Do mods make a difference ???

When there always a PC vs consoles topic, Mods are always mentioned as a thing exclusive for the PC Community and not available on the consoles. Games such as GTA, HL2, Total War, Warhammer DoW 1 & 2, pretty much everygame out there have a mod community for it, weather it is RTS, FPS, RPG etc...

talk to me about mods, tell me there benefits, what do they offer more to the game & to the gamer, does it prolong the life of the product, they need the constant support of the modder & community, why are they always for Free, I've yet to see a mod that have a price for it, probably a donation link. Explain to me this thing that is mods that we PC gamers own exclusivly to our system.

The Total War community is greatly benefited by mods. There are dozens of mods for the series especially Medieval 2 Total War. There are both full conversions (basically a new campaign) and minor tweaks that let you play as a locked faction or have more realism. The Half Life 2 mods are also great. Go modders!

Mods can bring hours of entertainment and make the game more replayable.

Mods can make a massive difference. There are some games made that are just boring and crap on there own without mods. I'm looking at you Oblivion. If it wasn't for the mods out there for that game, I would've thrown the game in the garbage in dissapointment.

Yes, mods make a huge difference. As others have said, they can make a piece of garbage like Oblivion almost tolerable (almost) but they can also make a good game even better and prolong it. Most popular PC games have mods and most of them are WAY better than the lame DLC many companies are charging for.

There are also total conversions which are akin to getting a brand new game for free. One of the best things about mods is that they are free although I fear that may be changing thanks to the greed-heads (like Blizzard and a few other companies) who are going to start allowing mod makers to charge for their mods (of course the companies are going to take a nice fat cut too).

Wow. There sure is alot of Oblivion hate here.

Wow. There sure is alot of Oblivion hate here.Josh5890

I don't hate it..but being a fan of Morrowind, it was a huge disappointment for me.

I wouldn't have played the game much at all without the components of FCOM: Convergence and similar mods..

personally, i prefer the official stuff - DLCs, content patches, etc. Mods are cool, and a number of them do rise to the occasion. counter strike, for instance, will be remembered as a mod that redifines online fps gaming. but more often than not these amateur contents simply fall flat. Take Morrowind, one of the most modded pc games, for examples - the torrent of mods suffer from problems ranging from glitches to nonsensical designs. some of the makers didn't even bother to spellcheck their dialogues/quest logs - somehow, this pisses me off the most.

Take Oblivion, for example. Because the publisher allowed modding, one particular user engineered three great mods that eliminated thousands of bugs and glitches still in-game after the final official patch.

Mods don't rewrite the actual coding of the game, but you can install them to replace nearly everything in the game, such as animation, weather, quests, graphics, etc.

These last few months iv been spending most of my gaming time playing full conversion mods for CIV4 and Medieval 2 Total war. It is just amazing the amount of free fun you`ll get from these mods. And some of these i would gladly pay retail price for.

And games like STALKER and Oblivion would, for me at least, be less fun without the great effort from modders.

As someone mentioned above, modders and such are not allowed to charge for custom content and mods for most games per the EULA. (One exception I've noticed is some Sims sites and their donation system *grumble grumble*...) For some people, the vanilla game is plenty good, but for people like me, mods and custom content serve to extend the longevity and replay value of the game. For example, the SimCity 4 community has expanded the game by leaps and bounds with thousands of new buildings, the NAM and the RHW, the numerous water and landscape texture mods, and even a complete SimMars conversion. Other games like Fallout 3 and GTA:SA have some fun mods that, if nothing else, offer interesting and quirky asides to play around with.

That's part of the joy of PC gaming, my friend.:D

Well, to put it simply.... Counterstrike was originally a Half-life Mod.

In PS2 terms... Mod's are kinda like what Persona 3 Fes is, to Persona 3.

As to why they are free.... It's because they are user created. And if these users tried to sell their mod, they would most likely be sued by the developer. Otherwise, the developer just ignores them and see such modders as a benefit, instead of a threat.

As for making money from a mod... Falcon 4.0 Allied force is a good example, and maybe, Counterstrike Source and Day of Defeat Source. In Falcon 4.0's case, a few modders teamed up and bought the license of Falcon 4.0. Then named themselves, "Lead Pursuit" and then sold their mod as Falcon 4.0 Allied Force.

I think in Counterstike's and Day of Defeat's cases... Valve may have bought the mod and sold it as their own for Half-life 2, or came to some kind of agreement with the orginal modder's. I don't know the story, I'm just speculating. But something happened, because the HL version is still free, while the HL2 version, you have to pay for.

They certainly do. Its free content from user community and they range from a simple game fix to a whole new game.

Who doesnt want that 400 free crysis levels at crymod ( ther is a rating so you can download the best) ?

Who doesnt want all those great steam created games like zombie panic for free?

Who doesnt want all those mods that made oblivion from a good game a great game?

Who doesnt want fallout 3 chicks runnin around in lingerie :P ?

Who doesnt want Batman dressed as captain America?

Who doesnt want Ken or Blanka playing in Max payne ( doing SF moves and sounds) instead the default guy ( oh yes there is such a mod look in youtube)?

Also sites Like MODDB make choosing mods quite easy by arranging them by rating, released or not, single or multiplayer, older or newer

basicly i could never imagine playing fallout 3 without mods, that game unmodded i came to realize is just horrible and easy without mods.

Oblivion is great without mods!!!! WTF ARE YOU PPL TALKING ABOUT?! oblivion is enhanced with mods, we need to give games a little luv without the mods.

mods are fantastic and one of the best perks of PC gaming.

Good mods are beyond awesome. I played the Desert Combat mod more then I actually played normal BF1943. In fact, if memory serves me correctly, some of those same modders were picked up by DICE to help with BF2.

For that matter, there are still some things that the Desert Combat mod did better then BF2. AC130 gunship FTW!