I came here from vizzed.com. Some of the rom hacks you "elitist" consider horrible hacks are scored very high on the site.
To be fair, there are other reasons why people might play a hack other than its either fitting arbitrary standards of elitists, or being 'fun' to certain people (and that some people like something, though others don't, would obviously not serve to explain why they like it). As mentioned, they might play it for nonetheless poor reasons, such as that somebody else played it, or shiny but meaningless graphics, although if they have to play them for poor reasons, they are probably poor games. You can't derive from such 'elitists' disliking it that it's instead in some particular other category, especially as most of these 'elitists' are mostly just about artificial and convoluted means to make a hack look exciting, or showy and happening, frequently rather than actually improving it in any manner. If you conceded that such people make hacks 'very good,' based on their views of such things, however, it would seem odd to polemicise against them at length.
The majority of people who play these rom hacks are casual players just looking for something to play. Rom hacking does not entirely revolve around you "experts". Its almost like these "expert rom hackers" all hang out somewhere in a private chatroom or something and discuss/bash on new/casual hacks.
This seems valid, generally speaking these people try to make it seem as though the barrier for basic acceptance of works is higher than it actually is for all hacks, and requires a significant amount of time spent on some artificial idea of 'craft' that is merely theirs rather than that of most hacks with a more universal appeal, as free games, while obviously as in most fields the things which were actually popular were generally known for their being slightly loose and vulgar, and frequently quite populist, rather than their dedication to some form of 'craft.' In addition, ROM Hacks were a field quite foreign to such things, which seemed lifted from elsewhere arbitarily to give it a veil of respectability, in a field where by itself some form of vision should be sufficient.
Is it because its the truth and even the moderators are apart of this "elitist wave" that's taken over the community?
They need some mode of apparent legitimacy, so in that sense it shouldn't be a surprise.
You want to know why im saying this? Because I was fully ready to begin my own rom hack. But now, after seeing the type of "community" this is, I have no interest anymore.
If you meant that you weren't posting it here, then fine, but you could make it if you wished, ROM Hacking has no inherent ties to such a community, and nor do ROM Hacks.
Maybe you take this stuff too seriously? Rom hacking wont get you anymore. As I said, once you sign off all your hacking websites, your nobody again. Your username does not bring you fame.
This is generally a valid point, namely that some form of artificial community ordering in ROM Hacking makes little sense, as it rather seems something fairly detached from the informal hierarchy of elsewhere, or in brief that such things are made up. However, obviously ROM Hacks like Quartz are better-known than some of the people that worked on the main games, with Quartz of course generally emphasising admittedly minor tweaks to the game rather than its author, such that like some people from the main series the author's username might be obscured. There isn't anything inherent to such, though. Obviously, Pokémon the main series belongs to a company, rather than to many of the people who produce the games, so outside of that or by themselves they are basically just occasionally editing someone else's game anyway, and esteemed lower than that because how the game reflects their intentions is generally obscure.
In that sense, ROM Hacks might tend to emphasise their author more than other forms, although this might depend on how they make the hack, and it might just reflect for instance the mores of the PC Community or the ROM Hacking community, etc., instead of this.
If A New Hack Doesn't Fit The "Mold" Elitist Have Set
To be fair, PC in general was mostly in favour of the newer games, and in that sense if they actually supported FR as some sort of model, this would be fairly controversial. As such, you're more likely to see regions from more recent games - D/P is quite popular, for instance for openings - imported into earlier games, despite those in fact having been designed elsewhere, and in general the mores of such things would have to be shown somehow if it were to somehow fit into the overall mold of PC.
Gaia was Boring and it feels like a basic Fire Red with enhancements, but as I stated previously, that's what the Veterans of this community love and that's why it's in the position that it's in now. Doing something new would have you looked down on here.
This is nicely stated. Anyway, the world's a prison. I think it's generally accepted by now that Gaia is mostly there due to working with PC mores, in some form or other, rather than standing out from the others. It's a popular vote, it's not a person's judgement of quality. As such, obviously if you dislike these mores, you'd probably not be expecting that much from Gaia, but that would be mostly tautological, and if you wanted to find good hacks you might want to look elsewhere or at the more obscure, but fundamentally atypical ones.
The Rom Hacking Community is Dead.
To be fair, the series isn't nearly as popular as it was, either, and ROM Hacking generally started gaining popularity when the series was shifting out of focus. As such, you might expect it to behave as such. Nonetheless, you are correct that the ROM Hacking community by itself is, if not dead, by now mostly quite undirected, and most hacks have been fairly similar for a while, without anybody seeming interested in any particular aspect of ROM Hacks any more. The sense of quirkiness or otherwise has long since been avoided. Nonetheless, the ROM Hacking community is not, of course, ROM Hacks, and in any case faintly-modified versions of previous Pokemon games are so far from a dying format that Sun and Moon just got announced a couple of days ago. By itself, this decline of the community gives no reason why you couldn't make a hack that would exceed most of that by default.
