Like the title. What games are made better with mods, and foster a great modding scene that retains momentum and delivers excellent content?

My personal favorite is Fallout: New Vegas, but games like DOOM, Half-Life 2 (really all source engine games), and Minecraft have extremely unique mod scenes. Of course, Skyrim remains a modding titan. STALKER: Anomaly is already an amazing mod project and has mod lists for it like GAMMA.

What are your favorites?

  • jaywalker [they/them, any]@hexbear.net
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    4 months ago

    Mount & Blade has great mods. I only recently got around to playing Bannerlord and haven’t modded it much yet, but I played Warband for hundreds of hours with and without mods

    Edit: haven’t played it in years now, but Ark was a very fun game to mod. Like holy shit there were so many amazing mods for that game around 2015 or so

    • barrbaric [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      4 months ago

      Sadly Bannerlord doesn’t really have any noteworthy finished mods yet because the game didn’t get into a stable state until very recently. The Warhammer one is “playable” for certain definitions of the word, and added in a pretty neat combat magic system. I think the higher fidelity is really slowing modders down too.

      • Moonguide@lemmy.ml
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        4 months ago

        Agreed. Since Bannerlord is kinda barebones and has balance issues, modders probably have to deal with fixing some of the stuff already in the game on top of adding more systems.

        The major mods I’ve heard about (has been a minute though) have been Shokujo, Realm of Thrones, and Realms of Arda.

        • barrbaric [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          4 months ago

          Yeah Bannerlord’s base game has some pretty big core issues imo.

          The major mods I’ve heard about (has been a minute though) have been Shokujo, Realm of Thrones, and Realms of Arda.

          Of those, only Realm of Thrones actually has files you can download lol. It’s going to be a long wait.

          • jaywalker [they/them, any]@hexbear.net
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            4 months ago

            What do you mean by big core issues? I just started playing last week, but I’m pretty deep into it and haven’t noticed any glaring issues. Haven’t tried mods yet, but haven’t really run into any problems

            • Moonguide@lemmy.ml
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              4 months ago

              It’s mostly issues you’ll run into once you’re into the mid-game. Economics issues and realm management issues mostly. Since social events aren’t really a thing in the game (like feasts, tourneys, and weddings), you don’t really get a chance to raise other rulers’ disposition towards you. Warband had a stat called right to rule, which you could raise actively while being a vassal, preparing you for when the time came to declare independence. That helped you gather allies quickly, depending on the deeds you had done during the playthrough.

              In Bannerlord the only real way to raise disposition quickly is to be in the opposing side of the lord you want to raise your disposition with, by beating them and letting them go. Voting in their favour in kingdom decisions yields pretty meager returns.

              However, the biggest issue is economics. Mid-game/late-game there’s very little ways to ensure you can keep a big army fed. You’re almost forced to level smithing in order to smelt down anything valuable the enemy had, forge new stuff with a higher quality, and go around emptying cities’ pockets through the same 4-5 minmaxxed weapons.

              I really want to love the game but its really only fun during the first, what, 10 hours of a playthrough. It turns into a real slog because there just isn’t any diplomacy.

              • jaywalker [they/them, any]@hexbear.net
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                4 months ago

                I guess my approach of being a mercenary for a bunch of different kingdoms and never taking prisoners was a really good idea then. I started my own kingdom after and was able to flip the nobles to my side pretty easily. I’m definitely already seeing what you mean by the lack of diplomacy, though. If I didn’t merc for a while there’s no way to really expand my kingdom fast enough to defend it from the constant war on all sides.

                I’m sad to hear about the mod situation. I didn’t really look into it at all and just assumed the game has been out for long enough by now

                • Moonguide@lemmy.ml
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                  4 months ago

                  If you ever get tired of Bannerlord, I’d say give warband a try. Ought to be cheap nowadays, runs on anything, and has a myriad of mods. Mind you, it’s an eyesore compared to newer games, but the mods make up for it.

  • Jobasha [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    4 months ago

    I came here to post Morrowind but it’s already been mentioned so I’ll give a shout out to ARMA 3. I don’t think anyone even plays that game without mods.

  • Tervell [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    4 months ago

    The older Total War games have a ton of great mods, Medieval 2 in particular. There’s a ton of amazing mods, both historical (like The Italian Wars for pike-and-shot action) and fantasy (like the LOTR mod, Third Age: Total War).

    The various Paradox grand strategy games are great too.

  • Weedian [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    4 months ago

    FTL Faster Than Light - Captain’s Edition, Station Jobs, Multiverse overhaul mods

    Battletech - Battltech Advanced 3062

    Skater XL

  • mechwarrior2 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    4 months ago

    Dwarf fortress modding is very easy to learn

    I had a personal adventure mode mod that added a ton of reactions for the player to use: butcher any corpse, leather curing and crafting, bone crafting, weapon sharpening, item decorating. Also changed necromancers to different elemental magic schools, each with their own set of spells to unlock via tome/slab

    I had another that removed all the fantasy races and creatures, then split up humans by biome into the standard western fantasy trope races (Northmen, steppe riders, desert people, marsh people etc), each with their own distinct appearances, clothing/armor/weapon styles, cultural preferences, and even custom conlangs based on real world language groups