Allow free avatars in Avatar Marketplace
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TL;DR
Let creators make their public Avatars listed in the Avatar Marketplace for a price of 0V/.
The Idea
The new Avatar Marketplace feature is a great addition for creators who want to sell their Avatars.
But what if a creator want to "sell" (but "share" would be a better word) for free? Let me explain:
I'm an Avatar creator and I don't personally like the idea of "selling" an Avatar, I prefer sharing them to the community.
I like the idea of having a menu where people can find, try, and select an Avatar within the VRChat menu, like this Avatar Marketplace.
So the idea is simple, let an Avatar creator share Avatars for free, meaning it's not the idea of
buying
an Avatar, but rather ability to directly select it.Implementation
One proposition is to add a new field in the Avatar dictionary. The key would be something like "listed", and the value could be a boolean (True/False). And the value would be False by default.
It would only work on a "public" avatar, not a "private" avatar.
- If the value is True, then the Avatar will be listed in the Marketplace for a price of 0V/. The buttons will be different, instead of "buying" the Avatar, you could just select it
- If the value is False (by default), it means that the only way to get this avatar, is like today, select if from an Avatar Pedestal (or from the API), and it will not being listed in the Avatar Marketplace
Also, if this feature is being implemented inside the VRChat API, Avatar search worlds could continue existing, using now the official way to search for Avatars.
Making this feature official, could prevent unwanted exterior Avatars information database to scrap and grab Avatar information, making them deprecated.
History
It's been years that players are looking for a way to get "public" Avatars from a sort of a search engine.
Several solutions has been created over years, like public databases that store VRChat avatars information and where you can access with third party applications, or from an Avatar search world for example.
VRChat did not implement an "Avatar Search" feature inside their menu for a reason:
Avatars creator want players to came in their world, in order to get them from an official Avatar Pedestal.
But let be honest, today, we have "Avatar Search Worlds", that are not always up to date, but they are one of the most visited worlds in VRChat, because people want to find Avatars following keywords (type, category... e.g: furry...) or from a specific author (like an author a player want to follow)
Also, some Avatar Creator are not always up to create a world just for storing Avatar Pedestals.
Inconvenient
Making an Avatar listed in the Avatar Marketplace would make the "favorite" list feature compromise, as it could become a way to
avoid
store an Avatar in the player favorite list as it could be easily accessible in the Avatar Marketplace.Conclusion
So, we could make an "listed" option for Avatar Creator to make their "public" avatars listed for FREE in the Avatar Marketplace, in order to share them to the community, while "unlisted" "public" Avatars would not being listed in the Avatar Marketplace.
Again, the idea is to not have the same behavior as "buying" an Avatar, but rather the ability for a player to find and select and avatar for free from the Avatar Marketplace.
Log In
_spidget
I think this sounds like a thing that could be done if VRChat allowed creators the ability to showcase public avatars on their profile the same way that their Avatar Marketplace avatars are shown in an avatar's details sheet.
If VRChat is willing to do that (and implement an avatar searching feature), then I don't know if there would be a need for this.
Chdata
I already know what the VRChat Devs would say:
Con to adding free market:
Allowing free avatars = many low quality avatars flood the market
Fix:
A simple "sort by price" or "show/hide free avatars" or "browse verified market vs browse free market" option will allow players to choose if they want to browse the paid or free market.
Pros:
The devs already know the majority of the playerbase wants to find good quality avatars without having to learn unity.
This will certainly be used by everyone to great extent.
Giving players a good FREE experience will retain those players. More retained players = bigger market and eventuality of sales.
Cons of current non-free market:
However, imagine the new player experience when they join VRChat, and think, "Wow, to get a GOOD quality avatar, I have to pay money, otherwise I am stuck with poor avatars?"
That is a bad new player experience. VRChat cannot force people who are unable to buy to somehow have money to buy.
So, by not including free options, those players are just alienated instead.
Fix:
The solution for that is just as Nekosan suggested :)
Pros:
Giving players a good FREE experience will retain those players. More retained players = bigger market and eventuality of sales.
Con to adding free market:
Allowing free avatars - it will be hard to navigate and find good quality avatars
Note:
This is already partially solved, because as VRChat intends, the paid market will be a place for high quality models curated by creators VRChat has chosen.
However, the problem would still exist in the scope of the free market only.
Fix:
Just as any other site does, giving players statistics like "how many times favorited" or "how many people currently using this avatar" or a like/dislike count/ratio, will help players sort.
Additionally, we already have avatar reporting. And VRChat I believe is already restricting the new market to avatars using up-to-date unity and SDK.
Having the option is better than not.
We essentially already have a free (and paid) market, just not a good way to navigate it.
Pros:
Goodbye Prismic's Avatar Search
Cons:
Goodbye Prismic's Avatar Search
Lordl left2die
good