Why are people against mods?

[Goddess Bhavani]

I had a very unpleasant experience on the so-called Official KSP Discord. 

KSP car design was being discussed so I shared a very old Ford F-150 replica someone shared with me. It immediately got bashed as "I hate it because it has mods."

"Mods suck. They are no use." From someone who looks like an admin or moderator.

Wow. It has stock decals and a moving gearshift made from Tweakscale & Infernal Robotics. Decorative mods. The drivetrain, articulating suspension and everything else is just creative use of low rigidity parts.

Anyone can shed light on why this kind of attitude exists on an "Official" KSP channel?

I believe KSP has remained on the hard drives of many computers because of its massive mod community.

[Superfluous J]

I won't leave LKO without mods, except for some exceptional challenges.

[roboslacker]

I don't know about other people, but I don't have the attention span to get any mods beyond mechjeb and hyperedit

[Urses]

If you try to get a right answer you will mostly see two options.

Vanilla brings you to think creative, look through forum and you will see many formidable inventions build only from stock parts. Helis, hinges, swingaable wings....

They are beautiful and show which people are here ingame and what they are able to build. 

Moders try on other hand the same abilitys through one model and program this ability in... or add new parts where the creativity comes through programming abilitys.

But for me i use the mostly profane sight on it. Partcount. A vanilla hinge need 10 parts to work and i try to build one in vanilla.

But if i will build a big spezialised station and need many flexible points there as example. I can build this in vanilla for x times partcount and wait for 30 min to load the vehicle... or i use a mode with the parts with the same functionality. For me time is the most needed ressource in my life....

And if you see that from this angle of sight. Nobody has the only truce because everyone had other preferencies.

But you will see many people who are on the trail for the grail

Edited November 12, 2017 by Urses

[Geonovast]

I enjoy both playstyles.

All my mods give me a lot more to do.  Make certain things easier, and overwhelmingly add to the game.  I don't have anything enforcing realism installed since I prefer to think of it as a game than a sim.  But I of course have nothing against those who play the realistic stuff.

I also love playing stock once in awhile.  As I've stated before, I grew up playing with K'nex, which basically went unchanged for the first decade or so.  Very limited selection of parts.  But when you've made something incredible, like this, using the few choices you were given, it can give you a real sense of accomplishment.

There's always going to be a mentality that it isn't good unless it was done with what you were originally given.  Some of it might be masked jealousy.  Some may come from someone who is on the autism spectrum and is just very set on things being a certain way.  Some may just be people being a jerk.

Some people just can't seem to grasp that there's no wrong way to play a strictly single player game.  Obviously Squad has no problem with mods.  If they feel cheated somehow that you did something they couldn't do by using a mod, there's nothing you can do but shrug it off.  The way this forum is run is the reason it's one of only two forums I've joined where I really stuck around.

 

[GoSlash27]

I'm not "against" mods (actively campaign against their use), I just don't use them myself. 

I *suspect* that the people who are against your particular collection of mods are either hardcore purists or are angry that their collection of mods aren't the same as yours, and so can't enjoy your creations the same way you do.

Best,
-Slashy

 

[coyotesfrontier]

Discord channels tend to be wretched hives of scum and villainy, even if they are official. Take any inferences you gain from there with a grain of salt. Just because a small subset of a community may believe something doesn't mean that it's the wider opinion of the community as a whole. It's still good to listen to criticism if it's constructive, which in your case doesn't look like it was. Simply try to ignore messages that simply hate on something without providing a reason, as in those cases there usually isn't a good one. Judging by the size of KSP's modding community, I think it's safe to say that his or her opinion isn't shared by the rest of the community.

[invision]

if this game didnt have mods i would have stopped playing a long time  ago

[Waxing_Kibbous]

For me "stock" is at least better burn time (with the suicide burn disabled) and basic orbit installed- I consider these to be balanced QoL fixes. It's kind of annoying to play straight stock while some really basic things are missing, eg radar altitude and AP/PE readouts in flight.

[Scarecrow]

I think people tend to be split amongst a number of mod using types.  Some will embrace any mod going as it adds massively to the experience, whilst at the other end, some people prefer to play completely stock for the purity of the experience.  In between we have players who use mods to improve the visuals, and others who will use some mods that help with the build process and mission planning.

No one group is necessarily right in their approach to playing the game, as no one group is wrong either.  KSP is a game that is easily tailored to fit the needs and requirements of the individual player, and no one else has the right to say that any one way is wrong, only that it is different to the way they play it.

[Van Disaster]

Try the actual official IRC channels ( well, don't go into kspmodders ) - usually full of long-term users & friendly. I only use discord channels for one game, and that will probably be the only one ( not least because the discord plugin for my IM client is not great! ). The IRC channel mods are good people.

As for active anti-modding ( which shows up everywhere, not just KSP ), it's just some elitist ego-strokers, play as you enjoy. So much hypocracy involved it's not worth the effort to argue about or even bother thinking about. A mod becomes part of the stock game and it's suddenly legitimate, really

Edited November 12, 2017 by Van Disaster

[Frank_G]

I play with stock parts, but use Kerbal Engineer Redux and Editor Extensions, because it offers me more freedom in my creations. I like to compare my creations with others though, so i have to stay with the stock part catalogue.

I really wish for a stock controllable rotational electric motor though, for creating ramps, rotors, deployment mechanisms, robotic arms and such things, without having to refer to mods.

[Van Disaster]

13 minutes ago, Frank_G said:

I play with stock parts, but use Kerbal Engineer Redux and Editor Extensions, because it offers me more freedom in my creations. I like to compare my creations with others though, so i have to stay with the stock part catalogue.

I really wish for a stock controllable rotational electric motor though, for creating ramps, rotors, deployment mechanisms, robotic arms and such things, without having to refer to mods.

And there is the difference between someone who legitimately would want to use a mod if the logistics didn't mean it was an issue ( which is why I don't use part mods in another building game - KSP has so many mods that make my experience better I'm not bothered ), and someone who thinks not using mods somehow makes them better than other people. Just ignore the latter.

[NSEP]

I don't dislike mods in general, i play Realism Overhaul alot, wich, by the way, is a great representation of the power of mods. Anyways, i love mods, and the people who make them, i do not appreciate people who use mods in their spacecraft or planes as much as people who don't, (expect when their entire playstyle requires a ton of mods). The reason is simple: it requires less effort with mods then with limited parts. 

[Delay]

I'm not against mods, I just don't use them (yet). I play KSP on a seperate machine and I want to wait until I have a computer capable of running KSP. I already have a few mods I want to try, like Principia, KER, and maybe a few others like Scatterer. I just want some nice additions to the game without changing too much.

[klgraham1013]

7 hours ago, Waxing_Kibbous said:

For me "stock" is at least better burn time (with the suicide burn disabled) and basic orbit installed- I consider these to be balanced QoL fixes. It's kind of annoying to play straight stock while some really basic things are missing, eg radar altitude and AP/PE readouts in flight.

More people need to try Basic Orbit and Basic dV.  In my opinion, I think they're closest to what should actually be in stock.

 

Edited November 12, 2017 by klgraham1013

[katateochi]

I also enjoy both styles; When playing with mods I love the extra challenges, new design possibilities and new game play aspects as well as some of the convenience that some mods bring. When I play stock I enjoy having a limited set of parts to work with (and how nicely the game runs), but I do find that some mods (like KAC and some visual mods) tend to creep in.  The biggest thing that I like about playing stock is the durability of craft. Stock craft (especially these days) tend to survive KSP updates whereas mod craft are subject to changes in several unconnected code bases and that can be frustrating. I like having a set of pure stock craft that can function just fine without mods, but are designed to take modded payloads or have minor mod additions.  I keep a set of pure stock craft which I know I can easily transfer into an KSP install/version and then I add bits to them (like additional science modules, decorative parts etc).  

I don't understand the point of view that playing with mods takes away from the challenge or is less creative. Sure there are mods that add overpowered parts, but a lot of mods add more challenge to the game and some are so complex that there is quite a big learning curve to fully understand them. And as far as creativity goes, it's about what important to you; some people want to be creative and solve a problem like how to make a stock hinge, other people just want a hinge so they can get on with being creative in other ways (and keep the part count down).
Some mods do add convenience, but after the nth time of having to right click on every tank in your munar shuttle, and panning the camera into odd places to get to those hard to see tanks, just so you can refuel it from your fuel station, I'd rather just install tac fuel balancer and click transfer out on the station's main silo tank. Or after 1 by 1 transferring crew between a station shuttle and station (a process that takes 3 clicks per crew), that gets a bit dull and I'd rather have crew manifest so I can do that transfer quickly and get on with the interesting things. 

I think the idea that "mods make it easy" comes from there being mods that do things like automatic docking and landing and people see that as missing the point, or the "I had to struggle with that so you should too" mindset. Personally, I'd say learning to dock was a great satisfaction and (after 5 years of playing) I still enjoy the satisfaction of getting a perfect dock, but I can see that for some people it's a blocker and maybe they just want to do their thing in space and perhaps at some point they'll learn to do it, but it doesn't matter so long as they're having fun.  But even something like automated docking can be used creatively; something I've been doing recently is having various craft near a station and setting several of them to automatically dock while I pilot one of them.  The result is so cool! it's like having traffic at the station and seeing various other craft moving about and coming into dock while you're approaching your dock just looks fantastic. 

 

[JK_Kerbineer]

I'm fine with both playstyles, but I get really angry when someone who hasn't even tried to get to orbit without MechJeb or HyperEdit, calls the game boring because they don't get to do anything.

[Mukita12]

Dude i agree with you when i was trying to Public discord server and Giving my Artillery Craft many people say It's was crap, S***, and Stupid because of mod so I leave that Discord

[Gaarst]

Some people are against mods because they feel that playing purely stock and having to work with what the base game gives you makes it more challenging and difficult; they think that mods make the game easier and it makes them feel superior. Which is a bit ridiculous because there aren't many mods that actually make the game easier, they just enhance one particular aspect of the gameplay and makes it possible to go further than stock, and even if a mod makes it easier for you, it's your game do whatever you want. Because after all, the stock and kinda-modded plebs are nothing compared to the glorious RO master race, as we all know that using RO and adding maximum realism is the only true way to play KSP and makes whatever you create vastly superior to the toy rockets peasants scramble together to crawl their way around the laughable pebbles they call planets.

[DualDesertEagle]

Being stuck with 1.0.2 for some reason, most likely until I buy KSP a second time, I've been playing bone stock for quite a long time until I thought "U know what? Darn it, I'll just try and if it doesn't work, so be it."

And what I had anticipated would never be working for me turned out to make the whole game so much better! Even one of the simplest mods I have installed, namely Mk2 essentials, made me enjoy building Mk2 planes so much more for the simple reason of the included jet engine being capable of accelerating my planes beyond 13 times the speed of sound (with ignore heat on of course, but still, that's one HELL of a high speed)! That's well over 4500 m/s IN THE ATMOSPHERE and tends to fling u out on an escape trajectory if u don't compensate enough! It's just a big fat BLAST to play like this.

Also, KIS and KAS are almost ESSENTIAL for building proper surface outposts just coz they allow crystal clear separation of the different facilities and placing them in different locations before connecting them all together using the tube system. And what REALLY makes these 2 awesome is the ability to attach or detach parts ANYWHERE to allow stuff from cleaning all the RCS ports off the modules u just docked to adding parts u forgot while building the ship in the VAB or SPH without having to go back all the way!

 

And those are only a few of the mods I've tried! It's just that my 10-year-old laptop just doesn't cut it when it comes to computing power and just can't handle a whole bunch of mods.

 

Seriously, everyone complaining about other ppl using mods has to quit their whining! If u guys like to play stock, FINE! We don't! Deal with it! It's still a single player game after all! It's just like cheating in the old GTA games! Who the hell cares if I use the RSJABBER and FISHFLAP cheats in GTA2? It doesn't interfere with anyone else's gameplay, so quit ur nagging and enjoy ur own game the way u like it! 

Edited November 12, 2017 by softweir
2.2.g Violation.

[klgraham1013]

38 minutes ago, Gaarst said:

Because after all, the stock and kinda-modded plebs are nothing compared to the glorious RO master race, as we all know that using RO and adding maximum realism is the only true way to play KSP and makes whatever you create vastly superior to the toy rockets peasants scramble together to crawl their way around the laughable pebbles they call planets.

Must be sarcasm, because I barely see that attitude on this forum.

[DualDesertEagle]

2 minutes ago, klgraham1013 said:

Must be sarcasm, because I barely see that attitude on this forum.

On one side it clearly is, on the other hand he's kinda right. I bet it takes one hell of a lot more skill to manage everything the way it happens in real life.

[klgraham1013]

3 minutes ago, DualDesertEagle said:

On one side it clearly is, on the other hand he's kinda right. I bet it takes one hell of a lot more skill to manage everything the way it happens in real life.

The comment sounded derogatory toward RO players.  Of course it takes more skill.  I just don't see the RO "master race" players actually being "holier than thou" on this forum.  The occasional comment about toy solar systems doesn't equate to constant snootiness. 

Edited November 12, 2017 by klgraham1013

[DualDesertEagle]

2 minutes ago, klgraham1013 said:

I just don't see the RO "master race" players actually being "holier than thou" on this forum. 

Can't remember having said that...