Recommend mods for a new player pls.

[C0mmies can cry]

Gonna start this game which I bought a while back. Recommend any mods for a noob like me??

[Iridar]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2165341111

[zoutzakje]

I recommend vanilla for any first playthrough of any game. Never understood the need to mod a game you haven't even played yet. Even if it is just QoL stuff. To each their own I suppose.

[C0mmies can cry]

I dont play often and when I do I prefer to go straight to the best parts of the game. Mods infinitely make the base game much better as a general rule.

[Redrick]

Going through it myself now as a newbie. No amount of prep, watching YT or guides will truly prepare you. They just complement actual experience. I failed my first two attempts even though I spent days researching and taking notes... Jump in and go for it.
And good luck, you're gonna need it !!

[Amanoob105]

As with most of the above comments, while I'd be happy to recommend some of my few favorites (I'm a quality over quantity guy), highly recommend your first playthough be mod free.

Partly because if this game will be going wrong, it's most likely to happen when mods are involved and having seen a campaign though to the end without them will help greatly with being able to tell if somethings not working as it should.

But mostly because there's about 3000+ mods for this thing (not counting the purely cosmetic mods) and trying to figure out what you'd want to mod about the game can be a challenge in and of itself.
So going though once without can help make these things a lot clearer for people.

[sick duck]

Originally posted by Redrick:

Going through it myself now as a newbie. No amount of prep, watching YT or guides will truly prepare you. They just complement actual experience. I failed my first two attempts even though I spent days researching and taking notes... Jump in and go for it.
And good luck, you're gonna need it !!

In the words of Mike Tyson: everyon has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. Mike is a world renowned boxer, so he would know better than most that there is a bit too much too chaos in combat sports to really make a plan. The same can be said for xcom 2. You just have to learn how to how to react to bad circumstances.

[footsoljer]

Play vanilla

[Terminus_X]

I had similar thoughts now I'm preparing for my own first playthrough. While there is a lot of merit in "play the game straight" it's fair to want to think about quality of life and the high-lights reel and unhelpful to just be told "play it normal, why bother."

My searches turned up stuff like the collection previously posted which is mostly optimising, but there's also a wide range of cosmetic, character pool, and weapon/class mods on Nexus (and likely elsewhere) worth a shot; there's some community map generator expansions too which would likely increase the variety of a campaign; and there's stuff which effect campaign speed and in-mission timers which could be useful for learning the ropes (specifically, "avatar project" adjustments can prolong a campaign (and no, I'm not sure what that is beyond an obvious boss hook) and there's several "adjust/remove/alter" mission timer things, mostly and pragmatically for non-story missions. Biggest conversion mod I know of, for that angle, is the Long War one which is built around the idea of a longer, stronger, larger campaign and has a lot of its own sub-mods.

Only thing I personally settled on was a graphics/shader mod using Reshade called Realview, but I'm also very picky!

Best of luck with whatever you do decide to do!

[Iridar]

Unmodded game has tons of bugs. That alone should be reason enough to use *some* mods. The in-game interface also leaves something to be desired and there are many mods that improve it in meaningful ways without being intrusive in any way. Playing completely vanilla on your first XCOM 2 playthrough is just a disservice to yourself.

[Double Event]

Piggy backing on this... Is there a mod that does away with mission timers? I would love to play this game without so many of those.

[Terminus_X]

Originally posted by Double Event:

Piggy backing on this... Is there a mod that does away with mission timers? I would love to play this game without so many of those.

Several, though most don't touch story missions. If you search on Nexus you should find a few options.

[99Random]

Originally posted by Double Event:

Piggy backing on this... Is there a mod that does away with mission timers? I would love to play this game without so many of those.

If you have WOTC there is a setting that doubles thew timers making them effectively a non issue.

[Double Event]

Originally posted by Terminus_X:

Originally posted by Double Event:

Piggy backing on this... Is there a mod that does away with mission timers? I would love to play this game without so many of those.

Several, though most don't touch story missions. If you search on Nexus you should find a few options.

Thanks

[Double Event]

Originally posted by 99Random:

Originally posted by Double Event:

Piggy backing on this... Is there a mod that does away with mission timers? I would love to play this game without so many of those.

If you have WOTC there is a setting that doubles thew timers making them effectively a non issue.

Originally posted by 99Random:

Originally posted by Double Event:

Piggy backing on this... Is there a mod that does away with mission timers? I would love to play this game without so many of those.

If you have WOTC there is a setting that doubles thew timers making them effectively a non issue.

Thanks I must have missed that.

[Razorblade]

Originally posted by Do your best:

I dont play often and when I do I prefer to go straight to the best parts of the game. Mods infinitely make the base game much better as a general rule.

That "general rule" assumes that the game's designers/developers are either bad at their job, lazy, or underfunded.

XCOM 2, meanwhile, is an impeccably balanced game. Class limitations, mission conditions, enemy variety, etc. were all chosen with the upmost thought to make the game simple, fun, and challenging. Any kind of gameplay mod could easily upset that fine balance and make your experience worse.

I definitely wouldn't change anything that's non-cosmetic before at least trying the game. Unlike something like Skyrim, which sells despite it's dull gameplay because it has a fantastic modding community, XCOM 2 sells because it is simply a fantastic experience out of the box.