I guess I struck gold with mine. 
3 Likes
I think we should separate usernames and display names kinda like how Discord, Twitter, etc does. For example, my name would show up as âTinargâ but itâd actually be Tinarg#8610816 or something similar.
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And what Iâm saying is that intending to use a common word or phrase anywhere is an exercise in futility. If someone wants to be âCarâ on every website, theyâre going to have a really bad time.
My username is my username simply because it wasnât taken. Thereâs nothing special about it other than that Iâve been using it for the amount of time Iâve 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 letâs 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 thatâs just alternating vowels and consonants. When you say itâs 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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Iâm 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 youâd think. I created my current username, Chrythm, last year, and itâs 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, itâs 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 âCreeperâ and ârhythmâ because music and creepers had a large impact on my creative influence, and combined them. Also switched the C and R because it looked weirdâŚ
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At minimum to be able to submit a request to Roblox to manually review the accountâs 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 hasnât been active for 8 years and clearly no longer gets involved or comes onto Roblox).
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I have an account I havenât touched in years. However, it has a lot of good items and frankly Iâd not want the name on it to be available for anyone else to use. Iâd assume others might be in the same scenerio.
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If youâre not using the username then youâre taking up space for someone else, TL:DR if youâve 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 havnât 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 âtaken usernamesâ - or so Iâve heard.
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I just found something out that makes this even worse. You canât even take the username of an account that literally no longer exists. I wanted to see if I could change my username from âXenderSquaredâ to âXenderâ. (My original and previous username was âxender2â.) I am connected to this original xender account but it wasnât mine. I am the owner of a group that this user used to own, and thatâs where a shout by the user exist. If you click the username, you get sent to a 404 error page. Iâm assuming this means the account has been completely wiped.
There should be no reason why I canât 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, â2â and âsquaredâ only exists because I canât claim this username.
I certainly donât 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 itâs 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 canât 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 itâs 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 accountâs 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 âjdhkasdj2313sgsâ.
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 wouldnât need to put so much effort into materializing your message. For example, most people donât say âyouâ, but instead they say, âuâ as a nifty shortcut. This is the identity of a chat, which is challenged when a user has to mention someone elseâs 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!
29 Likes
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 isnât 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 isnât going to do something about this, usernames will going look like âRobloxPlayer546710321313123â in the futureâŚ
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I made a reply to this thread a few years ago but would like to comment again that Roblox really needs to recirculate old unused usernames. As mentioned above, soon enough long usernames with plenty of numbers will become the norm.
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The lack of a username problem has been a thing before username changes were implemented. That really should put in perspective how bad the situation is now. Roblox has grown a lot, and almost any username closer to something original is taken. And as other people have mentioned previously, it is unknown how many of these players/users are old users who have not accessed their account in years and how many are bots. Botting has clearly become more and more of an issue recently, I think itâs fair to assume quite a few Roblox accounts are bots.
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I think this certainly would be really useful for people looking to create a more professional appearance on Roblox. Although, this certainly would need to be managed in a way that isnât unfair to people on the platform.
As mentioned by the original poster, Twitch have done something for this: https://help.twitch.tv/s/article/username-rename-and-recycling-policies?language=en_US
The issue with this on Roblox, as far as I can see, is that people create alternate accounts to reserve usernames and use the username change feature to do this as well. People seem to enjoy creating a âportfolioâ of usernames which, if Roblox randomly released these usernames, would upset a lot of people as Robux is spent to change your username.
So, if Roblox was to do this, they would need to make it clear the conditions of changing your username and the clear expectations as to how a username may be released for use. Perhaps it would be a good idea to release previous usernames but you always keep your main username regardless how long youâve been logged out.
I donât know for sure how youâd implement this on Roblox, but if Roblox did this it would be really useful for sure 
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Thatâs actually a problemâŚ
Some people âsnipinigâ usernames, just like this guy
what we gonna do later?, when all usernames will be taken
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Accounts that get used for about a day and then get completely abandoned should automatically be cleared and have their username made available for someone else to take.
Being unable to claim the username âkyjiâ just because some clearly abandoned and untouched account from 2013 is an extremely annoying thing to suffer with.
Display names did not solve this, as in many scenarios the username is still used instead.
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It would be great if it was like if your name was already taken they would put a number, like
âBruh#120319â
Meaning this is the 120319th User to have the name Bruh, yes, this would make searching for the User way harder but would allow people to get better names
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