Are mods usually confusing as hell or am I just an idiot?

Some games are super easy, press a button and it's done (steam workshop and things like that), most games are pretty easy but it varies (drag and drop some files to a specific place, maybe do a load order) and then there's the games that aren't made in a mod friendly way and require a 50 step ritual to add a minor graphics update that probably won't work the first 3 times because you forgot to add a patch on step 7b. Mass effect is definitely not a game designed to be modded, bg3 hasn't had full official mod support that long afaik so some stuff is likely still hacky

Some games lend themselves better to modding. Some are much more complicated to mod. Some games need a mod manager to do conflict checks and some games can just have mods piled on top of each other endlessly without issues.

Mods within certain game engines can pretty much be moved between games ofln the same engine often with very little adjustment.

I would say in modern modding it is usually fairly straightforward, but some games and some older mods definitely require some deep computer fuckery.

Stick to things you're comfortable with and skip the ones you aren't.

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.

"If it was easy, it wouldn't be a shortcut, it'd just be the way. "

Modding varies from game to game, but having been doing it for nearly 40 years now, I can say it has generally become easier in the titles that want you to and harder in the ones that don't.

Can't say that I've ever had this issue. Usually mod authors will tell you where to install them, or package the files in a folder structure such that there is no thinking involved.

Are you using nexus mod manager, vortex? Makes modding somewhat friendlier

Use Nexusmods and their Vortex mod manager. It simplifies it a lot, though you may have to watch a quick tutorial video or two. It's nothing that you won't learn, though.

Certain other games may have other mod loaders just for them, that you can use. KSPs CKAN comes to mind, or Curseforge for Minecraft. A lot of games handle mods through the Steam Workshop.

In the case of using mod loaders most of the stuff you will have to do yourself will be limited to keeping mods updated, resolving conflicts, and managing load orders (where applicable).

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.

I think you made the right choice here.

There's no quality control in modding communities so I'd say the effort the developer puts into the install instructions is going to be a reasonable indicator of the quality of the mod itself.

Not familiar with those particular games, but if you're lucky there might be a third party mod manager that takes some of the hassle out.

Depends on the game and how the mods work. I just did a bunch of mods on Morrowwind and there was a tool for it and it was straight forward. GTA IV was super straightforward loading the mods I thought. Dolphin game mods I thought where a little funky till I spent a little time with it and was like oh this makes sense they way they are doing it and I was being a dummy not fully reading the instructions

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.

You're not missing anything. Heavy modding of older games PC can be a pain in the ass.

You can usually find a somewhat coherent and structured guide that will give you a step by step process, but will still be time-consuming (and there will likely be exceptions or outdated information).

The best option is to keep mods to minimum unless you know what you are doing and it's a game that you play on a permanent basis.

This just reminds me of the mod situation for early versions of Minecraft. These days it's as simple as pressing a button and dropping your mods into a folder, but back then it was a case of directly modifying the main Java file, removing specific bits, adding specific bits in specific places... not smooth at all

Depends on the game. When the game was made in a way that is easily moddable then installing mods usually just means putting the mod files into some directory. But when a mod is supposed to do something that is not really supported then it has to do even more crazy stuff. And when several mods want to do similar crazy stuff it gets even more complicated.

So it really depends. Though BG3 has mod support built in by now. So everything in there should be easy.

Nexus's Vortex will be your friend. The Steam Workshop will be your best friend from elementary school.

Vortex works with Nexus mods damn near flawlessly. It's pretty easy to set up as there are instructions to guide you through the process.

Workshop is literally just a single click to download and install mods to your games. Sometimes you may have to activate the mods in the games themselves.

Other than that, I've found modding to get easier the more you do it. You start to see patterns and pick up on where certain files should go or how they should interact and work. People will make their own mod managers for specific games (I have the Sonic Adventure 2 Mod Manager for instance) as well.

I used to manually mod like this, but for a few years now I've pretty much just been using mod lists/packs.

For Bethesda RPGs (TES/Fallout), and a couple other games, you can use Wabbajack to auto-install a bunch of different lists, some of which have thousands of mods.

For other games you can usually use Vortex and Nexus collections, or in the case of Steam workshop, workshop collections.

If you want a good mod list for BG3, there's Listonomicon.

For every mod you add, complexity usually increases exponentially.

Depending on the game, difficulty also varies: modding stardew valley is joy (117 mods in a pack, easy afternoon sipping tea), modding skyrim less so (oh god,these two amazing mods tweak the same tree, time to go patch hunting, 2 weeks later you play it only to spot obscure graphical glitches, all hail wabbajack automation!), trying to make a working multiplayer mod pack for rimworld is pure suffering (why do you hate me, why do two compatible mods generate mass instability?!? 4 months of bug hunting and unsalvageable runs due to strange mod interactions, gave up for now).