When do you mod a game?

[ZedClampet]

Not counting potential QoL or bug fixes, do you play a game through once before modding it, or while you are downloading the game for the first time do you think, "You know, the Improved Barmaid Mounts with Deadly Firebreath" mod would fun...

For me, I tend to just start playing the game without mods, but will then sometimes look for QoL improvements if there are things that bother me. Then if I finish the game and really liked it, I might start looking for mods to extend the play. For survival games, which I play a lot, I'm a little different. If I know there is base building in a game, for instance, I may go ahead and start looking at what is available from the beginning.

How do you all handle modding?

 

[Brian Boru]

play a game through once before modding it

That would be me. I need to know it's a game I want to replay before I look at modding. Of course, if I knew there was an Improved Barmaid Mounts mod on offer, I'd be very tempted.

The same thing really, but if something bad crops up in the middle of a game I'm otherwise enjoying, then I'll go looking for a fix. Far Cry 5's capture parties being a classic example—I stopped playing for a good few months until a mod fixed it.

Quite often for the replay, the main mod I'll look for will be an 'unlock' type, so I have access to the good stuff from the beginning.

 

[mainer]

Rule number 1 for me when it comes to modding a game, is similar to yours: I play the game first in it's "vanilla" form as the developers released it in; hopefully the entire game. How am I going to know what I want to change if I haven't experienced the release version? Playing a game un-modded for the first time is usually (hopefully) a great experience, and you can pick out certain things you'd like to see further developed; whether it's graphics, companions, combat, story, or a multitude of other things.

Another reason to wait on modding a game, is because when a game first releases, I just know that there will be multiple game updates & patches, most of which (if not all) will entirely break a modded game. There are some ways around that, at least in Steam games, where you disable auto-updates, and start the game outside of Steam. But early on in a game's life, I really don't want to miss out on important bug patches. So I wait, sometimes for a year or more, before I'll mod a newer game.

Improved Barmaid Mounts with Deadly Firebreath" mod would fun...

Reminded me of a young woman I knew from my college days. Potion of Fire Resistance equipped.

 

[Pifanjr]

I'll definitely play the game before even looking at any mods, because I like to figure out a game on my own first and just seeing what mods are available can influence my opinion before I've had a chance to form my own.

Once I've decided to look at available mods, I'm still very wary about what mods to install. I don't trust other people to make the decision of what part of the game needs to be "improved" and I don't trust mods not to crash my game, so I do a lot of research into what a mod does and whether there are any known problems before installing one.

In practice, this means I usually only get one to three small QoL mods and very rarely try any mods that add additional content.

 

[Krud]

Not counting potential QoL or bug fixes, do you play a game through once before modding it...
How do you all handle modding?

Ideally this is how it'd go, that is, only QoL and bug fixes first, but... QoL can be subjective, and I go down the slippery mod slope of "the game might be better with more people in it, and if people answer the door when I knock, and if I don't know people's names before I talk to them, and..." until eventually I'm down the rabbit hole of "...my gameplay's QoL will be vastly improved if every single rock and tree is revamped along with every NPC, every song, physics, and Lydia now quotes lines by Lana Kane from Archer..."

Edit to add: Also, if the game is enormous and as crash-prone as Bethesda titles, and if I have to start over, then I might change things up quite a bit to keep the beginning portion of the game interesting for me.

If it's a small, stable game, however, I probably won't mod it until I've played through it. (Though this seems to mainly be older games that I played before a lot of mods were available for them.)

 

[ZedClampet]

if I knew there was an Improved Barmaid Mounts mod on offer, I'd be very tempted.

The Japanese (of course) game that I'm playing right now has an NPC called Receptionist Fan who gives you info on dungeons and lets you into them. You can capture her (a new one spawns immediately), turn her into a pet, and ride her around piggyback style. She's very slow, though, and if you get in a fight while you aren't riding her, she yells, "My God! Why is this happening to me!" and runs off. It's all funny to me in a Japanese sort of way.

 

[Mazer]

Same as most of you, I play the vanilla game before making any drastic changes. Skyrim is sort of an exception as I'm playing it modded now despite never actually completing it, but 300 odd hours of vanilla was more than enough and I couldn't go back to the old perks and extremely limited spell list.

I also couldn't play DA:I without the mod to remove the looting animation, I basically abandoned crafting in my first attempt at the game because I was wasting so much time stopping to grab ore and plants.

The Japanese (of course) game that I'm playing right now has an NPC called Receptionist Fan who gives you info on dungeons and lets you into them. You can capture her (a new one spawns immediately), turn her into a pet, and ride her around piggyback style. She's very slow, though, and if you get in a fight while you aren't riding her, she yells, "My God! Why is this happening to me!" and runs off. It's all funny to me in a Japanese sort of way.

The sheer audacity to say this without posting a screenshot. I can only masturbate to your Geralt avatar so many times without it getting stale, you know?

 

[ZedClampet]

The sheer audacity to say this without posting a screenshot.

LOL here she is giving me a ride. She's too slow to actually use, though there is a mod that makes all your mounts faster...

 

[Mazer]

LOL here she is giving me a ride. She's too slow to actually use, though there is a mod that makes all your mounts faster...

Why rush when you can just enjoy the ride. So to speak.

 

[Zloth]

If I waited for my second play-through, I would rarely use mods at all!

Even skipping bug fixes (you basically can't play Saints Row 2 without modding), there's mods I need right away. Expanded character portraits for old style RPGs jump to mind, or voice mods for XCOM. Most are mid-game somewhere. Second play-through mods are probably things like total conversions or massive changes (like RogueTech or Long War).

Issues with developers making changes on me normally aren't such a big deal because I like to wait for games to be "done" before I play them!

 

[Colif]

Only mods I have used were to add more to game or features that made sense. Most recent would be Torchlight 2 where originally it was just mods to add more bank space but eventually it was to make game more fun. Its a 10 year old game, you can only play through the story so many times before you need more. Mods I was running at end added so much to game, even an end game I never bothered with. Max lvl of 100 took long enough to get to.

I only mod games I have played already.

is patching a game after company who made it no longer exist a mod? then I also run the Community patch made for Sacred 2 long ago

 

[indianamith45]

I don't tend to use mods for wacky things, I get bored quickly most of the times. The only mods that were actually very useful to me, were the graphic mods for Dark Souls Prepare to Die edition, and several mods to modify the world of Fallout New Vegas to replay it.

 

[Sarafan]

I rarely mod games. This is reserved to titles that I finished multiple times. There are some exceptions however, especially when the game doesn't support widescreen resolutions or has problems working on modern hardware. In these cases I use mods to fix these issues. Most of the time a prefer the original experience however.