I agree somewhat and I admit I'm not much of a romhacker myself though I've been hacking roms for about 15 years, My first hack was made with Nesticle, I changed the color of the coin block in SMB1 and flattened mario's head. Super Flat head bros. That was me. But even for that hack I had to read a document on how to hack roms. It basically told me what to do with Nesticle to alter a rom. After that I became interested in level hacking and use the YYMario program to make a full level hack back then you had to read a lot, then change one brick or thing at a time play though the game make sure it still worked correctly go back change the next thing it was like using an elephant on a pig farm, and it took me 2 full years to make a complete level hack of SMB toward the end I got lazy and only changed a few little cosmetic things for level 8-1 to 8-4. I had created a unseen glith in the finished hack and people still ask today what that enemy is in my first level hack. I played with other more complex tools that are easier to use and can change a lot more stuff but they never really did it for me so I learned Hex Editing cause I wanted to change the text in SMB1 there was a tool but I didn't like it cause you couldn't change everything at the time. Then I went a step further and I discovered how to map the levels of SMB1 myself with out any editor with help from a document that gave me a starting point. Then I wrote my own SMB1 Level Map doc. So well you could say I cheated but I put in the hours in my own work and I made my very own hacks, nobody held my hand. lol
I'm on Romhacking.net Ranked Number #62, and I have just one hack on Zophars Domain where I used two different editor's but in the making of said hack I played through the entire game before completing it. Super Mario RPGed.
http://www.romhacking.net/community/868/