The most mods you've had installed at one time?

SharGuidesMyHand

Back when the IE games were first released, I was often curious about mods, but was too intimidated by/unfamiliar with computer technology to actually try any.

With the release of the EEs, though, I've been trying my hand at mods for the first time, and now I routinely scout these forums and elsewhere for any mods that will keep my latest playthroughs seeming lively and original.

I'm currently mulling over an upcoming playthrough of BG2 with about 20-25 various mods installed at one time (mostly added NPCs, with a few romances). To me, this sounds like an insane amount of mods to have installed at one time, but given my comparative inexperience at using mods, I wondered if perhaps a number like that is actually just par-for-the-course for many of the veteran mod-users here?

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semiticgoddess

However many I got from my BWS installation, plus a couple of my own kit mods. Which is probably dozens of different mods.

LudovikH

Once upon a time in classic game BGT I made an install with about everything I could find in mods. Must have been more than a hundred. I ignored most warnings about incompatibility. I spend more time on the console and with Near Infinity than actually playing. Those warnings were given for good reason.
So the question should maybe be:
How many mods can you add and still have a workable game? For this I would follow @subtledoctor and install as much as BWS tells me is good and then add some I find missing to see if it still works. I put those to the end so I can remove them if there appear issue. Makes me end up with 40-50 in BG2EE and about 20 more in EET - depends on how you count mods that break down into various big components, like e.g. TDDz where each one is a big mod on its own right.
What I learned is that more is not always better. These days I find it's the right mixture that counts.

ThacoBell

BG1: 25
BG2: 29

This is fairly conservative for some. Megamodders can have over a hundred with BWS.

lefreut

It may seems strange, but even after playing for all these years, I don't use a lot of mods, usually < 10. And I often play with no mod at all (except for UI mods).

CamDawg

subtledoctor said:

My "must install every time" list probably has more than 20 mods. That's just the ones covering areas of the game where I actually can't bear to play it unmodded.

Yeah, that sounds like me as well. I'm very picky about mods, especially content mods. Even so I have a very stable buildout of about 15-20 mods I always play with, and then usually try out 3-4 new mods on a given playthrough.

Best advice to avoid conflicts: read the readme, read the mod forum, and try to stick to mods that are recent or being actively updated. BWS does a decent job with conflict resolution as well.

Cashew

back in the originals I never modded BG but I had around 20ish mods that I always play BGII with and then I occassionally added some more.

With my current BGII:EE playthrough I have about 50 mods. I had to restart about 7 times to get the right mixture of mods. Generally speaking:

1. I never go for romance mods
2. I only go for added NPC mods if I know there is no romance involved
3. I use a lot of fixes/quality of life type mods
4. I like installing smaller questpacks
5. Not a fan of bigger mods that are almost conversions or straight up conversions
6. I've recently discovered a bunch of 'friendship' mods through BWS which I've installed, I much prefer extra friendship dialogues rather than romances.

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Cashew

subtledoctor said:

Yeah, the mods that lean on the camaraderie that you build working in a team toward a serious goal, tend to be WAY better (IMHO) than the bodice-ripping "romance" mods that try to build a romantic relationship by way of 12 conversations that are three sentences each. And it's not just mods - I count the official Bioware and Beamdog romance content in that last category. I find that stuff 1) creepy, and 2) not believable (and thus, not worth the creepiness).

I don't know if creepy is the same word that I would use, but yes they're not believable and even with the Bioware content, there are specific conversations that I feel is a bit unsettling. There's also the extra annoying gameplay bit where you cannot mix and match your party because they start guilt tripping you when you try to drop them.

TheArtisan

Please stop generalizing. I’ve played or at least read every mod with a narrative and writers do take different approaches to a romance just as they do with friendship or any other type of banter. Not liking romantic paths is fine but this is not a fair way to critique it.

DrakeICN

With the unfinished business mod, I got a lot of really good extra dialogues for some early UB quests, some back and forth with Imoen, Jaheira, Khalid, Xzar and Montarion. But that got me thinking; imagine making that level of quality writing, for all possible party constellations. For every extra quests and / or possible party member, that adds EXPONENTIAL dialogue, if you to retain the same level of banter throughout the game, and if you want to keep the same high quality... it quickly becomes a quagmire! I think the rather restricted amount of banter in BG is a VERY intentional choice. Or, perhaps rather forced choice. The UB pack shows ambitions that never could be realized, when the devs got smacked in the face by reality.

Think about it! The games with the best dialogues, such as FFVII, Chrono Trigger and KOTOR, they all have two things in common; very or fairly linear game progression AND a rather small cast.

Cashew

Artemius_I said:

Please stop generalizing. I’ve played or at least read every mod with a narrative and writers do take different approaches to a romance just as they do with friendship or any other type of banter. Not liking romantic paths is fine but this is not a fair way to critique it.

directed at me or at the other person? I don't think I've said anything other than "specific conversations are unsettling" it holds true for me for romances in most games/movies, not just bioware, beamdog and BG mod makers.

As a teen I liked the romance in my video games and movies, then I grew up and experienced real romances and my view on them has changed quite a lot.

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ThacoBell

@subtledoctor Well, remember, the game follows a compressed story. Those 12 conversations are obviously not all the communication that happens between even platonic party members. And unless you sit for long periods of time paused, those convos can be a couple months in game time easily.

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Mirandel

subtledoctor said:

Point is, in real life, if someone thought they could develop a romantic connection by way of 8-12 conversations that are 90 seconds long each, it would be quite weird and, simply put, would not work. I think therefore that "not believable" is a perfectly valid way to critique it.

Oh, @subtledoctor , you are forcing me to break my word never participate in trolling discussions! (And before you get all offended - trolling well can be unintentional, but saying on a forum about games with relationships "romaces are always bad, unbelievable, illogical unrealistic, etc." is like coming to the forum about dogs to make a statement "dogs are stupid waste of space, normal people love only cats")

So, about that broken promise. I'm sorry, but do you truly mean that the only dialogs our Charname and companions have are those banters we hear?! You never imagined other conversations?! You really play it the way, your small group is moving around for months only opening their mought for occasional comment on the quest?! Seriously?!

subtledoctor said:

Now, in a game like this, that's all you've got to work with. In other words the problem is with the medium, not (necessarily) the artists. So there are two options: 1) make it work as best one can within the constraints of the game; or 2) simply avoid that content and install different mods.

You are serious! Amazing! Ok, let me explain to you how imagination works. Game/book/movie describes/shows you some critical or scenery points. It's like a plan, a roadmap for plot/relationship/whatever. Building on that points, user (player/reader/....) creates his/her own story, filling the gaps the way his/her creative side allows. It's called imagination

subtledoctor said:

I personally opt for #2, and others obviously do as well. It's like trying to plant a garden full of sun-loving plants, tall grasses and lavender... but your garden is shady and damp. It just doesn't work, and saying "I don't like lavender in this kind of garden" is not a knock against the determined gardeners who try to make it work anyway.

But this is not what you are doing! You are saying "I am unable to grow garden on that piece of land. And I do not like gardening on the first place. But it's not my taste or skills which are at fault - no! It's because the soil is bad, sun is wrong, temperature is terrible and the instruments are of all kind of wrong size. Gardening is bad!"

Seriously, you had to stop at " I find it not fun" without attempts to rationalizing personal feeling with generalizations.

tbone1

I play with one mod each: BG1 gets bg1npc and BG2 gets @kulyok ‘s Branwen mod. It’s not that I don’t appreciate how good most mods are or how much work goes into it; the base games are just that good, in my opinion, and other than the two mods I mentioned none really felt necessary. They can be quite good, and oftten are, but I don’t need them.

Part of this is that I play a lot on my creeky, old, coal-powered leather iPad and if there is too much difference between my iOS and MacOS versions I get a sense of dissonance. (That sounds silly even to me, but it started after the medical conditions I’ve talked about before.)

TheArtisan

That’s going too far @Mirandel. I actually do think that some modders put too much focus into writing and pushing their romances that they neglect everything else. That’s kind of the reason why I never title my mods as romance mods because I try not to make that the focus of my work.

semiticgoddess

Mirandel said:

You are serious! Amazing! Ok, let me explain to you how imagination works.

Disrespectful behavior is against the Site Rules. Regardless of whether you agree with someone or not, talking down to them is not acceptable.

Mirandel

I am not talking down to anyone (and the least of it to @subtledoctor ) If he does feel offended - I sincerely wholeheartedly apologize. My point was - his opinion is a personal taste, and rationalizing personal taste makes people say not well-thought-through things offending others, who do not share the same taste.

In our case, all romances (official and from mods) were called by @subtledoctor "bodice-ripping", "creepy", and "not believable". Sorry, but what does it make people who enjoy them?

@Artemius_I I can name quite few of those excessive mods myself, but a) it does not make all romances bad (even from mods), b) most of those mods called just that - romance, with intention to add romance on top of the of existing dialogs, c) it's not like "romance" is a synonym for bad writing or a measure of character annoyance. Imoen is annoying for me without romance, for example, yet Rasaad is enjoyable despite the presence of romance I rarely pursue.

Hence, "I do not like romances/certain NPCs/colors/TV shows/books/etc." better end with just that "I do not like" without explanations why others should not like those things too.

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semiticgoddess

For what it's worth, a story can be creepy without its fans necessarily being weirdos. A story can be not believable and still be enjoyed by non-gullible people. I've enjoyed media that I myself would call creepy. "Creepy" isn't necessarily an insult against the fans. After all, there are people who like horror movies, and probably less than 10% of them are serial killers.

Mirandel

subtledoctor said:

As for for your rant about "imagination," it was extremely rude.

And for that I apologized and can do it again in all sincerity - you are truly the last person I wan to offend.
When I play RPGs with romances, I play for story - first, but romances would be close second, I love them, so I took your attack (too) personally. (This is not an excuse for rudeness, just an explanation of my overreaction)

Now, about my "rant". As simplified as it was, it does describe the process. Quantity of interaction has nothing to do with romance quality and "believability" (or the quality and "believability" of NPC to begin with). An example from DAO - Cullen. If you by chance not familiar with the game: Cullen has precisely 2 interactions with Protagonist (one of which can be easily missed), plus some silent participation in a cutscene. Yet, it was so touching and described character so well, that inspired countless fanfinctions (writings, pictures - what's not), a game mod (animated cutscene, no less) and a big move in the community, so, later in DAI he became a major character. Can give you many other examples of quality vs quantity.

Actually, you said it yourself - "a lot of romance mods are extremely explicit (seriously, way way too explicit), in ways that often diverge from what you might imagine is happening" - too much interaction can kill the character (even without explicit sex scene description). Whole gets lost in details. Sure, such amateurish writing happens! NPC modders want so much for everyone to see their character with their eyes they leave no room for imagination. But a good balanced writing - when character has just enough gaps to make his relations with every Protagonist personal - happens too. And I would consider many BG NPCs (with romances too) of that quality.

subtledoctor said:

I actually don't think there's any problem with someone specifically making romance mods... I just don't like them.

Then we have nothing to argue about! "Don't like" is the strongest and valid argument on any hobby discussion. Just, please, remember some times there are people who do like this sort of content. After all, you dislike romances, I fall asleep in 5 min of detailed spell discussion, yet, we both play and enjoy the very same game. There is room for everyone in BG.

James_M

Currently playing BG2 with 70 mods. Minimum 3 mods for BG2:

http://www.gibberlings3.net/bg2fixpack/

http://www.gibberlings3.net/bg2tweaks/

http://www.shsforums.net/files/file/1006-1ppv410/


Three really cool ones are:
Gerri's NPC Portrait Pack
Aurora's Shoes and Boots v5
Banter Pack v15


My favorite mod is Shadows Over Soubar (SOS) v1.13


I've probably spent 60 hours just researching the mods (content, location of download, how to install), and about 100 hours of installation time just loading-up and selecting the components of the various mods over the past two years since getting into mods. A couple attempts didn't work, several installations didn't work after making a couple of changes to them, some mods changed the game in a way I didn't like. The current 70 mod install took about 5 hours. A newbie would need at least 3 days I reckon.

Have fun!