Big Features Request for World Creators
Kadeko
VRChat has a huge problem when it comes to publishing worlds - most of them are dying after a day, up to a week. There are quite a few factors causing this:
1) Unique worlds, that has been put a lot of time and effort, get flooded by "Social Slop" aka chill and hangout worlds, assetflip worlds that has taken straight from the asset's demo scene and so on. I'm not against these worlds, but it gets too boring to explore any of these worlds.
2) Worlds that do get lucky like stays on top for couple of days will still die eventually because the Popular worlds don't change that often.
3) There are not enough SDK updates that can improve quality of the world and being able to create never seen before things.
And the list goes on.
Without fixing these problems, VRChat can eventually die from being too repetitive and boring. That means no money going to the creators and most importantly, to your game.
I have couple of ideas that could improve the quality of life on exploring worlds that can help you and us.
First and most important thing I want to see is a "Follow a creator" system that allows you to see any updated or newly added worlds tab from your favourite world creators. Right now the only way to stay updated is through group announcements or other social media. I don't like joining every creator's server to keep myself updated.
Second idea is to add Rating System to worlds that allows us to see if its worth going to these worlds and not be fooled by the thumbnail. Also this rating should be tied to how popular the world actually is and not just by the current players numbers. To avoid any "review bombing" this should be stricted to ranked users, just like how it is with uploading avatars and worlds. I believe this should be like a star rating system from 0-5 stars.
Third idea is having World list added into groups. Let's say there is a collaboration with multiple creators and they want the world to be released as a group. For that, any revenue coming from visitors will be added to the group revenue. It's up to the group staff members how they split the credits, whoever gets the permission.
Alternatively to the third idea is creating a favourite list for groups that want to recommend worlds.
Fourth idea as it's not so important, being able to form "Group homes". Basically when you enter the game, you and your group members can all join in the same instance rather than starting at your own home world, alone.
Please make me feel motivated again. Thank you for reading.
Log In
owlboy
Omnibus Canny posts are almost always ineffective. You can't mark this "In Progress" or "Complete."
Also, calling hangout worlds Social Slop? That's a huge bummer man. 😔
Kadeko
I do not mind any of these social worlds existing as I socialize with friends and strangers in these worlds too. I'm sorry if you took it in negative way, but I am little bit frustrated that there hasn't been anything new for a while. Hence why I call it a slop.
My post never has to be considered as I am just voicing my concerns and providing suggestions to them.
SaphiGoat
every system with a downvote, can be abused by people.
Imagine if someone does not like a specific thing in a world, an just downvotes this with thier friends.
Or someone uses thier range (a streamer for example) to review-bomb.
Kadeko
SaphiGoat You're right, but it's always worth trying it out these instead of never doing it. I wonder how it would play out if they made it as a option to receive ratings for those creators, who are worried about it. The only problem I see with that is it can't exist together with worlds using ratings, in the same world tab. There will be creators always opting out and bait people to visit their worlds.
More moderation would have to be considered to check, if someone has been attacked with ratings. Perhaps adding analytics feature would help detecting suspicious activity. They would have to update their Terms of Service and give out punishments like removing permission to rate. Visitor Ranks should never be allowed to rate for very obvious reasons and if it was a group of people doing this to someone, that's considered harassment.
Tooze
I think it would be cool if there was a seasonal spotlights section in the world menu.
I imagine each season would have around 16 to 32 of some of the most noteworthy, interesting, fun, unique, cool and high quality worlds of every season, and a dropdown menu or arrows to be able to check previous seasons.
Like "Summer 2025 Spotlights", "Spring 2025 Spotlights", "Winter 2024 Spotlights" and so on.
And I imagine it wouldn't necessarily only have to be the most visually appealing worlds but small cool udon project worlds or interesting concepts could also be showcased there.
The current very static spotlights are useful for new players, but they've been mostly the same worlds for a very long time now, and I imagine anyone who plays actively does not even click on those sections in the world menu.
A section like this would also be very useful for those that don't play that often or if you've haven't been playing for a long time.
Like if you took a break for 2 years, and you wanted to check all the cool worlds you might have missed out on, with a feature like this you could just go through the 8 seasonal spotlights that happened during those 2 years and go visit all the worlds that interest you.
That's why I think a dropdown or arrows to be able to look at previous spotlights would be important.
I think something like this would also help people remember that some worlds exist, since someone might not remember the name of a world but might remember that it was in a seasonal spotlight.
You could also give a badge for every world creator whose world makes it to the seasonal spotlights.
All of the worlds would have to probably be hand-picked which would require some manpower. It might also be possible to automate it with looking at which worlds people are giving favorites to, but that might also make it a little bit more boring if it was automated like that. It could still serve a useful purpose.
Kadeko
Tooze I believe this is a solid suggestion as well! I remember there were times when they did this during winter few years ago. It was automatically picked through custom tags and the amount of current visits.
If they improved search function like adding the Date Added filter, it would make it possible to find older worlds out there.
Momomeno7
I remember them doing the winter when I first joined VRChat and I really enjoyed it. Whatever worlds were at the top of the list for that particular day would be full of people, whilst empty on other days. The exposure was great for revitalizing older but still amazing worlds, and I truly wish they'd revisit the idea.
rokumori_
Hi, just passing by and wanted to share my thoughts.
I’m also a world creator, and I agree with most of what you said and have thought about your second idea. However, I have some opposing views regarding the rating system, and I actually think the current “favorites” feature is already sufficient.
The reason is that rating systems are very subjective. Different raters can give widely varying scores and reasons. This can lead to a lot of negative impact — and I, as well as some people around me, really pay attention to even small reviews. For example, if someone gives my world 1 star or even just 3 stars, it could affect my mood for the whole day.
Look at YouTube’s policy: they removed public dislikes because many creators reported that dislikes seriously affected their mental health. And that’s just a simple like/dislike system.
Back to VRChat, I also dislike worlds whose thumbnails and content are very mismatched, but a rating system would bring too many negative effects, directly impacting creators, which could discourage more people from creating.
Think about it: someone might just dislike certain parts of your world (maybe missing mirrors or collision boxes) and give 3 stars; or they don’t update their review after you improve it; or a user had an argument with strangers in your world and then gives 1 star… extreme, but all possible.
Moreover, many players don’t have enough knowledge to create good worlds. While a rating system could serve as motivation, it’s also a double-edged sword.
Also, I think chill or hangout worlds are always on the popular list mainly because most players enjoy the “chat” experience. Even if there were a rating system, these worlds would still likely stay above 4 stars.
Kadeko
rokumori_ I had a thought about this as well and I do agree it can also be bad for creators that get unfair rating. I believe there should be categories (Not the same as Custom Tags) for worlds as well like is it Hangout, Exploration or a Game world. There's always going to be someone who doesn't like what we do and I think it should not affect our mentality.
For the YouTube part, a lot of people are still against at the removed dislike button because now we're seeing much less productive videos than before.
Comparing to past times when Mirror dwelling was the only thing people did, I think it has generally been reduced all thanks to the personal mirrors. If every world creator reduced the amount of mirrors then it wouldn't be so addicting either.
rokumori_
Kadeko
I think it might be useful to have a system where the community can add tags to worlds, not just the creators themselves. Users could add or remove tags as well. This could be a good balance—helping players find worlds they’re more interested in without overly discouraging the creators.
I also agree that removing the dislike button on YouTube can be bad for users, but that policy was designed from the creators’ perspective. Many creators’ mental resilience isn’t as strong as people might think.
Salena
I agree with this as well.
I used sites like vrclist that have a voting system and you can get low (or even negative) ratings for things such as people not being able to beat the world in a non soft lock way or having the music not being on a toggle and these things aren’t proper feedback that help improve the world and are more likely to make a creator feel like it isn’t worth it.
As for the world follows for new uploads, it would be nice to have a public count on the creator’s profile for the number of followers that follow them for world uploads. This would be a good indicator for when people look at a world they can see if the creator has a pretty high and base it off that.
Prismic247
"Perfect is the enemy of good".
Certainly there are valid critiques for the pros and cons of like/dislike or star rating systems. But at the end of the day I would still prefer either of those over the existing paradigms, both as a creator and a user of the platform.
Those systems don't invalidate the existing paradigms either. We can still have listings for active/popular worlds on the discovery page, and see the visits and favorites a world has. But having the option to rate worlds not only provides another dimension of how to evaluate a world for creators and users; it also encourages higher quality world creation in general. And in a roundabout way, it finally provides a way to simply know if you've been to a world before (since VRChat doesn't tell you this), and what you thought of it.
Yes, there are valid concerns of downvote brigading and the larger issue of vote manipulation in general. But I don't believe that is a good enough reason to reject the suggested improvement outright as though the status quo is somehow better. Keep in mind that YouTube didn't remove the ability to downvote, just the display of it, because they still see the system as useful. Reddit, Amazon, Steam, Meta, etc, all also use rating systems. Brigading is usually outlier situation that can be handled, while the norm is that the law of large numbers would tend towards world ratings matching the average user's opinion of the world. The system we have in place now worked years back when VRChat was smaller and had only a few worlds coming out a day, but it has grown far beyond that, and desperately needs improvement.
Lastly, given that avatars now have the ability to have multiple showcase images, I would like to see the same implemented for worlds. With a single image slot we usually just end up with a cover photo that may have nothing to do with the world. I think multiple image slots would be a big improvement to have space to show off what's actually in a world and persuade users it's worth checking out. And conversely, I would love to see avatars also display usage counts and favorites like worlds do (and obviously a built in search). As bad as feedback is for world creators, avatar creators have it even worse.
Kadeko
Forgot to mention why it should be a star rating system: it should be like that so you can filter the worlds out by the rating! Imagine searching worlds that has been rated 4 and above!