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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[–] Rentlar@lemmy.ca 8 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

As the name suggests, a mod is "modifying" the game, in ways that the original creators never intended to support. That's why out of very few exceptions (such as Paradox and Steam mods), there is not a centralized hub maintained by the creator to organize and apply mods. But since there are some similarities between certain games (such as the game engine they run on), sometimes there is a third party mod launcher/installer which simplifies things. Thunderstore is an example.

The process tends to be different for every game because every game is made differently. To boil the concept down, basically if there's no official interface for custom functionality (such as a plugin system), then modders will usually "hack" this in themselves. Installing the mod often means replacing a game file with one that hooks into the game, to be able to load custom code and custom game resources.