Fallout 4

For the few people who happen to read this before the next time they load up FO 4:

Do not update to the latest version of FO 4.

Bethesda did something very wrong and the latest version has broken many people's save games and mods, and made the servers completely inaccessible regardless (ie you're not going to be able to download mods even if you do update.)

I recommend playing offline until at least a few days after the next update to see if they fix it.

Say what you want about this game, but at least they made improvements to the animations and combat design.

So I have been giving Horizon for FO4 a try, since I literally have not much else to play.

First thing first, don't bother using Vortex, it's still a piece of shit. Everything is fine until you get to plugin management. Vortex doesn't even let you arrange them manually, you gotta set a "group" or create one, then manually choose which plugin belongs to which group and Vortex will try (and I quote, try) to arrange them automatically. It does a garbage job, it's non intuitive and it's still feels like pre alpha. Wasted an entire weekend installing with Vortex only to go back to Mod Organizer 2, for good or ill it's still is the easiest to use, and the one that actually gets the job done. A pity because I was diging Vortex until that point.

So, onto the mod. It's okay, but I don't like it as much as I thought I would. I like the survival aspect, but the mod expect you to either craft everything or buy everything, and scattered through the world there's literally not much for the crafting, since the idea of the mod is making resources scarce. Buying is impossible because everything is even more expensive than it was in vanilla, and coming across caps is a rarity.

I ended turning survival off (food, drink, and sleep) because this is yet another mod that handles those horrible. It's a chore and a half right from the get go. How your character needs to eat and drink so much after 8 hours of sleep is beyond be. Food and drinks that don't exist in the world and you gotta craft, but you can't craft them unless you have the right perks and ingredients, so you're forced to actually have a specific perk right of the bat. Forced, in an RPG. A system that creates another problem once you solve the first:
Clean rads with radaway > item makes you tired AF > go to sleep > wake up hungry and thirsty AF > consume 10 pieces of food and 8 bottles of water. Repeat every single day. A routine that gets stale really quickly, and it's also unrealistic for gameplay purposes.
Anyways, I'm having way more fun with that off.

As for the rest, the combat is more interesting, since everyone dies easily it makes you be extra careful, and it's also good because there isn't much ammo to begin with. It has ammo crafting among other things and it's less arcadey than vanilla. But the modification system is still bloated with "make gun more powerful" type or receivers that I really don't like. One of my main issues with vanilla.
It has it's own mandatory settlement building system, which I wish we could opt out since I use sim settlements that I like more. It just overcomplicates stuff on top.
The mod also requires you to read at least some documentation before playing, it's really different and complicated with all the items and new mechanics. But that's a given since it's an overhaul.

All in all, I'd say I like the mod just enough, but it still doesn't fix all the issues I have with vanilla, and adds things I don't like.
I have also installed Depravity and Project Valkyrie. Both mods aim to change early and end game quest line a little bit. Good thing if you're dead  bored of the vanilla main quest, but not to the point you want to remove them completely and replace them with nothing, like Frost does.

Mine is too, my game runs like hot garbage and I turned all the world texture mods off with no improvement (might just turn them on again). I think it's just the amount of mods I have.
It's this disgusting game engine that can't handle things anymore. I get 60fps just fine all the time, but the game uses this Atlas system loading and knocking down stuff around the player, and it does it very badly, so there're lag spikes every 100 meters of walk or so, it's really annoying, it seems like it never completely loads a cell. And I have a fairly decent PC.

NMM is obsolete as of now, it's been for a while actually, and in fact was never a good Mod Manager. Installing manually is not only a chore, but it's also so easy to fuck things up without the ability to roll back the changes.
I highly recommend Mod Organizer, it's fairly easy to understand and you can't go wrong with it. It does still have some... quirks let's just say, like .ini files management it's done in MO, you can't do it manually because the manager overwrites them every time you launch it. .Dlls are also iffy to manage with it, thankfully 99% of mods don't use .dlls and the script extender is safe to just drop directly inside the installation folder, same with ENBs.

As for the issue with big Overhaul mods, yeah totally. Horizon needs its own set of patches, and it's no small thing. I basically need a patch for every new weapon mod. Same happened back in the day with Skyrim and the overhaul mods like SkyRe and the likes.
I personally just wanted to change my game somewhat drastically, since I have a hell of a lot of issues with vanilla, many more than I ever had with previous Bethesda games.

Raider overhaul and SM overhaul are mods that I used in the past (not now though do to incompatibility with Horizon). The first one is really nice, but it's not 100% finished and has some issues IIRC, and the mod author kinda dropped the mod too. Last update was in 2017 if memory serves. As for Super Mutant Overhaul, it's nice enough. It adds nightkin from New Vegas, which already is a plus.
If you want stuff for your settlers, you have two nice ones that are Better Settlers (it has a one or two "hair" mods as requirement) and Eli's armor compendium. The first will give them lots of different looks and in conjunction with the second they'll also have tons of new clothes, armor and what not. Both work really well to give each a more distinct look.

No, as far as I know the mod is not out yet? A beta maybe? Yeah, I'm usually not into half finished big mods like that. I'd rather just play the whole thing once it's done, if it ever gets finished.

I doubt it doesn't work due to a mod manager... It might be the fact Vortex is shitty with plugin management and people can't get it to load them properly. I genuinely don't see why it wouldn't work with say, MO. The main reason I'm thinking is the modders have fucked something with the files, or it's unbelievably bad optimized, a huge problem with this game engine.

Hope they actually finish it at some point. Most of these mods never end up seeing the light of day. I really hope Skywind and Skyblivion don't get cancelled at some point.
Same happened with the FO3 mod for FO4, ass soon as Bethesda pointed the obvious to them, they just closed shop. They can't reuse assets from other games (voices in that mod), got it. But there was no need to just cancel everything, seems over dramatic. Who cares if the voices are not gonna be the same as in FO3? It's a mod, nothing will. And the community has plenty of amateur pretty good voice acting figures that will work for free knowing it's just a mod.
Anyways, some other team picked it up, but still. Not high hopes it'll ever be completed.

Bethesda all in all is still semi "pro mod". Their games wouldn't be what they are without mods after all, and they know it.
What happens is that the conditions are very clear: you cannot port assets directly from one game to the other. That's illegal. Voices, guns, textures, absolutely not.

But, if you want to recreate FO3 R91 assault riffle in FO4 creating the gun from scratch, that's fine (in fact there're at least 2 mods for that gun right now). FO3 in FO4 mod didn't work because the guys were porting the voices from 3 into 4, that was literally the only issue if memory serves. So I don't know why they went the nuclear solution. That exactly was what I was saying, why didn't they ask first? And even then, they could still keep going, just without the voices from FO3.
The guys at Skywind and Skyblivion (I think those 2 teams are connected) already talked with Bethesda I think. In fact those mods will require you to have the original games they're porting on top of Skyrim in order for them to work.
I'm not sure if that was a condition on Bethesda's part or they just decided to do it nonetheless. I'm also uncertain if the base games actually do anything (like porting map heights or something) or it's just a requirement for the sake of the mods being free to begin with.

Honestly I have no idea. All I know is that you'll need the base games to get the mods. I don't even have Morrowind myself, and don't even know if it's on Steam (I suppose it is).
They could add a check for a specific set of files, but if that's the case then you could have the game from the "free black ship giveaway" and how could they know? I don't know how it works.

As for mods, it's a bit of both. They want to push their Macro$ shenanigans, but at the same time know that without the community their games would be collecting dust a year after release instead people keep playing older games thanks to the mods.
Also remember Pete Hines said they would never do anything outside cosmetics for F76? and then they done it anyways? Recently they've put out a statement about how they decided to change that as a necessity in order to keep the game fresh with new content quickly. BS response to hide the fact they outright lied again.

Bethesda couldn't find their asses on a map even if their M$ depended on it. The best they could do is "hire" for CC garbo. They don't care for remakes. Remember there's even a small FO3 related mod thingy coming for CC, even then they just can't see it past that.
Creation Engine is basically Gamebryo, just with some junk ductaped to it. Not saying they need to make a new engine from scratch since that rarely happens, but this current engine is absolute ass and it's barely holding its weight right now.

Seriously underrated game. So much story out in the world to discover.

Building settlements is cool but I'm not really into it, usually I just set Hangman's Alley as base and don't bother with settlements on the other end of the map like Sanctuary or Zimonja.

Story-wise the only faction I like is the Railroad but can't say I like the main quest overall.

Be careful with the Railroad - I joined up with them because I sympathized with their pro-Synth rights ideology, but they end up asking you to do something pretty extreme in their "Rockets' Red Glare" quest. I believe there's a way to fail one of their quests earlier in the game that doesn't result in a total falling-out with them, but has their leader advise you to work with the Minutemen instead.