So what's your favorite video game mod?

Requiem Overhaul for Skyrim completely revamps how the game is played, you need to mostly pick an archetype, casting spells with armor on institutes a huge penalty in mana cost etc unless you pick talents for it that aren't available until late game, damage has been tuned way up for everyone so you have to ideally dodge most attacks and enemies drop loot that makes sense like their heart and some claws instead of finding 50 coins and a mace on a wolf.

Just installed it yesterday but the Multiverse mod for FTL basically turns it into a sequel and improves every aspect of the game. Go from 10 playable ships to around 100, have to actually consider choices instead of "I will blow everyone up for marginally more resources" and just an overall more Star Trek vibe with races having different factions etc.

casting spells with armor on institutes a huge penalty in mana cost etc

I like that, D&D mechanics are something I appreciate.
- Yeah it brings it more in line with the earlier games, like you need fire magic or silver weapons to damage undead and the enemies/dungeons are level locked, so you can absolutely stumble into an area that is way beyond your character to handle. It's been a while since I did a playthrough but I usually wouldn't even try the first main quest dungeon until level 15-20 and had to run around killing bandits around Whiterun for a while.
  
  The only caveat is that you will be getting your shit kicked in for a while and it's very possible to get 1 shot by a 2h weapon, arrows do a ton of damage as well if you aren't wearing heavy armor.
Requiem is great, but after playing with it for some time, I went back to Ordinator. I prefer the way it deals with unique abilities. Couple that with class mods (like that one that adds Shor's Realm, where you pick bonuses and debuffs based on previous TES' classes, and you have a robust system. It also gives Speech some use in combat, by giving you bard-ish spells and stuff. Was finally able to play my bardbarian that way.

The Living Desert for New Vegas, because I could follow those guys around and see what they do forever. It's so cool to give the game more organic interactions.

Plus, it interacts with Functional Post Game Ending. The base game feels downright inconsequential without those two installed.
- The community behind TTW has helped to get a load of the mods working well together too. (so you can go through 3 with a load of the same mods in New Vegas. Another good one is Sweet 6 Shooter perk pack

Fall from Heaven for Civilization 4 is a fantastic overhaul mod that turns it into a fantasy world with interesting factions and characters and mechanics.

Last time I got a copyright letter was for torrenting Civ 4 in 2015 without a VPN. The game came out in 2005.

Last time I got a copyright letter was for torrenting Civ 4 in 2015 without a VPN. The game came out in 2005.

I've never used a VPN before. Are there any that are free or open source?
- Proton VPN is now free and open-source and (I believe) they just made it so you can use it without an account.
- Under no circumstances should you use a proprietary VPN. Any VPN service worth using is just a nice front end to either OpenVPN or Wireguard. I personally use mullvad.

There are too many good ones. Enderal, the entire Viva New Vegas modding guide, Tale of Two Wastelands, it's truly difficult to nail one down as my favorite. I play Bethesda games entitely modded these days and wouldn't have it any other way.

Enderal was really good. Don't think I ever finished the game because I lost my save, but there was a lot to that game and the map was designed really well (especially the capital city).
- Agreed! Never finished it either, but I love passion projects.
  
  Ramblelime on YouTube does mod reviews for Bethesda games and his videos are great, they are legitimate long-form analysis videos for an underappreciated genre.
  
  Plus, he has given comrade vibes, he personally identified with a group of Communists in one Fallout mod.
Enderal

Nehrim always looked cool but I never got around to trying it. Total conversion mods look like something I would enjoy.
- I love total conversions, even sloppily made ones like Dust and New California, or even overly ambitious ones with team and writing issues like The Frontier (obv excluding the sex pest shit). The amateurish charm is undeniable to me.

too many to list.

modding is praxis

modding is praxis

True! I've used so many mods I would find it hard to choose lol

nobody mentioned Long War so i'm mentioning Long War. ever think 30-40hrs wasn't enough for your XCom 2 campaign? ever thought it was kind of immersion breaking that these incredibly well equipped aliens couldn't swat down a ridiculously high-profile smash-n-grab resistance op foolishly headquartered in a single hovercarrier? Long War turns your chaotic gunfight missions into guerilla insertion and extraction missions, broadens your conflict from a months-long to a years-long endeavor, makes it MUCH harder to eject the aliens from earth while simultaneously making it a much slower process for the aliens to complete their doomsday plan, really makes you undertake missions on a global scale as opposed to the one- or two-region conflict that the base game tends to become, extends the available troop roster while forcing you to actually use more than an elite core of troops (because you have way more bases to cover), extends the max troops on a mission from 6 to 12 while allowing the aliens to field a LOT more forces (think 40+ enemies in some situations), making for some really HUGE fights near the endgame. really a spectacular rebuild mod, two thumbs up.

another really good mod for Stellaris is the Star Trek: New Horizons mod, a total conversion mod that was so good paradox got the envy and put out Star Trek: Infinite, which is just their own stab at a total conversion mod for Stellaris except they expect you pay 30 bucks for it, plus DLCs. New Horizons very worth it, give it a shot if you like trek and already have Stellaris

Long War is the goat

I really liked the RTS mods for the modern Fallout games. Building towns and collecting resources is my SHIT

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I like all of Drayano's Pokemon ROM hacks. Essentially just puts all of the content you would want from a Pokemon game into it. All Pokemon catchable, more challenging trainers but not overwhelmingly so, side content the works. Storm Silver is probably the best one. If you've thought about replaying a Pokemon game, play the Drayano version of it

For me Pokémon Unbound is one of the best pokémons ever made, highly recommend. The story with chimeras is too much but the game itself is awesome.

There's a mod for New Vegas that adds item descriptions to any item that you can pick up and they made up lore for all of them and a lot of the unique items have jokes in their descriptions. It really adds a lot to the game

Star Wars Empire at War is a pretty mid rts with great mods:

spoiler

EAWX is the biggest, excels in scripted mechanics that tilt the game more toward 4x. resource management, faction mechanics, planet loyalty, etc. it's more barebones than other space strategy games due to modding limitations but they try to make the best of it. currently they've got a legends-canon mod following the battle of endor & a clone wars mod following the cartoon with legends add-ins. and soon they'll release the first fully functional KOTOR-era mod, ever, it's very exciting since like 3 other projects didn't make it out of beta

AOTR is basically the setting of the original game but with its own brand of expanded complication and content. i really like their ground combat, they figured out making the infantry a modern and potent component of forces (integrated support weaponry, among other changes). it's really hardcore^tm though so not beginner friendly

Rise of The Mandalorians is a completely finished expansion-style mod that dropped in 2019, it fully replaced & revamped i think, everything in the game actually. it's also exactly the style of the original game despite some important technical innovations these other mods ended up using. it's a very cool comparison as a love letter to the game in full, instead of how these other mods try to wrestle the game into things it wasn't really designed to do.

Medieval 2 Total War was the last total war game that's workable without dev tools. modders have been trying to recreate the ability to change the map on later titles for 15 years lmao

spoiler

Third Age Total War you've already heard of it, everyone has. before we had Fantasy Warhammer sucking up all the development at the Creative Assembly, we had Third Age sucking up all the oxygen on the total war forums. it's so old and was so extensive when it dropped that it's easier to think of as a base-game in its own right, for which there are dozens of sub-mods. most major is probably Divide and Conquer, which makes the map a lot busier and exciting in all the corners. its also gone through so many developers that anyone who's played it a long time probably has a couple of faction designs they miss (white-armored samurai variags ooooooooooooooh squeaky's dorwinion oooaaaaaaauhhh ) then there's Last Alliance, which takes you to that 5 minute prologue bit at the beginning of Fellowship and goes pretty buck-wild with the faction designs that didn't appear directly in that movie sequence---bronze age coded wildmen & rhun. it's pretty fun but suffers from similar problems as og Third Age regarding boring parts of the map. there's a few more big projects but i wouldn't call them totally playable (Silmarillion, Reforged)

Stainless Steel is a similar heavyweight, its last mainline release is still a good expanded version of the original game that doesn't depart too far. but my god the submods & things built upon it. i don't even think you can list them there's so many. Bulat Steel is a major russian one that is semi-famous for extremely detailed units, they also helpfully install the entire original game for with it che-smile

Tsardoms is the most finished and historically accurate mod out there, i'm an enormous fan, it's about the rise of the ottomans, can't recommend it enough. Balkans, Anatolia, Italy stalin-approval they even have 2 separate releases, one for experiencing the precipitous decline of the roman empire in the 1340s and one for dealing with an already gargantuan Ottoman empire from its peripheries in 1450s

Broken Crescent is old and not too historically locked in, which is a shame because its the best mod with a focus of western asia, one copes with it by adding in units from other mods so it looks more up to date

some would say EBII is super historical and fun too and to that i say EB projects version of 'fun' is punishing players for having it morshupls but fr it doesn't run very good, its map is full of empty space like RTW and all the shit they put in to make it hardcore and historically accurate just makes it a slow slog

as for Bethesda game mods, i've played a lot and certainly have opinions but i'm still on the bespoke build mindset so any 'favorite' or recommendation comes from a place of "for what" because i don't think you need or should have mods for things you aren't going to be doing. there's much mods for Fallout 4's settlements but if you aren't going to be playing wasteland sim city there's no point, yknow? every mod besides patches/bugfixes is optional. besides big naked booba ofc very-smart

The mod in Morrowind which makes it so that your weapons actually hit things for sure, it makes the game playable.

But like actually? Kaiserreich comes to mind for Hoi4, Calamity for Terraria fits in really well with the base game and Legacy of the Dragonborn was the last Skyrim mod I built a playthrough around

I will die on the hill defending Morrowind combat. Morrowind is designed around the progression grind and removing that from combat unbalances the game, sadly.
- It was already abuseable. I remember running around casting 1 damage fire spells on myself to level evocation. And jumping everywhere...
  
  I definitely wouldn't mind if it scaled your damage down proportionally by your chance to miss and then lowered the skill gain per hit to balance out the progression.
i gotta plug the Kaiserredux spin-off of KR just cause it does the American Civil War way better. complete societal breakdown, like ~10 possible states can pop out?

and yeah if i wanted to miss attacks when my player model made contact i'd play a turn-based game, i just want to explore & experience the stories of morrowind, not master its archaic combat system.

Hm. Stalker Anomaly is up there, if it counts. I played the originals to death and Anomaly brought GAMMA eventually, which is probably the most up-to-date and approachable way to play stalker nowadays.

My favourite has to be Vanilla Psycasts Expanded, though, for Rimworld. The vanilla psycasts are very meh, and only the player is able to use them. VPE adds new psycasts and reorganices the ones already available and the new ones into new trees, allows enemies to use those same psycasts, and allows you to set certain psycasts to be used when ready. Makes it a bit less micromanagy, and gives you a chance to give more personality to each of your pawns if you're into that kind of thing.

Idk if anomaly counts as a mod or a straight up fan game made in the same engine

Regarding Stellaris mods, Gigastructural Engineering & More gives you the ability to build absolutely super high sci-fi structures.

Other great Stellaris mods include Ancient Cache of Technologies and The Zenith of Fallen Empires. There are a ton of great Stellaris mods, really.

Im not a big fan of Hearts of Iron 4 but by god does the My Little Pony mod - Equestria at War slap hard.

Enderal for Skyrim was real good

Assetto Corsa has a ton of great mods, my favorite is probably Shutoko Revival Project. There were some pretty incredible ones for the original rFactor too like CART Factor.

I prefer mods that add extra content rather than just being "let's make the game playable because the original devs didn't bother".

I was thinking about the original Need For Speed the other day and how I'm a boomer that hasn't really played car games outside of that and Gran Turismo for the PSP
- The original NFS is such a great game with a killer soundtrack, though.
  
  Someone actually made an Assetto Corsa mod for the A class cars from that game: https://www.overtake.gg/downloads/nfs-tournament-class-a.16905/

Project Reality is probably one of the best mods ever made. Single handedly spawned a unique genre of games, and trained dozens of amateur devs that went on to industry work.

Same with Long War spawning Terra Invicta. @ProgAimerGirl@hexbear.net

I was very impressed with The Last Days for Mount and Blade: Warband. Seems like they are working on a sequel for Bannerlord

Last Days was pretty cool, almost forgot it existed over the years but if I pick up Warband again it'll probably be a tossup between it and Gekokujo for which I play first.
- Gekokuju was great.
  
  I miss when games had such large total conversion mods.

gregtech

the gregtory most grow

Also a modpack and not a specific mod, but honorary mention to Blightfall for being one of the most iconic modpacks ever
hi do u use/would u recommend just gregtech bai itself? are there any good mods to pair with it i should kno? :3
- It's a pretty complicated and difficult mod (both in regular playing and config) so I'd mostly recommend to just use a modpack tbh
  
  imo the main packs to consider are
  
  the Community Pack
  
  Nomifactory - CE version - CEu version
  
  Gregtech New Horizons
  
  Community pack is just a focused tutorial on Gregtech basically, I've heard it's good but I haven't played it personally cause I just immediately started with another pack.
  
  Nomifactory is one of my favourite and most played packs. It has a lot of normal Gregtech grind and annoyances removed which is often nice IMO. There's 2 different versions (there's also Monifactory but I haven't tried it and it's in alpha, so I would avoid it for a first gt pack). The CE version is the main version (if you use this make sure to grab the 1.3 version under beta, not the 1.2 released version), and as such it's generally more polished (IMO just play this pack). The CEu version is on a different fork of Gregtech, it's more grindy in the early-midgame, but it's got a bunch of quality of life features in the late game, and it overall has somewhat more content IIRC. CEu also has a hard mode that I'm playing rn and it's a lot of fun but def wouldn't recommend starting with it. What I did was I first played NF CE version, and then the NF CEu hard mode. (Also as a note for length, IIRC NF CE took me ~500 hours to finish, so it's def a time investment but totally finishable)
  
  GTNH is like the quintessential GT modpack. I still haven't really played it, but it's probably most well known for being insanely long. It's difficult, but has a good questbook so it's still approachable to newer players. It's not really intended to be a pack you finish, it doesn't really have a strictly defined ending and the point players usually use as an ending (crafting a pair of stargates) gets made harder occasionally (I think there's only been like a few hundred people who got to that point anyways?). It has good progression tho so the main way ppl play it is just as a pack that you can kinda just play and enjoy forever.

I love silly mods like the googly eyes mod for Darkest Dungeon and the smiling leader portraits mod for Hearts of Iron 4. Those are truly one of the best genre of mods.

MC Tammer's NIF bashed weapons pack for Fallout 3 and New Vegas is totally awesome. Theres a gazillion guns of all sorts including a lot of non-lethals, it adds some extra attatchments and ammo types too. All of the weapon models are made up of parts of weapon models from the games themselves so they actually match the aesthetic pretty well. Highly reccomend the mod itself since its well integrated with the game with NPCs selling and carrying the new guns. One of the custom vendors (which are all optional) is a stereotype of russian people (think FPS Russia but hes a gunsmith) and that was kinda cringe at times.

Save Our Ship 2 for Rimworld is incredibly good.

Elder Kings for CK3 is also fantastic.

Automate for Stardew Valley.

Seamless Co-op for Elden Ring. Instead of the jank-ass summoning system, it lets you just play the entire game, start to finish, with between two and SIX players.

Honorable mentions:

Total War Warhammer has a bunch of mods I consider essential (level 4 settlements in minor settlements, reduced penalties at higher difficulties, legendary lords joining another faction if theirs is destroyed), but individually none stand out that much.
Mount and Blade: Warband has a ton of total overhauls that are usually interesting even if I wouldn't finish them. Gekokujo is set in Japan, so no shields and now guns exist. Warsword Conquest is the jankest fucking version of warhammer I've ever seen, where all the fantasy creatures are made by just stretching and warping the basic human in ways that look horrific. Prophesy of Pendor adds an end-game and ramps the difficulty up to a million. All of these suffer from not actually changing up the core gameplay too much, though, which means it's still kind of an empty sandbox full of cardboard cutout NPCs no matter what.

I very much enjoyed Seamless CoOp, but it WAS jank as hell.
- Fair enough, I think my baseline for jank is much higher after all the time I spent in DS1 coop.

FTL multiverse overhaul

Favorite game to mod? Rimworld.

The aether mod for minceraft

Choice pick, old and gold

Gonna keep it to things not already mentioned.

Big standalone fangame/total conversion:

Chronicles of Myrtana: Archolos, built off of Gothic 2. Was my GOTY when it came out, and I consider it better than anything the actual developers released since Gothic 2. I really dig the way it expands the original game's systems, like apprenticeship. I have some complaints about it but it's nothing major, and I overall greatly enjoyed my time with it, planning a new run when the big 2.0 update drops.

Mod packs:

Morrowind Sharp, it's like Viva New Vegas for Morrowind, I always use it as a base for my own setups, but it's great as is for new players to get a patched, QoL enhanced and face-lifted vanilla-like experience.

Individual mods:

Global Escalation for Squad - just a huge expansion-sized load of content
Beautiful Cities of Morrowind, for bringing the game's settlements closer to their concept art, implementing a lot of the new fan-made resources to make places more distinct and detailed while having a clear scope and keeping within vanilla-like territory
Kenshi Kaizo, touches up and expands the existing content without bloating itself by filling the map with all sorts of new factions of varying quality and lore-adherence
The Stardew Valley mod that adds a whole bunch of cat skins so I can have my irl cat in the game. And on the topic, SDV Expanded and Ridgeside Village when I just want more Stardew Valley stuff.

Revolution DCM for Civ4

Legacy of the Dragonborn for Skyrim is foundational to most of my builds, it gives you a museum and plays on one of the best parts of any RPG: finding unique items. It displays your shit and makes money off it, and adds some more unique stuff to find like coins, statues and of course equipment.

I miss the Masterwork mod pack for Dwarf Fortress. It added a bunch of stuff, playable races, and enemy factions. I still think about the playable orcs from time to time. The guy who organized the pack seems to not be active in the community anymore after he used free but unattributed sprites in his tileset, and this maybe costed him his collaboration on the official tileset for the Steam release.

I used to play a shit ton of Forgotten Hope/Forgotten Hope 2 in the Battlefield 1942/Battlefield 2 heyday

Deus Ex has a few great ones, Nihilum, 2027 & The Nameless Mod are all pretty good if you're looking for more imsim content

Half-Life of course has a pretty massive modding community, and they've made a lot of good stuff over the years - Echoes and Field Intensity for the 1st game and Entropy Zero 2 for the 2nd are basically on the level of proper expansion packs. Minerva, Mission Improbable, Uncertainty Principle and Downfall (all for HL2) are somewhat shorter, but still really good. There's also new campaigns for the Portal games, but I haven't gotten around to playing those yet.

Mount & Blade has a ton of total conversions, for various historical periods and fantasy settings

Medieval 2 was already mentioned, so some other cool mods for it are The Italian Wars and 1648, for the pike-and-shot fans among you

The Blizzard RTS games have a ton of custom campaigns, although I haven't played many yet. StarCraft 2 in particular has recently been having a ton of new campaigns made (although mostly in the format of overhauls of the existing campaigns, rather than being entirely new missions, but they can still be pretty extensive with the new units and mechanics)

MGS V has had a decent amount of modding done to it too - nothing too massive, since the modding tools are very limited, but Infinite Heaven allows you to tweak a whole bunch of stuff (and, in combination with some other mods, significantly lighten the grinding, which I probably wouldn't have been able to stomach the game without), and allows people to add new custom side-ops