Adding four random digits to people's names was a brilliant solution to two common problems with usernames (users wanting the same username and usernames of notable personalities getting leaked), and now they're just going to the exact same system everyone else uses with all of its attendant problems? Fuck off
I read their post, and to put it politely I'm unconvinced that people are so dumb they cannot copy+paste their name and number in a message to someone else that they want to add as a friend.
I can actually 100% believe that. A substantial number of people aren't able or perhaps willing to just google how to do basic stuff.
Well that sounds like a you problem. Discord has to account for the real world where people are in fact that dumb, not whatever world you live in. From their post:
Discord will never release this stat, but I would bet that that number won't decrease by more than a couple percentage points despite this change. Because people will still make typos, go "oops" and then make a second friend request for the person they're actually after.
Discord: usernames are currently extremely complicated and this results in people failing to remember or communicate them, so we're making them simpler
You: wtf I can't imagine the logic behind this change and also there's no way it will actually help the problem
:gamer-gulag:
I'm saying that I don't think that Discord has made a convincing argument that this is the case.
What do you mean they haven't made a convincing argument? About which part? The fact that discord usernames are extremely complicated is self-evident. That this results in people failing to remember or communicate them is something everybody who regularly uses the program has learned through experience (and also follows logically). That they are making them simpler is beyond debate.
Which part do you need stronger evidence for?
No they're not. This conversation will never advance because we completely diverge on this essential point.
Normal usernames people are used to: case-insensitive alphanumeric string with maybe a couple of hand-picked special characters
Discord usernames: case-sensitive alphanumeric string with any number of special characters and a randomly generated code at the end which is typically never displayed
Sorry but you're just wrong on this, denying it is like denying the grass is green lol
Have widely-noted problems
Solves many of those problems
Even if they are more complicated than the industry standard your continued insistence that they are "extremely" complicated is incoherent to me. Discord is making this change because every tech company reaches a point where their growth slows down and in order to chase their old growth numbers they start fucking with systems that work, and at best come up with something that is equally good but more often than not come up with something worse and the userbase is stuck going along with it.
But they've explained exactly why they don't think the system they're fucking with works well. This isn't just a case of changing stuff to change stuff, they're changing something which is problematic to address those problems.
Also notice how at first you were like "they're not more complicated" and now you're like "ok they are more complicated but it's worth it"
Discord doesn't think it's worth it. It's as simple as that. Now you understand what they were thinking. But keep moving the goalposts.
I've never denied this. I've only said that I do think it's worth it, and that I find Discord's explanation lacking.
Discord usernames aren't so incredibly complicated in a way that this change will fix.
What's the difference between UserName#2345 and username2347305 (because "username" and "username 2345" was taken already)?
The biggest issue they had was capitalization making a difference, no one paid attention to that but it could be fixed by just making all the upper case letters lower case.
Also don't take their metrics at face value, how do they know it's not "gone to to the person they want to match with"? Maybe the recipient just didn't want to accept for some reason. There's certainly friend messages I've purposely ignored.
There are two differences. First off, username2347305 was chosen specifically by the user and they know that every single digit is part of their username. UserName#2345 simply goes by UserName 99% of the time and might literally have no idea that #2345 is even part of their username. They didn't pick it, and they never see it. The latter is also not case-sensitive so there's no way of miscommunicating or misremembering that aspect.
Ok ignoring metrics, I can speak from personal experience that trying to communicate your discord name to another human being and have them add you as a friend is a fucking nightmare which will be a million times better after this change.
They want the dumb demographic. The smarts will stay and adapt no matter what but you gotta cater to those dumb dumbs if you want the big bucks