I don't mod games much anymore
Back when I was starting out as a self-motivated capital-PCG PC Gamer, the most exciting thing in the universe was modding Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.
I spent entire days installing massive overhauls, fixing my load order, and forgetting important steps in the install-guide - only to play 10 hours of a new file and feel the urge to change more. I had friends making utterly broken items and calling them "necessary fixes", or recommending a sword with 40,000 polygons in 2007. It's become a running joke at this point, but modding really was more of a hobby than actually playing the game.
| Pictured - absolute crack for 16-year-old me
I just kind of assumed that replays of PC games, especially RPGs, required mods to be interesting - surely I'd already exhausted what the base game had to offer on my first playthrough?
Reader, it's important on occasion to understand oneself to be a dipshit.
About a decade later, I was planning a third Witcher 3 playthrough - this time, I was gonna mod it to hell and back. HD textures, UI Fixes, Skill Tree Reworks, ReShade, Visual Effect mods, Combat Tweaks... I spent the best part of a day putting together 2 lists of mods - one for MUST HAVES, one for mods I wasn't going to do any hard work to install. And very quickly, I realised a decade of modding had caused my opinion on what "MUST HAVE" looked like - that list was all minor Quality of Life stuff, or removing trendy nonsense - Hiding the UI, no Minimap, Inventory Limit removers. The "maybe later" list contained all the stuff I used to consider utterly necessary but now considered a bit unnecessary.
This was, it must be said, a cause for some introspection.
I've come to the conclusion that Modding is, for the most part, an attempt to apply one's own design sensibilities onto someone else's work. "I think combat should be harder", "I think fights should be bloodier", "I think every woman in this game should have flawless hair", etc. Scan popular mods for major games of the last decade and almost every game has a "make your protag look like an Instagram influencer" mod in the top 20, because that's what people what their protagonist to look like - an extension of their own desired self-image and presence.
I think what's happened over the years is that my own preference has skewed hugely towards "let the game developers decide what's in the game" - Bethesda might have consistently terrible hair options but that doesn't mean I want to mod in hairspray and curling irons, there was a decision in there somewhere and I no longer feel the need to overrule them. Maybe I'll have some irritations with a game's design but I'm a bit more willing to stick with it and try things on their terms now. This isn't about me feeling superior - I just don't want the headache of adding instability to a game just to fix what may be a working system.
Not to say I don't still find mods interesting. A nice little insight into a very engaged corner of the player-base.
So I started playing Dragon Age 2 again recently, and had my usual "let's see what mods there are" scan of Nexusmods Most Endorsed mods and... Oh. Oh no.
Maybe I'll just leave the game as it is.