[NO LONGER MANTAINED] Fallout: New Vegas - Sigourn's Recommended Mods

[deuxhero]

Found out what my problem was: Patch (which was just the ESP) somehow overworte the entire Autumn Leaves mod in organizer. Fixed that.

 

[Sigourn]

46 hours into my current playthrough.

I have to say I wish I could erase these 46 hours and go back to the past, and here's why: JSawyer Ultimate is simply a not very good mod. I get it that it is an "extension" of Sawyer's mod for New Vegas. But to be honest, it still feels like a "casual" mod in more ways than one. But the most important, and the one that annoys me the most: food and drinks heal the player. It makes little difference to me if you can simply drink your way to health.

I don't know if I would do better by reinstalling my mods with a different, more hardcore setup, leave that final New Vegas playthrough for the future (maybe for when I can finally run an ENB on this computer without it shitting itself?), and play Fallout 2 (never played it) and Fallout 1.5 instead.

Opinions?

 

[laclongquan]

It's why I dont install jsawyer mod, but other tiny ones which composed each effect of THAT mod. I want to control which is useful, and which is just bloody busywork.

 

[RoBoBOBR]

play Fallout 2 (never played it)

you should fix that shortcoming immediately!

 

[Sigourn]

play Fallout 2 (never played it)

you should fix that shortcoming immediately!

Yeah, after posting that I simply uninstalled New Vegas and fixed up my mod list for my future playthrough. I'd rather play something fresh than replaying the same game for the Xth time.

 

[The Dutch Ghost]

Fallout New Vegas is a good game but you can only play it so many times before it starts feeling like a series of tasks to do when you start a new session.
I will replay it in the future again but for now I will just let it rest on my hard drive.

In general I only recommend the mods that restore content that was cut from the base game or fix some of its shortcomings.

 

[deuxhero]

Plenty of mods that add strip/freeside map markers, but I can't find any that are compatible with Freeside Open and The Strip Open (I found one that adds for both but only works with Freeside Open, not Strip Open)

Also while I'm asking, anything that makes Service Rifle/Marksman Carbine/Assault Carbine interchangeable for repairing? As intermediate caliber AR platform based guns they'd have very high parts interchangeability (everything except the barrel could be shared by at least 2/3. Buffer tube assembly, furniture and, depending on what the hell 5mm is, bolt carrier group and magazines are the only things that wouldn't go in all 3 and the first two could be combined for a perfectly functional frankengun.).

 

[mbv123]

I already did a playthrough few months ago and I'm already feeling an itch to play again.
Ride never ends.
Never played NV with mods since I'm not a fan of the stuff Sawyer adds (hardcore games just feels more like tedium than anything else) and everything else (Project Nevada for example) feels like needless bloat that I don't really need. Vanilla is fine the way it is. Don't care about graphics mods since I'm not a whore.
Are NV Bounties mods good? I don't mind mods that add new content, as long as it's not out of place and the writing is not retarded.

 

[Quillon]

Not a fan of hardcore mode also. Just some UI elements you have to keep in check via UI in an action RPG. Fuck "needs" shit, I don't feel any fulfilment when my character eats & drinks, nor I feel anything when he is hungry or thirsty. It might work in a game where you manage a group/community but it doesn't for directly controlled single character... and I can't believe there are so many fans of "hardcore" mode.

 

[AW8]

Never played NV with mods since I'm not a fan of the stuff Sawyer adds (hardcore games just feels more like tedium than anything else) and everything else (Project Nevada for example) feels like needless bloat that I don't really need. Vanilla is fine the way it is.

JSawyer neither really adds stuff nor is it hardcore, it's mostly a re-balancing mod for the increased level cap and pre-order weapons from DLC, as well as bugfixing. Project Nevada adds sprinting and bullet time so Action Points have a purpose beyond VATS, two great additions (although there are standalone mods that add the same things). JSawyer is basically a fixed up version of vanilla, and the aforementioned Project Nevada additions pretty much makes it vanilla enhanced.
I would not recommend playing FONV without JSawyer or a similar rebalancing mod, the DLC level cap is simply too high.

Are NV Bounties mods good? I don't mind mods that add new content, as long as it's not out of place and the writing is not retarded.

I tried it out but uninstalled it quickly, my memory is a bit fuzzy but I think the questgiver was essential and gave out good gear for free for no logical reason. It shows the mod maker did not understand or respect the core game and thus it had to go. Provided my memory is correct and I didn't uninstall it for an unrelated reason of course.

Not a fan of hardcore mode also. Just some UI elements you have to keep in check via UI in an action RPG. Fuck "needs" shit, I don't feel any fulfilment when my character eats & drinks, nor I feel anything when he is hungry or thirsty. It might work in a game where you manage a group/community but it doesn't for directly controlled single character... and I can't believe there are so many fans of "hardcore" mode.

Fair enough, but it also gives ammunition weight (weightless missiles are ridiculous), makes it so sleeping doesn't restore health (equally ridiculous) and gives purpose to doctor's bags since you can't heal crippled limbs with stimpacks anymore.

 

[Sigourn]

Not a fan of hardcore mode also. Just some UI elements you have to keep in check via UI in an action RPG. Fuck "needs" shit, I don't feel any fulfilment when my character eats & drinks, nor I feel anything when he is hungry or thirsty. It might work in a game where you manage a group/community but it doesn't for directly controlled single character... and I can't believe there are so many fans of "hardcore" mode.

Normally I would understand what you mean, except New Vegas' Hardcore more is hardly "tedious" in any capacity.

Arwen's Realism Tweaks is probably the most tedious mod I've had the displeasure of playing (a couple of minutes. It's the definition of bloat and tediousness. New Vegas' Hardcore mode isn't, though. It's pretty easy to keep in check.

 

[CrunchyHemorrhoids]

^The problem with "needs"/hardcore mode in New Vegas is that you're never more than a 1 minute jog away from a source of freely available fresh water/settlement, in a desert that you can jog across in 5 minutes tops. Do you worry about your hunger and thirst levels when you park your car at the assend of a big parking lot?

The game clearly wasn't made with that mode in mind, it was just a quick tack on of a popular FO3 mod because "desert!", "open world!", but I assume it must've worked better in bethesda's game due to that game's "everything's irradiated, scavenge for food and clean water" setting.

I enjoy survival mechanics and they lend themselves well to both postapoc and desert settings but NV is hardly postapoc and the short distances between settlements and POIs mean it's really not much of a desert either.

 

[Sigourn]

^The problem with "needs"/hardcore mode in New Vegas is that you're never more than a 1 minute jog away from a source of freely available fresh water/settlement, in a desert that you can jog across in 5 minutes tops. Do you worry about dying of hunger and thirst when you park your car at the assend of a big parking lot?

The game wasn't made with that mode in mind, it was just a quick tack on of a popular FO3 mod where it worked better due to that game's "everything's irradiated, people are dying of hunger and thirst" setting.

I enjoy survival mechanics and they lend themselves well to both postapoc and desert settings but NV is hardly postapoc and the short distances between settlements and POIs mean it's not much of a desert either.

This is true for the vanilla game. For modded New Vegas, not so much. For example, Water Overhaul makes it so that irradiated water sources are more irradiated even. JSawyer Ultimate increases the rate at which you get dehydrated and hungry. It works best if you don't alter the timescale, also: I changed mine from 30 to 20 (slower) and I'm noticing I'm stocking a lot of food and water, so I'll revert that change.

Moreover, JSawyer Ultimate decreases the carry weight you can have at once, AND if you decide to decrease it even higher (the absolute madman) you just can't count on carrying lots of food and water at any one time. It really makes for a different experience when you just can't walk around anywhere you want without any troubles on your mind.

I must get around to updating the recommended mods.

 

[CrunchyHemorrhoids]

^I did do a full playthrough of modded New Vegas with sawyer's mod with hardcore mode enabled. In the end it detracted more from the game's realism/simulation aspect than it added and thus made it less fun.

It's not something you can fix by sliding a few variables that change how often or how much you need to eat/drink, nor will changing the timescale help: whether the timescale is set to 1:1 or 1:1000 it will still only take you a minute of real time to jog your character from one settlement to the next, accelerating the timescale so you can pretend that 1 minute walk between settlements lasted a day in-game(all the while shooting critters in real time along the way) will only lead to further dissonance and thus lesser realism/immersion/whateveryouwannacallit that was the point of a survival/needs/hardcore mode in the first place. It's absurd to worry about dying of thirst or hunger during what effectively plays as a short walk, it becomes more akin to metagame busywork than something that would otherwise serve to flesh out the gameworld and root your character in it.

The problem is the worldscale/distance, and that's something mods are unlikely to fix. If the game world was larger or if it used FO1/2's map travel with procedurally generated terrain in between POIs it could've worked.

I appreciate you categorizing your mod list with patches/fixes vs enhancements vs cosmetics etc so it's something that's useful to anyone, but I gotta ask why no open freeside+open strip mods in the enhancements list? It's clearly what they originally intended and only split those areas due to console limitations, didn't run into any bugs/issues with them either.

 

[Sigourn]

I appreciate you categorizing your mod list with patches/fixes vs enhancements vs cosmetics etc so it's something that's useful to anyone, but I gotta ask why no open freeside+open strip mods in the enhancements list? It's clearly what they originally intended and only split those areas due to console limitations, didn't run into any bugs/issues with them either.

I understand where you are coming from in regards to Hardcore Mode. It's true that there is a huge dissonance between what you see and what goes behind the curtains (walk for a bit and suddenly you must eat and drink again). This is something that simply didn't happen in Fallout because of how the world worked. A Hardcore Mode there would make more sense: stock up on food and water, every time you make a trip to a town there is a chance depending on Outdoorsman and other stats that you will run out of food and water to survive, and it makes sense since the trip is huge.

Regarding Freeside and Strip Open: I personally don't use those mods. I feel they don't add much to the game (as opposed to the rest of the cut content restored mods), and they are some of the most problematic mods because people can't seem to install them properly. More over, if you aren't satisfied with them, you are stuck with them and that is problematic too since you can't uninstall them and have everything work out at the end.

I'm currently updating the list of mods, adding stuff I installed, removing stuff I don't play with anymore (because they are not necessary anymore or because it isn't good enough). Plus an installation order (though load order is yet to come).

 

[Master]

The problem is the worldscale/distance, and that's something mods are unlikely to fix. If the game world was larger or if it used FO1/2's map travel with procedurally generated terrain in between POIs it could've worked

Yes. Either do a big world in FO1/2 style or a small world in Deus Ex/SS2 style.

 

[Sigourn]

The problem is the worldscale/distance, and that's something mods are unlikely to fix. If the game world was larger or if it used FO1/2's map travel with procedurally generated terrain in between POIs it could've worked

Yes. Either do a big world in FO1/2 style or a small world in Deus Ex/SS2 style.

Or a mix of both NV and FO1/2. Add The Witcher to that mix too. Big towns and cities as well as other places of interest connected via a world map like FO1/2's. At the end of the day, the graphics in FO3/FNV/FO4 suck when it comes to taking pretty landscape shots, it would be simply much better if those landscapes were pre-rendered backgrounds.

 

[Master]

As long as you cant walk between two cities in first or third person im fine with it.

 

[Sigourn]

As long as you cant walk between two cities in first or third person im fine with it.

Yep, it would be like that. Have you played Final Fantasy XII? It's pretty much how I imagine it. I'd argue it has an even bigger map than FNV, but I can't be sure. It certainly felt more packed.

 

[Master]

No i dont have a console. But it doesnt have to go in that globetrotting direction. It can be a whole game set in just one city with loading areas. Like DX with New York or Hong Kong parts or like SS2 but without everything trying to kill you. Or like LA in VTMB. I mean the game is called Fallout: New Vegas but only 15 percent of it is in New Vegas so why its even called like that. It should be Fallout: Nevada or Fallout: Mojave.

 

[CrunchyHemorrhoids]

^Because New Vegas sells a hell of a lot better than Mojave or Nevada.

As long as you cant walk between two cities in first or third person im fine with it.

Why not simply give players the choice? Make the open world roads/distance between towns significantly longer(pseudo-copy paste design or even randomly generated - daggerfall?) and then :

Case 1: Players who don't enjoy walking simulators.
You could simply travel directly to the entrance of the next town or POI through an overworld map similar to FO1/2.

Case 2: Players who enjoy themepark-sized walking simulators with focus-tested 1-3 minutes' realtime walking distance between towns.
You would still spend those 3 minutes walking in realtime between towns, it would simply have a bit of map travel in the middle.
Example: In New Vegas Primm is a couple of minutes' jog down the road from Goodsprings when in reality it's closer to 20 miles down from Goodsprings. Rather than placing Primm at the standard 1-3 minutes realtime walking distance away from Goodsprings why not make the distance/road between them several times longer but make it so that after you've been walking down the road towards Primm for 1-2 minutes the overworld map automatically shows up(similar to TW3 once you get near the edges of the map) and lets you map travel to the outskirts of Primm. From there you'd still have to walk another 1-2 minutes until you reached Primm's entrance(and thus the same map marker/fast travel spot as case 1). This way these players get to spend as much time walking in realtime between locations as they would in vanilla New Vegas/AAA open worlds so that sense of walking simulator/crossing a great distance remains at least equal (and likely increases it without making the game more boring for anyone).

Case 3: Players who'd rather have much larger open worlds.
They can spend a lot of time traveling in realtime across the longer distances if they so choose.

A lot of players want big open worlds but that doesn't mean they want to explore all of an open world or even half of it, the illusion of an open world works just as well for them, as long as you find a way to make it so the biggest chunk of the target audience doesn't get bored getting from one POI to the next you could make the distances between POIs huge.

 

[Master]

Why not simply give players the choice?

This kind of attitude is what led to the Decline in the first place. The Player and his rule over the Game. Will it ever end? The holy exit grid must return else we all perish...

 

[ColonelTeacup]

Why not simply give players the choice?

This kind of attitude is what led to the Decline in the first place. The Player and his rule over the Game. Will it ever end? The holy exit grid must return else we all perish...

Maybe it would be better if videogames perished. Nothing lasts forever.

 

[Sigourn]

OP's list has been updated. Everything you need to play the game like I do, EVERYTHING, is there. Mod list, included edited mods by myself and some of my own, compatibility patch for the ENTIRE installation, and load order. Only a madman could do such a thing. I AM THAT MADMAN.

 

[Sigourn]

I made some tweaks to the mod list, as seen in the OP. In a couple of minutes I'm also adding a link to EssArrBee's S.T.E.P. guide for New Vegas, mostly for people to get to installing the game quickly and easily. I'll provide a small guide as to what portions of the game you must pay attention to (everything else is off-limits for my mod list).