Mods/Apps And Gear : Their Effect on the Community

With the rise of Mods in games do you feel this has helped push the people aspect away?
In WoW there is a mod for everything, there is even one that logs you in organises a raid group completes it and wins you the epic loot then logs off before you log in and play....
With mods people are able to track "performance" of players, knowing what to expect because of what a little app/mod told them.
This has really removed the people element from the game, and caused division, if your not doign what a mod says then your obviously not good enough to be playing with that group and they will ask you to leave.
The reliance on mods has made us less trusting of other players, we need to know they are doing their job so we have mods to make sure other players are filling the roles that is needed.
With many games having a gear focus you would have assumed that there would be a better community aspect since people would need to work together to get it, yet its more " get the fuck outta my way you n00bzor LOLOLOLOLBBQ!!!!!" Rather then lets form a group and bring Lil Jimmy The Ewok on our trip so he can experience content.
The gear focus is making games in to e sports, guilds are running themselves this way, A guild used to be about the people now its what can you offer to the leadership to get them their gear, numbers rather then names. You are turned away for not having experience, but no one will give you any because you have none
People do not want to take new players through content, they expect others to get them up to spead and get them their gear so they can join in and helping others get their gear so they can go on to getting more gear, then read their mods to make sure Lil Jimmy The Ewok is doing the right thing because their mod they didnt create tells them he is...

Its become a genre of zombies to a degree, gear is the sole focus rather then the enjoyment, while yes people enjoy getting the gear just seems people dont enjoy working with others to get the gear.
While it does sound like im having a go at WoW, the gear focus is genre wide and it is notable to see the change in focus from the Community to be constantly getting the gear,,
We all now play in a sea of rewards, ones gained for doing nothing, they are becoming the sole reason to play, not an incentive or something you got for doing what you enjoyed, they are the focus and reason for many, there is no attachment or reason for many to do something should there be no rewards

Yet around 5 years ago you did things to help others, someone needed resources, 20 of you turned up to help the guild crafter hunt so they could make armour, you pvp'd ina small town against the rival faction for pride, if anyone said they were doing it for the rewards they would have been lying.

I liken the use of game mods in games to that of slow motion replay in sports - particularly when you study the difference between baseball and (American) football with regards to this. Its a complicated analogy, and not at all perfect in its application, but here goes:

Slow motion replay, like game mods, allows for a high order of magnification when analyzing the gameplay. Refs are able to make more accurate calls on the plays, and game mods similarly enable players to refine their gameplay. The cost of this in football is the complete shutdown of the game when a play is called into question. Who suffers for this? The fans, which are the purpose for even playing the game. For the parallel, the cost of game mods is a more selective playerbase when it comes to choosing groups of other players, meaning average players have a harder time in getting access to end game gear.

Now, I'm admittedly biased here, as I'm a dyed-in-the-wool baseball fan, but when the ump makes a call, thats it. The game moves on or the fans get a show as someone gets in the ump's face, but in either scenario, the fans aren't sacrificed on the mantle of absolute accuracy. This also adds a human factor to the game, which is take it or leave it, but it is part of the game. As Bill Veeck said, "Baseball is almost the only orderly thing in a very unorderly world. If you get three strikes, even the best lawyer in the world can't get you off."

This is how I like my games. Don't try and avoid every complication out there because you're only going to bog the game down with unneeded complexity and you're going to miss the fun in the process.

One of my pet peeves with American sport is how slow it is, if they had constant interruptions in Rugby there would be riots
Thanks for the feedback Variable

I hate "performance" mods, here I said it.

People stop playing the game when they have them, they just look at a mod and/or do what the mode tell them to do. There's no more place for surprise or improvisation with mods, they mechanical system that indicate the fastest way to success. All that to get that "paycheck" sooner as opposed to simply enjoying the content.

In fact, I wonder if people who use a lot of mod actually enjoy the bare bone version of the game?

Other then hating it, do you feel it has had an effect?

On the plus side, its a great way for the developers to gauge what players are looking for as far as UI or other functionality. Take Power Auras (a mod that provides visual cues for certain procs or powers) in WoW, for instance. That was originally a player made mod that the developers have adopted to make it easier on players looking for particular spell or ability procs. So, mods definitely have a positive effect on the community as a whole. You just have to take the good with the bad.

Darka wrote:

Other then hating it, do you feel it has had an effect?

an effect? as bad for the community?

Good question.

I think that Gearscore does. It's a tool used to create castes. Rejecting certain people simply because they don't fit the metric. It cause rejection, exclusion and piss off nice people when they realize they were used by a soon-to-be Gearscore addict so he can reach that "caste" level. But Gearscore exist only because the game focus on gear level to complete content and it is used that way because people are selfish and greedy...

Although, while I hate them. I don't mind if people use them and I have no problem with UI mods that simply re-arrange, re-skin or simplify access to already available information.

Well, UI mods are nice. You can change the look of your screen to fit you.

I loved the threat mods in WoW. It was really nice to see if you were about to pull the boss off the tank...prooved very helpful over and over again for raiding. I also liked how everyone who had it could look at everyones attacks, dps, hell it even showed you hit to miss ratio, your crits and normal damage. This proved soooo helpful when we crunched the numbers and tried to better ourselves as a whole. We all loved using it.

Those were pretty much the only mods I used.

I did use macros in SWG that would keep renewing my personal buffs.

I say each to their own with this subject. Just because you like a mod that I don't doesn't mean I won't play with you...I mean if you stink and need to take a shower maybe then. Damn baby, why don't you go drag that thing through the creek a time or two >.<

Quote :

On the plus side, its a great way for the developers to gauge what players are looking for as far as UI or other functionality.

OMG! Do you guys have any idea how often Blizzard would track what mods people really liked and actualy implement it into the game. That was awesome.

I don't support the total freedom of that system.

I feel that damage meters have started it all. There are fun mods, cosmetic mods and all sorts of stuff that you can have without it making a real impact on how the community behaves around it.

Damage meters however have introduced to the game the factor of perfection. People had an easier job to tell what they had to do to maximize their "utility".

As it catches on, the developer has to react and adjust difficulty for encounters and such. They need to provide challenges after all. Therefore damage meters have generally raised the difficulty and thus we end up with the same situation as before without actually taking a big net benefit with us.

There is quite the negative effect actually: It raises the pressure on everyone because these tools define the player and how he's supposed to play. Even if you don't want to use it and find like-minded people you will probably have a difficult time doing so because the encounters are designed to fight "stronger", "more perfect" groups.

We end up in a world where people favor a "strong" guy over a nice one. It almost makes me think it's directly related to why the community as a whole is in such a bad place.

To make it worse, WoW was really built around gear. Gear was your path, gear was your goal, gear was your means to advance and to do anything really. You are nothing without your gear, it is defining what you are. If you will, the same way as in real life some people judge by skin color, clothes and looks is happening with gear in this case.

While I am somewhat of a math lover and always did theorycrafting more than actual raiding in WoW, this is not a very friendly environment to begin with. It is partly caused/fueled by the mods.

eh Sorry Grome but I'm in complete disagreeance on this one.

I do agree that WoW was built around gear. But the devs adjusted dificulty according to that very aspect. These mods didn't make you awesome or you didn't suck without them. The were just easy to use tools. Did you know that you could view all of this info by merely looking at your combat log in WoW. If you were grouped with anyone, it showed all this same info. The damage meters just made it easier to view...you didn't have to scroll endlessly to find it all. As far as showing threat of group members...if anything this made people slow down a bit or manage their threat more efficiently which would, in turn, make the encounter maybe last longer but also help keep people alive.

And take it from us...we knew none of us were perfect and we never wanted to try to be perfect. But when we took the time to look at our overall stats, we could tell that if we missed a lot then we may need to raise our hit some more. Or if our crit % was low, we could work on a little more crit.

See we were never elitists, but we did want to be able to play to the best of our abilities. And if I play my mage and see another mage doing quite a bit more dps than me, then I can say "hey, how the hell are you doing that? Help me out here."

Sorry but I am afterall a "min/maxer" first and formost. Looking at stats and figuring things out is what I do. It helps keep me at the top of my game. Does it mean that I'm awesome? lmao hel no. Far from it, but I try. And in some cases gear doesn't make a good player either. I've known a lot of people who were better geared than me and my dps would top them every time. Would I tell them or rub it in their face? Not for a second. But if they asked me about it, then I had all the stats from the meters to go back and look at to try to help them out.

Coldhart wrote:

eh Sorry Grome but I'm in complete disagreeance on this one.

I do agree that WoW was built around gear. But the devs adjusted dificulty according to that very aspect. These mods didn't make you awesome or you didn't suck without them. The were just easy to use tools. Did you know that you could view all of this info by merely looking at your combat chat in WoW. If you were grouped with anyone, it showed all this same info. The damage meters just made it easier to view...you didn't have to scroll endlessly to find it all. As far as showing threat of group members...if anything this made people slow down a bit or manage their threat more efficiently which would, in turn, make the encounter maybe last longer but also help keep people alive.

And take it from us...we knew none of us were perfect and we never wanted to try to be perfect. But when we took the time to look at our overall stats, we could tell that if we missed a lot then we may need to raise our hit some more. Or if our crit % was low, we could work on a little more crit.

See we were never elitists, but we did want to be able to play to the best of our abilities. And if I play my mage and see another mage doing quite a bit more dps than me, then I can say "hey, how the hell are you doing that? Help me out here."

But there is something to be said for these mods enabling the elitists, particularly the quite popular gearscore mod. My Rogue is rocking a 5847gs atm, but who is to say I'm not just plopping my cat on the keyboard and scratching her head during the raid? Meanwhile, your (hypothetical) Rogue is a paultry 5008, and not worthy of this raid, when you'd in reality be the better pick because you've done the research and practiced your rotations. There is a human variable here that mods like this tend to fail to account for, but that doesn't stop Mr. top ranked guild guy from dismissing someone out of hand based on a player made mod.

Quote :

But there is something to be said for these mods enabling the elitists, particularly the quite popular gearscore mod. My Rogue is rocking a 5847gs atm, but who is to say I'm not just plopping my cat on the keyboard and scratching her head during the raid? Meanwhile, your (hypothetical) Rogue is a paultry 5008, and not worthy of this raid, when you'd in reality be the better pick because you've done the research and practiced your rotations. There is a human variable here that mods like this tend to fail to account for, but that doesn't stop Mr. top ranked guild guy from dismissing someone out of hand based on a player made mod.

Ah...see there you go. Then it's not the mods you're dealing with. It's someone saying that you're better than this person. I hate people who do that. I'll take my friends over this type of ass clown any day. Even if it means we wipe repeatedly. Because with friends, we always have fun no matter what. Does it suck to wipe repeatedly? Well of course it does, for anyone. But once everyone begins to learn the encounter, then gear scores and max damage fly out the window. Besides with the laughter along the way, some of these times are my most memorable in games


que /drop group...."WTH are doing!? That's the fifth time you've dropped group!"

lol we had a friend who had a missfiring macro one night and kept kicking him from group until he figured out what it was...and he was our tank >.< lolol

Coldhart wrote:

Ah...see there you go. Then it's not the mods you're dealing with. It's someone saying that you're better than this person. I hate people who do that. I'll take my friends over this type of ass clown any day. Even if it means we wipe repeatedly. Because with friends, we always have fun no matter what.

I definitely agree, which is why I think mods are what they are. They're tools, and some just help the assholes to be more asshole-ish.

Coldhart wrote:

Sorry but I am afterall a "min/maxer" first and formost. Looking at stats and figuring things out is what I do. It helps keep me at the top of my game. Does it mean that I'm awesome? lmao hel no. Far from it, but I try. And in some cases gear doesn't make a good player either. I've known a lot of people who were better geared than me and my dps would top them every time. Would I tell them or rub it in their face? Not for a second. But if they asked me about it, then I had all the stats from the meters to go back and look at to try to help them out.

Cold

I admit, I exaggerated a bit there.

I am aware that the info is all there in the combat log but who would actually look up the info after a fight and sort out things? I believe that is why the damage meter kind of mod did open a door too a more business kind of feeling to raiding.
By all means, I do not try to copy paste this on every single guild and individual, I am just looking at the big picture.

To be fair, I used the mods just as you guys when I was playing WoW and I was enjoying the opportunity to be able to see my damage, threat and whatnot. I am very similar to you apparently as I always tried to make the best out of my situation and I was certainly a min/maxer as well. I used to look all the loot up in advance and calculate which ones would work best with my build and playstyle. I am a total freak when it comes to that and I know already I will be doing it in TOR too.

I just respectfully disapprove of the atmosphere it puts us in if we look at the big picture.

edit: Then again, the point Variable is making is a very good one.

yep. I think most mods get a bad name because of assholes missusing them

Yep Grome, I agree with that actually. Just like I posted above just now ^

I think that the mods are great actually. They offer all the info to easily see and look at instead of trying to scroll endlessly through it all and find it on your own. But some people use that as an oportunity to ridicule others and put them down and express how they're not "good" enough to raid with them. Well I say FU@# those clowns and lets go have fun...if you want to look at our stats after, that awesome. We'll take a look and compare and work on stuff. But if not, then the main thing is we have fun.

I agree

And as far as enjoying the game...well honestly if you're a person who likes to use mods then you will probably get more pleasure from the game by using them. If you don't like mods, then vise-versa. The content of the game won't change just because one person uses mods and the other doesn't. It come down to individual play style on this one.

Same as buying in-game money >.< OMG I actually said it. Sorry. That's a whole different thread in it's own...nooooo. Don't throw that can of beans at my head...I'm soooooorrrryyyyyyyyy.........I'll start one up mwahahaha

Mods can be useful, but there are some mods that push the boundaries of what you should be allowed to get away with.

Also as said, some mods get a bad rap because people misuse them.

Best examples are DPS meters and Gear Score.

Quote :

Terazok;

A long time ago in a MMO far far away...


There was no gearscore or dps meters or several of the tools that are now relied on in some MMOs.

The Tank was a good Tank because he held aggro.
The Healer was a good Healer because people didn't die.
The DPS was good DPS because things died quickly and safely.

If you worked with someone who did their job well, you took down their names so you could get together with them again later. You did the same for those who you would not want to work with again.
People would do the same for you and if you were good, you carried that reputation with you.
You could do raids, even though you weren't in a raiding guild, because you had those connections.
E.G. "Hey, we're putting together a PUG to take down Uberboss. We know you're a good player, do you have time to come along?"

This system worked for a very long time before gearscore was ever used as a player tool and people were still able to determine through experience with other players if that player was good or bad.

saw this on the official forums

It's all about the numbers, disgusting. I see it as the main catalyst for WoW's cesspool, which naturally flows over to other titles through the effect on the community it has. So wether we like it or not, we'll feel it in SW:TOR.

It can be debated that UI mods are fine, but where do you draw the line. All the meters are called UI mods, in my opinion they're not. An UI mod would be about rescaling, moving, colouring, etc. which BioWare has promised we would have a long time ago (without any mention of mods).

So I say we don't need mods, and if we can get mods I'll boycot them. If mods become required in any way, I'll leave the game.

That should say how I feel mods affect the game.

Coldhart wrote:

The content of the game won't change just because one person uses mods and the other doesn't. It come down to individual play style on this one.

Same as buying in-game money >.<

Mods reveal the great all-powerful Wizard of Oz is really a little man hurriedly throwing levers and flipping switches, too blinded behind his curtain to think it possible a group of rumpled misfits could kill the witch.

There is a different company name on the credit card billing. Somehow that makes gold and item selling perfectly fine now.

Assuming mods help people beat content more often (because if they don't there is no purpose) ... then content gets a balance redesign. That affects even those without mods.

When benefit in the game world doesn't come from in the game world, there is no game.



This discussion was written by a Google Civility Translation. For the original, see below:
You &8#@ momma >#@!% my $@!~ go &^$#@* troll &$#*(# in a bowl of #@/&^!

Mods and Gear....

Though they have existed in MMORPGS for as long as I can remember in some form or another it was WoW which brought in all manner of Mods like gear score etc which had previously not existed.

WoW also became the MMO in which gear was king.

Every MMO since has been the same.

I don't blame WoW for this, but I personally dislike most of these, and never use them. (I am a Macro king however lol, and will have a macro for an awful lot of things, but they are mostly ones to assist me, rather than to check out other players and their gear etc...)

I honestly hope, though I doubt this will be the case sadly, that gear in SW:TOR is not that big a deal, I honestly don't think it needs to be either. I have seen so many people on threads on the main forum quoting 'Progression or developement of their character' as being all important. The sad thing is, I doubt many of those of who state that have ever played a game prior to WoW where this was actually not really the case.....Still, so be it.

I will give you an example of a game which is hugely popular, has millions of people who play it every single day, and yet its gear is capped very early on. It is a completely different genre perhaps, but look at COD and its many variances. (Also true in BF2, and many other PVP FPS type games)

None of them really offer much in the way of gear progression, and I use these two games, mostly because they are the PVP mega games in some respects, and if they can be so incredibly popular and long lasting without the need for a vet to be so overwhelmingly out gearing then why on earth can an MMORPG not be the same?

These games work not on gear score, or the overpowered weapons, I know many people who are multi prestiged in those games, who actually use and prefer the weapon they get at the 1st level to some of the higher end guns, and they do so for different reasons. But this is what I like about those games, the weapons are all different, each offer something slightly different and offer different benefits and drawbacks, and each seem to suit a different style of player better.

It means even a relative newb can kill someone who has played it well over 1000 hours (Crazy...) and so on, the only reason the vet wins out most of the time is experience and knowledge.

Compare that to every MMORPG I have played. You start out in PVP with lowbie gear, and you may as well not bother to turn up, if you fight someone who is maxed gear, you can barely touch them, and that is simply too much if you ask me. Gear should matter, but it should not be to the detriment of giving someeone who has played the game longer or can devote way more time to it, an instant 'I WIN' button. But that is the way it is in almost every MMO out there now.

I honestly hope that if not this game, that some MMO in the future looks at this model and realises an MMORPG does not have to be so gear centric to succeed, it just needs to offer great combat and content. Still I guess a new must have shiny and a new raid with the same basic concept is easy content to generate and if you make it hard enough with a rare enough drop rate, it will keep people plugging away at it for ever and a day, and many will see this as awesome.....lol.

If and when this game hits that wall of feeling like a gear grind over that 'I am having fun' it will be the beginning of the end for me, at least as far as PVP and Raiding are concerned. I will take part in them, and likely enjoy them for the most part, but if i keep getting those messages i got in WoW which tell me I cannot take part because my gear score is too low.....then I will slowly loose interest, I did in WoW as well, so I am sure this will be no different.

Gear does not need to be the 'Be all and end all' of an MMO, and the sooner game developers realise this, the better the games will be from my persepective, and the more fun MMO's will become.

Gear treadmills suck, they stop people from actually playing the game, and it removes the 'Fun Factor' for me.

As do any Mods which promote this elitism.

Pretty much agree fully with the dark lord of spam here.

Ty-Odi wrote:

Mods and Gear....


... Gear should matter, but it should not be to the detriment of giving someeone who has played the game longer or can devote way more time to it, an instant 'I WIN' button. But that is the way it is in almost every MMO out there now.

...

Gear does not need to be the 'Be all and end all' of an MMO, and the sooner game developers realise this, the better the games will be from my persepective, and the more fun MMO's will become.

...

These are things I agree with. However, games that are not made this way make such mods useful to those who use them properly. As a raid leader I've used gearscores to tell me what tier of raid my group is ready for. The fact is that, whether we like it or not, raid encounters in WoW demand a certains amount of DPS, a certain max HP, and output a certain amount of unavoidable damage that must be healed. If the numbers aren't there, the encounter is unbeatable and a waste of everyone's time. Thus a proper use of gearscore is to determine which raids you can succeed at.

Conversely, most people do not believe that skill matters in WoW. I have, time and again on multiple classes, "outperformed" people with significantly better gearscores. More DPS, more healing, whatever measure you care to name. This is because I do, as an engineer in real life, enjoy the process of min/maxing my characters. I also enjoy RP and teaching new players about the game. And I've been excluded from raids where others I had already out-DPSed where included because of my gearscore. It sucks.

Now for the part for which some will call me an "elitist". If you are a Hunter in WoW, and I invite you to my raid, I expect you to DPS. If you tell me you would rather be a healer and are going to spend time bandaging the raid and not DPS, then I simply cannot use you. If you are a Warlock who's putting out less DPS than a healer, even though you're in better gear than the healer, I know you are sitting there waiting for loot to drop rather than participating in the raid. If you are a mage, and I asked you to decurse the raid, and I find you did 3 decurses and I saw 25 curses cast, you are not playing as a team. I conclude that mods which tell me who is tagging along for loot or doing their own thing rather than cooperating with the team and following the raid leader's instructions have a vaild purpose. Mods which tell me which boss abilities did the most total damage to the raid allow me to adjust tactics and improve our chances of success.

The experience of out-DPSing better geared players makes me less dependent on mere gearscore since I know for a fact that players can out-perform or under-perform their gearscore. I'm also aware of the group that killed bosses in Ulduar (second tier of level 80 raiding) in nothing but blue gear. I absolutely believe that success is dependent more on the players than the gearscore. Gearscore is a tool, like an ax.

Just because I use an ax to split the firewood that keeps the pipes from freezing in the winter, doesn't make me an ax-murderer!