Renaming the avatar performance ranking system would help to be better understood globally between mobile/quest/PC players/platforms. This would make making optimised avatars a lot easier and finally allow for a good "performance" cap, that ik VRChat has been considering for a while (However with the system in its current state, would be a disaster!).

Instead of having it be:

Have it be a global rank system between everyone, and just specify what (mobile/quest/PC) users can see up to, and what each [android and windows] sees (for those that upload different performances for Android and Windows rather than the same.)

--("Global" ranks means both platforms have the same rank boundaries as each other)--

There would be 2 options (one easier and the other more "effort" to implement) that could help:

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Option 1: combining current ranks.

This would combine all current ranks from PC and Android into one long system (since it already slightly goes up in steps from the Android ranks into the PC ones).

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Global ranks: Phenomenal / Excellent / Great / Good / Okay / Average / Medium / Moderate / Poor / Very poor

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---What platforms see up to---

Pc: Very poor + .

Quest: Poor and under.

Mobile: Good and under.

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(just to compare to the current names; Phenomenal is “Excellent” for Quest; Okay is “very poor” for Quest; Average if “excellent” for PC, etc.… )

This would be the easier option, as there is no need to make a massive change to what the current rank stats are, just reordering a few stats to allow the new system to flow together/to one another in steps; change the rank colours displayed in avi stats; and change their names/in-game display rank names.

It would be super easy to make this change as it’s just changing the names of things and adjusting a few stats that don’t match up between excellent(PC) and Poor(quest), making the ranks flow up naturally.

(just for a tiny bit of "context"; I myself AM a pc only user (quest airlink, but never use standalone quest), and I also create from scratch avatars, so I know the full process and effort that goes into avi creation and optimisation, wether it's optimising the things you make, or optimising bases your buy and use.)

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Option 2: Revamping all ranks.

This would Instead of using current rank stats and combining them into a global system, it would entirely make new boundaries for all new ranks, making clearer/better steps between performance ranks.

Why would this be better than option 1?

Well to put it simply, option 1's does have 2 big flaws. Firstly, combining all ranks makes 10 different ranks altogether... That's a lot! And it would just be better to make fewer ranks, and have bigger steps between each.

So instead, this option would be using the current stats of: Excellent / Good / Medium / Poor / Very poor , and using these GLOBELY between both platforms, and reworking the boundaries that level people between them, like:

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Global ranks: (0)Excellent / (1)Good / (2)Average / (3)Medium / (4)Poor / (5)Very poor / (6)Extremely poor. .

---What platforms see up to---

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=Pc: Extremely poor and under

(Manuly have to turn on "Extremely poor" avis just like quest users do now).

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=Quest: Poor and under.

(Manuly turn on Medium and poor; average and under avis are on by default, but with safety settings applied, just like PC users)

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=Mobile: Good and under.

(Manuly turn on good avis)

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One issue with making quest users only see the current "Poor(PC)" rank and under, is that it cuts of a HUGEEE portion of avatars that aren't the ones causing the problems.

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The main target for VRC wanting to ban Quest from seeing Very Poor, is because of those people that don't optimise avatars, making casual avis that are 200k-500k pollys, with like 30+ skinned meshes, and 30+ materials, over 200MB of textures alone.... e.t.c. but currently, cutting of Very poor (PC) hurts those that aren't causing the problems of lag.

Completely revamping the rank boundaries would be better, in that before completely "banning" quest from seeing Very Poor, raising what Poor is even classified as (And lowering needed things that are more than what's needed).

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I think a good/fair rank boundary would be (for the main things and top ranks):

[["Poor" is around a bit over/under what current "Poor(PC)" allows, and "Average" is around what "medium(PC)" is now.]]

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+-- Optimal "Very poor" rank (this is a PC-only rank, and is there so anything above this is set as "EXTREMELY POOR", allowing for people (even on pc) to still encourage to optimise, as anything "extremely poor" will have to manually be shown):--

200k polls // 45 material Slots // 200MB texture memory // 25 skinned meshes // 40 basic Meshes // 20 Phys comps // 256 Phys transforms // 15x15x15m bound box

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+-- Optimal "Poor" rank (MAX quest can see):--

150k polls // 36 material Slots // 150MB texture memory // 20 skinned meshes // 30 basic Meshes // 9 Phys comps // 70 Phys transforms // 10x10x10m bound box

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+-- Optimal "Medium" rank:--

100k polls // 20 material Slots // 70MB texture memory // 13 skinned meshes // 24 basic Meshes // 8 Phys comps // 64 Phys transforms // 6x6x6m bound box

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+-- Optimal "Average" rank:--

70k polls // 15 material Slots // 50MB texture memory // 8 skinned meshes // 16 basic Meshes // 8 Phys comps // 64 Phys transforms // 3x3x3m bound box

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+-- Other ranks be evenly distributed in performance stats, Excellent being what a fallback is.--

(People [for casual avi use] should be aiming for "average" and under).

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------------ Ingame displaying ------------

Ranks could be minimised into a little coloured circle with a symbol inside (or even just a number for the rank [lower numbers being more optimised, and the higher the numbers, the higher/less optimised the rank] ), then looking at the avi stats itself would show the symbol with the full rank's name, in said rank's colour.

And due to people a lot of the time uploading a different more optimised avi for Android, nameplates can display double ranks. One for what the Android rank is, and the second for what the PC side is. Even if it's the same on both platforms, it would just display double of the same rank, so you always know the left icon is Android, and the right icon is PC.

(this way, no matter your platform, you can see what the rank is for PC users and quest users).

If these were implemented, you would mostly see people with 2 of the same rank; better if the Android side is more optimised than PC and it is different; and very poor on the PC side if it's very poor+ (New pc only), and normal rank if it is then optimised to be quest compatible on the android side.

-Avi displaying:

_If the rank on Android is a certain rank and below, then the avi will automatically show itself for Quest without Quest having to show it. This would encourage people to still make more optimised quest versions of avis, rather than just aiming to juuustttt be in the limit of quest compatibility. (say maybe "Average" and below on quest will auto show itself, using safety settings and not having to be turned on manually ).

_If the avatar is "Extremely poor" on pc ( the rank above very poor), it (just like Quest) will have to manually be shown by the user, and will automatically display as a fall back (AND YES, this is for PC players; Very poor, and extremely poor are pc only ranks).

(This second option is the BEST one... but will require more effort and time to implement than option 1)

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-------------------- Why even do this? Why change the rank system? --------------------

Changing the current rank system to one of these would benefit so many people! It would make it easier/clearer for:

1: Event hosts; allowing them to enforce a maximum avatar performance, without having to worry about quest users seeing different ranks to pc users, and pc users having to tell quest users what the rank of their avatar is.

2: Avatar creators; It would be easier to understand and go through all the ranks, rather than having 4 ranks with 2 different “meanings” as each other, meaning different things depending on whether its (for example): “Good” (but pc) or “Good” (but quest). Instead, they would have a universal/global name for both platforms, allowing planning optimisation on each platform easyer!

3: Encourages Optimisation; people these days just can't be bothered to learn how to optimise their avatars, when actually it's quite simple once you know some good techniques! VRC was planning on doing this anyway, stopping Quest from seeing very poor, but with how the current system is, it would DESTROY so many communities and avi creators' work, making most avis pc only...

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"But preventing quest from seeing verypoor+ sounds unfair"

Yes.. But VRC has been planning this anyway, and... What other option is there?

Telling people to optimise their stuff? They already do! And yet no one listens, and every year the game gets laggier because of this growing issue.

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"Why don't people just have the avi size limit or safety settings on if their that bothered"

That doesn't help solve the problem, and is just like sweeping the dirt under the rug; it's still there, and overtime it's just gonna build up more; you can't just pretend its not there.

Making a hard cap like this FORCES people to have to listen, and not just "well.. it's still quest compatible, so it doesn't matter" - ...

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Making PC users have to manually show extremely poor avis would be EXTREAMLY annoying for pc users to deal with, however, encourages creators to still optimise their things more, even if it's pc only, as they wouldn't want their avis to be auto-hidden and have to unhide "casual" pc only avis.

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I already HATE how much of a divide there is among PC and Quest users and doing this (having a cut off) would only widen and worsen that divide; so upping the boundary limit before making a hard/harsh cutoff is a good compromise, for those that like making cool fancy avatars but still be quest friendly, and those that go wayyyy over the top in millions of particles and pollys that (if you know how easy optimisation is) could have easily been cut down! Upping the boundaries means it allows riggle room for those that like complex things, but it doesn't get way out of hand.

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As mentioned, making it so (Option 2) Average and under could be automatically shown on quest will also help encourage creators to make optimised versions, so quest users aren't forced to show their avis! Pluss, having it at that average gives a good guideline for how casual use (not spectacular avis with cutscenes and special things) should be, making it the new golden standard on how normal avatars should be. A lot of the "Average" rank specs are based off of the current "Medium(PC", which you'd be super surprised how much you can do while still being a medium!! ^-^

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Spoken with both Quest and pc friends (and strangers in pub lobbys) (I myself am pc only user), and most agree changing the boundaries like this would be good! Ironically, those who don't agree most are the PC players, not the quest ones.

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So yea! this would be amazing, useful, and help to make the game less laggy. (People will need a big pre-warning before this would be implemented though, since it's such a HARSH change).

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+--Semi-related extra feature:

Manually unhiding avis on Quest is a big problem atm, especially as when you do, it bypasses all the safety settings. Making an extra "Unoptimised show" button, that then still applies your safety settings but lets you not see the fallback would be a great fix! Quest users are the ones that need safety settings the most, for blocking particles and potential crashers and such, but almost none of them get to use it because 95% of avatars need to be fully shown to not just show a fallback.

If this does happen, and pc users also see fallbacks if the user is in a "extremely poor" avatar, then this would be useful to them too!

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(Edits to fix formatting issues)