I don't find mods necessary to have fun. Mainly I use them to add more nitty gritty things, drama like crazy custom traits and things you just couldn't normally play out in ts4. Since I love apocalyptic play that's the only way for me to get it. But no I don't feel like I NEED it to have fun. I would just have to switch up my playstyle like before I discovered mods.
What I feel I NEED is cc ?
I love all the modders out there but they bring so many glitches to the game lol I really prefer as less as possible