That works great until some dickhole implements the old, "New password cannot contain any sequence from your previous (5) passwords."

This also of course necessitates storing (multiple successive!) passwords in plain text or with a reversible cipher, which is another stupid move. You'd think we'd have gotten all of this out of our collective system as a society by now, and yet I still see it all the time.

All of these schemes are just security theater, and actively make the system in question less secure while accomplishing nothing other than berating and frustrating its users.

"I just increment the number at the end" is a phrase I've heard so many times