The game that stands out to me is Fallout 4. The new dialogue system only hinted at what the protagonist was going to say with vague choices like “sarcastic” and that led me to reload saves frequently to either check out other options or because the protagonist came off as way too intense an railroaded me down a conversation route.
With Fallout 4 it’s more of a quality of life thing but with Fallout 3/NV I feel like I need to mod the games for the sake of stability. I’ve lost a lot of progress because I was exploring the Capital Wasteland/Mojave without passing through an auto-save point so I rely pretty heavily on things like CASM.
Fallout 3, for a long time on Steam, used Games For Windows Live DRM which shutdown in 2013. This meant a majority of people needed some kind of games GFWL disabler to even launch the game. Some people used Tale of Two Wastelands (TTW) which essentially combine Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas into one game.
I am wondering what other games do people only play modded?
I feel like there must be a lot of niche games out there that have some kind of quality of life mod a sizeable chunk of players use.
Maybe it’s an older game that relies heavily on mods or an open source engine recreation to run on modern systems.
I suppose another question would be which mods are essential in those situations
You must log in or # to comment.
Skyrim and Minecraft for me lol. Also rimworld.
Man yeah I need to get back into Rimworld. So many mods.
Haven’t played the game for a few months, but I keep installing mods for next time.
Skyrim. Unplayable without SKSE and SkyUI and a few others.
KOTOR2 relies on several mods, especially the restored content mod.
Minecraft. When you play with mods the vanilla game seems bland. Even if it’s just shaders and a new texture pack, I probably wouldn’t play it without mods.
We play with at least the datapacks from VanillaTweaks. Lots of quality of life features there.
I don’t really think of visual-only as mods. The mod scene being unsupported and thus always behind (and somewhat locked to those versions, too) what I wanted to play always bothered me.
I made my own resource pack (odd and mediocre TBH) and I really liked making 1.8 models (which also stopped me from enjoying mods in older versions) and for a decent amount of time it was the only thing keeping me interested in the game at all (I never fixed the models for the 1.9 changes that broke the display settings and stopped playing shortly after that, never migrated my account). I never got to mess with data packs, I’m sure that would’ve been helpful.
EDIT: I should say that Optifine was a bit of an exception for version availability and was definitely a solid choice especially if you needed performance. Some expansion to resource packs as well with negligible cost (at least with 16x), though some things like CTM top/bottom weren’t needed after 1.8 added models (to be fair, they added overlay CTM and entity models and I basically missed both of those aside from a simple prototype overlay).
I’ve looked at Minetest which is basically 100% mods, I probably could make my own thing but I don’t really have an enjoyable base to start from.
Bit of a tangent, but it’s a shame there aren’t more content mods and more of a modding community for Cyberpunk 2077.
CDPred released underpowered mod tools for Witcher 3 because they were concerned about losing DLC sales. The tools they released for CP2077 had a similar feature set.
That being said some seriously impressive mods, such as one that starts a Gwent match when combat initiates and then kills all enemies when you win, still came to be thanks to the ingenuity of modders.
It started out strong and had some steam for a while pre-2.0 patch.
But the long time between 2.0 and then the rapid succession of patches since, pretty much killed the mods.
It is a shame because there were some really great ones. You had full NPC control, followers and posses, you could have your own gang, someone added the Metro station which thankfully isn’t necessary anymore, there was a Spider-Man mod for swinging, polevaulting, and something else - there was wall running.
That’s just the engine stuff, not even quest stuff.
That said, I do think once 2077 patching settles down we’ll see some mods starting to pop up again.
The two subnautica games are pretty good vanilla but I always end up adding the “snap to” mod for building and of course a map! When I want to just do base building the mod that expands your inventory is invaluable too. Lets just build and hold the resources you need instead of having to go back and forth.
Valheim I honestly don’t think I’ve played the vanilla version. Theres just so many good content mods and qol fixes that I can’t imagine playing it without
The Valheim one that organizes shit in boxes for you
OMG why haven’t I thought to install one of these
Civ 5 or Civ 6.
I’m curious on this one. I have 55h in Civ 6 and I haven’t touched mods and have had a lot of fun. What do the mods add?
Don’t get me wrong, the vanilla versions of both games are great. But once you explore the higher end mods, it’s hard to play without them. I would recommend AI+, some of the expanded unit additions and there are some great diplomacy mods. I am not on my computer at the moment, but I’ll DM you tomorrow some of my must haves.
Stardew Valley. SVE adds so much that it’s just not the same without it. There are a few other mods that I like to run too, like seasonal outfits or canon friendly dialog expansion. IDK what other mods I use because its been so long since I last played but those are a few of the big ones
Would you recommend SVE for a first time player?
SVE adds so much to the vanilla game that you could consider it an unofficial expansion rather than just a mod. I might say try vanilla first if canon is important to you and you want to experience the story without any non-official changes.
If you don’t care about any of that, definitely dive right into SVE. It has a personality all its own that blends nicely with the vanilla game. It adds tons of stuff (characters, new areas, events, etc) and takes a lot of creative liberties to flesh out the world and lore.
Mount and blade warband. It’s my most played game on steam but 99% of that time was played with at meats and handful of mods and 80% of it with some kind of full conversion mod
The mods for war and are some of the best mods ever made, I’ve spent more time playing PoP than many full AAA games.
Bannerlord doesn’t have the big full conversions yet but it has some good qol fixing mods that help bannerlord a lot. I’m waiting to come back to bannerlord when that warhammer fantasy conversion is done
Assetto Corsa. If you ever get that game, it’s nearly essential to get the Content Manager and Custom Shaders Pack! (Also helps that there’s just so much additional stuff from the mods it almost makes the vanilla game feel smaller in comparison)
Far Cry 5. Coming from 3 and 4 I hated the forced drug trips, abductions, getting railroaded into the story with staged, unwinnable “fights”, godmode animals spawning all over the place. When modded back into an actual open world game, it’s pretty decent.
Still beats the hell out of FC6 which I just don’t want to play at all.
Sims 3 lol
Which mods do you use?
Quite a few, off the top of my head there’s nraas master controller, debug enabler, and traveller. I have a couple others I can’t think of right now, and of course shit loads of cc (and a shit load more I’m waiting to get a new pc before I install otherwise I’ll probably crash it lol)…
I love the game, but at this point I think I would have quite a shock playing it vanilla lol, it’s been too long, and I’ve been spoiled 😂
Most games I usually do a run through without mods, then add them after for a second run to enhance the experience after I know what I’m dealing with.
That said, I will never play games like Skyrim or Fallout without mods again. The right mods make them so much better.
Super Smash Bros. Brawl
It’s so easy to setup and you get so much out of it. I personally recommend Project+. It adds new characters, costumes, stages, music, Melee-like gameplay and more.
I only play on consoles, so its pretty limited. Fallout 4 and Skyrim are the two that came to mind.
I’ve put so many hours into both of these games I really don’t think I’d enjoy another play through on vanilla.
It has taken a long time, but I’ve finally found a set of mods for FO4 that give me the game I want, and far more difficult, don’t conflict and crash the game.
5x damage on all attacks for player and enemies to remove the bullet sponge combat, darker nights / flashlight to create a more horror environment, and Underground Railroad to provide a balance between survival mode and lack of fast travel are the key ones.
