As a player, it would be a quality of life improvement to be able to visually see that a player is AFK. Given the interactive and immersive nature of an MMO in VR, it is a bit disconcerting to approach and speak to someone who may or may not be there listening.
One potential solution would be to auto-sense if a player is AFK if there is no movement tracked for a period of 1 minute, or some sensible interval of time, or by some other means, such as headset removal is sensed.
Once the determination is made that a player is AFK:
Easier goal: their avatar would automatically assume either a randomly generated animation, such as smoking a pipe, reading a book, eating a snack, etc., until it was sensed that they were no longer AFK (via movement).
Advanced goal: their avatar assumes an animation pre-selected by the player, which are somehow earned in or out of game somehow.
As a bonus, if players would be auto-muted when they are AFK, and then unmuted when they return, that will cut down on background noise immersion breakers.
For sure, once you’ve encountered an AFK player once, you know what it looks like. This would just improve the immersion and cut down on the “hey, you there?.. hello?..” type of conversations with AFK players.
Heck, even if they made one animation that just made them look like they were taking a nap (eyes closed, ZZzzz in thought bubbles), I think that’d be better than a contorted avatar sunk into the ground.
