minervamaga

This is one of the biggest issues the SDV community has, mod theft here on Nexus. And often we struggle to get the offending reupload removed. One of the issues that I mentioned that has led to a lot of distrust and unhappiness with Nexus in our community. The download redirects was the icing on the cake to the other complaints we had, that remain un-addressed.

Re: the coffee conversation. Perhaps some of you are under the impression that supporters are not seeing these "go premium"/"slow/fast download" screens. That is false. Doesn't matter how much money you have tossed at Nexus in the past, if you are not a current premium member, you see them. The only way to get rid of them permanently is to buy a lifetime subscription, which yes, many users likely cannot afford. I know of at least one mod author for who even the monthly premium cost is a solid half of a day's pay (obviously not in the US or UK).

Sakorona has already addressed this, but I'll add on. What about users who speak English as a second language, or use a translator to access the site? What about users with screen readers? There are more examples, but the point is, this is what's referred to as deceptive marketing (iirc), the same as a shady third party sharing site. I think it's a shame that a well respected site has to resort to a tactic like this, honestly. Not that it matters to the Stans who are targeting and harassing users here in the thread, in a section that is dedicated to user feedback to the site admins. Not to other members, not to some random Joe, feedback to those who actually run the site.

The rate has gone up because people are being fooled into thinking they need premium. We've already had several new mod users in our discord very confused and thought they had to buy it. And not all of us are free users.

The Nexus promotes its offerings to bring in revenue to keep the lights on and reward mod authors. The users who have free accounts want everything for free without interruptions, distractions, or limitations forever - damn the costs! Who's greedy again? You liked my donut story but you clearly missed the point. As one of the users of said free accounts, I'm asking to please not lump us all in together. My only complaint about the new system has been in regards to the way that it looks, and makes the site look. And how it could affect new users coming to the site for the first few times, in regards to first impressions. As far as terms of costs, as far as the free members, and the supporting members, who are seeing this screen..... which again, I will repeat, VASTLY outnumber the amount of premium members, it's actually a huge INCREASE in bandwidth usage, to send out this new screen hundreds of thousands of times per month. A usage, that they could minimize a bit, by at least, not making that screen so darned big. [Edit] Now before anybody starts up on me, because I said that we and the supporting members outnumber you, stop and think. What I'm referring to, is site statistics. if there are as an example.... 10k premium accounts, and 50m free accounts.... those free accounts are making requests to the servers hundreds if not thousands of times more often than premium accounts are. An excellent point. Adding extra page loads only increases bandwidth use, which seems very counter-intuitive. If the site is struggling and needs money, adding forced extra page loads would be an extremely stupid move.

A) It's good to hear that some of you are trying to reach out and be proactive about your complaints. I completely support those kinds of efforts, whether I agree with the complaint or not. Out of curiosity though, objectively, if you think back on your communications with Stardew Valley's community manager, did you come off as indignant and aggressive as some parts of your posts read? If so, wouldn't that lead most people to react with resistance, or even silence? How does one communicate with someone that is already bristling and doesn't seem to want to hear anything but what they want to hear? It's also good to hear you all have delegated communications to some form of mediator. Good luck with those efforts! I wouldn't mind reading updates on how things work out. B) Because vacation time at any business is scheduled, people make plans, and good companies who want to keep their workforce happy, or keep their workforce period, don't screw that up. In some places, there are laws that protect those sorts of things. I'm not sure if there are any laws in the UK about such things but I wouldn't be surprised if there were. But, it's the holidays - or at least some form of holiday vacation (redundant?) - and I'm sure most of those that are enjoying the time that they have earned are taking a well deserved break from this part of their reality. Would you yourself want to deal with a group of angry consumers over the holidays, or any time of year, over something you may not have had much of a choice in, or take some time to breath, time you have worked for and planned on? I think this thread should answer some of your questions; just try to think of it from the shoes of those implementing this change - especially if you want others to understand where your own two feet are planted. If you're asking me (maybe you're not, but here's my answer anyway seeing how we're discussing these matters) they knew, from experience, that regardless of how they implemented this change, or any change, there were bound to be a slew of complaints from people who don't seem to want to see things any other way than the way they want things to be. Nearing their vacation time, or well before, they probably had one fashion of meeting or another at which leadership said something like: "we can deal with this change when we return, and handle what backlash we know we'll receive as it comes, or, we can push things through before the holidays, take off, let things cool down for a spell while we're gone, let those in the community that can form a coherent complaint hit us with some suggestions, and deal with everything with fresh minds," or something similar... just a guess, and potentially a bad one. Some may say that's cowardly, and maybe there is some point to be made there. But, if you can think outside of your own aggravation for a moment, and realize these folk knew full well there would be backlash, can't you see the wisdom in going about it the way they did? Maybe they'll be more responsive and open to suggestion when they return from a spell of potential relaxation. Maybe the community will calm down, realize what their complaints really are and calmly present them to the staff. Then again, maybe not. In any case, the reality is that in whatever way they decided to deal with this, they were bound to deal with backlash. Damned if you do, damned if you don't kinda thing. Personally, I'd want some time to relax before handling anyone's outrage, in hopes they had enough time to calm their initial emotional outbursts, and form reasonable complaints - else I'd go full orc myself, lol. About the claim that this shows disregard about their user base, I feel that's a big stretch of either ego, imagination, or both. Their user base encompasses how many people, from how many locations? It seems some think they speak for everyone here - or at least jump to the conclusion that they represent the vast majority. Maybe that's true, maybe it's not. My point there is, their user base is an extremely diverse group - just the mods here should show you that - and I don't think 30 pages of posts here, and who knows how many elsewhere, from a small fraction of their user base is enough to assume that one person here speaks for the majority. I know there are quite a lot of people who don't seem to care about this flag for membership one way or another. I know I don't. If anything, as I've stated before, it got me to realize how much I've taken this site for granted, and, not without pulling a few teeth (orc teeth too... ouch), I decided it was high time to pay for membership; something I've been thinking about doing for a long time now. I know my opinions are probably fairly unpopular right now among some of you.. maybe the majority. I'll live with that. I'm just sharing what I see and read along with the rest of you and mean no individual here ill will. So, happy gaming, modding, or turd slinging if that's your jam! :laugh: We did have an amicable relationship with our community manager. They started disappearing and obviously people became frustrated. And our community moderator supposedly has contact with them, but again, none of the concerns have been directly addressed with communication back to us. I'd love to provide updates on our suggestions and concerns, but sadly have nothing. Fair enough point about the holidays and vacation time, though perhaps I'm spoiled by other devs/businesses. I also work in healthcare, in which holidays just mean overtime pay XD We can agree to disagree on that one. I did find an interesting tidbit while checking around some documents though, that'd I like to leave here, as food for thought. Any emphasis is my own. From: https://help.nexusmods.com/article/96-download-speed-caps-adblockers-and-different-types-of-membership

accidental double post

A couple points to address: A) each time I've attempted to reach out to the community manager for SDV in the past few months, I've been left with either no response or resistance to suggestions. While this obviously doesn't represent the entire staff, the staff is also small enough that it doesn't imbue trust. We now also have a moderator for the SDV section, who we attempt to route contact through, only to be redirected to here (which, frankly, I have yet to see a staff member comment on these changes). B) That last comment leads on to this: why on earth would a company make a (relatively) major change to their system and then go on vacation??? That implies to me a lack of concern over their userbase and the reaction to these changes, let alone if it caused bigger issues like server crashes. Not to mention it was an unannounced change, after a lot of talk and hype over the new UI a few months back. That had a opt-in beta and plenty of info spread around about it before implementation, so why not this change? Why make themselves unavailable immediately after the change? It leaves a very bad taste in my mouth, to be honest. At the very least, a warning in the form of an announcement would have allayed some of the shock and outrage, though probably not the protests about the system itself.

I’m sorry that is harsh (I know your situation, i was there too) Its okay but you must understand that something must change. So that people who cannot pay for premium still can use the Nexus. I started recently modding in sims 4. All mods are scattered al over the internet (Patreon, Blogs) I am so glad that the nexus exists. (And no, Bethasda.net is not an alternative if you want to play your game in your language) You must not be familiar with ModTheSims. A site that has been around since the TS2 days and remains free to this day for all users. Personally I get all of my Sims mods from there if possible, because they have proven themselves dedicated to the community after so many years. When I got back into Sims recently, I was disappointed at the mod selection available here, to be honest.

Okay, popping back in to see pages of long time users staunchly ignoring what the rest of us are saying. I want to outline exactly why so many of us find these changes a large step in the wrong direction. Yes, Nexus has a right and a need to support the high traffic they get. However, acting like shady file sharing sites is not the way to go about it. I personally bought the supporter level after the first few months of using the site, since I was on here frequently and CANNOT, for health reasons, take off an ad blocker. And since I know some entitled person is going to ask, yes, some people can have migraines and/or full blown seizures from ad flickering and it is not in any way safe for them to take that blocker off and risk their health. After purchasing supporter level, I was gifted a premium membership from a user of my mods and ended up using some of my DP to continue it. I would have kept up with this, but forgot to renew when a three month term expired. At this point, I decided to save up my DP to purchase a lifetime subscription, since I didn't have to worry about ads anyway. At my rate of DP income, it would only be a few months anyway. And then, things started sliding downhill. Repeated issues of stolen mods (not my own) being reported and taking days or up to a full week to be removed, to the point of even needing to directly contact a mod about why they were still up. Most mod authors in the SDV community will know of the incident(s) in question, it only needs to be referred to as "that house mod" to be met with groans and much yelling. On top of this, the SDV community had a primary point of contact in the form of a community manager, who is also a member of our server. We had been told in the past to ping with any issues or questions, which worked out well (though obviously with a bit of delay to account for time zones). We often had a return ping within a few days or faster if DM'd. Around the time we started having a surge in stolen mods, we started seeing a lack of responsiveness from said manager as well. Repeated pings received no answers at times. DMs were better, but not always. Then we got to the banners a few weeks ago. Let me remind you, I am a user who paid for no ads, purchased several monthly premium memberships, and who is also a fairly popular modder within the SDV community. Certainly not Pathos level, but not a stranger to front page and several thousand DP per month (which in turn means revenue for the site). So needless to say, having a banner pop up on every page that couldn't be dismissed was a bit off putting, but I was willing to adopt a wait and see approach. Cue Friday morning, logging on to check the latest updated mods (of which there have been an avalanche thanks to the 1.4 update). I open my slew of tabs from the front page as usual, click over to the first one in the set, and what do I see? Something straight out of the early 2000s and mega.upload. Not gonna lie, it was like being in high school all over and trying to track down that one file you wanted. The resemblance only grew when I realized the pop up was not a one time thing, oh no. It was on every single file I downloaded. Mods with multiple downloads required going back to the files page and going through the entire process again. As a whole, I was impressed with Nexus when I first wandering into #modding and started checking it out. The site was fairly easy to navigate and had a wide variety of files, plus different sorting features (always welcome). As incidents and unaddressed concerns have started becoming more frequent though, I'm sadly reminded of great fansites that rose and fell because of alienating their userbase. I would hate to see a collection of works such as this lose the support of a community, as that's never good for anyone. BUT, a balance must be struck. I myself mentioned a few suggestions and I've seen other SDV modders in here echoing similar ideas: timed ads (perhaps once per day, once per week, etc) for going premium; the sticky banner; fundraising drives (possibly with small incentives); making premium memberships more than increased download limits/message storage; and more. As it stands, I don't see the value in a premium membership, as even when I did have it, it made no real difference to me or my experience. Another point to make, recognized mod authors receive a message that they will not see ads after they hit their 1000 download marker and access to the mod author forums. While this is a nice touch, a good portion of us may have already purchased the supporter tier. A tier system for mod authors (possibly weighted for each modding community due to the differences in download volumes) would be an alternative to invasive advertising for these users and help provide incentives for authors to make more content (which means more traffic, which means more incremental revenue). This has been a bit of a ramble and while I apologize for that, I felt it needed to be said. Our community in particular has been suffering a lack of support from Nexus recently and this latest change has many up in arms. To add onto that, many feel that they are being attacked for voicing their concerns about the direction the site seems to be headed in. So in closing, I want to remind everyone that we are all here because we love our respective games and want to be able to enjoy modding in peace. Nobody is arguing that the site doesn't need to support itself, just in the manner they are presenting this need. Deliberately reducing the experience of free users is not the way to go about things, as many others have learned in the past. And we all know what they say about those who do not learn from the past. Happy farming (and gaming) to you all. I hope the Nexus staff take the time to seriously consider the points of concern brought up in this thread and are transparent about future changes, for the better or for the worse. EDIT: trolls can kindly not engage. I want civil discussion, not blind support or snide comments.

Zola/Opalie chose to leave the site, as she was unhappy with the direction it is headed. Wedding Mod is also unfortunately bugged in 1.4 and still needs updated.

Also posting here, since the Mod Authors one is less active. As a verified mod author and a former premium member, these repeated, shove it in your face premium messages are extremely annoying and make the site harder to use/navigate. Especially if someone has a throttled/limited internet connection, the forced page reloads make them use up even more bandwidth and reduce the number of mods they can actually download at one time. The whole point of the "supporter" tier is to remove annoying ads, so why are these members still getting what is essentially unblockable ads on every page they click?? I fully understand that a website needs to make money, but there's a fine line between supporting your business with ads and driving away all of your users because you want to shove it your need for money in their faces everywhere you possibly can. There needs to be some kind of compromise, perhaps in the form of a timed reminder about going premium instead of placing it on every single download/page. And please revert the download pages, as a mod maker and frequent troubleshooter, having to reload the files tab for each and every file I need to download is a royal PITA.