In my opinion, the current fallback system doesn’t work well alongside impostors. The main issue is that impostors work per avatar, while fallbacks work per user, which unnecessarily complicates things.

But I wouldn’t remove fallbacks entirely. Instead, my suggestion is to rework them into something like "impostors+". Here's the idea:

What do you think? This approach would prevent the creation of "heavy" fallbacks, while still giving users some control over how they appear to others, without relying solely on impostors.

Unfortunately, the current quality of imposters is extremely poor, and there are cases where avatars appear broken or completely naked. Being able to set the traditional fallback reduces the likelihood of such “accidents.”

I'm a Japanese user, and I think removing the fallback is unrealistic. Japanese users usually upload avatars individually, so they need to keep track of a lot of avatar impostors. Also, English is not their first language, so it's very difficult to report impostor issues.

Response based on tuppers pinned comment.

I vehemently disagree with deprecating fallbacks personally. You lose your ability to define exactly what you look like for people with your avatar disabled, and must instead rely on an automated system that often requires a lot of tweaking to get things correct.

I don't mind changing fallbacks from the API, as I get this is a power user thing, but the "being deprecated slowly over time" worries me.

I've been running the same fallback for a long time now as I trust it to represent me no matter what when my avatar is disabled. I can't say the same for imposters currently. They must be tuned on a per avatar basis, and even then may be unable to properly represent aspects of the avatar which often simply become a mess. See the imposter of my main avatar attached below as an example.

I would prefer to be a plain reliable fallback model than a unreliable imposter.

Fallbacks are being deprecated slowly over time in favor of impostors. This update removes them from the VRChat application, but you can still select them on the website.

We'll note this in the patch notes.

I personally think that impostors should replace fallbacks. Having both systems is imo a bit confusing and not needed.

It's very rare that someone has a proper fallback of their actual Avatar and I would much rather see an impostor than a fallback that looks nothing like the actual avatar.

Impostors are also a lot clearer on if you are seeing the full version of an Avatar or some kind of fallback etc, as they are visually very distinct. I often times talk to someone who is using a fallback without realising that it's a fallback for like 10min. Which is a bit annoying as usually when speaking to someone I want to see their full Avatar.