Complexity for trivial reasons

I have been working on avatars for years now. I have most definitely seen a slump in the speed I can get them produced. Some of the avatars that I am using on a regular basis are the same ones I made over 2 years ago. There are times when I will jump back into a previous avatar to fix a long overdue error or to satiate a desire for a toggle that was previously not considered; however, fully built avatars are now requiring me to write up excel spreadsheets of all the features I want on an avatar.

These are things such as how the menu system will be set up in the hierarchy, as well as the parameters required to make it function. I have always had a tough time staying under the 256 parameter limit as I suffer from a major case of “feature creep”, I learn a new thing or something that was previously not considered and immediately want to add it regardless of if I fully understand it and dive head first into it.

As a result, I am now over 2 years into an avatar and have jumped into making THREE other avatars in the interim to appease my insatiable desire to make the best avatar I can possible do- and for what? I would assume 90% of the things my avatar can do will only be visible to the PC users in VRChat, meaning that roughly 2/3 of the players will not be able to see them; furthermore, most of them will lack too much day to day use beyond “peacocking” as one of my colleagues so graciously calls it, the process of showing off my avatar to other users. Once the show is over, I am left with a massive bag of things I can do and only like 5 of them are getting used.

As much as I want this super avatar to work, past mistakes show that it will be a total mess that will require hours to clean up… I just need to get to the point where I have a completed avatar before I even cross that bridge.