What do you look for in a mod?

[Omny]

When you're combing the Nexus for mods, what do you look for? What do you avoid? Share your personal tastes here, and perhaps current and future modders can learn from your unreasonable demands.

 

Personally, when it comes to weapon mods, I look for three things: look, feel, and balance. The first two may sound like they're the same thing, but hear me out.

 

First, the "look". When I'm choosing weapons, I want them to look badass. I'd love to, say, have a cannon that shoots exploding chainsaws, but if it just looks like the vanilla rocket launcher, it loses that certain unique-ness to it. Even a retexture or a weapon cobbled together from random 3D objects in the game is better than an ordinary-looking weapon with weird ammo. Speaking of textures: the little details are important. Remember, these things have been kicking around in the Mohave for who knows how many years. Scratches, grit, grime, rust, dust, paint chips, duct tape... it doesn't have to look like a chewed-up metal turd that's been tumbling in a cement mixer full of bricks overnight, just "well-loved".

 

Now, the "feel" of the weapon. Look at the other weapons in the game, and how they move and sound when swung, thrown, or fired. The sound it makes when shot, the throwback from the recoil, the muzzle flash, the clicks and snaps from removing and reloading a new cartridge... all those little details add up to the experience. How satisfying would it be if you had fired off your exploding chainsaw launcher (AKA "The Slaughterjack") and all it did was twitch a bit and make a noise like a little bunny fart? When I fire something that powerful, I want to not only feel like I just summoned Odin himself to sucker-punch my foes in the face hole, but that he's simultaniously giving me a high-five.

 

Finally, balance. If the weapon I want is, say, a small-caliber pistol or an uprooted mailbox serving as a crude club, I'd probably expect to get it early in the game, even in a box in Goodsprings (which seems to be quite popular). But if I find a super-powerful weapon that adds, say, some kind of weird alien cannon that turns people into chocolate, I want to work for it. I want to have to drag my bleeding, broken body through a sewer in the center of the earth towards the locked safe containing it after defeating five hordes of minigun-weilding Deathclaws who speak in British accents for some reason. The struggle makes it all the sweeter, you see.

 

 

And that's my personal criteria when it comes to good weapon mods. They don't have to fit exactly, but its very satisfying when more effort's put into them.

[wektis]

I only really look for 2 things, it either has to have lots of nifty features, or it has to look cool :dance: