I also ran into the problem with the need of a vcenter in my ESXi 8.0U1 free home lab to be able to create vTPM for Windows 11 guests. I am not willing to buy vmware essentials license for the 2x vms i am running at home on the free ESXi, as i am running the home lab just4fun (I am currently running the free version of "manageengine endpoint central" and a free document-archive from ECODMS on it). - It would be nice if VMware would solve the issue with the mandatory need of a vcenter for vtpm creation, perhaps having a vcenter version where only one free ESXi host can be integrated, or something like that. (And perhaps disable all vcenter options/advantages except the tpm key provider) !?
( Just to mention: On the other hand I am buying "VMWare Workstation"-license for my personal use for some years now, even when i only use it very rarely.)