KalChoedan

Uh-huh. I had exactly the same problem as OP, and removing Ethatron's High Quality LOD's fixed it for me.

Yes, it automatically downloads without anything popping up. If you happen to be looking and your PC is at the desktop when it happens, it will pop up one of those little bottom right hand notifiers to tell you it's finished, but that's it.

"I'll gore you like a beast!" Just guessing here, haven't heard it myself. I'll keep my ears, uh, open.

I disagree, that isn't implied at all. All that's suggested is that the author is aware that it had happened, and given people's reactions around you when you use a shout, I don't think it's much of a stretch to imagine it generates a good deal of gossip (off-camera). The author heard that you'd done it, there's nothing to suggest he actually heard you do it. That said, the Greybeards clearly "just know somehow" after you absorb your first Dragon Soul, so it's clearly possible that the author could be someone who was themselves "special" somehow (a dragon, a greybeard, someone with a mcguffin, etc) and that they literally "heard" you do it, even if they weren't actually present. And indeed, they might have been present. I'm not dismissing the idea, but I disagree that it's implied by the note. The "truth" of course is that it's just been written intentionally vaguely exactly so we can all enjoy a bit of wild speculation like this! :D

Yes, it's true. Soul trap works just the same as any other weapon enchant for your followers. Whoever is using the soul trap enchant needs to have the soul gems in their inventory - so if you want your follower to fill them, they need to be carrying them. That's all there is to it.

Well to be fair, I don't think "just don't use it" is a terribly good solution either, when crafting is such a big part of RPGs for many people. Apart from the balance problems (and the UI... ugh), it's implemented in quite a fun way in Skyrim, very integrated into the world, even if the system itself is actually very simplistic. There really isn't any alternative to "just don't use it" at the moment though, so it's just down to your own judgement and self-restraint. I'd be interested in hearing how people think this could be balanced - seeds of ideas for future mods, right? The obvious one upfront would be what (most) MMOs do - level requirements on gear. That would be a very non-Elder Scrolls method though. Level requirements for crafting with certain mats? Is there something other than level it could be scaled against?

It's exactly the same as in Oblivion. You get more powerful when you don't drink, but you also lose the ability to pass as human. It's a bit rubbish. There also doesn't seem to be anything like Morrowind's Vampire clans and quest lines. Roll on the mods :)

AFAIK the only way that door is getting unlocked is via the relevant early (i.e. 1st) Mages Guild quest. Whether you choose to join the Mages or merely infiltrate them for the purposes of gaining entrance is entirely up to you. Isn't this by definition a spoiler? You're asking for direct confirmation of details of a quest.

I've no doubt this will happen, and I look forward to it. They've also gone with the frankly insane Oblivion-style Vampirism where you become more powerful when you don't feed but lose the ability to pass as human. There were 3 or 4 really good mods for alternate Vampire systems in Oblivion, and the "supernatural races" are always really popular. I expect this will be a hot area for modding :) Against the lore, huh? Maybe for a regular Joe... but I wonder how many times in Tamriel's history a Dragonborn has tried to contract both conditions? :D

If you do agree that it's a good solution and a feature that will likely be implemented when you do have time, is it unreasonable to suggest that for the moment, you use your editorial discretion to make an exception to the current policy for Zenball's mod (or any similar projects if Zenball no longer intends to continue with his)?

You know what? The more I think about it the more I think this is exactly the right answer. It puts all the power in the hands of the modder. Make available a bugfix category and make it very clear that if you choose to put your mod in that category it essentially makes that file forevermore community property. Suddenly the Nexus becomes a valuable bug-searching/stomping tool for anyone motivated enough to take on something like a community patch. Nobody is compelled to put their fix mods into the bugfix category - but if it's a really simple mod, it has to be realised that eventually, someone will. That also proves to be a useful and modder-controlled method of "drawing the line" - no-one at the Nexus needs to make that decision, if an individual modder believes that they put enough effort into the fix that it's become more than a simple bug fix, they can choose to use a different category. By george, I think he has it!

It's really important to emphasise this. This is about bug fixes specifically, not about modding in general. The way the community has operated to date is that nobody "owns" bug fixes. That's really important. You find and fix a bug, you let the community know about it (whether by posting about it somewhere or by producing a file and releasing it), that bugfix then becomes part of the community's accumulated knowledge and can then be incorporated wherever it's relevant, whether that's into an over-arching bugfix "unofficial patch" or just into your own mod that happens to touch the same things. The original discoverer of the bug/author of the fix certainly deserves credit for finding the bug/figuring out the fix, but they certainly don't have any right to deny anyone else permission to fix that bug themselves (which is what denying permission to use "their work" would amount to.)

Again, it's not really about modder's rights, per se - I think everyone here is in agreement that supporting modder's rights is a good thing. The point, really, is that the permissions system isn't actually doing that - it doesn't deter the dishonest from being dishonest and it may even lead those who would otherwise be honest to either be dishonest or simply not submit their work at all. Nobody gains from this system; honest modders and community lose out. What is the benefit? Really I think it's about the nature of bug fix mods and how the technical part of the community operates. It makes no sense to talk about "stealing other's work" when we are talking about single-bit bugfixes; that someone else fixed it first does not take away any other individual's right to fix that bug themselves (and release their fix publically). Given that not only is there no way to tell but there isn't actually any difference between a file produced completely from scratch without reference to anyone else's work, a file that was produced manually after examining someone else's code or a file that was simply merged in via a tool like FNVEdit, the resulting file would necessarily and by the nature of bugfixes, be exactly the same. Are we really trying to exert control over what tools mod authors can use to produce their files? Are we just trying to insure the purity of our mod's intangible "souls"? If they had had to operate under this system, Quarn and Kivan would never have been able to produce either of their Unofficial Patches, which had a list of fixes contributed by others that was into the high hundreds, in addition to work done exclusively by Quarn and Kivan. Can you imagine if they had to painstakingly contact (and retain documentation of that contact) every single contributor and obtain their explicit permission to include "their work" - and all this just to satisfy one hosting site's rules?

I just want to try and underscore exactly why this policy makes no sense in as simple terms as possible so we can all get on the same page here. Showler in the original discussion on Bethsoft's boards said the following: Dark0ne said something similar in this thread: Now I'm sure we can all understand the reasoning here and it is clearly well-intentioned. It makes perfect sense in the case of mods including longer scripts, external assets or anything else which would make it uniquely identifiable. However in the case of a bugfix mod there is simply no way for an external party to tell the difference between the nominally "merged" .esp and the manually edited .esp - the result would in fact be identical. All you are really asserting any control over is which tools the modder uses - a merge tool or a pen and paper and their memory - but there's still no way for you to know which was in fact used. This means that you are reliant on the individual releasing the new mod to be honest about his sources - if they decided to lie, there would be absolutely no way for you to know. You are therefore still exactly as reliant on the "honour system" as you were before the permissions system was implemented. The only difference now is that any honest modder who would previously have simply given due credit is now forced to invest a significant amount of extra time obtaining and tracking individual permissions to incorporate each fix - and remember in the case of a bugfix mod this may amount to several hundred individual requests for permission, each of which will require contact with an individual who may or may not be readily available online. As more and more fixes are discovered by the community and incorporated this load will only increase. Basically, you are significantly penalising anyone who wants to be honest while doing absolutely nothing to deter anyone who wishes to be dishonest. I hope that makes it clear why, despite the best intentions, the permissions system is counterproductive, at least the way it is implemented currently as regards "bug fix" type mods.

Zen, for what it's worth, I think your ideas are solid. I do however think that ultimately the Nexus is completely wrong to be implementing this permissions system and that it will cause (as it has here) far, far more trouble than it is worth. The ideal of protecting mod author's rights is a good one and I'm all for that. I completely disagree that bugfix mod authors should have those rights, lumping tiny bugfixes into exactly the same camp as much larger mods is a terrible precedent to set and I firmly believe will lead to the death of the technical modding community. I've made the case for exactly why in my earlier posts and as yet nobody has rebutted any of it. The Nexus has now killed this mod with it's over-the-top implementation of the permissions policy, however well-intentioned it may be. How many others are being entirely discouraged from modding? How many mods are already up here that make some use of other people's work but have chosen simply not to give credit where it's due just to avoid this mess?

I think it's the difference between "looking after author's rights" and "giving authors new rights that they shouldn't really have" that is fundamentally where we disagree here, Robin. I think I've made the case for why giving authors undue additional rights is bad for the community, and you don't seem to have disagreed with any of my points. Is this simply not something you are willing to discuss?

What "attitude" are you referring to, sesom? Zenball has bent over backwards to do the "right" thing every step of the way, even when the "right" thing as dictated by the Nexus may not in fact be the "right" thing in the bigger picture, as I've tried to explain. He initially gave credit to every other author whose work had in any way influenced his (which is already more than is required by Bethsoft's EULA). Once the Nexus took his file down he has been working hard to get all the permissions required by the Nexus to allow him to re-release this for the Nexus community, again, even though he doesn't need to do this and could just release his work on another site with zero repercussions.

http://www.thenexusforums.com/index.php?app=forums&module=extras&section=boardrules#uploading End of story. Kal, your last post is one of the reasons why we have a rule like that. To avoid having to sort that kind of thing out, and not have to go thru the "he said, she said". I'm honestly not sure that this qualifies though. You would know better, but let's just say for the sake of argument that Zen had released this as "Zen's Unofficial Patch" and never used the word "compilation". He could have enclosed a list of mods that you shouldn't use alongside his mod because their fixes were included. This seems to be fundamentally different than the types of things (my favourite mods etc) that are described in the rule you linked there. It can't be the first time this has happened. Am I completely wrong to think that had he taken that route, this "ZUP" wouldn't have even been on your radar (as far as permissions and the like go, anyway?) I think it's also worth noting that combing technical fixes is a qualitatively different matter than a simple compilation of favourite mods. Some fixes may simply not work together at all unless integrated properly and not everyone is sufficiently competent with (or interested in) the editor to be able to do this themselves. Zen isn't just hitting a magic merge button and releasing the results, there is an amount of work he has to put in to get all this running together even over and above the fixes of his own that he has incorporated. I think that although you are doing a great thing here in trying to provide extra protection for modder's work, by extending that protection to cover every .esp file hosted here you are hurting the mod community. Creative authors are the ones who need your protection, especially people who are building entirely new .esp based content, because unlike the mesh/texture/sound file guys, they don't even have copyright to protect them as Beth owns all the .esp's. But technical authors who are releasing very tiny fixes that really just address typos or oversights in the base game not only do not need that protection but I believe it is important for the health of the community that they explicitly do not get that protection. The technical modding community has always been a bit incestuous - if someone comes up with a new fix for something, everyone is at liberty to check it out in the editor and see how it was done, learn from it and incorporate it into their own mods. They don't need any permission to do that, not even should they then choose to release it publicly (per Beth anyway), and that's just as well because if they did it would all but kill the technical modder community. I'd go so far as to suggest that any modder who has created a fix of this ilk and insists on people getting his permission to reuse it or worse refuses permission has both misunderstood what rights Bethesda has granted him (it may even qualify as a breach of their EULA) and is on an ego trip, and are themselves harmful to the community. You shouldn't be encouraging or empowering these people! The issue with simply not being able to tell the difference between a "plagiarised work" and a "reproduced work" is important too. If there is fundamentally no way to tell the difference between the two (except for "he said, she said"!), then there is absolutely no way for you to make a fair decision should a dispute arise. You are setting yourselves up for a no-win scenario where whatever decision you make will appear to be arbitrary and capricious. I'm sure you don't want that. This also leads to the scenario I described above where you all you are actually achieving is to encourage people not to give credit, again, not something you wanted, I'm sure. Clearly as fixes become more complex it gets harder and harder to determine which mods are purely technical and which contain creative elements; I do understand why you don't want to get involved in drawing that particular line. Where exactly is the point where "fixing typos and logic flaws in Bethesda's script" becomes "basically ripping out the whole script and writing it from scratch"? It's a tough one. I think however the fact that certain types of mod absolutely do not require any kind of permission to use is fundamental to the success of this modding community (at least those parts of it most interested in fixing bugs), so if there is going to be a permission system at all, that line has to be drawn.

I don't know what else I can say to convince you Dark, if my original post hasn't convinced you then I don't know what will. You don't seem to be suggesting that anything I've said is wrong, but it's also clear that you don't agree! I was using the two terms interchangeably; "far less onerous" is probably most accurately what I meant, though. Think about it: you'd have the editor open anyway to do whatever merge you were doing, the files we are discussing are all really really small, it would only take a couple of extra seconds to check for uniquely identifiable comments. It seems obvious to me that having to seek, track and document explicit permission every time you fix a bug that someone else may have fixed first (and hosted their fix on the Nexus) is going to be more work, more time and more onerous, however you slice it. I don't know if you have actually looked at the file in question in an editor; I have in detail and I can assure you there is no way you would have been able to tell whether the 2 being changed to a 1 was a 1 "stolen" from someone else's file, or whether Zen only read someone else's 1 and then changed his own copy of that 2 to a 1. Born yesterday or not there is literally no way you would be able to make any kind of fair decision, and so it all just sort of falls apart. As far as you would be able to tell, either modder could be lying. If you err on the side of caution and pull the file just in case you open yourself to abuse by trolls, and what's worse, how could the author of the pulled file ever prove they were innocent? If you leave the file up you could be enabling a thief - and how could the complainant ever prove they are being plagiarised? There is no possible positive outcome from this scenario - nobody wins whatever you do. Like I said I completely understand your motivation for this, you are trying to do your best to protect modders rights. But I think in implementing a system that is far more restrictive that Beth's own requirements you are making a huge mistake. Part of the reason that this modding community is so succesful is that Bethesda are so unrestrictive in their policies towards modding. This does more harm than good.

If only everyone was available 100% of the time and responded immediately to their PM's! I think the amount of time that this particular file has been unavailable should at least be suggestive of how much of the modder's time actually has to go into obtaining these permissions; unfortunately with a bugfix mod it is only going to get worse as more and more fixes come to light. By comparison, I can compare two files in FNVEdit and strip out anything that might give away plagiarism in a matter of minutes at most, at least when it comes to the sorts of files being included here, and I'm far from an expert. The exact size of the burden placed on the modder is is only part of the issue though. Right now it makes more sense for Zen to either just host it elsewhere or to re-brand it the ZUP as I mentioned above and include a list of conflicting mods (or at least acknowledgements.) If Zen had never called this a "compilation" in the first place I doubt this would ever have arisen, and that's just silly.

Original discussion is on the Bethsoft forums, here. That should help clarify things, WastelandAssassin. Basically what I'm saying is that the system is set up such that if a modder chooses to release their work on the Nexus, if that work is even so much as inspired by anyone else's work that's already on the Nexus, they are tangibly better off if they do not give any credit. That clearly isn't what the system was designed to do. It works really well for things where plagiarism would be obvious e.g. new meshes, textures etc, or where there are entirely new scripts/worldspaces etc for someone versed in the relevant tools. But for anything smaller than that, the system fails, and it fails in a way that harms both the modder (whose time gets wasted) and the community (who may lose access to something they want.)

Hi guys, I wondered if you wanted to follow up on the discussion we were having on this over on the Bethsoft official boards - it's probably more relevant a discussion here anyway. First of all I want to make it clear that I have been a huge fan and supporter of the Nexus sites since their inception. I certainly don't mean to offend anyone but I am trying to give constructive criticism - just because I <3 you guys so much :) So in short, I think that the Nexus is making a big mistake with the policy on permissions. I completely understand your motivation - to protect modders, and I also understand that you don't want to get involved in the "drawing of the line". However I believe that if you are going to have permissions then you need to draw that line and I hope I can convince you of that. What I'm concerned about is that by not making a distinction between the types of mods that require permissions to use and ones that do not (but a credit would be polite) you are creating a situation where people are actively being discouraged from giving credit to any other author if that author's work so much as inspires them in the creation of their mod. Obviously this is completely contrary to the spirit of the community (and indeed your own intentions I'm sure!) To take Zenball's Compilation Patch as the catalysing example here, the current rules make it completely acceptable for Zenball to have released his compilation providing he took all the credit for it (with the exception being, as always, any non .esp assets.) That this would be far less work for him is obvious. That he in fact gave credit to everyone underscores what a good guy he is. It's possible someone might have complained about plagiarism, but given even examining the code in the editor couldn't reveal who was telling the truth, how could you possibly ever make a fair decision? Or perhaps another way; instead of (too?) honestly releasing it as the "Compilation Patch", instead Zenball releases the exact same file only he calls it Zenball's Unofficial Patch, and simply turns the "credits" section in the existing readme into a list of which mods not to use alongside his mod "because ZUP already includes those fixes". Would you be insisting he get explicit permissions from the authors of the "conflicting mods"? Aside from his marketing, he wouldn't have done anything different. I hope this makes it clear why the current policy makes no sense and is even counterproductive. I also mentioned on the Beth forums that I was concerned about possible legal "hot water". I am in no way a lawyer so of course my concerns could be completely baseless, and several people poo-pooed what I had to say, so take this however you like. Copyright and intellectual property law is a funny area though. Of course the Nexus is a private site, and you can have whatever rules you want, but remember that the files you host are predominantly Bethesda's intellectual property, legally speaking, and if the permissions control panel was somehow construed as granting permissions over someone else IP... I'm just saying, I could be way off base, but it's something I would be concerned about if I were you (as if you didn't already have enough to do.) So there you go, I hope that didn't come across as aggressive or rude or anything, I am really just trying to help out here. EDIT: added link to beth forum thread