The first time i played the Fallout games (Fallout 3, New Vegas) and the Elder Scrolls games I always found myself getting engrossed in the lore and the game in general the first few times through them, but the more I played the more it became less of a challenge. I turn to mods to change that. I always end up getting mods that make the game harder in some way or another. I fell in love with mods that do things like add hunger and thirst, make it where you will bleed out if you dont apply first aid to a wound you have suffered and mods that just make the game more of a challenge in general, Other than those I tend to like graphic enhancement an skill/perk expansion mods It's one of my gaming dreams to buy a pc and mod the hell out of skyrim. I've only played on console, but I bought the legendary edition on a steam sale a few years ago for this purpose. Seeing the graphics updates, additional content, new areas online all really seem like they improve on an already fantastic experience, sort of like an expansion but more involved. But I feel like one of the main things mods do is add a reason to replay your favorite games, and I don't think I would want to mod something like Fallout 4 or Elder Scrolls 6 without really experiencing the base game vanilla first.
Dude same gaming dream here. I did a TON of research on like what I want for my PC and I was telling myself how I would buy it piece by piece and I had a plan in line but it never came to fruition. It was gonna cost me a total of around $900. The thing that first made me want to do this was Dunkey's video:
If you mean as far as hardware goes, I can't remember much of the names now. GTX force 300 or something along those lines for graphics card, I was going to have at least 16GB of RAM, as well as either Intel i5 or something from AMD whose name I forget but from what I had read it was on par with the i5 and a little bit cheaper too iirc. I looked at this site and was going to go for something in the superb-excellent range since it would be my first and I'm not the most experienced when it comes to building. I would also buy all the parts before getting a case if I stretched it out over a few months and make sure the case would be big enough if I needed to add anything or replace a piece with something bigger.
I share your dream. For Skyrim, I'd like to get the proper first-person archery setup, and for New Vegas - scarce, scary and deadly world where I would have to make my wits work to survive. I've had a pleasure of playing a half of that experience for NW before my videocard decided to rest in peace for reasons unknown. The experience was amazing, though I must admit to have used mods that'd make the game easier (like bullet time, reasoning being to simulate reflexes of a person the Courier ought to be to survive all the horrors of Nevada). One moment that stuck in my head is when, near the town you start in, you climb the mountain full of geckos to save a guy's girlfriend, only for the guy to full the player and try to kill him himself; once I realized what's going to happen - he's going to kill me with one shot - I pushed the bullet time button in, drew my trusty snubnose and shot the bastard first. It was amazing; I crave for more.
yeah definitely closer but there's still gonna be hardware limitations. Some of the super intense mods require very high end PCs to operate, so while youll be able to mod on consoles to a degree the options on PC are probably always going to be better. Plus for now I'm on PS4 not Xbox One, and I don't think Sony has agreed to mods yet.
I used to pretty much play all RPGs vanilla, mainly because I was too lazy to go through setting up the mods. But it's a lot easier nowadays, and I've recently started a Fallout 3 campaign with the FWE mod package, and it is amazingly more immersive. Once I've finished this playthrough I'll probably look into the JE Sawyer mod for Fallout: New Vegas. That or something with Skyrim. Or maybe I'll finally do all that restored content mod for Knights of the Old Republic 2, because even the original (clearly incomplete) game was fun for me, and restored content just sounds fantastic. For RPGs in general, though, I think I'll at least play through the vanilla game once before overhauling it and changing it. I want to get a feel for how the makers intended it to be on release, before I throw that out the window and turn it into a different game.
Skyrim was quite fun without mods as I enjoined a bit of travel in the world, then once it got repetitive I ran through the main story and finished it. After that, deleted the game. Playing through Pillars of Eternity, without mods, having a lot of fun, if I had the time I think I would have just set for 2 weeks, 8 hours a day to finish it :) On the other hand, Neverwinter Nights, which in my opinion was the best game ever created, had a boring Single Player mod, which I've never bothered to finish. However, this game was not created for it's single player, the single player was created to show-off the tool-set. The game inspired an amazing community of modders, story tellers and players.
From hard-core role-play driven persistence worlds (mini-mmos which are actually story driven, controlled by players and effected by players) to role-play groups that played together on private servers. The game wasn't limited to RP, it had social servers, PvM servers, PvP servers.
The game wasn't limited to servers, there was a very active community of moders that created extensive single player mods, some of them were better then paid game. The modding community brought the game to it's limits and behind as coders created software to by-pass some of the game limits. Even after the main servers were taken down, some people are still playing the game, they created replacement for the main server. Even though I'm not playing anymore, I think that NWN was and is better with mods, as it was design to be such a game. It saddens me that there is no modern replacement. But there is a problem with modding modern rpgs, games like Skyrim are so complex from the visual side that the bar for creating your own environments is much higher then in NWN. Which means that a single moder, or a small group can't just create a map to tell their story. I hope my message makes sense in this context, I think that rpgs with complex stories like PoE when they are well made are in no need for mods. Skyrim, which has a simpler story but focuses on creating an open world can benefit from mods, but due to it's complexity limits the type of mods that a single and pairs of modders can create in their free time.
I think NWN was in the middle, simpler graphics which meant easy map creation, but a strong tool-set with a strong scripting language. I miss NWN and sadly no game was created since which, in my opinion, balanced so good around mod creation.
I'm not a fan of the Fallout series (I enjoy watching play-throughs, but when I try to play, I don't find it nearly as engrossing), but I really enjoy TES. The first time through, I don't use any mods. After I've completed the game and as much of the extra stuff as I can, I tend to start over with game-mechanics-changing mods. For instance, my most recent play-through of Skyrim, I used one of the many alternate start mods, as well as a mod that allows you to become a Bard and I have spent my time going around singing and playing the loot and doing quests.
With PCs, mods are essential in many games just to keep them stable- Fallout 3, for example, has issues with Windows 8- but mods for Bethesda games go way beyond normal gameplay. Personally I play through the games once in vanilla (with bug fixing mods) and then add graphical mods and other stuff. For the most part I leave gameplay intact, but the extra content is amazing. Several Skyrim mods even have their own voice acting! I also like tinkering with settings and configurations, so getting large groups of mods working well together isn't really a big deal for me.
I am the idiot that owns TWO copies of Skyrim for console. Also I plan on buying Fallout 4 on console. I don't really know why... I mean mods look like fun an all. But...I want to play the designers' game. They worked, if you listed to programmers, to death to make that game reality. The least I can do is play that game. That being said it took me 3 years to finish Skyrim...there were soooo many shiny things along the path.
I understand where you're coming from for I too like to play the vanilla but after a while the content gets repetitive and not challenging to me.
Without a doubt the modded. This especially rings true for the Elder Scrolls game. Mods breathe life into games that should otherwise be outdated. Not only that, but most mods are made by die hard fans of the series so they always have the lore down. The coolest part of mods that add weapons, magic, area's, or items of any kind is they are usually very lore friendly. The lore friendly thing is pretty important for me in games because it just adds to an already immersive experience.
I like to play through the vanilla game first and then find some mods to change it up. Could be anything from mods that make the content more challenging to mods that make it into a completely different game.
Modded all the way. Not because of all of the variety - simply because a lot of them are made by people who, like me, were dissatisfied with the vanilla experience and wanted to improve upon it. So pretty much: UIs, additional features like the Redesigned Skill Trees in Skyrim or the revamped weapons modding interface for New Vegas, extra content like Falskaar in Skyrim or that one mod series about abandoned facilities for FO3, and other things that bring the game into what I call Vanilla+ territory - it's still mostly the same game, but with a little extra touch.