Mod Browsing Overhaul Discussion

[Iluviel]

11 minutes ago, llihP said:

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).

What is the rationale for such a change?

The rationale for including collections on game home pages is that they make modding substantially easier for the majority of new modders and have be responsible for the huge increase in mod downloads on Nexus Mods over the last 3 years.

If you don't like them or want to engage with them, all I can say is the majority of people do and anyone complaining about them in this thread is in a vocal minority. Our data proves this, I hope that as a developer with 21 years experience you'll appreciate a data driven approach.

That being said, to address your point about wanting to see immediately fresh content every time you visit the site. If all you care about is mods, have you considered just going straight to the mods list? https://www.nexusmods.com/games/kingdomcomedeliverance2/mods

The game home page you're complaining about is just that, a home page for all of the content on Nexus Mods related to games. That includes mods, collections, images, videos and news. If we ever add more content types, they're going to get added too.

[Iluviel]

3 hours ago, zzundeadzz said:

Hey moderators! We all hate the new UI, can we have the old UI back? We all knew you guys spent money on it, but holy... it is bad

"...it is bad" isn't useful or constructive feedback. We aren't going to be making changes based on subjective feedback.

[Iluviel]

5 hours ago, chanoc1 said:

I've never posted on the forums until today. The redesign has made the site slower, uglier, and worst of all, harder to use.

All the new fancy effects burn processing time for no reason (it's a file distribution website, does it really need all these bells and whistles?). Scrolling the front page of a game slows down my browser, seriously.
The theming feels a lot more generic and bland now, having everything monochrome with only the occasional splash of color is boring (and arguably, makes the site harder to use).
Search now being a modal that blurs the rest of the site and takes up your whole screen makes it less of a "quick search".
And so on.

I don't see what was wrong with the old design to constitute such radical changes.

The new pages are not slower, we're actively monitoring the P90/95/99 times on these and can confidently say that across all users they are performing well. We're being very strict on this and its a firm goal that the pages must not be slower.

Sorry to hear you don't like the look and feel. I'm not really sure we can action anything on this, it's a bit vague in terms of feedback. If there's something specific you don't like, perhaps we can respond to that.

Search is vastly improved and we've made a lot of changes under the hood. Quick search now works for games, images, videos and users, it used to only work for mods. Even if you don't find this useful, other users do. It now wildcards keyword strings, so terms like "stalker" now return "s.t.a.l.k.e.r.", we've also added more keyword matching so terms like "fo3" match "fallout 3". It's just as quick to open, close and use as the old implementation.

[Kontrary]

Not entirely sure if somebody has said something similar but two things I noticed: There's a "next page button" on the bottom of the page, but not at the top, Why? It makes it that much more frustrating to browse.

Secondly it would be nice to be able to exclude certain categories without needing to manually search for the tag.

Final thing, as many people have pointed out the section (In this case "Skyrim Special Edition mods Browse the internet's best mods", perhaps putting the filters there instead could work better as it would mean you wouldn't need to scroll down to view all the filters (It would also mean you would be able to see more mods at once (like when you "hide filters" currently))
(Image illustrating what I'm trying to explain, it also has some UI elements changed around to fit the filters being above and not at the side.)


(Also just a personal subjective feedback, I personally feel like everything is too "close", like it's sort of claustrophobic inducing? zooming out to 90% scale does reduce the claustrophobic feeling for me though.)

Edited yesterday at 09:50 AM by Kontrary

[llihP]

40 minutes ago, Iluviel said:

The rationale for including collections on game home pages is that they make modding substantially easier for the majority of new modders and have be responsible for the huge increase in mod downloads on Nexus Mods over the last 3 years.

If you don't like them or want to engage with them, all I can say is the majority of people do and anyone complaining about them in this thread is in a vocal minority. Our data proves this, I hope that as a developer with 21 years experience you'll appreciate a data driven approach.

That being said, to address your point about wanting to see immediately fresh content every time you visit the site. If all you care about is mods, have you considered just going straight to the mods list? https://www.nexusmods.com/games/kingdomcomedeliverance2/mods

The game home page you're complaining about is just that, a home page for all of the content on Nexus Mods related to games. That includes mods, collections, images, videos and news. If we ever add more content types, they're going to get added too.

I didn't ask why collections were there, I asked why they take precedence over content that keeps users coming back, and what keeps mod authors posting. New mods and updates.

I also mentioned that it can all easily fit, but empty space seems to be a draw card for some reason.

You are advocating for collections as much as I would, it doesn't mean they should be so large that they push down new mods and other tabbed content full of fresh mods, mods that have been updated or tracked changes (actually, I see tracked has disappeared too).

• Two collections push down mod additions and updates, things that should be above the fold
• New mods are now so far down the page that nobody sees them at a glance, and at 1080p it might take a few scrolls to reveal
• Do you expect an uptake in mod downloads now that the newest mods are out of view by default on game homepages?
• Google/SEO is going to serve the mod home pages as the first port of call, not the mods index page you just linked

All of that for 2 collections that will largely always be the same two things. Is that the trade off?

If collections need prominence, it seems odd that it's not even explained what they are until you navigate there, and that the title to such a prominent section isn't linked.

A few CSS changes with a lot of superfluous elements (double ups) removed:

Same monitor, same resolution, I can see more of what already existed (I added back the 5th tile under the main 2) and new / updated content are in view.

Your data will tell you something else in time. Good luck!

[JobiWanUK]

@Iluviel

I can get used to the changes I guess, because you're obviously dismissing our opinions as a 'vocal minority'. But why remove the 'tracked contents updates' tab? It's a useful tool, especially for mod authors who want to quickly see if their mods have any new posts on the comments page.

It's obvious the design changes are here to stay but please bring this back. Or at the very least explain why you removed it.

[Iluviel]

8 minutes ago, JobiWanUK said:

I can get used to the changes I guess, because you're obviously dismissing our opinions as a 'vocal minority'. But why remove the 'tracked contents updates' tab? It's a useful tool, especially for mod authors who want to quickly see if their mods have any new posts on the comments page.

It's obvious the design changes are here to stay but please bring this back.

The removal of Tracked Content Updates game home page was a deliberate choice. We’re not saying they’re not useful, but we felt the mods section on the game page was not the right place for them. To offer a more cohesive experience, we plan to reintroduce these updates on more relevant pages, where they will be more appropriately placed, contextual and useful.

[Kiwa]

As a member of the alleged vocal minority who won't just "get used to it" the staff's attitudes over an unpopular sitewide decision has convinced me pretty much to just stop using this site even if they do revert the UI.

Just as a final note: it's awfully hard to trust a data driven argument when the only person who has the data is the one saying their data is correct. I could say I have data that proves unicorns exist so anyone who says they don't is wrong, but if I don't show people my unicorn data then it's pretty moot. Maybe we are just a vocal minority, or somehow mobile users are the most important userbase for this site despite someone earlier saying it was less than 50% of the users who used mobile. But I genuinely don't believe anything I read on the internet without evidence. Especially not when the person saying them is being very defensive in the first place.

[JobiWanUK]

7 minutes ago, Iluviel said:

The removal of Tracked Content Updates game home page was a deliberate choice. We’re not saying they’re not useful, but we felt the mods section on the game page was not the right place for them. To offer a more cohesive experience, we plan to reintroduce these updates on more relevant pages, where they will be more appropriately placed, contextual and useful.

Thanks I guess. How long before this is reintroduced please? And in the meantime, you expect me to scroll through all my mods to see if there any new comments? This makes it seriously more difficult for mod authors to engage with their users. Isn't this something you wanted to encourage with the DP changes?

[Kontrary]

42 minutes ago, llihP said:

I didn't ask why collections were there, I asked why they take precedence over content that keeps users coming back, and what keeps mod authors posting. New mods and updates.

I also mentioned that it can all easily fit, but empty space seems to be a draw card for some reason.

You are advocating for collections as much as I would, it doesn't mean they should be so large that they push down new mods and other tabbed content full of fresh mods, mods that have been updated or tracked changes (actually, I see tracked has disappeared too).

• Two collections push down mod additions and updates, things that should be above the fold
• New mods are now so far down the page that nobody sees them at a glance, and at 1080p it might take a few scrolls to reveal
• Do you expect an uptake in mod downloads now that the newest mods are out of view by default on game homepages?
• Google/SEO is going to serve the mod home pages as the first port of call, not the mods index page you just linked

All of that for 2 collections that will largely always be the same two things. Is that the trade off?

If collections need prominence, it seems odd that it's not even explained what they are until you navigate there, and that the title to such a prominent section isn't linked.

A few CSS changes with a lot of superfluous elements (double ups) removed:

Same monitor, same resolution, I can see more of what already existed (I added back the 5th tile under the main 2) and new / updated content are in view.

Your data will tell you something else in time. Good luck!

Would changing the placement to something like this be less, er... jarring? (fairly roughly and quickly put together, but I hope it gets the general idea across)