Does anyone on this forum play the unmodified game anymore?

Even the most popular mods for the most popular games rarely get more than 10% of the base game's player base. While the numbers are much higher amongst those who are actively engaged in the game's surrounding community, it still never comes close to 50%.

I am probably in the minority but I still just play the base game.  I am happy to wait a while and let everything (base game and mods ) get fleshed out.

I play the vanilla game with vanilla races.  I'll do another custom race when I hear that the steam achievement is fixed for that, though.  (I did one, but the achievement didn't show up.)

There's nothing wrong with modded games.  I just prefer to try to go with what the devs throw at me.  I'll probably do modded games later.

I played Vanilla to death. I am happy to play Vanilla however things which in my opinion like Ai behavior or blueprint fixes or resource distribution which make my game fun I will use those mods. I have not added Vids blueprint mod yet and was waiting to see if its going to be fixed in 1.2. 

I try to change the base game as little as possible but changes that make the ai 'better' at things is always good. For the most part our community is probably one of the best in the genre as far as friendly modders. 

Another person who just plays the base game.  Though to be fair I haven't finished a game since not long after release.  I generally only play with the ship builder and I don't need mods for that.  Also throw in that I can't be bothered to learn about mods and how to get them working, which I'm sure the majority of players feel.

Is that due to the vanilla game being good enough for you, or do you actually mean it's too much of an hassle to read a few lines of text on how to get them working? 

I actually only bought the game because of how fantastic the tools are for creating custom races and ships. It's not that I don't find the base game satisfactory, far from it, it's that I need an outlet for my creativity, and this game happily gives it to you.

I don't have mods too only some custom factions, which I don't count as mods.

However I probably will at some point try some mods, but I haven't explored the base game enough yet. I wait with mods until I know the base game better.

I don't really care what you read into it.

Exactly this tbh. As I said, 90% of the players of any given game can't be bothered to figure out how mods work for it. It's not because they're willfully lazy or anything - they just don't really care enough about mods for any given effort to be worth it beyond a button click. That's why we really, really need proper workshop support.

Have you bothered to learn how to use the mods for every game you've ever bought? I know I haven't, and I actively mod half a dozen games at a time. I just don't see how extensive modding can add anything to the Hatoful Boyfriend experience, or think State of Decay needs more content, or believe that Chess would benefit from half a dozen extra types of pieces.

I do not play mod's only the supported game through Stardock

Then why care enough to post that garbage line above? If you really didn't care, you wouldn't reply at all. I was really just curious if this was really a case of laziness, or some sort of "mod-phobia" thing that many people seem to have going for them.

Every game that uses mods properly, yes. (though I don't generally buy tons of games to play all the time, I focus on a few at a time) And I hear the Bobby Fischer mod to chess is quite good (random placement of officers) Again, I was curious to the reasons why people do not dare to touch mods at all, maybe thinking it's very complicated stuff, when it's really not that hard to install and use one.

Actually encouraging to see that at least half of the respondents are playing the base game.

I have to admit that I use a lot of mods for 2 reasons.

First is the aggravation factor if the devs change the game in a way that irritates me, I will mod it to my satisfaction. I modded the game back to where I can talk to the AI as often as I wish, and I modded back my beloved early game sensor boats.

Second, I have a low boredom threshold. The diversity mods by Deathwynd and others add a lot of interest to the game. I can always turn off mods whenf I want to and if I want to pick and choose, I have a mod parking folder to save any mod that I want to omit from a particular game

Given they are unsupported by the devs you can't be sure that the mod won't break your game immediately.  Or that in the future when/if the game is updated if the mod won't play nice with that and again break your game.  So there's the added risk of messing with mods that would put people off.
 

I'd say there are two factors:

1) Historic Complexity. Newer games have gotten much better but simple mod installs, but it was not always that way. For me, it wasn't until Civ 5 that I start using many mods, just because it was finally a snap to install.

2) Not the "true game". To many, they are here to play the "true" version of the game made by people who get paid to make games. They aren't interested in modifications from fans. And I think this aspect reinforces itself. The less often you use mods, the more you might feel this way. People who get used to playing with mods lose that feeling.

I started a game before the last patches and I'm still playing it out, so I have not tried any mods yet.

I use very very few mods for gc3 so far. That is mostly because, I have and maintain my own "mod" and want a pure copy to test on.

I say Mod in quotation marks, because I'm really just making custom races and ships, but they haven't bothered to make "ship sets" a customizable/uploadable thing, so to do that I have to make some files.

GC3 is built from the ground up to be very friendly to modders or mod-players, once Steam Workshop is enabled (for real) for mods, I'm certain usage will spike significantly.

I'm using the base game. I've created some own custom factions and downloaded custom factions and ship designs from the workshop. However, I only have one game at the moment where I use these downloaded factions.

I honestly have stopped playing, waiting for Patch 1.2. I want 1-click mod support via Steam, and haven't bothered with learning how install mods in the game. I've done that for Sims 3 and some other games, and oftentimes this takes up a lot of time, so I simply won't do that for GC3 when Steam One-click Mod support should be in range.

It is for the Devs to do their homework and provide that for the community. I also right now feel that things have slowed down, and the GC3 team should work much more and polishing out core mechanics of the game. If not, it at least should allow us very simple mod support to change that ourselves.

^ Paul stated in the last dev stream that their plan was for mods to be included in the workshop with 1.3.  Depending on if they keep to their update schedule that's probably 2 - 3 months away.

I hope it's coming down the pipeline, because as things stand mod support is really bare-bones. I'd hardly call it mod support really, all you can share with officially-supported tools is things you can make in-game.

I play with no mods.  I just use some custom made factions created with the in-game tools, other than that, everything else is pure base game.

This is a matter of perspective, but I think this is an unfair statement, the support was front loaded into the design of the game. You can edit most of the game, including the AI, using Notepad. Most things don't require you put files in the game directory either, making uninstall and the risk of damaging your installation easy/non existent.

Compare this with XCom Enemy Unknown. Much, much more difficult. 

Expectations around mod support have been increasing quite rapidly I think. Probably because of the popularity of and ease of using mods with Skyrim, and programs to sort it out/maintain it like Nexus Mod Manager, and then subsequent development of Steam Workshop. I guess its fine that expectations get raised and that our bar for excellence evolves, but I think its too cavalier to say they do not support modding.

I think in general, a more accurate critique is, "post release support has been slower than expected". As this has effected all aspects of the game not just modding, from tiny bugs, to the AI, to features, and a LOT of balance stuff.

Only base game with custom factions created of basic assets. Reporting everything I find in the change logs thread in the hopes that the base will get more solid.

Mods are the last results for me, ideally I like to experience the concept what the DEVs had in mind - mods are mostly tailored to one specific taste and canon is canon

I use mods that are cosmetic.  For instance right now, I am using one that removes the background nebula that sometimes gets too bright for my eyes.

I am using Vids blueprint mod as a workaround to return to what I think is intended behavior.

When playing GC2 I eventually got one of the AI assisting mods that greatly improved the gameplay but didn't seem to change the game.  I expect that eventually, I will do the same with GC3.

Base game. I haven't seen any mods that caught my interest.