Is the Nexus over, a failed experiment?

[zulu9812]

I’m sure that I’m not alone in being frustrated with the low speed of the Skyrim Nexus lately. For me, it’s been compounded by the fact that I’ve had reason to wipe my hard drive and start Nexus Mod Manager from scratch, with a brand new mod list. Clearly, this was a bad week for it. But, nonetheless, I have sat here trying to assemble a new mod list from the Nexus for the better part of three days. Trying and failing, I might add. Wasting my time, banging my head against a brick wall, et cetera. At this point, I feel it necessary to get some things off my chest about the state of the Nexus and the direction that it’s heading in. Some of this is me blowing off some steam, but I hope that most of it comes across as the constructive criticism that it is intended as.

 

1. Is the Nexus slow because Robin has overreached himself?

 

I’m going to start this by saying that I hold a huge amount of respect for Robin Scott. He runs the #1 fan site for one of the most popular games in the world. He’s definitely doing some things right. I’ve always been impressed by the professional approach that he has taken. I don’t imagine that he earns much income from the Nexus, so I am very grateful for the dedication that he has shown to the mod scene for Bethesda games. But I can’t help but wonder if the recent slowdown on the Nexus has been due to the expansion of his operation, i.e. support for more and more games. I don’t know the first thing about web design or hosting, but I can’t help but wonder if choosing to support 25 games (and counting) instead of 5 (3 elder scrolls and 2 fallout) has caused a slowdown in service, either due to a drain on resources or bugs arising from a more complicated setup.

2. What does the Nexus do well and what do other sites do better?

 

When it works, the Nexus is fantastic. The Mod Manager is the best mod manager I’ve ever seen for any game. User-generated categories enabled the program to hit new heights and enable a level of customisation hitherto unheard of. I think that’s because the Nexus is a system for modders and gamers, made by modders and gamers. No suits involved. That gets mighty respect. But there is room for improvement. For example, in the NMM, is it really necessary to have to download a mod that you like just so you are notified when an update is available? Couldn’t you have mods on your list that you are subscribed to, but haven’t necessarily downloaded to your hard drive? Would this approach save on bandwidth? Additionally, couldn’t I save my mod list from NMM to the cloud, so that it’s available when I reinstall the programme? Those two features, taken together, could really improve the user experience. I know that you can track files on the website, so it makes sense to be able to do it in the mod manager as well.

I know that Robin and his team are working hard to make the Nexus experience better. I know that work progresses on the Mod Manager program. But there is competition. The Steam Workshop has an obvious advantage in terms of corporate support, which gives it the money for a huge amount of technical expertise, not to mention raw bandwidth. Steam Workshop is actually very good. What makes the Nexus Mod Manager better is greater customisation, e.g. the aforementioned user categories and support for SKSE and you don’t have to go through the launcher. But Steam definitely has the advantage in terms of reliability and up-time. The Steam Workshop does occasionally have some downtime, but it’s generally a fast and reliable platform.

3. Should the Nexus be more streamlined?

 

I’m going to put my cards on the table. I’m here for Elder Scrolls, and to a lesser extent the Fallout series. I don’t believe that the Nexus should be supporting other games series. I’ll acknowledge that is partially selfishness on my part: if resources are tight, I would like them to be focussed on the games that I play. But, more significantly, I feel that Bethesda’s games are more worthy of a strong modding scene because they ship with strong modding tools to begin with. There’s simply more that can be done with Skyrim than the Dragon Age Origins or Witcher 2. Don’t get me wrong, DAO and W2 are two of my favourite games, but they don’t benefit as much from modding as Skyrim does.

 

Because so much more can be achieved with Bethesda games, that community deserves the time and money that Robin has invested into the Nexus. The return is a great modding scene for a great game. The modding scenes for other games don’t have as much scope because their modding tools aren’t as good. The juice isn’t worth the squeeze. I feel that this should be a criteria for choosing which games to support, rather than a seemingly open-ended platform that will support any game as long as one person uploads a mod for it.

 

4. Who am I to be saying all of this anyway?

 

I’m a long-time user of the TESNexus, from soon after its launch in 2007. So I like to think that I’m a committed supporter of the project and I’ve seen a lot of things change, most of them for the better. I’ve been a Lifetime Premium subscriber since September 2009. I didn’t buy the premium membership because I was in love with the site. I bought it because it got me access to special servers that gave me faster downloads. In other words, I’m a paying customer. I don’t for one minute regret paying that fee. Over the last five years, it’s been good value for money and I’ve been happy to contribute to the costs of running the site. I know that some of you are furiously typing responses along the lines of “premium doesn’t guarantee uptime!” I understand and accept that. But there comes a point where you do think “Hang on, I’ve paid money for this”. And here comes the rub. At this stage in my life, I’m a bit more financially secure than I was in 2009 and I would happily donate more money to the Nexus – if I thought it was going to an Elder Scrolls site. But I’m not happy to pay more money into an open-ended setup that will support any and all games that come along. That seems like it will generate infinite complexity and problems and I think I would just be throwing money away.

 

There seems to be no end in sight to this expansion in operations: no “end game”. All I can see at the moment is that I can’t download my favourite mods and thus I can’t play Skyrim the way I want to. I work full time, so it’s upsetting when the Nexus is down/sporadic/slow all weekend. It’s almost, not quite – but almost, enough to make me start using Steam Workshop as my main Skyrim modding portal. But that could certainly change. I have a fairly hard core approach to my mod list, with lots of mods big and small and lots of customisation. I can see myself sacrificing that in favour of a smaller number of larger mods, a list that’s more easily maintained, and downloaded through a more reliable host/platform.

Of course, it could very well be the case that the increased number of games on the Nexus has had no bearing on the server reliability and it's purely down to number of visitors (probably for Skyrim). If that's the case, then I just need that reassurance. But it seems too much of a coincidence, that's all,

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Okay, I’m just about finished. I realise that some people will flame me. Some people will ignore me. But on the chance that I’m not the only one thinking these things, I hope that some good can come from what I’ve said here. If I’ve come across as ignorant or rude, I apologise, I really didn’t mean to. I’m just frustrated. When the Nexus works, it’s great. So when it doesn’t work it seems like wasted potential. Robin has done tremendous things for elder scrolls modding and I hope that he continues to set the standard.

[Dark0ne]

I think people get it stuck in their head that supporting more games is what's overloading the sites. It's not. What's overloading the sites is supporting Skyrim, and Skyrim alone. Skyrim traffic accounts for ~80% of Nexus traffic. I'm not going to abandon support for Skyrim so that's that really. We'll continue to work to improve things. It'll happen. Things ARE getting better irrespective of what people think, and they'll continue to get better until it's perfect.

[McclaudEagle]

You shouldn't be burying the Nexus just because it is having problems lately. Like all large scale updates, there are going to be a lot of problems, and a lot of further updates to fix them. There will be a time when the Nexus is back to being a very strong, reliable network, but for the time being, it's not, and that's just something that people need to accept. People just need to be more patient and wait.

[TLymond]

@zulu9812;

 

I reread your post just to see if I missed anything.

 

You said:

Some of this is me blowing off some steam, but I hope that most of it comes across as the constructive criticism that it is intended as.

Nope. Since your one and only "constructive" comment was to suggest that the Nexus not support a many games as it does, and as Robin pointed out that isn't the problem, the entire remainder of your post is simply you complaining that you've had a difficult time using the Nexus this week (for the reasons we all know.) Your loss of your own (apparently unbacked-up) harddrive is solely on you.

 

You said:

I didn’t buy the premium membership because I was in love with the site. I bought it because it got me access to special servers that gave me faster downloads. In other words, I’m a paying customer.

No, you are not. You made a contribution to the site, and received a few perks in return. That doesn't make you a "customer" any more than sending a few quid to a charity and being given a paper poppy makes you a customer. It's as if you're upset that the poppy didn't last as long as you thought it should have done and are demanding that they supply you with better ones.

 

You said:

it’s been good value for money

If that's the way you look at the Nexus, (a free service, remember) then you're wearing the wrong spectacles.

 

Get over your sense of entitlement, let Robin and his team do what they do, and check back in a week.

Edited December 22, 2013 by TLymond

[GrizzlyUK]

Change isn't always a smooth process, improvements don't always go perfectly but while the recent troubles are somewhat frustrating for everyone (including Robin) we just have to be patient and allow Robin and his team whatever time they need to get things sorted! The Nexus isn't dead nor is it a "failed experiment", it will continue to grow, expand and improve as time goes by.

 

Might I suggest that you keep a backup of all your downloaded files so that you can avoid having such trouble at any point in the future! ;)

[Jujinka]

Sometimes every site runs into slow-downs. It's the nature of the Internet. :3

[Hypermouse1mil]

Change isn't always a smooth process, improvements don't always go perfectly but while the recent troubles are somewhat frustrating for everyone (including Robin) we just have to be patient and allow Robin and his team whatever time they need to get things sorted! The Nexus isn't dead nor is it a "failed experiment", it will continue to grow, expand and improve as time goes by.

 

Might I suggest that you keep a backup of all your downloaded files so that you can avoid having such trouble at any point in the future! :wink:

yes yes, backup mods.....and backup often.

[DatrixTSW]

Ok so all in all is the Post comments going to be fixed I have asked this in multiple areas and haven't ever got one solid answer in the skyrim nexus mods page the posting comments has failed. When I post a comment it takes a long time to load. and when I refresh it the comment is no longer there. However others seem to comment just fine on this site yet I and a few others seem to have this trouble and would like to know why us? I use Firefox because I hate Google...Is that the problem because I know for a fact I was able to post comments on skyrim nexus before and am not able to anymore...

[Dark0ne]

Sounds like something is blocking the javascript that posts the comment from working on your browser. As you say, it's working for everyone else (indeed, this is the first report I've seen of that specific problem) which suggests this is something on your end and not on ours.

[Oubliette]

Meh. The Nexus still is, and I suspect always will be, quite a bit more reliable and more responsive than any government website I've ever seen. A little bit of turbulence while Robin tries to make it even better is no sweat off my nose.

 

As for the question of if he's bitten off my than he can chew - I find myself hard put not to laugh. I've been here since before the latest name change, I've been a member at all the mod download sites since Morrowind, I've seen most of them die in the most anguished and tortured of ways, and I've seen none of the usual signs I've learned to look for that a download site is in serious trouble.