I'm newish to modding games. I have been on a console my whole life and PC gaming is still relatively new to me. I've been modding a few games lately like Mass Effect and Baldurs Gate 3... It's like a whole ass research assignment to figure out how to load mods. Each one different with different rules. I decided to not even bother with a significant number of mods because they just seemed mind numbingly confusing to set up.

I'm not complaining, I'm just wondering if I'm missing some trick or something.

Edit: I would like to thank everyone who answered. It appears that, nah. I'm not missing something. I am just a dummy. Probably just gonna take a while to get used to for me. But thank you very much <3

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[–] TootSweet@lemmy.world 36 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

Most games were never made to be modded. The communities are hacking mods into these games, many of which were even designed to make modding harder. (Because mods compete against sequels or something? I dunno. Intellectual property is a mental illness.) It's not terribly surprising that games that weren't meant to be modded have confusingly inconsistent methods for loading mods. Because those mods work fundamentally differently from game to game. If a mod happens to be easy-ish to install, chances are it's either quite a simple mod (a model/texture replacement or some such, or just something that's not terribly hard to mod) or a lot of work has been put into making it easier.

[–] kipo@lemm.ee 8 points 2 days ago

Also the timeline usually matters. Mod methods can change as game patches are released. Mods can have mod patches. Mods can be deprecated for new mods or mod methods. Mods can have other dependencies. Install order sometimes matters.

I think OP is right; mods can be messy, complicated, and a lot of work.

[–] Die4Ever@programming.dev 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

(Because mods compete against sequels or something?

yea sequels, expansion packs, and DLC

[–] snugglesthefalse@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 days ago

It's more that most games aren't made with consideration for modding, this means you can have core gameplay elements hidden in encrypted packages and modding is limited by what you can actually get access to. Sometimes the devs/publishers will actively make mods harder though. Really depends on the game, the company, how determined people are to mod it, how long the game's been out for, the engine and probably a bunch else that I haven't thought of right now.