I've had an interest in playing VRChat for a couple years now but never went through. There's been so many conflicting that been said about it ever since the Easy Anti-Cheat Update. So I want to know about your personal experience with the community and where to start.
Also I've been looking to upgrade my headset from a Valve Index and looking for recommendations. No Meta headsets since I don't trust Facebook.
VRChat is free, so it is worth a shot to give it a try. VRChat actually does not require a VR Headset to play (though it definitely helps), so you can try it for yourself if you like.
VRChat does unfortunately suffer a lot of unsupervised children and other people who causes a nuisance being in public instances. So finding people to add to your friends list or finding groups to join private instance is the key to having a good experience.
My opinion on EAC is that it sucks, but there isn't a viable competitor platform that offers the same features and the large playerbase. I think that the program experience has gotten way better for me, due from the pressure to add proper features ever since there was massive backlash of EAC.
I unfortunately cannot comment on any other headset since I use an oculus headset as my primary PCVR headset
I dont really know a lot about the community as im an introvert and im bad at meeting new people (getting to know some people is still on my todo list) but ive had a lot of fun just hopping through worlds and enjoying what people have build. From what ive heard the good parts of the community are also a bit hidden beyond the popular public lobbys.
there's good, there's bad. i think of it as going to the mall and talking with strangers, except its not as awkward and half of the strangers are 13-16. can't provide any recommendations on the headset though; i've been using a quest 2 since launch day
I started on VRchat in 2020 and just before most of the kids made it there.
Public worlds used to be about 25% unsupervised kids and teens %50 adults and the other 25% were computer mutes. On Friday's and other popular times it was 90% adults.
Today it's 90% kids and teens in public lobbies and you'll have to join the adults in private worlds. You'll have to find these fellow adults everywhere but public VRchat worlds, mostly through discord servers.
ChilloutVR is the closest thing to what VRchat once was, but you'll be sorely disappointed with it if you compare the two games together since they're so different.