Recently I was reminded of a common debate that I had completely forgotten existed. There are those who will vehemently swear that players who play the game free of mods and addons are superior to those that use mods. They will proudly proclaim that they are more skilled gamers than the unwashed masses madly mashing buttons to the tune of Deadly Boss Mods and Omen. Because I find it an interesting mindset, and a topic worthy of at least cursory exploration, I had thought to carry the conversation over to all of you.
Playing Without Mods Makes You Better
Now, I’m sure most of you can probably guess what my personal stance on this particular subject might be. However, in the interest of discussion, I’m willing to consider the other side of the fence and play Devil’s Advocate for a moment.
The mindset behind the mentality that “Mod-Free is Better” is understandable, to a certain degree. Players of this opinion feel that, because they can play the same game while being presented with less information just as well as those who use mods, they must therefore be better players. Or, if perhaps not better, than at least less lazy.
The supporting argument for this stance is usually something like: “I do just as much DPS as another player that uses mods, I don’t pull aggro any more frequently than that player, and I don’t have any problems knowing what to do and when to do it during a boss encounter.”
Mod-Free proponents believe they are fundamentally superior because they have learned to perform as well as players who use mods, without developing a dependency on a particular source of information not built into the game by default. Further, they point out that dependency on any mod or group of mods is inherently a handicap because, sooner or later, the mod will cease to function, and you’re left having to determine how to accomplish the same job you did before without the information you’re used to having.
This is the core of their argument. They argue forcefully against dependence upon a source of information that will inevitably fail them.
The Fatal Flaw, Mods Don’t Make You Inferior
The primary assumption of players who believe using mods renders players inferior is that players become dependent on mods and could not perform as well without them. And because mods will inevitably break or stop being updated, it would then stand to reason that eventually, players will have to function without them. When that happens, their performance will suffer as a result.
That’s a pretty big assumption to make. (And smacks of superiority.)
Now, first consider the fact that we all started playing this game the same way: mod free. This is how we learned the fundamental mechanics of the game: how combat works, how our characters interact, and how our characters perform in various situations. Typically, it’s only after someone has become comfortable with these basics that they begin to feel the desire to install modifications.
The fatal flaw in the logic, then, is that the installation of interface modifications precipitates the loss of understanding how to play the game without them.
Now, it’s true that many players will proclaim “Oh, I couldn’t go a day without my Recount!” and the like, but what this sentiment truly reflects isn’t dependence so much as strong personal preference. The statement shouldn’t be taken at face value, but instead interpretted as hyperbole. While players may have strong ties to their addons, liking how everything fits and works and knowing where everything is, the disruption in this setup and the subsequent perceived loss in performance isn’t a reflection of dependence, but rather a natural human reaction to change of any sort.
As humans, we’re creatures of habit. If you play using the same setup for months on end, it’s only natural to feel disoriented when that setup changes. This disorientation is interpreted as dependence by those who would gain from such a display–players who believe they are superior for their lack of so-called dependence on features not supported by the original game and it’s developers.
My point in all of this is that we don’t just magically forget how to play a game simply because we’ve installed a few mods. Players will be as good (or bad) as they will be, regardless of what they choose to install or not. This is a point that mod-free proponents seem to completely disregard or disavow knowledge or recognition of.
The Other Side of the Coin
There is, of course, an opposing side to this debate; one that will decry loud and proud that players that use mods are superior, because they have more precise knowledge at their fingertips. Installing mods allows players to know precisely how far they can push the envelope. It means knowing exactly how much DPS you can pump out on a boss fight before catching the tank, and reacting accordingly to dump threat and begin the indefinite process of DPS throttling. It means knowing the precise moment a boss will perform a specific action, so you can prepare accordlingly for it. It means being able to precisely gauge how much DPS your raid is putting out as a whole, so you can anticipate success or failure more accurately. It means being able to say “DPS ALL IN!” in that last split second moment between doom and victory.
These are all strong arguments in favor of mods. After all, if there weren’t strong arguments in favor of them, their use wouldn’t be so prevalent, and indeed, a requirement for many top-end raiding guilds worldwide.
Personal Performance Speaks for Itself
In the end, I believe it all comes down to personal preference. I don’t see it in black and white terms defining one method as inherently better than another. Statements like “I don’t use mods, so I’m a better player” or the opposite are tantamount to saying “I own a Porsche, so I’m a better driver”. One has nothing to do with the other. I’ve seen my share of recked Porsches, and I’ve seen my share of great players that use mods and great players that don’t. I’ve also seen really horrible players of either persuasion. Such being the case, I believe the evidence is sufficient to support the inference that the use of mods, or the disdain for them, has no impact on personal performance. A person is either going to be good at playing the game based on their own personal skills, or they’re not. An addon from Curse isn’t going to tip the scales.
As Ron White would say, “You can’t fix stupid”, and so addon’s can’t fix terribad, nor do they cause it.
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Very interesting. I am a very mod-heavy player, and have been for quite a while. I think it took me like 4 months back in 2005 before I started using ct_mod and with the advent of Ace I went out of control.
Yet most of my addons are informational. Addons I would not want to live without are mobhealth and incidentally a better health display on the unit frames, which is why I am using Pitbull. Furthermore, any action bar addon that is more flexible in placement than the default bars is good, and Omni CC for cooldowns is a must for me as tank. The rest is all fluff. I could tank just as well without all of them.
One of the girls in my guild was a vehement addon hater, and I never understood those. She didn’t even have the argument that no addons made her a better player, but she hated addons and would only use Omen because we made it a requirement for 10-mans. I know another hater, who feels stifled that everyone else in his guild requires him to use addons to cover up that they can’t play, and I have long given up arguing with him.
Neither side is inherently superior.
I will however say that I take my hat off for healers who do not use anything to assist with healing. I am useless without Clique when it comes to healing. The default UI is really clunky for healing, IMHO.
Kadomis last blog post..The threat minigame
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Oh, I’m a fast and firm lover of addons to be sure. Some are informational, some are aesthetic. After playing addon-free in the Beta for a while, though, it became obvious to me that my addons weren’t as “necessary” to me as I had thought they were.
Sure, it’s nice to be able to look at Recount and say with confidence “Oh, I’m doing about 1200dps on this fight”, and it’s nice to be able to watch Omen to keep track of my threat rather than having to pay close attention to my shot rotation for that, but these aren’t things I can’t play the game as effectively without.
I think what strikes me as fascinating about the whole discussion is really that people will make value judgments of a player’s skill based solely on whether or not he/she uses mods. I know very few players take a strong stance at either polarity of the discussion, but they do exist and for purely sociological and psychological reasons I find it pretty interesting.
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I will admit, I was one of those people, to a degree, that thought that I was “better” because I played without an addon, simply because I didn’t “depend” on Healbot. I had resisted playing with it mostly because it was a big change and I was doing fine healing without it. I could keep up with the big dogs and I didn’t need Healbot – hah!
Eventually I caved because of a guild requirement… and I do miss my old healing sometimes. But I do a better job now (shaving those half seconds off does count) and it benefits my raid/group members, so I stay with it.
It was a silly pride thing. Not because I literally thought I was better. Ah well…
Karines last blog post..GO NOW!
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I was one of those silly, unfortunate saps that didn’t know of addons until well into my WoW career. I was promptly introduced to Omen, Quartz, and other such mods which I would now consider my raiding essentials. But I digress; something which my guild has be applauded for has been our tactical use of in-game chat only. You read that correctly: No Vent! From Lurker to Illidan, we were a raid chat only guild, and while I believe we might have made progress a bit more quickly if we were all on vent, I don’t truly believe that we were limited due to our lack of vent. Now here is my correlation: whether it had been vent or addons which were excluded from our nightly raids, we weren’t limited, but neither were we superior to other more Vent-y guilds. If you see a child with a toy, there is no proper way for it to be played with. One could say the same about the game we all respect and love so much.
~ Vael
A quick side note: My guild’s primary reason is not one of pride but rather of shyness. Our ranks are heavily fortified with players of many different countries and quite a few don’t have the most firm grasp on all the nuances of the English language. So, we just decided we didn’t need Vent to progress, and just continued to use the always faithful blizzard chat frames. Though it is disconcerting when you hear someone’s voice for the first time, after already creating a preconceived voice for them in your head.
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When I started playing WoW the thought of using ay mod whatsoever frightened the hell out of me. Mainly because from screenshots I had seen, they all looked super complicated to install and manage.
I made it all the way to 70 without any addons before a friend convinced me into changing my stubborn ways. The guild had begun raiding so to have simple mods like Omen had become mandatory at that point.
6 months later and as I type this, I’m running 110+ mods for all sorts of things. Inventory management, playing the auction house rtc. But I do it for asthetic reasons.
http://img101.imageshack.us/my.php?image=wowscrnshot102308200558hz0.jpg
The old default UI is just plain ugly! The first 3 days after the patch were horrifying for me.
Do I feel like a better player because I use mods? Not at all. I just feel “sexier”
-Heal
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I used to be as relatively mod free.. and even now its only the compulsory ones – I had to get more when my Dps was bad and I needed a dot timer and a cast bar. I think I shouldn’t need mods to play – but I would be a fool if I was not reaching my full potential by not using them.
Pugnaciouspriests last blog post..Dr Phil says I have a problem.
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I love addons.
Typically I have up xperl, bartender, icehud, buff mods, minimap mods, pretty much my whole UI is modded.
The reason behind it is to make more of the screen accessible, to allow me to track stuff without going into arcane areas (if I want to know how damage is going on the MT I use Grim reaper, rather than trawling through combat logs mid fight). UI mods and suchlike give you the information the game already presents (seriously DBM is basically just a textual warning for the sounds / actions already in the game, and it misses the nice things like Teron casting conflag which has a travel time -> pre target dispelling ftw).
If anything macros are a much worse tool for the whole player skill, literally many rotations are spammable onto a single button for cast sequences. Of course people will argue that they have to add stuff in, however you do that anyway. At the end of the day however mods can only present to you the data already in the game in a different way, a threat meter is pretty useful as an addon because its hard to judge the whole concept (since it is an abstraction forced upon us by the lack of collision / taunt mechanics). Beyond a threat meter (which the game now provides itself) there is no mod that can really provide you with data you couldn’t already see or that was available somewhere.
2ndNins last blog post..On Becoming a healer
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‘ The supporting argument for this stance is usually something like: “I do just as much DPS as another player that uses mods, I don’t pull aggro any more frequently than that player, and I don’t have any problems knowing what to do and when to do it during a boss encounter.” ‘
Did anyone else notice the irony inherent in this argument? Last time I checked, the only way to know if you are doing as much DPS as another player is through use of a mod…
Blizzard spent a lot of time and effort building the framework so mods can exist. They allow mods so people can tweak the interface and enhance the information the game already provides to suit their style of play.
My bottom line? It is my $15 a month and I’ll play the game the way I want. I could honestly care less what anyone else thinks.
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I was introduced to Warcraft by a friend that had done some addon building at the time, so I’ve never played the game with a totally mod-free interface… except after patches, after expansions, in the beta, and for the first week post 3.0.2.
And really, it’s mostly a cosmetic thing for me (with the exception of Grid for healing).
That said, I have a person in my guild who regularly boasts that “he doesn’t USE addons” and will make comments if someone asks an addon question that “well, if you didn’t use addons, you wouldn’t have that problem”. I’m not sure why he feels the need to assert his alleged superiority (particularly since it keeps him from raiding, as he won’t install Omen or BigWigs/DBM), but it gets old fast. This was rather refreshing to read.
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I think playing without (or with few) addons makes me superior–at playing without addons. That’s really about all I’d say it does for me though. There’s no doubt addons improve my performance, and I love the ones I do use. I don’t think using a lot of addons reflects your skills as a player.
I will anecdotally note that I do believe it is true that the skills of addon dependent players can atrophy, depending on the situation. I remember back in the MC days as a holy priest, I ran very light on addons. During a normal raid, I was responsible most heavily for MT healing, and moderately for dispelling during trash. Well, anytime Decursive broke, I seemed to become the only person who could dispel/cleanse on trash. Any time I got a dispellable silence debuff, I would have to sit and wait for it to wear off because I was the only one still adept at noticing debuffs and cleansing them without an addon. The others had become too dependent on Decursive.
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For me it’s not a question – I just don’t care what other people think. I’m a good player – and I’m the only one looking at my screen. So why should anyone else care what’s going on with it? I don’t care what’s on theirs as long as they don’t move in the flame wreath.
When I see people getting into the whole “who’s better” argument in Trade or General chat, I’m mystified. Right before I hit Ignore, I have to fight off the urge to yell:
DUDEZ GAME IZ 4 FUN!!
If you enjoy playing straight out of the box, your life is easier. If you have some aesthetic sensibilities to satisfy, you love your bar skins. If you raid to live, you’re watching those meters.
Whatever – just have fun!
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I’ve been using mods for around 6 months now, there are some really great ones out there that make playing the game easier = less of a job = more fun!
Questhelper is an absolute must for me, I used to hate looking up quests on Google, trying to find out where I had to go next.
I must admit I do miss my add-ons when a new patch comes or I have to play on a computer without them installed.
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Addons are great. Or rather – they “add” something “on”. Therefore I use them where they add value to me. But, how about “My guild requires me…” ? No. Your guild/party/raid requires you to fulfill your role. Addons CAN help, but if you do your role without them, there is no need for you to have them. In the end what counts is that that boss goes down and you did your part. It’s as simple as that – in my opinion.
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I guess I fall into a middle catagory. I dont use mods beacuse I want to minimize problems I may have with the game. Vista gives me enough headaches as it is [/shakes fist].
Being in a small, family guild makes it easy since we are pretty low-key and I doubt I/we will do much raiding. If I ever did though I would get what is required. I dont think my personal preferences shouldnt make life tougher on the rest of the group.
I do use several simple macros though and love them.
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Mods. There’s a little story behind that; I started WoW in 2005 (I was 15, and I had NO experience with any RPGs of kind. Heck, I don’t play any games other than Pokemon, Starcraft, Civilization II and III!), and I didn’t know about mods.
I didn’t know about it until late into 2007, I start hearing those odd terms in my guild chat: Omen, TitanSomething, PearlSomething, etc etc. Then my uncle, who also plays WoW, came for a visit at Christmas. He showed me and helped me download TitanSomething (we both agreed that I’ll start off with one).
Well, I enjoyed the comestic features. It’s fun and nice, but I noticed one thing: my lag sky-rocketed. Laaaaaaaaaag!! I died SO often in Zangarmarsh because of that. Dad and I looked at EVERYTHING else on my laptop, and when compared to my dad’s laptop and the main desktop (which doesn’t have mods), my normally superior laptop was the laggy one!
So I decided to delete the mod. Oh, the bliss! No lag to worry about… and ever since, I refused to download any more mod. I realize that TitanSomething was a huge mod, yes, but now that I’m in college and therefore with a less-reliable internet connection, mods definitely will kill me (ever since 2005, I’ve been playing with roughly 10, 12 fps. It doesn’t bother me because I’m rarely LAGGY, but when I get laggy, then it gets very annoying. And at the college, I now get not only lag but also 8 fps. You see why mods frighten me now).
I never saw myself as superior for not using mods, but rather I saw myself as a person who PLAYS WITHOUT mods. My guild knows I don’t have mods. My guild knows that I don’t use Vent (can you imagine a deaf person using Vent? Too funny! I love shocking people with the news that I’m deaf and therefore no Vent/in-game chat). And yet I still go on raids with them (granted, we’re not a real raiding guild, but we’ve done Kara and ZG a few times).
Through my three years of playing WoW (remember, I was 15 with no MMRPG experience: I didn’t know anything about PvP and competion and the such, but I started with a hunter because I want a pet – and ironically I’m a Marksman – and ever since, I’ve loved playing a hunter. I don’t care what people say about hunter “being easy”) had taught me which of my shots cause threats. All those fights where I pulled aggro off my pet certainly made me wise up.
…as an added precaution, I ALWAYS cast Misdirection on the tank at the start of the boss fight and Feign Death after I use up my three shots.
But my point is… mods are nice and fun. They can be helpful. BUT I do wish that sometimes people would TRY to run a few instances/heroics/raids without mods to learn the basics of aggro/threat/etc before immediately slapping on Omen and letting Omen do the work. I think it’s nice to know what the mod tells you/does, you know?
I have nothing against players who use mods such as Omen, but a few mods just don’t make sense to me. My sister downloaded a few on her spiffy new laptop, and one is this bag mod… it shows all slots on one window (which can be done with Shift + B…) and I couldn’t figure it out! Alas, I guess I’m an old lady! =)
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I simply find that, mods & macros make life easier, though mods mostly for putting 3 diff functions into 1 button that simply depends on the current situation when you use it..epic, I completely detest macro’s for spam dmg were you simply spam 1 button the entire time, like the hunter steady shot macro, being a hunter i completely refused to use it for no other reason than, thinking it completely retarded, and any respectable player would never use something so mundane.
But as far as mod i could never understand some players that would vehemently refuse to use mods for no other reason than fear, i believe the real hoopla is based on they learned how to do things a certain way and the thought to do anything differently is completely beyond them, they talk about how we couldn’t live without mods, though it works both ways, they can’t even figure out how to use mods, so as far as the argument goes, who is really better the one that knows everything thats going on, or the one that has no idea, and simply making best guess.
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