Dear VRChat Team,
Do you care at all about the avatar creators in your game? Because your actions say you only see us as and our creations only as problems. Maybe you don't realize, but avatars are literally the life-blood of VRChat. A huge number of people literally came here to see creative avatars and take part in making them. And what makes avatars in this game special is what we (used to) be able to do with them. But each update you either break something (and never bother fixing it), or purposely take away functionality we use in them without making any attempt to replace it. Since I started this game two years ago, you guys have done nothing but continuously strip away little by little the things that made avatars special. You should have learned from the particle limiter debacle. Forcing limits on people whether they want them or not is a horrible idea. Your latest stunt with forced audio limits we can't sidestep is going to drive a lot of creators away.
Nobody is asking for forced audio limits. You already gave us two methods to get rid of annoying audio, through the avatar audio slider and the saftey settings. Why do you feel like you need to now force really restrictive limits? People were only ok with the original limits cause we could just side-step them so easily. Most people don't want audio limits. I understand wanting to prevent people from ear-raping people with global audio, but you literally already solved that issue. You don't need anything more than the avatar audio slider and saftey settings. If people don't want loud audio, they can already block it.
What I really don't understand is why you feel like you have to force logarithmic roll-off and no 2d/volumetric audio. Yes, logarithmic is technically realistic but the way you implemented it is distinctly unrealistic. Audio falls off noticeably way too fast. The real max range before audio becomes too faint to hear is something like 2.5 meters at the max allowed range. Your current implementation is not realistic in any sense of the word. Yet, every time I've approached a team member about why you guys insist on forcing log falloff and no 2d, you tell me that its because its realistic. You should not be forcing me to make stuff "realistic"! The appeal of this game is fundamentally about defying the laws of reality, not conforming to them. Let us, the avatar creators, make decisions about how we want to make our avatars sound. If we want to use linear rolloff, let us! If we want to make weird custom falloff curves, let us! Who cares if it's unrealistic? Are you going to force the standard lighting model on all shaders because anything else is unrealistic? Two dimensional audio isn't just used for ear-rape, it has a very legitimate use for background music. Let us use it. Don't tell us what we should and shouldn't do. Let us do the audio design for our own stuff. Don't make decisions for us.
Since you're hellbent on forcing these new limits, and I doubt anything will change your mind, please consider doing what you did with the dynamic bone limiter and the particle limiter. Please add an option to the menu (or maybe the config) to disable forcing the audio limits. Make it both stop forcing the old audio limits and curves and make it disable auto adding the new spatialization script to every avatar sound source. That way you can keep your limits, and those of us who don't want them can not have them. I know you guys hate options (to quote one of your server guys "People ask for options, I scream NO at them"), but if you force this on everyone, its going to make A LOT of good people, not just idiot spammers, leave the game.
Please don't just leave the audio limits permanently forced on as they are now. Let us disable them. I've spent over 4000 hours just playing on this platform. I've probably spent nearly as much time making stuff in unity. I love this game. But you guys keep breaking my stuff little by little, and it has completely killed my enthusiasm and creative drive. And I'm not the only one. Many really productive creators I know left the game after you guys broke or removed an avatar feature. I'm on my last legs with this. If you don't give us an option to turn it off, I'm done making anything for vrchat ever again. If you don't have the slightest bit of respect for the people who make your platform special, then I won't do you the favor of making content for free. Please, stop doing this to us. If you continue to drive your creators out of the game, its going to stagnate and die.
Thanks,
Error.mdl