tl;dr: A separate status for "Online Friends" not in any favorites groups, and separate statuses for each favorites group. The highest level of availability applies to people in multiple favorites groups.

This is a suggestion I've heard floating around a lot but haven't seen posted (unless I missed it).

It's often repeated nowadays that VRChat isn't as fun as before due to everybody being on orange / unavailable. As somebody who is always on orange myself, I stay on that status for two reasons. The first is that I accept friend requests from kind people I don't necessarily know too well who I wouldn't want to mix with my close friends. The second is to keep some friends groups separate either due to them explicitly stating so or just my own judgement.

I would like to instead have a different set of statuses for different people I can set as needed. For instance, if I'm streaming I would be unavailable to most but joinable by a list of people I trust to be in my stream. If I were just hanging out and relaxing I would only be available to join by people I'm very close to. And I could have a different status on a favorites list of people I trust to join me in any situation.

I think most people on orange have a lot of friends they would trust to join them in most cases, but their friends list is so full that they have to be selective. I know most people now see orange as unavailable and won't even send the request out of not wanting to be rejected. I think having different statuses for different people / favorites lists would clear a lot of this up and bring some of the fun back.

This would be an effective resolution to the "orange status" problem even if it were only applied to one favorites list.