Apologies if the title sounds a bit overly cynical or perhaps even accusatory; it’s more of an expression of exasperation. Perhaps it’s even a little naive or my expectations are too high; but I digress.
I’ve only recently started venturing out into Public and Group Public instances (after spending most of my time in Friend/Invite ones), and, at the risk of sounding overly dramatic, the experience has been frankly appalling. My game sessions are typically 2-3 hours, and I say without exaggeration that in every single session involving public instances, at least one individual has engaged in harassment of others, dropped an n-bomb or (insert anything here)-phobic remark, or otherwise simply been a nuisance to everyone around them. And don’t even get me started on the nigh-endless parade of idiots who still think invading furry-related spaces is the absolute height of comedy. Real winners, that lot.
Yes, I get it: blocking and instance-moderation exist for a reason; there are tens of thousands of players and very limited staff-hours available to devote to processing and following-up on reports. But (and yes, this is merely anecdotal), there seems to be a pervasive (and growing) sentiment that reporting just doesn’t work. It’s great that there are a myriad of ways to send such reports, but what good are they if nobody uses them because they don’t believe doing so will accomplish anything?
I’ve been working on a prop->osc->external app setup to auto-trigger OBS to record 30 second clips in the hopes that providing more concrete evidence of such actions might make for more effective reports that actually lead to these people facing some repercussions. But I don’t want to be some sort of ‘misbehavior vigilante’, and it’s far too easy for cynicism to step in and to imagine being a ‘squeaky wheel’ is just going to get my name on a ‘move to spam folder’ filter.
Admittedly this is more or less just venting frustrations at a perceived lack of action on reducing the number of bad actors and making VRChat a more pleasant place to spend time, but I’d be remiss to not at least try making a constructive suggestion. Could there be (or is there already) some manner of periodically-updated report statistics dashboard/page/widget/whatever to just serve as an indicator/acknowledgement/reassurance that “something is being done”? It could be a simple as
During {time period}, we received {X} reports, successfully processed {Y} percent, and actions were taken in {Z} percent of cases
Just a little blurb to tell the community: “Pushing that ‘report’ button means something.”
I really like VRChat, and while I don’t necessarily agree with some of the features/choices/priorities that have been made over the past however many months/years, I have a great respect and appreciation for the work the staff has done and continues to do to improve the game and experience for the userbase. It can just be really disheartening when, night after night, I drop into an instance of something like SVRB or the Pug, only to be greeted by someone wearing an up-scaled, offensive PNG avatar and calling everyone who passes them a “f----t n----r”.
ok thanks for coming to my Ted talk