Hey all, I have whipped up a Revised version of my feature request from months ago, I’ve Also created a Google Slideshow and I would like your feedback. Thanks in advance. https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Wr36j1R8DflzsfrNNDelLMsENWEo72ti4ad3m_Y3lxU/edit#slide=id.g30837231fe5_0_158
I’ve been approached with this sort of decision to be made for world creators for their worlds, and I agree that the group-ownership of the default instances made for that group would be an immense boon.
I would beg to question though if the allowance of a default public world would still be available for that world, should a group and it’s moderation take precedent in the space. My vote is that to make this sort of feature more respectful to the current climate of “public spaces” in VRChat, that there would be the option to still host a default Public instance. However, users would, by default, without choosing their own group to host an instance, be given the default option as “Host as Owner Group’s Public” or something a little more eloquently spoken then that.
I can still see public worlds getting scratched off the list though, but then that raises a massive concern as groups are still completely paywalled, and that a $10USD/local currency entry fee becomes apparent, if you’re wanting to ever see a world without having to rely on a massive network of friends who already just hang out in Friends+ Instances all the time.
think of it like this: instead of one single “creator” of the world that has all the permissions, there can be multiple people. Usually world creators that are recognizable have their own group, And although i was originally thinking of having co creators as a seperate thing from groups, Having it as a group feature just makes a bit more sense since the groups system already has spots for roles and permissions and what not.
Instead of relying on people to read text in the world, people will know if someone is one of the “developers” of the world simply by seeing that they don’t have permission to kick them or anything, because people are pretty quick to kick nowadays, and honestly its kind of annoying having to have a built in Developer tag in my world that always hovers over my head.
So in my opinion, No, there wont be an option to make true public instances. My main goal is to allow “Teams” to be properly recognized when creating a world with more than one person.
At the end of the day, when a group decides to host their Bar in Our world, it’s still our world. We have the final say, but we don’t control them, and they don’t control us.
Think of it like this:
imagine some people rented out a venue from you, you still Own the venue, but they are using it. You wanna be able to make sure they arent doing anything that is against Your rules.
We are letting people host at our bar world for free, but in return we ask for respect for our higher ups and me, since the world is uploaded under my friends account.
All of this requires balance of power.
and as i already mentioned in the slideshow:
The only people who will abuse this power will be the people who’s worlds are not popular. If people start abusing their power then their worlds will fail, simple.
The feature I want the most is the ability for vrchat to show in the website and in the game that more than one person created the world, and that the world shows up in multiple peoples “created worlds” tab. I want to be able for people to click on my profile and easily see the world i helped create, rather than me getting them to just search up the world.
“I would beg to question though if the allowance of a default public world would still be available for that world, should a group and it’s moderation take precedent in the space. My vote is that to make this sort of feature more respectful to the current climate of “public spaces” in VRChat, that there would be the option to still host a default Public instance. However, users would, by default, without choosing their own group to host an instance, be given the default option as “Host as Owner Group’s Public” or something a little more eloquently spoken then that.”
I’m still confused as to what you mean by this, There wont be a paywall for simply visiting a world, Its just that any instance you create, there will be more than one person who is “creator” of the world. A creator of a world can close any instance that is visible to them (public, group public) and can kick people regardless if they own the instance or not.
This can be useful for example if we just push an update to the world and we need to go in and manually close all the instances to prevent network desync.
Forgive me, I wrote my remarks on an empty stomach before bed. Let me try this again, of sound mind and body. :P
Forward: I’m using “VPI” as a short hand of the phrase “Vanilla Public Instance,” the default instance type of VRChat worlds.
I absolutely agree with you that the idea of a VRChat Group owning a world should be a thing. If an option could be added that opened Linked Group Instances instead of VPIs by default, I feel like that would be a good thing.
I do not believe that it would or should be mandatory, and some users feel less inclined to moderate their own spaces innately. That said, I do not believe that removing VPIs is a good idea. We’ll save that for later. For now, I’ll reference the PP Presentation.
Page 3: Makes sense. Using the page for our worlds uploaded on VRChat to choose a target group makes sense.
Page 4/5/6: This concept loses me a bit. You can just host a Group Public instance, and have moderation powers as per your group roles in your Group instances. Linking multiple groups to the moderation of a single world seems like it misses the mark. If it’s just a single group, then it aligns with my recommendation and will have the lowest likelihood of being misused.
I believe the thought process on these pages however refers to the idea of removing VPIs from worlds; if you do this, you are limiting the population of users that a world creator and their moderation team has deemed unfit for public. They can only go to Invite/+, Friends/+, and Group+/Private instances of that world now. This, if you ask me, goes against the public space idea that VRChat has established inside of VRChat’s ecosystem, and would further complicate things, as we’re now looking at a new dynamic of players controlling large swaths of VRChat’s core worlds. (This opens a new can of worms, such as possible and necessary moderation over toxic users controlling worlds.)
We can think we know best, but at the end of the day, VRChat is not our own, and we’ve sworn over jurisdiction in our worlds to VRChat at time of publishing to Community Labs.
Do I want to have full moderation power in my world? Yeah. I feel as though I could help protect my community considerably more effectively, as I have a team that works alongside me to combat against crashers and client users as much as they and I can stand it, using a Discord Announcement channel to provide real-time updates from us to them.
If we remove the VPI however, we’re forcing these users to occupy other spaces or getting them off the platform altogether if the right conditions are met. I’ll use the bar scene as a mention, since we’re both creators in said scene.
Say we remove VPIs, and start putting our own teams into moderation. We’ll say that some of the members of our teams decide that they want to handle moderation their way and decide to remove Visitors, New Users, and anyone they believe is under the age of 18 from the space.
Suddenly we’re assaulting the New Player Experience in VRChat and limiting the number of people that can occupy our spaces, even if we, the author, didn’t know it was happening. These users can only go to private versions of our worlds now, and they may find those instance types to be uneventful, boring, or useless. So, now we have to contend with the understanding that we are liable for the people that we have on our teams, even if they made the decisions and we did not.
Now, let’s keep this idea alive; what if the users removed don’t have friends, or very few? What if they can’t join a standard VPI version of the world? Suddenly, the doors are all closed, and there’s nothing they can do. They are at the mercy of our choice, or unknown allowance of moderation. These are the people that are going to be caught in the crossfire of this whole idea.
I urge discourse from page 7 however, as I believe this to be dangerous thinking. If I’m not great to people hosting an instance of my world, and they need me out, they have that right to remove me. My world is Public, and it is not up to me if I can inhabit the same space as others, even if it is my world upload. That is surrendered when you send your world to Community Labs.
Page 9: …and I imagine you’re speaking of Midnight Bar for the record, you already understand that we cannot use things to gate-keep people from our worlds. Having a linked group and removing the ability to create a VPI is tantamount to running code at runtime of the world to check your name and through you in the forever box thousands of Unity units away. We have the option to restrict features of the world however, if we find users that are being disruptive with those features.
Auto-moderation cannot be used, but giving people choice and guidance in moderation is. While a bit grey, I don’t disagree with a system that we alert users in the world of known troublemakers, racists, et cetera. We still have the ability to flag false positives however, and as you’ve been on the receiving end of that, I think you’re in a prime position to understand exactly what it would feel like to the layman user trying to enjoy themself in one of our worlds and being completely locked out.
Page 10: Makes sense. However, by removing VPIs, this goes back to my original point made in the first response post; if you do not have many friends, any friends, or you lack friends that go to the instance in question, then you are in a way putting up a paywall. They can join other group publics, but what if there aren’t many or any else up, other than your own? The only way they can enjoy a public instance and the experience then would be to pony up for VRC+ to create a group to then run a public instance of your world.
This is a stretch, and I admit it. This statement really only impacts worlds that have lower CCU counts over ones with higher averages. However, if it is the smaller creators that are by your account more likely to abuse the features of removing users, then it would be by their hand as well that they would struggle to get user numbers up to try and compete with other well established worlds on VRChat.
Page 11: I 100% endorse the idea of multiple authors behind a world. I do not know why that isn’t currently a feature, but my guess would be to remove the idea of infighting between co-collaborators having fallout and nobody else knowing what to do with the worlds and works uploaded; remove it wholesale? Keep it up? There needs to be good documentation established for what would be done in these cases. Perhaps a digitally signed contract that states that in good faith your work uploaded would be honored no matter what? Tough area to speak on the behalf of.
Page 15: What version of the SDK are you trying to upload content from? Future Proof Publishing has been extinct for years now. o_o
Again, I agree with multiple creator/author credits and fully endorse it. I’d love to give credit to my sibling for Sunset.
All-in-all, I think there are serious considerations that need to be addressed in the already established ecosystem in order to run something like this. I know we’re on the same page for most of this, but I fear of the possible things that could happen to newer creators in the space and what would happen to them if these features became live. What if people don’t want to go to worlds that don’t have active teams moderating their public spaces? What if they don’t join a new world in Labs or something up and rising in Popular because they don’t have a community and a plan to combat the bad actors in the space?
I think this needs refining, but it’s something that I too want some of the implementation of.
Hmmm, I see. Originally my idea was just to be able to add another world creator to an uploaded world, showing the world in both user’s profiles and having both users have equal power except deletion of the world.
Suddenly we’re assaulting the New Player Experience in VRChat and limiting the number of people that can occupy our spaces, even if we, the author, didn’t know it was happening. These users can only go to private versions of our worlds now, and they may find those instance types to be uneventful, boring, or useless. So, now we have to contend with the understanding that we are liable for the people that we have on our teams, even if they made the decisions and we did not.
I think you are misunderstanding. With World Group Linking, You need to actually BE in an instance to kick anyone, But I understand your worries.
I like to think of it as a Hierarchy of Power:
First there’s Kibble, The Uploader of the world, Responsible for modelling everything.
Then there’s Me, Responsible for Programming everything.
Then there’s The Higher Ups of the Mafia (Consisting of Magii4 and Ball0)
And then there’s You, The group owner hosting at the world.
Oh and then you have your own hierarchy for your group.
While I understand your worries as to people abusing this mechanic, I only want to be able to moderate instances I didn’t create, Not gatekeep who is allowed in. Cause to be honest, A world uploader can already do that.
Page 9: …and I imagine you’re speaking of Midnight Bar for the record, you already understand that we cannot use things to gate-keep people from our worlds. Having a linked group and removing the ability to create a VPI is tantamount to running code at runtime of the world to check your name and through you in the forever box thousands of Unity units away. We have the option to restrict features of the world however, if we find users that are being disruptive with those features.
Yes I am. Me and the Creator of The Midnight Bar have some beef, I won’t go into detail about it as I don’t need any more problems.
I would like to see your take on the idea, Make a copy of the slideshow and remove/change the parts you don’t like, this will help me understand where my ideas are flawed. Writing like this isn’t something I’m really good at, Heck I’m only a college student. But I do appreciate your feedback and I look forward to seeing your take on the idea.