Avatar Performance Restriction Overrides
MondoCat
Avatar performance gating, for event runners and clubs who need to manage performance at scale is great and highly requested, however, the hard restriction preventing users from locally overriding these limits isn't fair
If a player has the hardware to handle their friend's unoptimized avatar, they should be allowed to make that choice for their own client.
Allow individual users to locally override the instance restriction for specific avatars (or friends) on their own client, similar to the "show avatar" system we currently have.
So we alllll get what we want :3
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Docteh
the "show avatar" system works so great that all the quest users just blindly turn everyone's avatar on, and then wonder why the game is always running so badly.
DarkSwordsman
Allowing users to override the limit locally will do nothing to actually "enforce" against very poor avatars. We would see little to nothing change. I am not in support of this suggestion.
ThistleBunny
Honestly, I like the way they're implementing it without an override - it makes optimized avatars the problem of the people creating and using them, because no one will be able to see their avatars unless and until they optimize it.
Historically, it's always felt like "if you're computer can't handle unoptimized avatars, that's your problem and you get to suffer a degraded experience". But if people with unoptimized avatars are having their avatars force hidden by instances, and no one can see their full avatar, that'll just encourage them to optimize it.
Kojso
I already wrote about this in a comment on the Developer Update where this was announced. I'll keep this to just my proposed solution.
Here is a link to the comment as well: https://ask.vrchat.com/t/developer-update-9-april-2026/48173/107
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Instead of the instance directly locking avatar visibility to a performance rank, I think this should use the existing Avatar Optimizations options VRChat already has.
Since users can already block avatars by performance rank through Block Poorly Optimized Avatars, Avatar Performance Gated Group Instances could simply set that existing option to the desired level and then give users a way to revert to their usual setting.
If that happens, the user should get a clear message saying that their setting was changed for this instance and that they can revert it if they want, ideally with a button in the message itself if possible.
This would still improve performance by default while preserving local choice.
It would also fit well with adding some much needed options like Always Show Friend Avatars and Allow Override with “Show Avatar” to the existing Avatar Optimizations settings, similar to what Avatar Culling has.
I attached a visualisation for what the new Avatar Optimizations could look like.
Rekka93
To add to this for those saying people shouldn't be able to override. If the club sets the restriction and then people are allowed to override locally that is not taking away from the curated experience the instance owners are setting.
By having the restriction and then allowing overrides it is giving players the same freedom of control they have now with culling but setting the starting post firmly in culling rather then showing everyone. Have a strong PC okay then ease off some of that imposed culling and allow people you select to be shown locally.
To me that would be way more in line with how the current VRChat experience is while still granting control for instance owners to set a default experience for people joining.