I can’t say that I’ve experienced this problem, personally. I’ve been able to find quite a few unique and easily identifiable usernames.
not to mention an old friend of mine who has more (good) usernames than can fit on the web page:
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Roblox should have limited name changes from the very beginning honestly. With a warning each time you change it with how many you have left, like say each account only gets 10. Also, to prevent people from using up all 10 so fast, the price would double every time. First change is free but only for BC to prevent new alts sniping twice, otherwise it would be 1k. Second is 1k. 3rd is 2k, 4th is 4k, and so on. And once the name is changed, the previous name is now open to the public after 1 month grace period. I would like to think such a thing is possible but perhaps its not due to how the website works. I mean imagine any conflicts and site errors based on the fact that its trying to get someone who once used the name but no longer is, or perhaps even a human error getting people mixed up because they once used the name. But then again that’s what UserId’s are for, so eh.
I would rather not have my name taken if I went on vacation for a couple years. I like the idea, but I would like it to have some conditions like if the person has had a BC membership, especially if its still active, or the user has used DevEx before. For a dev with millions of place visits, going on vacation and coming back to your name missing, the name that millions of people know you by, would be very annoying.
And now that you found them, others cant 
(and thats one of the points of this thread.) Not everyone is going to be clever enough to find really good names, especially kids. I mean besides the special cases where they are clever lol but thats not the point. At best, even myself sometimes I can take up to an hour or so to decide on a username for websites that have too many names taken just because I don’t want to be known by some ridiculous name with a lot of numbers in it because that’s not professional looking at all.
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I agree that there should have been a limit. I certainly don’t need all of the names that I’ve taken. At the same time, a lot of these names can never be allowed to anyone else. While many of the names I took have been used only for a moment, some of them were used for a lot longer. For example, my original name “Emporerj” hasn’t been used in years now, but it could still be used to impersonate me. This goes for several of my other usernames, and I really wouldn’t feel comfortable with people running around with usernames that I have actually used for years at a time in the past.
With that being said I would have no problem at all with some of them being used. For example, “John_Locke” was obviously a name snipe that I never intended to use. If Roblox has records for our usage of these names, it’d show that I used that name for less than five minutes. So, at the end of the day, I think I’d be okay with names that were only briefly used being released to other users.
Briefly being the keyword. Nobody could impersonate me with a name I used for a few minutes. I don’t think anybody would ever be comfortable with people using names that they used for more than, say, three days, though.
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3 days seems too short. a couple weeks is better but even then that feels like only a tiny bit of time compared to how fast time flies in a given year lol. So perhaps any name that hasn’t been used for a total of a months worth of time. Surely people can get over that you have a new name now if you were only known to have the old name for less than a month.
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Disagree, or else I would have been stuck with xXObliterationXx. Maybe a set number of name changes per year, 5 or so, but the more important focus is roblox re-releasing usernames for people to use them again.
I love runescapes idea, a letter a day. It sounds extremely fun and fulfilling to get a username that you really want, but at the same time, if the cap on username changes is active, then that’ll be even better in stopping people from grabbing all the usernames.
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So many people suggest freeing up usernames from old/deleted/inactive accounts, but what’s preventing the same people taking good usernames now to also take those? It’s just going to give more usernames to the exact same people you’re trying to prevent from taking them. Even with restrictions on who the usernames will be available to, there are plenty of people with too much undevexable robux on Roblox.
Imo, if usernames are going to be handed out, it should be on a case by case basis, and for a reason other than “i want it”
Also, on the topic of limiting name changes, I can very easily see people hitting this cap if some new username feature comes out (like when underscores did) that would allow your username to be displayed in new ways, and you wanting to prevent impersonation.
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I guess I struck gold with mine. 
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I think we should separate usernames and display names kinda like how Discord, Twitter, etc does. For example, my name would show up as “Tinarg” but it’d actually be Tinarg#8610816 or something similar.
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And what I’m saying is that intending to use a common word or phrase anywhere is an exercise in futility. If someone wants to be “Car” on every website, they’re going to have a really bad time.
My username is my username simply because it wasn’t taken. There’s nothing special about it other than that I’ve been using it for the amount of time I’ve been on the website. What I have an attachment to is the identity my name represents on the website. Had it been taken already, I would have a different username right now. But it still would have the same amount of identity behind it, and therefore the same attachment. The particular sequence of letters was never really that interesting.
How true is that?
Usernames allow letters (26), numbers (10), underscores (1). Only a handful of old accounts have things like dots and spaces, so those are negligible. Usernames are 20 characters maximum, and 3 characters minimum, so we have (26+10+1)^20 - (26+10+1)^(3-1) usernames to choose from as an upper limit.
Now let’s try looking at a very simple subset: Letters only, and sequences with no more than one consonant (C) or vowel (V) in a row, which probably looks wordy enough in most cases. The sequences look like this:
CVC
VCV
CVCV
VCVC
Which turns into this (21 consonants, 5 vowels):
21 * 5 * 21 +
5 * 21 * 5 +
21 * 5 * 21 * 5 +
5 * 21 * 5 * 21 +
Extrapolating that to 10 characters yields 28,961,773,680 possible names. At 100 accounts per second, it would take around 9 years to snipe all those precious names. 12 characters gets us to 3,040,986,261,180. 9.5 years at 10,000/s. The maximum 20 characters yields 369,633,780,691,804,011,180. 11.7 years at 1 trillion accounts created per second. And that’s just alternating vowels and consonants. When you say it’s only going to get worse, you might be right. It will be interesting to see what Roblox comes up with to handle that increase in traffic.
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That would lead to so much impersonation
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I’m deeply sorry to annoy anyone for bumping this post after such a long time, but I feel too strongly to let the argument hang like this.
Finding a good username is not nearly as hard as you’d think. I created my current username, Chrythm, last year, and it’s pretty simple. There were plenty of other names I found and considered, too. If I was able to get this name on Minecraft a week ago, it’s possible to make an original username. The only difference is that nowadays, new usernames need to be more creative and unique. For example, in 2011 I was very invested in that game. I took “Creeper” and “rhythm” because music and creepers had a large impact on my creative influence, and combined them. Also switched the C and R because it looked weird…
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At minimum to be able to submit a request to Roblox to manually review the account’s status and if the account is deemed inactive the account to be put in an inactive state where the username is take-able (for example if an account hasn’t been active for 8 years and clearly no longer gets involved or comes onto Roblox).
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I have an account I haven’t touched in years. However, it has a lot of good items and frankly I’d not want the name on it to be available for anyone else to use. I’d assume others might be in the same scenerio.
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If you’re not using the username then you’re taking up space for someone else, TL:DR if you’ve got an account you want, use it or lose it.
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This is exactly the situation of the one I want. They havn’t been online since 2008, they have no valuable items NO ITEMS in their inventory. It really annoys me (the current username system that is) because even when someone changes their name permanently, their username is never removed from the list of ‘taken usernames’ - or so I’ve heard.
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I just found something out that makes this even worse. You can’t even take the username of an account that literally no longer exists. I wanted to see if I could change my username from “XenderSquared” to “Xender”. (My original and previous username was “xender2”.) I am connected to this original xender account but it wasn’t mine. I am the owner of a group that this user used to own, and that’s where a shout by the user exist. If you click the username, you get sent to a 404 error page. I’m assuming this means the account has been completely wiped.
There should be no reason why I can’t use this username.
I know to many this will seem trivial, but many others will understand the value of personal branding. I have always been known as xender, “2” and “squared” only exists because I can’t claim this username.
I certainly don’t want anyone bending over backwards just for me (some random nobody), but I just want to know if this could be done for me or if it’s set in stone and can not ever be changed.
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The 404 page just means that they are terminated. You can still log on to terminated accounts you just can’t do anything other than view the termination screen. So the Xender account still exist.
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I apologize for bumping this topic, but I have some important points to make including my stance, the main problems that I see in this, and a potential solution.
My Stance
I agree with everything said in the topic.
Main Problems
These are the problems that are the result of this username restriction. Of course, there are many more, but these are the ones that I see.
Problem 1: The Snowball Effect of Unique Usual Usernames
Very true. We are all aware that the number of accounts is increasing day by day, usually in very large numbers. Whether it’s an alternate account or a completely new person, one new account is added every time someone signs up. This essentially creates the snowball effect: the username of each account is taken and can never be used for future accounts; so, as time goes on and more new accounts are created, there are more and more restrictions of what those future account’s usernames can be.
Now, you may be saying that Roblox allows up to 20 characters in a username, and therefore, the possibilities of unique usernames are HUGE. Aah, this is where humanly preferences come in. Think about it this way: humans are usually creating new accounts, and so, the usernames are usually real words, people, phrases, memes, or something along those lines. This eliminates many possibilities where usernames would be something like “jdhkasdj2313sgs”.
In summary, The Snowball Effect of Unique Usual Usernames is a growing problem where every new account decreases the number of choices of new, valid, and preferred usernames. Hopefully, you can imagine what this means for Roblox a decade in the future.
Problem 2: Communication
To create a new username with a preferred word or phrase in it without it being identical to previous usernames, most users just stick random numbers within their username. Sure, it does the job by creating a unique account, but someone in a game server wants to mention their exact username, many issues arise.
One, it gets complicated to copy down the characters of their username when most of them consist of numbers and symbols. This is not the point of a chat. A chat is supposed to be a quick way of communication where you wouldn’t need to put so much effort into materializing your message. For example, most people don’t say “you”, but instead they say, “u” as a nifty shortcut. This is the identity of a chat, which is challenged when a user has to mention someone else’s long and complicated username.
And two, the chat filter kicks in. Usually, if users of ages under 13 try to say numbers like 1, the entire word gets ### out. For example, if someone wanted to mention hello121439918, the chat would yield ##############.
My Solution
I strongly suggest that allowing users to have identical usernames would be awesome. To differentiate those identical accounts, we can use tag numbers (like #1429), just like how Discord does it. This way, usernames can look a little more preferred like HelloWorld, instead of something like HelloWorld42187249.
Thank you for reading this very long reply!
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This thread is still very relevant to the current state of Roblox, hence why I wanted to bump it.
Roblox needs to implement a way of preventing username hoarding for inactive accounts and cycle old usernames back into the ecosystem.
Most of these accounts have been inactive for many years and are left collecting dust, new users are struggling to get an original name without many numbers and horrible characters being used, recycling unused account usernames would give people a lot more freedom to express the name they want to be.
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It isn’t an unknown fact that lots of Roblox accounts are created daily. A major percentage of these accounts are either used by bots (so terminated after a short time) or no longer used after a few weeks of playing on it.
Because of this, a lot of usernames are claimed by terminated/inactive accounts.
If Roblox isn’t going to do something about this, usernames will going look like ‘RobloxPlayer546710321313123’ in the future…
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