Feedback on Collections: Play Ready only post-download processing

[nokturnihs]

My most basic proposal would be to require two things for PUBLICLY viewable collections - a mandatory installation guide to cover whatever manual edits or suggestions/options the collection author/maintainer has and an acknowledgement that at the very least states "by making his collection visible to the public i certify that using a default installation the mod collection in question works without further actions or If it does require manual installation steps I have outlined them in the guide. Should that be proven false i acknowledge that the nexus may publicly delist or remove the collection until it meets these requirements."

 

For people interested in sharing private collections with friends when they do not want to meet those requirements they can create it privately with a private link to share and edit or troubleshoot it and make it public later. That way everyone still can handle it how they like and no one is restricted heavily but there's at least some burden of responsibility to collections maintainers to certify it's ready for public consumption and doesn't (like at present) have such detailed information as "mods that work" when clearly some do not "just work". It protects end users a little more and offers some CYA to the nexus and also adds less burden on mod authors who could easily become overwhelmed by support requests. This was one of the big contentions over collections. Personally I feel like collections authors should carry support burdens as they're unable to opt out of collections for their works. That will never happen on the nexus for various reasons so this is at least something that might help MA's out a little.

[nokturnihs]

There was some typos there because of the mobile site but mod authors cannot opt out of collections and the rest should be fairly lucid.

[nokturnihs]

Nothing you said is wrong, but consider that Nexus has never moderated mod uploads based on their own opinions of the quality of said mod. As long as a mod doesn't violate actual rules, which are minimal, then modders are able to upload whatever they have and users are free to download it or not.

 

Why would you expect Collections to suddenly alter this policy?

 

There are going to be some bad Collections. Everyone knew this from the beginning. It's no different from a bad mod. As long as it is not in violation of the rules there isn't much to do about it.

You make a valid point however it's probably not an extreme expectation to require a installation guide for public collections and I don't think that would constitution content moderation. It also probably makes collections more attractive. Look at the popularity of STEP in Skyrim as an example. Very successful and it's a good presentation that would probably draw more interest in the feature.

[Pickysaurus]

Hey nokturnihs,

 

Thanks for providing your perspective, I'll do my best to answer your initial questions, then pick out anything else from the thread since. While the intent is good, some of the community answers here aren't entirely accurate.

 

The first thing I need to point out is that you're actually referring to two separate things there, the Collections system itself which is an alpha feature designed and maintained by the team here at Nexus Mods and secondly the Cyberpunk 2077 game extension which is maintained by an awesome team of community developers (Kellie and her team). In the later case, they've been super receptive to constructive feedback around problems installing mods with the extension and have worked really hard to keep it updated with the current formats used by the community.

 

 

Collections were billed as a way for non-computer savvy folks or folks new to modding to be able to enjoy many mods easily. Mod Authors were required to forego their intellectual property rights to a degree to make this feature happen. Why then are you allowing collections to be posted that will result in MORE problems than if a person were to simply install a few suggested mods from say a youtube video. It seems to defeat the intent and cause more problems than it solves.

 

I do understand where you are coming from with this. The point of Collections is very much to allow users to share a curated list of their recommended mods. Obviously unlike a YouTube video or a forum post containing a list, we provide the ability to automate the downloading, installing and conflict management to get the users set up properly. If you're saying that installing the same mods with Vortex without using Collections results in a different end-product than doing it via a Collection that does seem odd to me. It may be the curator of the list has done something weird. I'd need examples of this really to say more.

 

 

Why are collections being posted that will 100% break people's games unless they're going in and performing manual file changes, which, while briefly discussed by Vortex in the form of alert boxes, large collections requiring 20-40 manual file edits to make the modpack work is ridiculous.

 

Just as with mods, we do not hand curate the content shared through Collections. However, we do provide the community the means to give feedback on each Collection to signal to other users if it works or not. 12 hours after installing a collection Vortex will pop up and ask "did this work as expected?", that vote is then tallied into the "Success rating" you can see both on the tile on the list page and on the collection page itself.

 

We have identified some weaknesses with this current implementation. Specifically in that with each new revision the rating resets, so it makes it a bit hard to find good or bad collections if they are updated often and the rating gets set back to 0. We have work underway to improve this by having a "recent" and "overall" rating (similar to Steam), so if over the last x weeks/months the rating has been mostly negative, it will not be as easy to "shrug off" that rating by simply uploading a fresh revision. Once we release these changes, the hope is that low quality content will simply slip down in the ratings and allow users to find better content more quickly.

 

Can you give some examples of collections which require manual edits post-install? Vortex should be able to cater for most of this, we're also looking at including Binary Patching to allow curators to ship slightly modified mod files with their collections to automate some of the small tweaks that often need to be made. This may also be something the extension guys need to know about if it can be done programmatically.

 

Finally, the instructions provided during install are another point of weakness we've identified (thanks to feedback from users testing the system) and we're currently working through some designs to improve the way instructions are presented to the user.

 

 

Why isn't it a basic requirement that collections authors, once the install is complete have a fully configured modpack or at least provide options for collections installers to go through (like a FOMOD installer)?

 

I'm not sure I fully understand what you mean here. At present the only way to submit a Collection to the site is to have it installed and configured in your local instance of Vortex. The reason for this is that we expect the curator to actually set up all the mods to work together before exporting it for others to use. Unfortunately, if the collection don't work, it's either that the curator didn't test it properly or they picked some options during the upload of the data which result in a different end result to what they have on their machine. In the case of the later, I'd be interested to learn what caused this decisions so we can improve the UI/UX of curating a collection.

 

In regards to FOMODs, to correct what showler said, this isn't a Bethesda-only feature. It's something Vortex supports for any game, but it's up to modders in the given community to adopt this format. A brief tutorial is available here: https://modding.wiki/en/vortex/users/How-to-create-mod-installers

 

 

With the simple fact that as it stands collections are shipping incomplete and broken with zero liability for collections authors, absolutely no direct way to see comments BEFORE installation and zero effort in regards to verifying a mod collection in fact functions, why is it even an option

 

This is mostly covered above, but I understand the part about comments. Please keep in mind that the entire system is still in alpha and is unfinished. The comments being on the forum is definitely not ideal. We are currently working to ease these pains though. We're building a brand new bug reporting system for Collection pages at the moment, it's taking shape fairly well but isn't ready to be released to the world yet. Once bug reports are implemented the next big feature is going to be to build a comments system inside Nexus Mods Next which will allow them to be shown on the page itself. At this point we can ditch the forum threads and make it easier to browse comments before downloading. Both of these features will also serve as a basis for updated versions of the features found on mod pages too.

 

In short, there will be some pain points over the next few months and that's actually great. It allows us to understand the problems with the system and better tailor it to the needs of the community. Much of what you pointed out is already on our roadmap but the feedback further enforces that we're going in the right direction. I would say that you just need to give us a bit of time and patience to get everything we're building in place and they we can see if they have properly addressed your concerns.

 

If you haven't already seen it, we've got a FAQ for Collections here too: https://modding.wiki/en/nexusmods/collections/FAQ

[Zanderat]

Nothing you said is wrong, but consider that Nexus has never moderated mod uploads based on their own opinions of the quality of said mod. As long as a mod doesn't violate actual rules, which are minimal, then modders are able to upload whatever they have and users are free to download it or not.

 

Why would you expect Collections to suddenly alter this policy?

 

There are going to be some bad Collections. Everyone knew this from the beginning. It's no different from a bad mod. As long as it is not in violation of the rules there isn't much to do about it.

Bingo.

[xrayy]

 

Nothing you said is wrong, but consider that Nexus has never moderated mod uploads based on their own opinions of the quality of said mod. As long as a mod doesn't violate actual rules, which are minimal, then modders are able to upload whatever they have and users are free to download it or not.

 

Why would you expect Collections to suddenly alter this policy?

 

There are going to be some bad Collections. Everyone knew this from the beginning. It's no different from a bad mod. As long as it is not in violation of the rules there isn't much to do about it.

Bingo.

 

what exactly is "bingo" ?

 

My question for confirmation of some points is not clearly answered and i expected nothing just maybe a try to answer. from the reaction i just know now that someone think i have obviously too high expectations of what exactly ? where did i mention my expectations ? i can confirm i personally expect nothing from collections simply because my experience is that i better not trust even my own profile or mod list if it is older than one week and anything has changed not under my personal control.

but maybe some other people have expectations who try to use collections ? at least it looks like.

i'm glad for you and all potential collection users if all this will be a success in future and a big part of it will be how the expectations and responsibilities will be successfully fullfilled.

[Zanderat]

 

 

Nothing you said is wrong, but consider that Nexus has never moderated mod uploads based on their own opinions of the quality of said mod. As long as a mod doesn't violate actual rules, which are minimal, then modders are able to upload whatever they have and users are free to download it or not.

 

Why would you expect Collections to suddenly alter this policy?

 

There are going to be some bad Collections. Everyone knew this from the beginning. It's no different from a bad mod. As long as it is not in violation of the rules there isn't much to do about it.

Bingo.

 

what exactly is "bingo" ?

 

American slang for "exactly".