samuelgensler

I'm aware different areas of the game represent different viewpoints. In the case of reddit, for instance, the changes received almost universal praise, but the discussion quality was not so great. Usually just one or two sentence responses to the tune of "paid mods bad" without any real debate over the nuance. However even there I saw complaints about the patch stuff. I'm not saying the current change isn't good, but it's also worth considering who makes up what communities you're talking in. Of course reddit is largely pro-free mods. Discord I can't speak to, for the reason you gave. It's like, if Taylor Swift does something terrible and you walk into the Taylor Swift sub expecting criticism of it, you'll probably not find that. The sub's community took an anti-VC/CC stance a long time ago and never shook it off (ironic choice of words given my Taylor Swift reference), and have more or less made it clear alternative opinions aren't welcome. So, you don't really get them, though I'm sure if you dive deep into the downvoted posts (another issue with reddit, as a small majority can hide most of the opposing voices) you'd find criticism of the policy. Here, obviously, there's no downvoting, so someone saying "I like this policy" can't be hidden like people saying "I dislike this policy" can be there. But yeah, discord is unfortunate. A lot of communities I'm part of try to avoid using discord altogether for discussions because of how closed off it is.

No, you see, this is actually good for the community. Instead of easy to access patch hubs for content, we now have to find specific patches in optional files from modders who may not exist anymore. God forbid the community be allowed to do anything for itself. And the latest update effectively confirms this was never a legal issue or anything of the sort, it's genuinely Nexus admins trying to take a controlling role in the community and decide what people are and aren't allowed to have out of some naive belief that they're taking a stance against paid mods. We're all on AE, where was the stance then?

Ultimately this is a good change in the right direction, but at the same time why are we just denying reality here? In no way does it seem like a large number of users were praising the changes, and plenty of non VC authors were critical of them. Being this "pro free mods" but only related to VCs still comes off as super vindictive. If this is truly the stance of nexus, the SE hub should be shut down and we should all be stuck on oldrim. Or we should be relegated to pre AE versions only. Baby steps I guess, but none of the policy changes come off as coherent with each other.

Probably, or the author hid it to get ahead of potential reports. Either way, genuinely pathetic and unnecessary. Not mad at the author, but the poorly thought out policy change made without consulting the mod user community who are most affected. And no, this isn't about protecting free mod makers, if it was they wouldn't be allowing VCs to advertise on their free nexus content. It'd be a clean break. That it's not tells me it's just a frustrating and intrusive attempt at sabotaging the experiences of those who buy something like EEE or BCE.

Could even argue that EEE surpasses Hearthfire in terms of scope. Doesn't matter, though, because Nexus considers Armored Mudcrab to be more legitimate than BCE or EEE or Blood and Snow.

Also to this point, why is a line being drawn at controversial paid mods? Why not microtransactions? That it's specifically revolving around the sites biggest traffic drivers in Skyrim, Fallout 4, and now Starfield (though to a much lesser extent, sorry Starborn) makes it pretty obvious why it's being done, which is that either Bethesda directly got involved and Nexus is backing down or they're being controlling and want to make decisions for the community about the direction it goes in. And if it was the former, they could just say that. No one would blame them if that were the case. That they haven't makes me question any future affirmation of it being the case, because leading with that would've resulted in effectively no controversy, and the anger could be rightly turned onto Bethesda for trying to be the controlling ones. I can't fathom that's the case, though, given how many blatantly stolen things there are from other IPs. If something like BCE isn't going to be supported by anything nexus related, what is? Is it even possible to release a mod that's so high quality the gates are lowered for it? That mod featured, to my knowledge, the first ever returning Skyrim voice cast member, and somehow that's not good enough quality to warrant someone potentially paying for it? What does a VC have to do to get past the judge, jury, and executioner? Add a fully voiced Akavir to the CC? Of course not, even that wouldn't be enough. If they're truly consumer friendly, and taking a consumer friendly approach, go shut down every site revolving around greed driven games like GTA V and Sims 4. Don't discriminate, stand up for us consumers, go stop modding of games that take advantage of their players. Or, get out of the way, and allow us to make our own decisions about what mods have high enough quality to be worthy of money. We should be the judge, jury, and executioner of VC content. That content getting support in the form of compatibility patches and downloads, or being ignored, should be up to us.

Also something I was wondering. If it was Bethesda/Microsoft themselves breathing down their necks to force it, the anger could be redirected elsewhere, but it comes off as Nexus trying to make decisions for the users without consulting them. And yes, they absolutely should be consulting the traffic of their site about potential construction zones. Because that hasn't been said, despite ample opportunity to do so, my conclusion has to be that this is simply a decision by Nexus to try and discourage people from buying paid mods and enacting sabotage on the handful of really nice things by VC. And yeah, god forbid someone makes money off their hobby. I love the voluntary element of the community, and the idea that a bunch of people can come together to make something as good as an official release (Beyond Skyrim, looking at you!) but I'm not going to demonize someone who wants to earn a buck doing it in the only life they'll ever live.

Yeah that about sums up my position. Trying to prevent people from making patches for content like that comes off as super intrusive. My single player game is my single player game. If I want to spend 5 dollars, or 500 dollars on every garbage mod on the CC, I shouldn't feel discouraged to do so because Nexus decided to get super controlling over what I'm allowed to have access to. I could understand it if it was a legal issue, but we're talking about compatibility patches and retextures for mods that are of extremely high quality (Bards College Expansion could literally have been sold as an official DLC). There is zero justifiable reason to disallow those, and it just comes off as someone else putting their fingers all over my game. The other points make a ton of sense, but not that one. I'm surprised anyone is even remotely okay with it. And for the record, I'm not a fan of paying for mods, but this is going way too far and trying to discourage other people from making their own decisions by tanking the quality and accessibility of the ones that are sold. That's, frankly, not Nexus' business at all.