PC Gaming & mods, am i missing out?

So aside from a couple of years at the end of the 90's, i have never gamed on a PC. I went straight from Amiga to Super Nintendo and never really looked back.

A couple of weeks a go i bought an Oculus Quest. A large factor for me was playing Beat Saber with custom tracks. So on day 2 i had modded it to allow said custom tracks, and all is well with the world. Whilst looking at the Discord for the game and its modding community (first time using Discord btw, man that's a confusing layout), i was stunned to see how many mods were available that would really improve the game and its longevity (not as much as the aforementioned custom tracks, but still considerable bonuses to the base gameplay).

This has got me thinking - am i really missing out by playing closed off versions of games? What % of PC games are really improved by the modding community?
Back when i last bought a PC game (and actually had a viable gaming PC - it had an Nvidia Riva TNT2 graphics card and everything) it was a bit of an art to actually do it. Now it would appear that mod support is often built directly in to the game and the vendors ecosystem. Is that right?

I have always been console-centric because i have told myself i like having the version of something that "just works". Nowadays this is not really true however, and it can just as often be the version that never works due to patching and so on.

So for those in the know, how much of a draw is modding in respect to PC gaming as a whole. Bonus points for any examples which don't just give elevated frame rates etc, but allow different ways to experience the game (i believe Skyrim was a poster child for this).

Look forward to your replies.

Mafro has visited my island in animal crossing so mods aren't exclusive to PC gaming

I don't often bother modding games unless it is to improve functionality or adding quality of life features, I'm currently playing the PC port of FFIX with a mod that adds upscaled pre-rendered backgrounds and a few other graphical improvements which make everything look semi-decent on modern hardware, before the mod the only thing different from the original version was higher res character models which looked awful against the pixilated environments.

i dont think getting a gaming pc is worth it just for modding but it is a big component - for example improving and making it possible to play games from 20 years ago, improved and with little to no issues
i think the biggest draws right now are emulation and the aforementioned insane back catalogue

Getting mods to work is often more fun, to me at least, than most of the mods themselves. I was messing around with Doom mods a while ago and it was fun getting them up and running but I didn't really play any of them for more than five minutes.

There are some games where the modding scene has given me a totally different experience to the console players. Left 4 Dead 2 has dozens, maybe over a hundred custom campaigns on the Steam workshop, and I spent a good amount of time playing them with my friends. The novelty kept on coming.

Custom Portal 2 maps had endless potential as well, and the mode that just let you keep playing them automaticaly was brilliant.

I don't know if it's worth it purely for that, but it's certainly one of the reasons I prefer PC gaming.

It’s nice to have the option, but ultimately in all my time on PC I’ve not bothered with it much.

I tried a few times to get into modding Skyrim, but it ended up just feeling like a bootleg experience where the effects of your updates can feel ill thought out. I wanted characters to look better, so I followed a guide to give them better skin, but now when I loot their armour they’re all completely nude with pornstar physique. :dread:

Custom game modes and campaigns fall by the wayside too because I don’t have the desire to spend the time researching it at all anymore.

The only game with mods I can say I’ve honestly enjoyed is Tabletop simulator, but that’s just down to it being a piracy platform for board games

jiggles wrote:I wanted characters to look better, so I followed a guide to give them better skin, but now when I loot their armour they’re all completely nude with pornstar physique.

It's okay we're all friends here

You might also be interested in looking at the mods available for the new Tomb Raider games

I'm so sorry

Yeah, its worth it :slol:

On second thoughts :dread:

Thanks for the honest replys all. Sounds like the consensus is that modding is fun, but (with a few exceptions given) rarely elevates the game to a higher level than it was originally.
I guess it was the nature of what modding Beat Saber allows - almost an unlimited number of songs to play against, together with interesting ways to provide more information on progress and improvement etc that got me wondering. Perhaps it was a bit of an outlier in that respect.

There are other reasons why i am considering PC gaming - the Quest and the VR options afforded to me via Oculus link / Virtual desktop are one, but i know i blow hot and cold on VR, and so it would be nice to have other compelling arguments to support the decision.

Some of my absolute favourite moments and experiences in gaming have come from the greater flexibility and customisation that the world of PC gaming allows.

Whether it's playing custom levels from the vast collection of community content for something like Doom or Thief many of which far exceed the already high quality of the original games, using mods to enhance (or in some cases even completely reinvent) the experience of games like the Oblivion/Skyrim/Fallout/Witcher, getting to play games in ways that the developers never imagined with things like the multiplayer mod for Just Cause 2, playing enhanced versions of so many generations of previous games through the wonders of emulation, or even getting involved in creating my own attempts at content for games I love - all of these things have brought me huge amounts of pleasure over the years!

kazanova_Frankenstein wrote:Thanks for the honest replys all. Sounds like the consensus is that modding is fun, but (with a few exceptions given) rarely elevates the game to a higher level than it was originally.
I guess it was the nature of what modding Beat Saber allows - almost an unlimited number of songs to play against, together with interesting ways to provide more information on progress and improvement etc that got me wondering. Perhaps it was a bit of an outlier in that respect.

There are other reasons why i am considering PC gaming - the Quest and the VR options afforded to me via Oculus link / Virtual desktop are one, but i know i blow hot and cold on VR, and so it would be nice to have other compelling arguments to support the decision.

As someone who recently got this option I can tell you it's fantastic. Beat Saber is great, Budget Cuts is great, Superhot VR is AMAZING. VR is a great experience and a quest can certainly give you that with a PC too.

Thanks guys. I'm certainly tempted that's for sure.

jiggles wrote:It’s nice to have the option, but ultimately in all my time on PC I’ve not bothered with it much.

I tried a few times to get into modding Skyrim, but it ended up just feeling like a bootleg experience where the effects of your updates can feel ill thought out. I wanted characters to look better, so I followed a guide to give them better skin, but now when I loot their armour they’re all completely nude with pornstar physique.

yes an accident weve all made :roll:

Skyrim is the only game I've gone to any real lengths to mod. The better models/high-res texture/less strawberry floated up faces/massive norks mods are the standard, but I also got some pretty extensive perk, crafting, and items mods that added a lot more variety to the world, including a bunch of quests to find loads of Zelda equipment. There are also magic mods that add buckets of new spells, which makes it way more interesting and actually viable to play a mage.

Other than that, I used a couple of graphical and quality of life tweaks in New Vegas, and a reworking of the Sonic Adventure 2 Chao Garden mechanics.

Most other games I leave as is, tbh.

Modding can be as important or unimportant as you want it to be. I probably prefer modding Skyrim and Fallout more than I do actually playing them, and I'd argue both really need mods to actually be really good experiences.

Other times, it's just nice to be able to add quality of life improvements, or graphics updates for older titles.

It's worth remembering that more support varies massively from game to game. Some are built to make modding really easy, while others actively attempt to block mods, and then there's whether there's even an active mod community for the game as well.

Currently playing Dark Souls 3 with the Cinders mod, which is a complete overhaul of the game: adding new pathing; new weapons from the previous Soulsborne games; giving all armour sets individual bonuses like added stats or regen or the like; reworking how game mechanics work to make different builds more viable.

At the core it's still DS3, but it's a lot more interesting.

In a related vein: Final Fantasy XIV on PC has the ACT parser to let you see how your DPS numbers are looking, which is a fantastic tool to improve in the game.

oh yeah the Souls mods are incredible!

Gave up on PC gaming this gen. tired of spending more time tinkering than playing and found more time was finding work around to things.

Jordan UK wrote:Gave up on PC gaming this gen. tired of spending more time tinkering than playing and found more time was finding work around to things.

I really don't think that this has been a problem this generation. If anything, I've found consoles to be less accessible. I don't have the time to play games regularly so I was nearly always met a large patch or system update to install before playing something on my Xbox One or PS4. The auto-download feature never seemed to work, even just to download an update in the background.

On the other hand, as I use my PC for more than just gaming, I found that my Steam library was always up to date. Even if I wasn't using my PC, it was simple enough to tweak it to turn itself on and download updates overnight. I feel that the multi-purpose nature of a PC is one of its edges compared to consoles, in addition to mod support and the ability to customise your experience (I'd rather dial down some settings to maintain 60FPS than be forced to play at 30FPS).

I think that the original PC version of Dark Souls was the last game that need tweaking but even that was to deliver a better experience than the console version. I can't remember the last time I couldn't just click a game in Steam to start playing. On the other hand, I began to dread booting up my Xbox to play Battlefront in case there was yet another update.

PC Gaming & mods, am i missing out?

Who is online

Affiliates