Do you folks play games as is? Or do you apply visual mods and driver tweaks?

[Frankenburger]

I'm kinda curious how folks go about configuring their games. Personally, I apply mods and tweaks when possible, especially in non competitive games or single player games. IMO, most games simply don't have good lighting, color/contrast, anti aliasing, or texture filtering. Generally speaking, I'll often load ReShade in many of the games I play to adjust the contrast and add some nifty lighting effects while adjusting drivers to use SSAA, DSR, AF tweaks, LOD tweaks, texture quality tweaks, and adding in FXAA+SMAA if SSAA and DSR is not an option.

[IAnthonyFX]

As. I am far to lazy to do the other option

[BuckGup]

I touch every setting I can get to so I make it look the best while maintaining the FPS range I want for that game

[Guest]

Every game I play is modded in some way.

[Taja]

I just mod bethesda games in general. But mostly for stuff not related to graphics.

For me graphics are not a problem most times, I just put on the high setting (or whatever is bellow ultra) and tweak until I get to constant 60 fps.

[Tabs]

5 minutes ago, Frankenburger said:

I'm kinda curious how folks go about configuring their games. Personally, I apply mods and tweaks when possible, especially in non competitive games or single player games. IMO, most games simply don't have good lighting, color/contrast, anti aliasing, or texture filtering. Generally speaking, I'll often load ReShade in many of the games I play to adjust the contrast and add some nifty lighting effects while adjusting drivers to use SSAA, DSR, AF tweaks, LOD tweaks, texture quality tweaks, and adding in FXAA+SMAA if SSAA and DSR is not an option.

 

For me, it depends a lot on the game. Most games I play nowadays are pretty much play once and done, but games like Skyrim and Fallout 4 I definitely do a lot of tweaking. It helps that those games have a big modding community and the developers have open support for the platform. Some other games too like the Witcher 3, i'll use utilities like enbseries (reshade).

[PlayStation 2]

Unless we're talking about Garry's Mod (well duh) I play games with no visual tweaks.

EXCEPT for a time I played TF2 with the Source Filmmaker models.

[PopsicleHustler]

I usually apply some mods/trainers to the single player games if I re-play them or they have P2W stuff. Good example is AC Origins, that game had one of the most offensive microtransaction system in a single player $60 game. So instead I applied trainer that gave me unlimited money and paid currency, and let me tell you, game began to shine with new colors when I got access to P2W visuals and more powerful weapons.

 

Then there are games like Witcher 3 and Skyrim, I have some graphics mods applied to them when I was re-playing each game. There are some super talented people who made Witcher 3 look like it was shown at E3 2014.

 

 

[xAcid9]

I use reshade in most of my games. 

[JZStudios]

I'll do texture mods if they're horrible in the base game, or if it's just an old title.

Or Halk Hogans mod for TW3 since he's practically autistic in how detailed they are while keeping all of the original distinguishing features.

 

Otherise the only time I'd want to use Reshade is if a game already has a bad color filter, but adding a color filter on top of a color filter isn't a very good solution or idea. There's also the fact that most reshades I've seen... no, all reshades are basically just boosting the shit out of the saturation and contrast which makes it look horrible. But hey, if you like crap instagram filters, you go on with your bad self.

Reshade also hinders performance, so on top of making games look generally trash it slows them down too.

[Ross Siggers]

If the game is suitably old, I'll apply some additional AA or Filtering via the graphics card control panel, and try and find any texture mods I can. I don't normally go beyond that.

The exception is my racing games. Because there's such a wealth of community made content, I always add reams of cars and tracks where I can.

[Almonise]

depends on what game im playing. if it's a competitive e-sport game then I'll just leave it the way it is. I also do the same thing to AAA games, the only games that I would mod is old games (Skyrims, GTA SA) or games with decent mod community like GTA V, Warthunder, World of warships, World of tanks, CS 1.6, Stardew valley, etc.

[Phentos]

Games that have a decent modding community and are at least somewhat easy to mod, I will mod them heavily. On my last playthrough of Skyrim SE I had a mod list containing nearly 210 mods. I had about 145 in my most recent Fallout 4 playthrough a couple years ago.

 

Online games I don't touch.

[Andreas Lilja]

Mostly try mod-free first playthroughs, except maybe widescreen or unofficial patches.

[Underi]

I play mod-free every time unless the mods are "a part of the game" and there is a big modding community behind it, like the Elder Scrolls series. Also I like installing Reshade on some games that are a bit older, like GTA IV, Insurgency or Euro Truck Simulator 2. For newer games, I don't use mods.

[Guest]

If the #1 mod listed is visual tweaks & it’s not a bajillion gigs, I’ll get it. 

 

I would get the fallout 4 and rainbow six siege textures but, they’re like 30-60 GB. 10 GB is like really pushing it imo. I think i got mods for arma 3, Skyrim & maybe one other game. I leave the settings as they are because the games nowadays either look good or they don’t. 

[Praesi]

Depends on the Game. DarkSouls 3 can be enhanced alot with Sweet FX and i modded the living Hell out of Skyrim&Co. Odysse on the other Hand looks insane on its own.

[Lathlaer]

Depends on the game and how much of a PITA installing a mod is. I like mods where you simply replace game files but I dislike any kind of mod managers. I will use them though if the reward is big enough.

 

It depends on the game but some reshades are simply different and not universally better in which case I usually don't bother. I will mod the shit out of older games for higher res textures though.