I know most of the Bethesda RPGs have massive mod support, and there’s games like Minecraft that have more mods than anyone can imagine. I would consider those games pretty playable in their vanilla states. Would you say there are any games that were “saved” by modding? Or that are still kept alive by thriving modding communities? What are some of your favorite mods?
minecraft for sure
I don’t think anything comes close, Minecraft can be several different types of open world games just based of the modpack
Half of the problem IMO is Java edition runs so poorly mods are necessary to play the game most of the time. And there’s so many quality of life mods that should be base game but Mojang just doesn’t seem to care about.
Another vote for RimWorld, though I want to point out that the game is perfectly playable without mods, too. It is not uncommon to see someone with hundreds of mods, but the vanilla game is just as fun. People have logged thousands of hours without mods.
The ~700 mods in my current playthrough (and ~700 more inactive) strongly upvote this post.
One of the best goddamn games of all time, only made continuously better by folks like Owlchemist, Oskar and the Vanilla Expanded team, jptrrs … so much amazing work went into that community.
Yeah I logged hundreds of hours before I downloaded any mods, and even then I usually only do QoL ones to keep it as close to vanilla as possible
Aside from the obvious minecraft… Arguably I’d say Factorio. They have a robust, feature-rich modding API built into the game that allows for relatively easy, wide ranging game play mods to be made very stable, and the number of mods has exploded as a result. The base game is amazing, but mods exist that quite literally triple the amount of game play and in some cases completely overhaul it into a totally new game. The support is amazing, and I wish more game companies could operate as efficiently as Wube does.
Definitely Minecraft, you can turn it into a completely different game
I know I’m a minority in this, but I unironically prefer vanilla Minecraft, it’s simple in a good way 😅.
I love minecraft mods so much. I play BetterMC now which is essentially a Vanilla+ mod pack but even though it doesn’t turn minecraft into a different game I love how it makes the game feel less repetitive
CounterStrike started as an Half-Life mod
I played vanilla Stardew Valley once, and now I’m on my second go around, and I’ve installed a bunch of qol mods so that I don’t have to keep checking the wiki and my collections to see if I should keep or sell this item I got because I don’t know if I need it for an achievement, and now I have a notification that it’s an NPC’s birthday and I can just check to see if I own or am carrying an item they have. It just makes the game less stressful for a completionist like me.
Some I’ve modded besides what you said (Bethesda RPGs would be like, 8 games or something for me) would be Cities Skylines, Deus Ex, Factorio, Stardew Valley, Mount & Blade, Terraria, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, Stellaris, Oxygen Not Included, Project Zomboid, Darkest Dungeon, Kenshi, Battletech.
Factorio is one that adds absolutely tons of content through mods. Some change the game pretty significantly too
Mods are almost a must with Stardew Valley. There are so many QoL improvements to be had, world expansions and automations to remove some of the tedious busy work.
Skyrim
That’s a Bethesda game. (Just fyi since OP said they already know about Bethesda games)
Tabletop Simulator and Garry’s mod is all modding, they would be very boring without it. (Tabletop might have the DLC addon content worth playing).
Cities Skylines fixes many of the broken aspects of vanilla and adds things to the point that Paradox added some of them into an enhanced console edition.
Slay the Spire, it’s already an amazing game to begin with, but mods allow it to be absolutely insane with customization and cards. Even multiplayer is supported (Together in Spire) and works quite well!
American/Euro Truck Sim has a multitude of mods that add great stuff and even more realism to the game.
Call of Duty Black Ops 3 is more or less a bog-standard shooting game without mods, but the number of crazy, funny and innovative maps for zombies gives it an insane amount of replayability.
Are the Slay the Spire mods all PC only, or do some work in the mobile version?
Edit: I’m intrigued by the CoD zombies comment, too. I’ve never been into those games, but, maybe for zombies…
might be pc only sorry… It uses a ModTheSpire Java application. The mods are on Steam Workshop as well.
About CoDBO3 yeah Zombies is fun and I’m not huge on PvP FPS. Only downside is it hardly ever goes on sale and is fairly large install size (plus map mods are large too).
Wait, hold on. Multiplayer Slay the Spire? Is it like playing against one another or is it cooperative? I haven’t played in a while but I have to hear more about this…
You heard right… co-operative multiplayer Slay the Spire with your friends or randos.
Together In Spire Steam Workshop
This is the one I use, supports up to 10 people at once! Enemy health scales so with two people it’s difficult, 4 people it’s pretty easy at base difficulty, any more you may want to split up into groups to not be too overpowered.
It even works kinda OK with some other mods but sometimes crashes.
tabletop sim is basically a magic the gathering emulator for me at this point
It’s ok you get to play with digital versions of the paper NFTs.
i have spent far too much money on those paper rectangles. the game’s really fun, at least
While not “saved” by modding, Kerbal space program is certainly not as interesting.
KSP is a perfect example of a game that doesn’t need any mods to be an enjoyable experience (albeit a steep learning curve), but is SO enhanced by them. The visual mods give you breathtaking views to keep you going, while the parts mods (especially the science parts mods) add additional direction and goals beyond the stock games initial appeal of just figuring out rocket science and orbital mechanics. The KSP community is one of the best communities I’ve ever been a part of on the internet, and I’ve been around since early dialup modems.
KSP visual mods make it so much more beautiful
Doom 1 and 2 would be a lot less interesting without mods, some of which change the game rather dramatically.
- Project Brutality turns it into a modern-ish shooter.
- Guncaster replaces the usual protagonist with a spell-casting, oversized-pistol-slinging dragon.
- DemonSteele replaces the protagonist with an anime character.
- My House and City of the Damned: Apocalypse turn it into a horror game.
Without mods, these games would have just been historical footnotes, not something a significant number of people still play.
RimWorld. It’s amazing what people can do from QOL to whole new factions or weapons. Amazing and the dev is very helpful during updates to try and not break mod support. Just blown away.
Hell there are multiple mods that add whole new planets. I was so surprised that was even possible considering it seems like the game was made to only be able to handle one.
Late to this post but to me it’s Minecraft. It has such an insane amount of replayability and can be turned into a totally different game depending on the mods and whatnot.
For sure, playing through Create: Astral with my partner atm. So many good modpacks out there that completely change the game
Thanks to you I discovered this modpack. It seems amazing!
Glad to hear it, I love the more mechanical approach to automation that Create has. Just built our first windmill
Minecraft is an obvious answer of course, but there are some other really good games out there that get made much better with mods. Some of my favourite examples of this would be Star Wars Battlefront II (2017) with the cool hero mods and bot mods, and then Ghost Recon Wildlands with the amazing First-Person mod.
Not seeing anyone mention Crusader Kings yet (unless I’m blind)
Gameplay isn’t for everyone but full conversion mods let you experience basically any world you want
Specifically CK2 for me, there’s Tamriel mod that’s amazing
I’d also say this for Hearts of Iron 4. The vanilla game has gotten increasing amounts of flavor over the years, but the kaiserreich, road to 56, etc total conversion mods added a lot more replayability to the game
