Mods/Apps And Gear : Their Effect on the Community

Lednik wrote:

Wow....what a heated discussion.
To the people saying GS and DPS meters are just informative tools and we must blame those who misuse them: this is correct. Indeed these mods do no harm if used properly. But going back to the analogy with the guns. Gun doesn't fire by itself and is just a piece of metal. Yet in many, many countries around the world guns are prohibited. The reason is, the authorities are 100% sure somebody will use them inappropriately, no matter what. I think the same goes with these addons.

Yes, but then you might as well banish knifes, and other keen edge tools, and heavy things, and... well, you see my point (it is a bit exaggerated). And this point is: You can't just forbid anything that might be misused by people if their use is potentially greater than that cost of misusing them. Now, how to determine if their use is important enough is pretty much where everyone has his own opinion.

It's all good Stry. My last post there had a lot of a joking nature to it. It probably didn't seem that way because our discussion did get a little heated. But I liked our heated discussion...it just shows that we're passionate about what we believe in. I got heated over the conversation not at you or anyone else posting. We both have valid reasons for what we feel and I wouldn't try to tell you or anyone you were wrong.

It's good to have discussions like this as long as knowledge is gained. I wouldn't call this an arguement, but as far as arguements go, even best friends have spats from time to time. It makes us who we are.

So rock on Stry and stay passionate about what you believe in (nert geHy)


/ques Lion King/Elton John omg that not so super gehy song "Can you feel the love tonight"

Mods don't hurt the community by themselves. However, when combined with certain selfish players and a gear-centric game, they cause segregation.

When a game is as gear-centric as WoW or many other MMOs, it becomes a "if you fall behind, you're left behind" situation. To avoid being "left behind" many raiders feel they need to obtain the best gear as quickly as possible. Mods such as GS allow them to screen potential group members. While a player's gearscore does not equal that player's skill, refusing to play with people with low GSs is much faster than actually playing with them to see if they are any good. This ensures the raiders (not all raiders, just the ones who refuse people based on GS and other mods) with good GSs progress quickly enough to see all of the content, but it isolates those with lower GSs.

This is not necessarily the mod's fault as much as the community’s, but the mods do enable this segregation. It would probably happen without mods like GS, but not to the same extent. This, however, does not necessarily mean that mods should be removed, since they are also used to strategize and evaluate performance.

I believe that improving the community will help prevent the misuse of mods and will have much less collateral damage than removing the mods altogether (not that we have the power to do that).

tl;dr
Mods alone are not the problem. A bad community and gear-centric game combined with mods creates segregation. Improving the community helps prevent the misuse of mods.