Mod Browsing Overhaul Discussion

[HeyYou]

1 hour ago, kat1004 said:

If they're going to work with someone with impaired vision to verify their designs, they should make three "skins" for the site. One for a light-mode, one for a "pseudo-dark" mode based on the old UI's color scheme, and one high-contrast for vision-impaired users. The vast majority of people who use this site aren't vision-impaired - or at least, not to the extent that they actively need a high-contrast color scheme - so why harm the majority of users for the sake of the minority?

I'm speaking as someone for whom vision-impairment is a well known issue due to having grown up with a vision-impaired parent who did need high-contrast to see (and used the BUILT-IN high contrast color scheme WINDOWS has), but also as someone for whom this new color scheme - even with their extremely minimal tweaking - is physically painful, to the point of not being able to use the site for more than 20 minutes at a time.

I would expect the vast majority of users here are also viewing the site on their PC, yet we get a UI designed for phones anyway......

[HadToRegister]

FWIW, Discord offer these (Free) presets for viewing their app, (The last symbol syncs the color of the app to your Windows Theme.)
The Theme color that I have picked (Blue Check) was what I always had, but after they updated Discord, they automatically changed everybody to the 3rd Darker Theme instead.
I kept wondering why the text started getting fuzzier a lot faster than it used to, and something felt “off” to me.
And it's when I found this setting and switched to the lighter theme, that I realized they had, by default, changed everybody to a darker, higher contrast theme.
And that's when I realized what the problem was, thankfully I was able to switch back by selecting the lighter theme.

My point? It doesn't take a lot for something to be Too Dark, or Too Light for each individual.

From left to right
1. White, far too bright for me, I'd need sunglasses.
2. My “Goldilocks Zone” of “Just Right”.
3. Was what they changed the default to, and it was noticeable and increased eye strain for me.
4. I would've probably picked long ago, back in my 20s, but after a few days, I eventually would've switched to 3, then probably ended up using 2.
5. Using my system colors wouldn't work because I override them using “Window blinds” for a custom windows color theme that's easy on MY eyes, and Discord would've just used the Microsoft settings instead. So, a moot choice. 

Themes would be nice.



 

[HeyYou]

8 minutes ago, HadToRegister said:

FWIW, Discord offer these (Free) presets for viewing their app, (The last symbol syncs the color of the app to your Windows Theme.)
The Theme color that I have picked (Blue Check) was what I always had, but after they updated Discord, they automatically changed everybody to the 3rd Darker Theme instead.
I kept wondering why the text started getting fuzzier a lot faster than it used to, and something felt “off” to me.
And it's when I found this setting and switched to the lighter theme, that I realized they had, by default, changed everybody to a darker, higher contrast theme.
And that's when I realized what the problem was, thankfully I was able to switch back by selecting the lighter theme.

My point? It doesn't take a lot for something to be Too Dark, or Too Light for each individual.

From left to right
1. White, far too bright for me, I'd need sunglasses.
2. My “Goldilocks Zone” of “Just Right”.
3. Was what they changed the default to, and it was noticeable and increased eye strain for me.
4. I would've probably picked long ago, back in my 20s, but after a few days, I eventually would've switched to 3, then probably ended up using 2.
5. Using my system colors wouldn't work because I override them using “Window blinds” for a custom windows color theme that's easy on MY eyes, and Discord would've just used the Microsoft settings instead. So, a moot choice. 

Themes would be nice.



 

Well, theoretically, they use variables for a lot of those settings, seems like implement different themes would just be a matter of adjusting those variables...

[carpesangrea]

3 hours ago, HollownessDevoured said:

The only visually impaired induvial who backed the the new changes immensely to their vision needs last year, that seemed to just justify the new colour scheme changes, was just giving feedback, that I am aware. I do not think they had that specific individual in mind as their source or consulted them personally, unless that was just not mentioned. I think originally generic accessibility was the reasoning/excuse.

I also questioned and asked why a minority group who usually already have in place adjustments to accommodate their specific narrowed and/or high(er) needs was more important than a seemingly larger group getting actually pain/discomfort. I tried very hard to be respectful to the individual last year, but even my attempts of asking for compromise caused them distress and upset, making the talks last year very difficult. That coupled with a very small sample pool of users who provided feedback gave the devs reason to ignore the high contrast/pain causing theme complaints (as well as other major complaints) and moved forward with the theme for the rest of the site a year later.

This also had us question: why can't those with vision issues zoom in as they probably already do before and even after the update, and give us our 5th tile back (or more), since zooming out does not accomplish this with the new theme. The oversized UI and wasted space was also a very hot issue and concern a year ago.

It was speculated but not confirmed, that accessibility was just the safeguard excuse for the new theme colours/sizing, and that the new theme was more so driven for mobile friendly/geared reasons, as high contrast on a phone/mobile device is not as painful/discomforting than PC view with the same theme/colours.

This entire post would imply that their priorities are seriously messed up...that certainly tracks.

[EagleFour]

On 3/20/2025 at 9:52 PM, Sythix6 said:

It's crowded, its annoying and overall its ugly to me. having them in a list is a lot easier to sift through than having a bunch of tiny tiles that just mash into each other after scrolling. i would really appreciate it if you could reintroduce it because it's causing issues for me.

Hello,

I feel the same way. A list view is much better and easier to read than tiles, where all the information is crammed together. It is extremely exhausting and much more difficult to skim quickly. I already notice that I hardly look for new mods anymore because reviewing them is exhausting.

I don't understand this design decision, a list view is ALWAYS clearer and easier to read than tiles. Tiles are not structured in this way and a page full of tiles looks totally cluttered.

Please bring back the list view.

[EagleFour]

Hi,

 

In the new style, I miss the quick search function. I found it very convenient that the search results were displayed immediately on the same page. The way it is now, it's a step backwards in terms of usability.

Please bring back the quick search function.

[Brotagonista]

Absolutely awful. Not only is it bad for practical use, its just plain ugly to look at. And why is nearly half of my screen real estate just being wasted with this vertical phone scrolling design? Who the hell would even use this site on their phone?

Its crazy to me that this new design got forcefully implemented despite the overwhelmingly negative reception. Just making it easier for people to move to a new platform.

Edited March 28 by Brotagonista

[kyeaxford1]

You know I'm just fed up with the devs because at this point they are basically ignoring, lying and downright ignoring all the negative feedback. If any well advertised and easy to access poll was put out for those who use the new site I truly believe that it would support and reversion to the old design or at the very least an option to switch back. The only reason I can think of that the devs have not done so it out of cowardice and pride that they know they have made a mistake and going to force it on the users because admitting they have got this redesign wrong would hurt there egos. 

[Simale]

On 3/26/2025 at 8:48 PM, NexBeth said:

People visiting Nexus on computer are mostly doing it at home.  Phones, however, go everywhere with you--work, restaurants, school, anywhere you are "waiting" therefore Nexus can potentially be available quite a lot through the phone.  No doubt creating a larger usage which generates more income that would not be there otherwise.  Nothing wrong with Nexus wanting to make more money.   This also is a plus for at least 40% of users who visit Nexus on the phone.  That is no small number for phone usage and can't just be ignored.

Ideally, there will be a reasonable balance resulting in a decent desktop interface for the website that can also be usable for the phone.  

I love to download mods to the games I play to my phone because it has many terabytes of storage, and moving files from the phone to the PC is done in an instant without me having to do anything as soon as I'm a few yards from home. It also launches the game I downloaded the files for as soon as I unlock the door. 

 

Or wait, is that not how it works? Fine, people with phones like to visit NexusMods. Probably because they mod their PC games. Then do what countless other websites have done. Make a UX just for phones that detects when you're browsing to the site from your phone or from your computer. And if it is from the phone, it automatically selects the phone UX. Letting the minority's platforms rule what a site should be catering for is just bad in every way possible. Especially with SO many options today with scaleable webdesign.

[Demorphic]

2 hours ago, kyeaxford1 said:

You know I'm just fed up with the devs because at this point they are basically ignoring, lying and downright ignoring all the negative feedback. If any well advertised and easy to access poll was put out for those who use the new site I truly believe that it would support and reversion to the old design or at the very least an option to switch back. The only reason I can think of that the devs have not done so it out of cowardice and pride that they know they have made a mistake and going to force it on the users because admitting they have got this redesign wrong would hurt there egos. 

Sorry you are fed up. I'll try to clear a few things up but ultimately, I think there's little we can do at this stage to satisfy your complaints other than just switching back to how the website was. To be clear, we are not switching the website back to how it was.

In terms of ignoring some feedback, we've read all of the feedback but yes, some of it will need to be ignored, at least in terms of responding to everything. There's been 1.8k replies in this thread alone, and that's excluding feedback from multiple Discord servers and Reddit and various other social channels. We need to organise feedback and build a list of priorities for the next period of work.

Are we lying? well I don't think this is happening intentionally. We are a team of humans, with human fallibilities, working on a fairly complex project, trying to build the ship while it is sailing, while managing a huge range of expectations and both internal and external priorities. We definitely have pride in wanting to do something worthwhile and do good work. We by nature value our own internal priorities but always endeavour to balance this with lots of user focus groups, beta testing period, Hotjar surveys and raw data coming into our dashboard, to ensure we lead by user priorities.

Like I said previously, a big news piece will be coming your way, probably on Monday, with a lot more context and things we will be working on as a result of all the feedback. Following that a breakdown of planned work will be published in our monthly update. Our objective has always been to find a balance between improvements and continuity, to develop our infrastructure to support the growth of the platform, while clearing away so much technical debt and accumulated issues with the site.

Yesterday was the end of sprint retrospective meeting here. We have our own adapted process, but it's sort of like this. The meeting includes product, design, community, front-end, back-end, and we've been working through all of your feedback and seeing how this fits into the next period of work. We are listening, we are iterating and improving and we do have the interests of the community at heart. We do make mistakes, sorry but who doesn't. We have lost patience at times with some of the outright abusive feedback and death threats that team members have received. I think we keep improving as a team, and making modding easy, while staying true to our power userbase will continue to be our objective.

I have no doubt that Monday's update will not please people who just want to go back to the old site. (For context, the last time the site was updated, there were angry people who just wanted to go back to the old site). Change is hard, particularly when the added value seems to be limited, or unclear. We will be shouting a lot more about the added value and will keep adding value, and keep iterating. I hope that you can have a bit of patience while we work these things out and to some degree give us a chance to expand on this vision.