Unfinished Business in Bethesda Games: Should the Mods make the games better?

In light of the release of Fallout 4 and the subsequent Game of the Year Award loss to The Witcher 3, message boards have exploded into wars over the quality of Bethesda's recent post-apocalyptic RPG. One of the largest and most frequent complaints for any Bethesda game is release content and stability – is a game devoid of the life that mods bring and running on a temperamental engine really worthy of the acclaim it receives?