Mod Browsing Overhaul Discussion

[Iluviel]

29 minutes ago, Szkieletor said:

I feel like most of the complaints are just "new bad, old good", though there is some good criticism here. I'm the kind of person to write custom userstyles to revert style changes on YouTube, because the purpose of those is usually to make the site less usable, for some reason. Nexus redesign is fine. It's got it's strengths, and some parts I liked better before. It's mostly similar to the old style, just a bit cleaner. The margins are fine, most pages are actually spread to the whole screen width on 1080p, and the margins feel smaller than previously on 1440p.

However, there's one particular reason I've returned to the old design after trying out the beta: the time range filter. The old one had a "from - to" setting, which I used to search for mods made after 2020. The reasoning is that I want to filter out a lot of the old, outdated mods, the "1 year" filter is too limited as I want to catch up with the last few years, and the "trending" view is too biased towards the last month or so. So setting it to "from 01-01-2020 to today" was my less-than-ideal, but functional compromise.
This is no longer possible, and setting the "timeRange" GET argument in the URL manually does nothing, as the API seems to only accept the dropdown values. The perfect solution would be two filters - "uploaded", and "last updated", with the current dropdown options, and a custom time range, like the old one.

And please, please, remove translations from "Mods requiring this file" list, they're already under their own header and pollute the list, or give us a "Required mods" filter setting. I'm begging on my knees.
This helps immensely when working with frameworks, body mods, and other stuff that builds off other mods. Just putting the name of a mod in search queries often brings up stuff that mentions "xxx is incompatible", or FAQ entries that go "xxx support? No", which are really good things to include in your mod description, but the exact opposite of what I'm trying to search for. It gets worse with mods using common words or acronyms, and so on.
I usually use "Mods requiring this file" to search for stuff like "PC Head Tracking and Voice Type" voice packs, but it's a pain in the ass and half the entries are translations I have explicitly filtered out in my preferences.

Thanks for the constructive and pointed feedback. This is very useful.

Agreed on the date range filter, we're working on getting that back in now. It'll reappear as soon as we're able to add it.

The translations specifically within the "mods requiring this file" feedback is new for me and interesting. We'll certainly discuss this and have a think about what is possible.

[supremo7]

why am I paying premium for this site to remove features? Where is custom date range when filtering mods??? Why did you remove it?

edit1:

Why force only one viewing option? I like to view them in a list, not a grid like you are forcing us now.

Maybe I'm too old, but all these new designs are garbage. newer is not always better. UI design peaked by 2003, after that it's all downhill.

[Iluviel]

22 minutes ago, Steinnuss said:

Thanks for the quick answer. I know you guys are getting bombarded with feedback, and sometimes people aren’t too nice about it.

 

I use Firefox and do have an ad blocker, but the issue only started with the page redesigns as far as I can tell. For me, it’s noticeable on the authors' page in the "Mods" section and on the main page with the "Trending Mods" and other media.

Maybe adding some color customization down the line could help? I’m not a web developer, so maybe it’s not worth the trouble, but I and a few others in this thread would appreciate it.

It’s good to hear that you want to adjust the "Popular Collections."

The issue I have with the search bar is more that it covers the entire screen, which can be a bit disorienting when quickly opening and closing the search function. I guess I can live with it, though.

I wouldn’t be mad if the option to search for another game quickly stays, since it doesn’t bother me too much I just found it a bit weird.

Overall, thanks for all your work. I know it’s really hard to engage with the user base while also translating feedback into actionable changes.

 

Maybe it would help if you opened an official FAQ on the main site listing the main complaints along with explanations. 

Apart from the forum, there aren’t many places to get info on why certain things were changed.

 

Thanks for the thoughtful feedback and replies. Some further responses for you.

We'll do some more testing on Firefox. The pages shouldn't be slow and laggy, we want them to be as fast as possible.

We are thinking hard about making better use of game art, things like icons and wider artwork, to give game-specific pages more identity. I believe this will address lots of the coloured text related feedback.

We did consider an FAQ and are very open to further suggestions on how we gather feedback in the future. We do struggle with taking on board so much feedback, particularly when much of it is very vague, subjective or amounts to not liking change. We are putting some more HotJar surveys live on the new pages soon, we did that during the beta and had over 2,000 responses.

[Isguros]

In the spirit of "constructive and pointed" feedback: If I click on the 'view more mods >' button, it doesn't show me any more mods.

[WndMll]

Four that don't even fit on screen compared to TEN that do fit on screen perfectly, the gaps between the panels on the new one as more than double the original. Original top bar is far sleeker than the bevelled oval buttons which look less compact therefore chunkier by comparison. The background now being darker only makes these issues more obvious and your eyes far more drawn to them. The lack of the orange text which tells you the categories doesn't help either, as it drew eyes in towards what they were meant to look at. When browsing under the explorer the tiles were horizontal, thus allowing more space for text to fit in and telling you more about it (I presume the text length was longer as it appeared that way).

I wanted to give genuine criticism as to why it looks the way to does, why we don't like it and explain the smaller things that're incredibly important that haven't been mentioned.

I simply don't want to see my favourite modding site, really the only modding site (besides gamebanana) turn into a mess. This should've been run by more people, specifically designers and broadened the test audience. The original look is slim and sleek while this new one is chunky and girthy and not in the fun way.

Edit: Just wanted to mention, this is not the case of "We like the old because it's what we had and we just don't like change." I remember what Nexus looked like in 2014 and I guess what we'll now be calling 2024 nexus (I don't remember when that redesign came out) was actually a DIRECT update and I do not think a single person disagrees with that. Also the background images helped a lot and weren't intrusive nor did they guide eyes away, it added much need colour. 

Edited 15 hours ago by WndMll

[ObsidianStag]

An aggressively mediocre redesign of something that wasn't broken, sounds like the modern internet, alright. 

 

[Havok11]

My feedback to this point:

-New site feels sluggish / responds slower compared to before.

-It takes more time to navigate to every location i desire to visit e.g. "new today", "new this week", "popular 30 days" (tabs felt better than dropdown-menus).

-Alot of wasted space, i need to scroll much more / move my mouse farther to get past the "trending section" (which displays less mods than before).

-New search-bar doesn't feel like an improvement till this point, but i get the argument to switch games faster, could feel better after im used to it.

-Second most prominent space in the layout is collections which is imo the most uninteresting section at all.

-Individual mods take up way too much space, the new layout displays 8 mods on one screen compared to 15 with the old layout, it feels more tedious to navigate this way.

[WileCoyote68]

2 hours ago, Iluviel said:

• Collections are instrumental in making modding easier for users who are new to modding, so it is important they are given prominence on the page. They were not in a separate tab before. We are considering some changes to this section though, to reduce the scroll down to "More Mods".

This may be nice for users who are getting into modding, but not for everyone else. For me and others, it's just annoying. No matter how prominently you present the collections on the site, I will never use them. Collections are collections and not mods and therefore do not belong on a mod overview page. It shouldn't be that hard to make it a switchable option. It would be much more important to bring back the tracked mods as this is an important feature for many users

[H3LLGHa5T]

3 minutes ago, WileCoyote68 said:

This may be nice for users who are getting into modding, but not for everyone else. For me and others, it's just annoying. Collections are collections and not mods and therefore do not belong on a mod overview page. It shouldn't be that hard to make it a switchable option

fully agree.

Also please let us have a static background picture like the home page (nexusmods.com) has across all mod pages, that alone helps a lot.

[StrongAcid]

I'd prefer an option to switch back to the old design with the new one.

I don't like it at all, and if I don't get used to it soon, I'll even have to reconsider canceling my long-term subscription.

Because, as the saying goes, what you see is what you get... best wishes from a huge fan and (still) supporter.