I've finally found time to play a little bit of New Vegas, after I picked it up at Christmas.and as such, I have no idea what I'm doing. Yeah I think I'd disable the Monster mod since it isn't doing anything for me and try to stick with the increased spawns a little longer. Ironically the monsters imported from STALKER via the Monster mod do nothing for me since they don't have any tension associated with them. That add a nice sense of danger to the world that a game like STALKER has but Fallout 3 was a little short on. The ghoul additions were also really interesting, especially night ghouls making it a lot more dangerous to travel at night. I really miss the increased creature variety and all the color / size varieties and the way the raiders looked were more interesting as well. Not all the Mart's Mutant Mod additions were great, but compared to the stuff in the Vegas Monster mod they look way more professional. I'd still recommend IWS without the Monster Mod. I'm told that they are fun to hunt down in the AWOP Rumble Zones as a mission-like challenge, but honestly, you can skip the Monster Mod unless you are running other mods that require it. Monster Mod adds a ton of monsters, and a lot of them aren't really canon.

Or uninstall some of those 'lipstick on a pig' prettification mods that greatly slow down your performance. If you are getting decreased performance, you might want to try the temo or ToggleEmotions console command. I love hearing 'pop pop pop' and going over a hill to see a Legion/NCR or Jackal/NCR battle. The village guards make the populations seem a bit more realistic, and the patrols set up some running gun battles between conflicting factions, which is really nice. I play IWS with Low Spawns and everything else on, generally. It might be the world design in New Vegas is less conducive to more spawns or that Vegas had a better difficulty curve then Fallout 3 so increasing the difficulty is less necessary to add a sense of danger to the world. No idea what element from Mart's it's missing. Mart's made the world of Fallout 3 feel more alive whereas the increased spawns in Vegas just turns everything into a shit show, encounters no longer feel properly spaced out and it makes the combat feel repetitive. They seem to just be missing the same magic that Mart's Mutant mod had. I think I might disable the increased spawn and monster mod.

Fallout new vegas awop