Mod Browsing Overhaul Discussion

[Shade999]

Why are the filters now on the left of the screen instead of at the top and why is there a description, author and uploader to choose from in the filters when i want to search for something in a category but no title? How is it even possible to make something worse with every update?

[donkanalle]

Sorry, but the new design is really aweful.

Overall to much space and everything to big.

Makes it much harder to read

[CharlieBarber98]

Seemingly in the minority here, but I actually like the change. Using the full screen width now isn't bad thing. I also don't understand how each card being bigger is an issue; use the space you have. Not just for general clarity, but accessibility too —many people use this site, and accommodating people with poor eyesight is a good thing. Moving drop down content to being visible by default, not only laid out in a better way than previous, presents both old and new users with search options they may not have even known were there. I do think some changes could be made however. Scaling back just a little bit (10%), both keeps the wider layout, and still has cards remain a bit bigger than before. It also reveals more of the background, for possibly bringing unique image for each game. Use the same two tone grays from cards, for the side options, and a background could now cover the whole thing.

Edited 14 hours ago by CharlieBarber98

[NIck5200]

The new UI is atrocious.

DO NOT try to copy Skymods! Their search and UI is utter nonesense! (Because this new UI heavily reminds me of that site, and its bad.)

The only reason I go to that site is because some mods from steam workshop pop up there.

Now, back to Nexusmods, please bring back the old UI and dont fix what it ain't broken.

It was all nicely arranged, sorted and with one simple click you got what you wanted.

Now with this new UI feels as if I am fillin up form/checklist.

Old was gold.

[mfPixel]

13 hours ago, Revenge096 said:

Is it intended that new uploads section is so small and squished together?

Hey @Revenge096 This shouldn't be displaying like this -  there should be a max of 4 per row. Can you tell me what device, browser and screensize you have please? Also, are you zoomed in or out and running any plug-ins? Thanks.

[llihP]

I really liked some of the initial changes, but as other changes are being rolled out, I find the site more difficult to use. It's hard, because I want to be positive, but this seems to be going in a backwards direction.

After 10 years, this update removes so much and adds so little. It should have been built upon, not reduced to have less features while wasting a considerable amount of screen real estate.

Your previous design came from someone who used (and continues to use) Nexusmods on a daily basis. The new one feels like it's checking boxes for how modern sites should look, and not much else. The difference between a site designed for its users, and one size fits all.

Side by side:

On the left, we have more mods in view, less wasted space, more navigation in view and the spacing/grid is consistent. What happened to the right? And more importantly, why? I notice it's not just the home page, but other pages too. What benefit is there of making the header this large, with this much padding/margin, across multiple pages? Whatever the reason may be, it reads as 'let's show less mods and less relevant data'.

The new header only contains a game title + links for Mods, Collections and Media. Are links for Mods, Collections and Media not already always visible in the fixed header? What is gained here? Why is the dividing line needed, which essentially adds top/bottom margins to it, pushing things down further? If anything, it would have been more beneficial to remove the title 'Hot Mods' on the old one and fit even more into the space. With a small grid change, you could have trending mods, collections AND the latest mods in view.

I really don't know where to begin with functionality being removed from game tiles, data points that no longer exist on the front end or changes letting mod authors know when and where things are happening with their mods. There are so many more techniques that can be used these days vs 2015, with much better CSS techniques and browser support.

The old design might not have been as pretty as the 2025 version, but that comes with being 10 years old. From where it was, it should have been refined. Are you aware that the tiles that sit over the background colour fail every contrast test for accessibility? Even the pre-2015 Nexus site handled this better. Again, the old one wasn't pretty, but such things were taken into consideration. For reference:

It's easier to scan through, everything is immediately apparent, and more relevant content is being displayed using far less space.

I have 21 years experience as a designer / developer, and I can see no feasible reason some of these changes have been made.  The more comments and feedback items I scroll through, the more baffling it becomes.

[Iluviel]

3 hours ago, Deathsu said:

Please bring back the old trending sort function. This was functionally different than endorsement/downloads/unique downloads sorts as it looked at rate of interest by the community within a time-division rather than total interest all time.

The current trending and popular mods sections and tabs are either functionally broken or mislabeled. Currently, trending can only show total endorsements all time filtered by mod release time frame, and popular is the same thing substituting in total downloads all time. The way these should work is sort based on total endorsements/downloads filtered by time frame, filtered by mod release time frame. This does a better job a showing where the current interest in the community is at a given time.

'Trending' is mods released in the the last X days (where X is determined by a database field, for SSE it is 7 days), sorted by endorsements. It is not, and never has been, based on download stats in any way. The "old" page worked in more or less the same way, so functionally nothing has changed here. All we've done is remove the 'Trending' sort option, because it does exactly the same thing as 'Endorsements'.

If you want to sort by trending, sort by endorsements and you'll get the same result.

[llihP]

27 inch monitor, 2560x1440 resolution

I am fullscreen and I can't even see today's new mods without scrolling.

The existing site, without scrolling, as a comparison.

Who wants to see content that only changes every couple of days, each time they visit the site? I must visit it ~20 times a day. I like to be greeted with new mods for the games I am interested in, or with updates to one of the other tabbed areas (also out of view). This keeps it fresh.

What is the rationale for such a change? Is new and updated content less important than mods that can be locked in place for days? And why less content instead of more, when it can all easily fit?

[Iluviel]

2 hours ago, Shade999 said:

Why are the filters now on the left of the screen instead of at the top and why is there a description, author and uploader to choose from in the filters when i want to search for something in a category but no title? How is it even possible to make something worse with every update?

The filters are easier to use on the left, a lot of users didn't even realise they existed when hidden at the top.

There has always been Description, Author and Uploader filters. These aren't new and existed on the old page too, they work in exactly the same way.

[Iluviel]

2 hours ago, NiteFromWindhelm said:

I know others have probably explained things better and in depth, so I'll be brief. 

This new layout/UI/whatever is absolutely dog water. It's missing features and functions that the old one had. We also learned that people hate mobile looking stuff and that's why everyone was in an uproar with windows 8 all those years back.

Speaking of mobile, I frequently browse mods on my phone to later open and then download on my PC. One of the problems is with this new mobile look is that it doesn't do what the old one did and that is displaying the entire name of a mod. It just cuts off with ....

The old one displayed the full name and I'm not sure if anyone has brought this up yet with viewing on mobile.

 

Please give us back the old layout or at the very least make this new stuff look like the old stuff and give us back the missing features and functions of the old stuff. The stuff that was kept doesn't even work correctly as others have mentioned, so that would need to be fixed too. What isn't broken doesn't need to get fixed.

Other than longer titles on mobile, what features and functions are you missing?