RPGHQ

Post games that have been saved by mods: bad games made good, decent games significantly improved, etc.

I'll start:

Skyrim/Enderal

I absolutely cannot stand Skyrim out of the box, while Enderal is much improved in many regards, it still has some of the same fundamental issues. The first person combat is simply bad. Mods have done much to improve these games, but for me, what really saves them is the combat mods. (Yes, I set them up to play like a third-person ARPG.) Now I actually enjoy the core gameplay.

Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade

FEBuilder lets you turn ambush spawns into regular spawns. Absolutely necessary if you don't want your frail backliners to be sniped by a pack of wyvern riders spawning behind you with no forwarning.

Octopath Traveler

Hard mode mod gave this game a much-needed difficulty boost. I'm sure I would have gotten bored without it.

Honorable mention:

Horizon's Gate

The game is already great, but mods by Prominence add an incredible amount of content, most of which feels as though it could be native to the game. The added dungeons scattered across the world in particular feel right at home and I didn't realize they were mod content until I had played for dozens of hours.

kotor 2 & toee are both unfinished games. Even with the content restoration mod, kotor 2's last third still a complete mess. Temple+ does a good job of unfucking toee.

WhiteShark wrote: ↑ March 26th, 2024, 20:36

Skyrim/Enderal

I absolutely cannot stand Skyrim out of the box, while Enderal is much improved in many regards, it still has some of the same fundamental issues. The first person combat is simply bad. Mods have done much to improve these games, but for me, what really saves them is the combat mods. (Yes, I set them up to play like a third-person ARPG.) Now I actually enjoy the core gameplay.

So what's an RPG with good first-person combat?

Nammu Archag wrote: ↑ March 26th, 2024, 20:42

WhiteShark wrote: ↑ March 26th, 2024, 20:36

Skyrim/Enderal

I absolutely cannot stand Skyrim out of the box, while Enderal is much improved in many regards, it still has some of the same fundamental issues. The first person combat is simply bad. Mods have done much to improve these games, but for me, what really saves them is the combat mods. (Yes, I set them up to play like a third-person ARPG.) Now I actually enjoy the core gameplay.

So what's an RPG with good first-person combat?

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1912-which-rpg-has- ... r-subgenre

rusty_shackleford wrote: ↑ March 26th, 2024, 20:43

Nammu Archag wrote: ↑ March 26th, 2024, 20:42

WhiteShark wrote: ↑ March 26th, 2024, 20:36

Skyrim/Enderal

I absolutely cannot stand Skyrim out of the box, while Enderal is much improved in many regards, it still has some of the same fundamental issues. The first person combat is simply bad. Mods have done much to improve these games, but for me, what really saves them is the combat mods. (Yes, I set them up to play like a third-person ARPG.) Now I actually enjoy the core gameplay.

So what's an RPG with good first-person combat?

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1912-which-rpg-has- ... r-subgenre

I've been lurking on that one but no one has mentioned first-person games yet

- literally all Elder Scrolls games following Daggerfall: they aren't bad per se, but sooooo much better with mods. Once you start playing Modded Skyrim, you just never want to go back to Vanilla Skyrim ever again.
- Baldur's Gate 3: No Alphabets, or at the very least, Ser Aylin, is a must have. The game is so pozzed in its vanilla state that it makes me vomit.
- KOTOR 2: as Rusty said, unfinished game, needs the Restoration pack
- Minecraft: I just cannot play vanilla Minecraft. I need fucking trains, dungeons, medieval castles, magic, guns, electricity, nuclear energy and stuff.
- Honourable mention: most Paradox grand strategy games (Crusader Kings 2-3, Europa Universalis 4, Stellaris, Hearts of iron 2-5, Victoria 2-3, etc.), while aren't bad, there is still so much potential in modding them

Red Dead Redemption 2

- customizable walk speed mod (you walk too slow without it)
- law and crime rebalancing (no more getting 'reported' to the police by a deer who witnessed you pick up a hat you found on the ground which is considered stealing)

Control

- assign all weapons to a hotkey mod (default game behavior is you can only swap between 2 weapons at a time and need to go into the menu to assign other weapons to your dual slots; with the mod you can assign each single weapon to its own hotkey)

Dragon Age: Inquisition

- power and forced timers removal mod (basically it removes the gatekeeping mechanic which forces you to accumulate power before being able to open up new areas, and the other one removes the forced timers for when you send out units on a mission, i.e. no more having to wait 5 game days for a unit to return so you can visit a new area instead they just instantly return and you can actually keep playing the game as normal)

The Witcher 3

- too many to list. Somewhat similar situation to Skyrim but to a lesser degree. Lots of small gameplay mods that add up to make it more enjoyable. Hell, the mod that removes the forced intro and narration after every game load is probably enough to justify it. Jesus, what the fuck were they thinking forcing you to listen to that crap every single time.

-Rimworld is among my favorite games, but mods add so much depth and gameplay variety. I refuse to play unless I need to manage my guys shitting and pissing. The modding scene for it is still active to this day.
-Mount & Blade Warband/Bannerlord have excellent mods, including total overhauls.
-Total War games have very detailed overhaul/realism mods. I'm planning on an SFO 3 / Old World playthough for Total Warhammer 3 at some point
-Dark Souls 1 was barely playable without mods to fix it
-I played a pretty cool Age of Empires 3 mod that added tons of new factions and mechanics. Think they were working on WWI tech or something similar.
-The Halo series has a bunch of overhaul mods I forget the name of, but they rebalance shit weapons and make the gameplay more impactful. There's also SVE3 for Halo CE which completely overhauls the campaign, adding huge maps and weapons/vehicles/features from later games
-Stardew Valley Expanded is a huge expansion, adding area, characters, and features. Another one I really liked added visible fish to bodies of water.
-Project Zomboid has tons of mods, adding zombie visual variety, new vehicles, weapons, NPCs, etc. There's a new mod that lets you enter the interior of RVs/moving trucks, even while another player is driving it.

New Vegas good story wise, but was in pretty bad shape unmodded. Techincal issues. Gunplay sucks ass. Ragdolls are shit. Vats system is boring garbage. Bad animations and visuals. There are many mods you can use to remedy that.

Mount&Blade: Warband. A fun game on it's own but much better with mods like diplomacy.

Elder Scrolls games. You can improve them with vast amount of mods in many ways.

BG1. I like the game and main story. But the side content is lacking and there are no party interraction. So i just use mods.

Lipstick on a pig. Either the game is good and the mods are simply polishing what's there, or it isn't and the mods don't do jack. Enderal is a total conversion mod, which I guess does allow it, but I still wouldn't hold it up as something that is 'saving' Skyrim. It's Vegas : FO3, but with an unpaid team making it as a passion project. It could be a paid product and a standalone game, tbh.

Oyster Sauce wrote: ↑ March 26th, 2024, 20:58

-Dark Souls 1 was barely playable without mods to fix it

Fixing frame rate issues is also something that isn't really 'saving'. You can love or hate DS, but the mods didn't change it much, if at all. And the remaster for the PC had the issues resolved as well.

Element wrote: ↑ March 26th, 2024, 21:15

Lipstick on a pig. Either the game is good and the mods are simply polishing what's there, or it isn't and the mods don't do jack.

I see you've never played unmodded ToEE.

rusty_shackleford wrote: ↑ March 26th, 2024, 21:16

Element wrote: ↑ March 26th, 2024, 21:15

Lipstick on a pig. Either the game is good and the mods are simply polishing what's there, or it isn't and the mods don't do jack.

I see you've never played unmodded ToEE.

I have and I never bothered with mods. Those wouldn't 'save' the game for me.

Element wrote: ↑ March 26th, 2024, 21:15

Lipstick on a pig. Either the game is good and the mods are simply polishing what's there, or it isn't and the mods don't do jack.

I hear this often and I don't know why. Fixing a fatal flaw isn't just polish, and in the case of Skyrim, mods can change the game significantly. You even admit this yourself by allowing Enderal. If you think mods don't do enough to save these games, that's fine, but saying it's impossible doesn't make sense.

Element wrote: ↑ March 26th, 2024, 21:15

Enderal is a total conversion mod, which I guess does allow it, but I still wouldn't hold it up as something that is 'saving' Skyrim.

I didn't say Enderal saved Skyrim. I listed it alongside Skyrim as a game that was saved by mods.

wesp's patch/mod more or less saved Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines from fading into total obscurity.

https://www.nexusmods.com/vampirebloodlines/mods/80

Skyrim's default UI is one of the worst that exists, SkyUI is one of the best that exists.

NwN2 - Is unplayable without spell fixes mod.

Too much balance cultism in og spells.

WhiteShark wrote: ↑ March 26th, 2024, 20:36

What games have been saved by mods?

Correct answer: none

can't fix shitty engines with tranny mods

WhiteShark wrote: ↑ March 26th, 2024, 20:36

Honorable mention:

Horizon's Gate

The game is already great, but mods by Prominence add an incredible amount of content, most of which feels as though it could be native to the game. The added dungeons scattered across the world in particular feel right at home and I didn't realize they were mod content until I had played for dozens of hours.

I didn't even know this game had mods. Didn't think to check for some reason.

Neverwinter Nights is an obvious one. Lousy base campaign, mediocre expansion packs, some good user-made campaigns.

Nammu Archag wrote: ↑ March 26th, 2024, 20:42

So what's an RPG with good first-person combat?

They all swear by Dork Messiah. I suppose Kingdom Dumb Deliverance also has its fans.

Roguey wrote: ↑ March 27th, 2024, 00:09

Neverwinter Nights is an obvious one. Lousy base campaign, mediocre expansion packs, some good user-made campaigns.

Nammu Archag wrote: ↑ March 26th, 2024, 20:42

So what's an RPG with good first-person combat?

They all swear by Dork Messiah. I suppose Kingdom Dumb Deliverance also has its fans.

I love dark messiah but it heavily lacks any actual RPG mechanics. Kingdom come is an RPG but I hated its combat

Total War Warhammer by a massive margin

To the point that every update and overpriced DLC goyslop adds more bloat and a litany of new bugs to the game, that the gorillion mods needed to glue the game together and fix the myriad shit design decisions made in the game stop working and have to be updated time and time again, where you have this schism in the playerbase that desperately want the devs to fix their buggy ass game on one hand, and people sick of 50gb nothingburger patches that fix pointless shit(like removing a randomly generated name for characters that happens to be the same as some WW2 tank General, cause it was 'pwobwematic') and just want the devs to only update the game when there's something fucking worth adding to the patch.

TLDR: broken ass game that the devs can't fix so the modders have to

why does everything have to be one of two extremes?

if i can make a game more enjoyable by tweaking how one of its systems work then i don't see the problem. people really need to chill out.

aweigh wrote: ↑ March 27th, 2024, 02:22

why does everything have to be one of two extremes?

if i can make a game more enjoyable by tweaking how one of its systems work then i don't see the problem. people really need to chill out.

Totally fair.
I used to be very much 'anti mod' ie. I always wanted to play games 'purely' cause i saw mods as a way of ruining the devs vision and kind of 'muddied' the game so to speak.

After a while i realised some games were just designed poorly or the developers stopped giving a shit so mods are like a necessary evil to me.

Not to mention all the pozzed shit that has to be cut out nowadays

I spend more time modding or messing with config files than I do actually playing games, I think.

Manny V wrote: ↑ March 27th, 2024, 02:39

aweigh wrote: ↑ March 27th, 2024, 02:22

why does everything have to be one of two extremes?

if i can make a game more enjoyable by tweaking how one of its systems work then i don't see the problem. people really need to chill out.

Totally fair.
I used to be very much 'anti mod' ie. I always wanted to play games 'purely' cause i saw mods as a way of ruining the devs vision and kind of 'muddied' the game so to speak.

After a while i realised some games were just designed poorly or the developers stopped giving a shit so mods are like a necessary evil to me.

Not to mention all the pozzed shit that has to be cut out nowadays

The fact that salaried developers with YEARS worth of time put out shit that modders quickly fix or improve in their off-time, for free, is boggling to me. There's just so much stuff that is just objectively better than the base game, and it's just because the original was released that way out of pure laziness.

Acrux wrote: ↑ March 27th, 2024, 03:20

I spend more time modding or messing with config files than I do actually playing games, I think.

I love making custom control configs as well, or custom binds. The purists, or rather those who argue that games should be experienced "as intended"; they have no answer to control configuration being a form of modification as well.

STALKER and STALKER: Clear Sky were both saved by mods. STALKER had a load of outstanding issues even after numerous patches that the Zone Reclamation Project had to fix. Clear Sky has showstoppers in the late game that force you to do the entire hospital run in one go because trying to reload on that map crashes the game.

Nammu Archag wrote: ↑ March 27th, 2024, 00:59

Roguey wrote: ↑ March 27th, 2024, 00:09

Neverwinter Nights is an obvious one. Lousy base campaign, mediocre expansion packs, some good user-made campaigns.

Nammu Archag wrote: ↑ March 26th, 2024, 20:42

So what's an RPG with good first-person combat?

They all swear by Dork Messiah. I suppose Kingdom Dumb Deliverance also has its fans.

I love dark messiah but it heavily lacks any actually RPG mechanics. Kingdom come is an RPG but I hated its combat

https://www.mobygames.com/game/24996/da ... ws/197354/ looks RPG to me

Mass effect 3 is greatly improved with some mods, to the point it actually feels like a complete game. Of course Bioware fucked it up for a bit by releasing the legendary edition, but like SKSE I think most mods are ported over by now.

A Chinese opium den wrote: ↑ March 27th, 2024, 12:41

Mass effect 3 is greatly improved with some mods, to the point it actually feels like a complete game. Of course Bioware fucked it up for a bit by releasing the legendary edition, but like SKSE I think most mods are ported over by now.

First I've heard of this. What does it have?