>>276404770
>but it's not a very welcoming community, 
Literally anyone can join through the thread, without any requirements besides not being underaged, and even that isn't strictly enforced. How much more welcoming can we even be?
When I joined, a kind anon literally made my model for me, all upload-ready. Try getting that from other communities.

>nor a particularly creative one
How would you quantify that, and with what "particularly creative communities" would you contrast it? 
And more importantly, are those communities as openly accessible? Because being welcoming and super creative most of the time conflicts, since most people anywhere simply aren't very creative, so you'd need to be very selective about whom to let, maybe even have mechanisms on kicking people that cease to have a highly creative output out. That doesn't sound very welcoming to me.

>These sometimes have experienced players in them you can friend to join their friends+ instances later, but just as often it's other new players who just haven't found a subgroup to hang out with yet. 
"Sometimes" and "just as often" are very wishy-washy terms, and in combination sound like a huge overstatement. The vast majority of people in public instances are the latter group. I'd wager that a good 95% of players you meet in public instances are new players, and then I'd guess that 1% are maybe older players who enjoy going to public instances, and the other 4% are older players who visit that 1% or friends theirof. 
In other words, it'll be pretty hard to get older player friends there. New players have a better chance at that with what you said here:
> There are lots of small and large VRChat communities that hold regular events