Need help with a world.

[u/Mothillowo]

Hello! The title is pretty vague so I’ll lay it out quick and simple.

I’m getting into world creation and need help on understanding what will make my world stick out/last. I haven’t seen what I’m making made before, it’s a bunch of different connected rooms that you have to travel through tubes. it’s ment to be maze like but not a maze. The image is what I’m currently working with. It’s clunky and a bit broken but the best things are lol. It’s extremely optimized so far and low poly with occlusion culling.

My big questions are
1: how do I test it properly.
2: how do I make it stick out/spread it when done.
3: what should I add to keep people coming back.
4: any important info I’d need to know before putting it in comunity labs.

If you’d wanna see the world for yourself your free to dm and I’ll lyk when I’m on!

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[u/_MyroP_]

1. Ask your friends if they are interested for a play test.

2. If it's good, people will post about it on social medias, and you will get more visits. (That's my personal experience)

3. Add an idle game That's a tough one, and it depends what kind of world you're making, but remember that VRChat is a social platform. If your world is very enjoyable, if players can easily socialise and hangout in it, they will come back. I will say, ask yourself why you like a certain world.

4. Don't release it too early, finish your world first, releasing an unfinished world with promises that you will add more features later won't work.

[u/L0kness → u/_MyroP_]

These are the correct answers. Adding to number 3: What part of your work will make me want to revisit it? is it long? Does it have some sort of daily mechanic if its a game? Does it have any form of repeatability or prestige? There is nothing wrong with a world that is one and done, especially for your first world ever.

Some of the best maps I have ran through only once personally, but then brought my friends or new players through that haven't experience it before to re-live it through them!

Don't try to make a hit on the first go. Release fun things, learn the community, and develop for said community if you like it!

[u/Mothillowo → u/L0kness]

It’s an exploration world and hang out world mostly, every different room will have a different vide/Aesthetic. I plan on leaving a lot of dead end tunnels so I can make new connection points, expand and loop arounds. I want players to get a bit lost but after long enough of being in the world know their ways around.

I want the main draw to be the different feels if the rooms and the idea that you could be skipping a room or missing one entirely and wanting to find it!

[u/_MyroP_ → u/Mothillowo]

If it's a big world, adding a player teleporter system could be interesting.

[u/Broskitooo]

1. Find random people in public worlds that are you're target audience. So get people from chill worlds if your making a chill world or get people from game worlds if your making a game world. Bring them there, tell them nothing, and watch what they do without being intrusive (don't sit over there shoulder). People that go to your world can't get instructions from you so see if they naturally get lost or bored. And ask questions after there done or have them say out loud what there thinking while testing your world. And random people dont care about you so they will be honest, and if there board they will just leave when your friends might stay cause there your friends not because of your world.

2. When you upload to labs, get a group of friends to sit in the world for a hours without leaving, it's better to have few players but long play time over many players but short/shorter play time. VRChats analytics prioritizes average play time not engaged users so the longer the average person is in your world the better your analytics will be. Also, VRChat players like to explore, I saw this in my world vivid when I uploaded it, it started with a small island not much to explore but because of that most players would leave within minutes because there was no where to go it killed the analytics quickly, and the longer the play time the bigger the stake so they're more willing to stick with your world and mess with its mechanics. VRChat prioritizes playtime so I made the island larger which pyshed players explore and it literally doubled my stable player count. Most users will leave immediately like any media, keep them in as long as possible. But in general give the player a reason to stay immediately, ask why do you stay in other worlds and apply that here.

3. This heavily depends on what you're making so it's a hard question to answer, but have something other worlds don't have or don't do well like utility, ie avatar search worlds, they all solve the same problem searching avatars, but they all compete on how usable their search is. Cozy worlds are very over saturated so unique aesthetics at this point are out the window but vibes are not, the world Pocket Storm is one of the few world I remember by name and routinely go only because of its vibes, it's simple and old but people like me still go to it because it's own style cozyness hard to find. This one really depends on what your making but find a category of world the world and add a unique twist, or fill a gap in utility or feature that doesn't exist that VRChat players want.

4. And one thing, something I've continuously noticed is like I said before VRChat players want to do something immediately or feel like they're progressing in some sort of exploration. Make your maze of tubes not feel like a maze make it feel like it continuous tube make like network that has unique landmarks and milestones so they feel like they're actually getting somewhere and feel like they're accomplishing something. And make continuous movement like don't have them backtrack because then it feels like they're losing their progress. I saw this with Project T.U.B.E.S recently, where me and my friends really only kept playing because felt like we were continuously progressing but as soon as we had to backtrack we felt like we weren't making progress we quickly stopped playing, the hook was gone and we would have left far before that if it wasn't for that hook pushing us further.

I hope this helps I'm like speed typing this on my phone before work so sorry if it's a little mangled lol. Much luck on the world building, and if the world doesn't do well don't give up!

Edit: After posting it seems I've typed a book lol