I like mods that have a 1 2 punch deal. I hate complicated installs or editing things yourself because there's a 50 percent chance you could mess it up.

Hard way.
Simply because whenever there's a reason to shoot people, I'm up for it. Especially if there's a new weapon in it for me

like to work for it, its the wasteland too your not just going to fine a bada** power armor in doc mitchell's house poor guy has a lot of junk in his home

I really like what tumbajumba did in fallout 3 with the scavenger armor mod.
He openden a shop
You have to buy them there ,they are not too expensive and not too cheap.
I dont really like 'the easy way' ,it destroys the whole game.
You start and find one of the best guns in game just infront of you ,nothing is a problem now ,you can kill everything in some seconds.
But there are some really good mods out there wich do this.
There is a box with cool stuff in it.
I install this mods later so the whole feeling do not get destoyed

I'll typically test a gun or armor to see if I'll even like it before I dedicate a spot in my load order for it, so in that case I'll use the easy way. Though for my actual play through, I definitely like the hard way so long as the reward is proportionate to the effort, I've run across a couple mods that by time you have enough experience and gear to actually get the reward it's no longer even useful, let alone worth the effort. But for the most part, whether it's a full and involved quest or even just a scavenger hunt, the hard way just gives more of a feeling of accomplishment.

I prefer the hard way but some of the mods I've seen that try to do this just scatter content throughout the game and send you on a scavenger hunt, and that i do not like. If the hard way meant, as you said, fighting a boss enemy of doing a cool quest that'd be great but just scattering gear to unknown places is flippin' annoying. IMO