Bad mods on Nexus that makes the game unplayable?

[XsilverwaterX]

If there was a similar discussion like this and open for further addons, please link for me and possibly others.

Anyways, playing the Nexus mods Children of Ug-Qualoth and I just KEEP crashing even on the lowest setting due to those stupid bomb headcrab things and the pillars spawning in more shadow ghouls than it can handle?! The lore is very interesting and Lovecraft appropriate, got a few jumpscares from the show ghouls doing the "red light, green light" tactics and tackling me to the ground. I posted a complaint for the author to lower them for creation engine's already decaying capability and probably think they will somewhat fix it but fupp it up even more with some of the unique loot clipping INTO the void?!

What other mods like this piece of trash should I avoid? Don't hate the mod, hate the modder for half-assed coding education.

[Chaosium]

Sim settlements, fite me

[Zekiran]

What doesn't float your boat.

What has lots of red flags - like a mass of unanswered bug reports, obviously broken things being claimed as 'working'? like the one you played?

One that has never been updated and questionable bug reports that may or may not ever be resolved.

What breaks your existing actually-working mods.

Those are things to avoid.

But what works for someone else might not work for you, and the reverse. For instance I absolutely hate Workshop Framework - it broke vital mods that I use. But lots of people swear by it.

I will agree with Chaosium though.

Sim Settlements 1 or 2 are just unbearably meh to me, hugely bloated piles that require way more fiddling than just installing your settlements and mods individually.

For me: virtually any mod that "does something for you" - like FOR you, sim settlements style. The joy of the game for me is building and settling locations. I don't want some click to do it for me.

[FedEx Noelle]

Lowered weapon. Just no. I don't like it at all.

[Zekiran]

Also just a point of clarity here:

The game is in no way 'unplayable' from the OP's description.

"Difficult".

"Laggy."

Not unplayable, and the mod, I will remind you, is *voluntarily downloaded and installed and played through.*

You have the option to remove it and revert to a save before you played it, and there's no harm no foul.

[-={LG}=-]

Originally posted by XsilverwaterX:

What other mods like this piece of trash should I avoid? Don't hate the mod, hate the modder for half-assed coding education.

I don't go in for any sort of fan-fiction. The official fiction is bad enough.

[TheLoveMummy]

Never could get sims to run without crashing over time. Found a few patches but never revisited it since there are way better options. Anything that cleans out a settlement or breaks the precombined meshes never works right or winds up breaking saves over time. Trimmed my mod list back to 350 active and don't have any crash or performance problems at all recently. Buffout crash reports are good for sniffing out problems so you know what to remove.

[Zekiran]

I'm not sure what you're referring to while quoting me?

The game is finished.

100 % playable as-is, vanilla. If your system needs ini tweaks for it to work that's not the game's content it's the engine's limits.

None of the things I said there seem to relate to me asserting that the game "needs to be finished" nor that it is an "excuse".

The OP asked whether there are game breaking MODS.

Mods break. The game breaks too. The game content, however, is finished and completely playable for 999 out of 1000 people.

[Fear2288]

If we’re talking mods which are known to cause issues for a large number of users I can think of a few:

1. South of the Sea - the original, not Atom’s Storm. It’s a notoriously buggy mod that causes plenty of crashes and was eventually abandoned and never properly fixed. Atom’s Storm is an attempt by another mod maker to fix those issues and make it more stable. I’ve been using AS and it seems to be fine.

2. Feral Ghoul Expansion Pack - it’s a cool idea and has a great variety of new ghoul enemies, but the creator straight up tells you on the mod page that it will likely break any/all vanilla or mod-added quests that involve feral ghouls. The more recent version of the mod has also generated a lot of bug reports claiming that when certain varieties spawn - it causes an instant CTD.

3. Bean Town Interiors - I’ve never used it myself, but I consistently see people say that this mod causes performance issues and crashes, and actually warn people not to install it.

4. Functional Displays - this mod messes with the .nif files for many objects in the game in order to make them display correctly when you place them on the mod’s added shelves and such. Since those .nif files are altered, it can cause instant CTDs when loading an area because the engine can’t load these files correctly into the world. A confirmed fix is to delete the mod’s replacement .nif files, but the result is that you may get displayed objects facing the wrong direction.

5. Faction Reinforcements - supposedly a lot of people have CTDs when the game tries to spawn in the new Raider mech enemy added by the mod. It was such a widespread issue that the mod maker had to release an optional patch to remove the enemy from the mod entirely.

6. Scrap Everything - some people will tell you this mod works perfectly fine, others will tell you it’s a recipe for CTDs and performance issues. The truth seems to be that both groups are right. It’s unclear what determines whether or not SE will break your game, but some people get lucky and others not so lucky. The problem stems from the fact that SE allows you to delete things in settlements you were never supposed to be able to delete, and since the engine uses precombines, when it tries to load the cell and finds that stuff that should be there has been deleted - it can cause problems.

[Bored Peon]

Originally posted by Chaosium:

Sim settlements, fite me

Nope, because I have bricked more saves with SS1 and SS2 than any other mods.

Although I will say that IF you get SS1 and SS2 to work properly and not give you issues they are worth playing. SS2 has a really good storyline and voice acting which kinda makes a better story than the main game.

Horizon is another good one IF you get rid of mods that would conflict with it, which is most mods, lol.

[Candesco]

A thing which you have with mods is that you need to check if they are compatible with the current game version and if there is an update for that mod. Mods as F4SE require to be on par with the game version. For example; currently the game is now version 1.10.163 and the latest version of f4se is 0.6.21. So if your game is 1.10.163 you should use f4se 0.6.21.
What people also often forget is to read the provided readme or the information on nexus, resulting that you get posts about "the mod is not working" and then it turns out some files weren't installed or not properly installed. I would also just avoid to use vortex. Vortex (and it's predecessor nmm) is the worst you can use regarding mod managers, cause vortex use a whole other structure and often don't install mods where they belong. Use Mod Organizer 2 instead, which is also quite easy to use. But if possible, just install mods manually.
I use mod organizer 2 myself, because there is one mod which only can be installed through a manager and next to that i use it to launch the game, so that it also loads together with f4se. I use alot of mods from vtaw.

[Zekiran]

Re: the game version - the game version hasn't changed in many years, but the only way that a player's game would NOT be on the 'current version' is because they didn't use the English version. Only the english version apparently got major updates last, so non-english games need to be switched to english, updated, and then with any luck find a mod pack for the language because they didn't bother fixing that part. >_>

[miakisfan]

I always check the post section to see what people who have played it are saying. Not going to say it isn't nice to have the knowledgeable people here help out but it isn't their job to be doing my research.

Believe me when I say you'll know after reading it or not how good or bad a mod is. I don't forget most of the people posting there have way more experience modding than I ever will have.

[Joe Coffee]

Originally posted by XsilverwaterX:

If there was a similar discussion like this and open for further addons, please link for me and possibly others.

Anyways, playing the Nexus mods Children of Ug-Qualoth and I just KEEP crashing even on the lowest setting due to those stupid bomb headcrab things and the pillars spawning in more shadow ghouls than it can handle?! The lore is very interesting and Lovecraft appropriate, got a few jumpscares from the show ghouls doing the "red light, green light" tactics and tackling me to the ground. I posted a complaint for the author to lower them for creation engine's already decaying capability and probably think they will somewhat fix it but fupp it up even more with some of the unique loot clipping INTO the void?!

What other mods like this piece of trash should I avoid? Don't hate the mod, hate the modder for half-assed coding education.

Strictly speaking, read the commentary of users who have used the mod and you'll see it like it is. Also, the most endorsed tends to speak for itself.

Mods are only as good if the user (i.e., "you") know what you're doing. If you don't bother to read the fine print and install mods that conflict with each other, it's YOUR problem, not theirs.

In short, here's a fortune cookie for you: don't go yelling at gasoline users for not buying a battery-powered car or going green frakkin' energy when you're at risk for the damned thing catching fire or taking half a day to recharge or the the solar powered panels don't work because of dust and lack of sunshine.

[Fear2288]

Originally posted by miakisfan:

I always check the post section to see what people who have played it are saying. Not going to say it isn't nice to have the knowledgeable people here help out but it isn't their job to be doing my research.

Believe me when I say you'll know after reading it or not how good or bad a mod is. I don't forget most of the people posting there have way more experience modding than I ever will have.

Unfortunately, that isn’t always accurate either.

For example, the mod which the OP talks about has many comments that are positive and give the impression that CoUQ is a great mod - which it isn’t.

It doesn’t help that Nexus is a bit too trigger happy and prone to delete comments that are negatively critical if the comment gets reported. I’m also not sure about this, but the mod maker may or may not have the ability to delete user comments. I DO know though that the mod maker has the ability to silence anyone they want - using the “Block Interactions” option which bans any specific user from posting comments or submitting bug reports on their page.

[Zekiran]

Yeah that's why reading the bug reports is good, but also checking on the 'when did the modder last do anything even if not for that specific mod' via the profile link is important.

"They're really more like... guidelines". :)