Freedom, which includes the freedom to mod the game to our liking. This is the best modding community in gaming, because Bethesda was open enough with their game and developers tools, as far back as Morrowind, to allow us all the opportunity of making and playing with mods.

I've read all kinds of reviews about FO4. The critics are largely right, but the point that they are missing is that what really makes these games amazing is still here. It blows my mind how many quality mods are already out, even before the release of the CK. I would have lasted about 8 hours on a console. As long as Bethesda keeps the game open enough, and lets this talented modding community do it's thing, you can count me in, and I'll keep giving them my money.

Yes, those are pretty much the only games I have the steam account for.

I tried Dragon Age Inquisition for example, but they kept changing the patch system after release with nearly every patch/dlc and this broke the community written modding tools. It felt like they were actively working against modders. In Skyrim some of the mods from 2011 are still working just fine.

I love it too but it does come at a pretty high cost considering nearly every other triple A game out there feels and looks way better. Personally i feel the trade off is worth it but people in the community whining about the outdated look and feel of the engine can get rather...tiresome at times.

I think they are the best from way back in daggerfall days.......

Bethesda games have two release dates. The day the game is released and the day the Creation Kit is released.

Modding support if done right can extend a games lifespan and sales well beyond it's initial release. Neverwinter Nights 1 being a good example, although their scripting changes during expansion releases did break a lot of older modules.

The base campaign was better, but Neverwinter Nights 2 never reached the same levels of user generated content due to the modding tools being less user friendly and partly due to the most creators catering only to min-max fighter builds.

Preaching to the choir brother.

Most companies do not support mod making and in some cases you can get banned if using mods if the game is online.

Mods can enhance a game but they can also have the opposite effect as well.

I found the Diablo 1/2 mod making community to be the best back in the day, it never got that large since mod making was never supported (officially). Blizzard did take some ideas from them and one of the Devs for Diablo 2 was even active in the community where he made patch 1.10 to be quite friendly to mod makers. I think I liked that community more because the amount of mods were less but the ones that were made seem to be of high quality so it was easier to sift through the mods, also the mod makers seem to be more friendly to each other and worked together more often. The Bethesda mod making community is quite good, but I feel that there are quite a bit of tensions between many of the mod makers with other members of the community and I think it got worse in the past year, especially in April. Hopefully it does get better.