Old Game Additions, Under 10 Mods Each are DOA

[UhuruNUru]

I don't see any point to all these old game additions to the Nexus game List, even if they are games with a existing modding community. They already have sites that have supported them for years and thats where they'll stay, even those who use Nexus for Skyrim will not use it for games they have used another site for.

Only the closing of such a site might make the community look for a new home, but that should be arranged as a complete transfer of all content between the sites, with the backing of the old sites users.

 

Having about 90% of the "Supported Games" with less than 10 mods each is not even good for such transfers it just makes the Nexus appear a DOA wasteland. The idea of NMM Managing so many games or even just what it does now is not a good idea at all.

 

It doesn't even do a good job for Skyrim, if it wasn't artificially supported, by the Nexus Name and all page exposure, it probably wouldn't exist or more accurately, it would be Timeslip's Skyrim Mod Manager, maybe challenging Mod Organizer and Wrye Bash on merit.

The basic idea that one manager can be a good manager for many Game Engines is flawed, even with just one engine, being the best for all games that use it is almost impossible. Those who actually mod many games are more likely to choose what they consider best for each game. I do and NMM is best for none of them.

 

I know all these decisions were made, when Bethesda "Supported " Steam Workshop, when the Creation Kit was released. The threat to the Nexus, if Fallout 4 modding becomes Steam only, is obviously a concern. The new 64-bit Engine, which it will have, means modding Bethesda games could radically change.

Stopping modding completely is very unlikely, but the change in engine moving to 64-bit requires, makes all post Skyrim modding a blank sheet. This site needs to have a future, even if it means no more Bethesda games mods are hosted here.

 

That future is best secured by doing what the site always does best. Hosting mods and supporting a thriving community around those mods. That can't be done by supporting old never before supported games, with the exception of being available as a refugee camp for entire existing communities, likely an extremely rare event.

Hosting mods for new games is the future of this site,hopefully that's includes new Bethesda games, even without them, though the old games will remain and still be supported and modded, new game hosting is the only way to attract more mods for other games.

 

Not making mods, whether a manager or not. Leave that to the modders, they will do a better job than any hired help could do, even in there spare time, while working full time also. Collectively, they know what the game, they play and mod, needs and will endeavor to provide it.

 

Mod Organizer is a one man part time effort, yet with much community feedback, it's vastly superior to the "Paid work" of NMM (purely due to knowledge of the Game and past experience modding the engine), Wrye Bash languished hardly touched for 18 months yet is still much better than NMM and it's now getting more attention. When Dragon Age support was added to NMM it didn't even match the ability of DAO-ModManager (Last updated: 8 March 2010).

I stopped even looking after that, the more game engines it tries to support the fewer functions it will have, it can only get worse as more games are added.

 

NMM is a Jack of All Mods but Master of None, as a ordinary mod it would be a users choice to use or not, by promoting it, on all Nexus pages, many new users don't know they even have a choice. It's just like Internet Explorer on Windows, before 3G phones, most just used IE because it was the only option they saw, never even realising they had a choice, also like IE the drive to improve was also lost, how long was NMM without any updates, stuck on v0.46. It wasn't a priority then fixing the slow site was, yet the Mod Manager is the most important mod we all need. Worse, one of the problems was NMM DDOSing the Nexus, making all the other issues worse.

 

If the worst case happens and no more Bethesda Game Mods come to the Nexus, then only the core service of Mod Hosting can sustain this site, not being a free Desura/Steam competitor, with basic Mod Installer=Mod Manger functionality.

 

If Bethesda Game modding is still here hosting the Mods/Community, better than Desura/Steam ever can, becomes even more important. It's what made this site what it is to begin with.

NMM is a red herring in that equation, those who play the games will always make the best managers, for each specific game and most would use a one of theose managers, choosing on merit if given a level playing field.

Promoting the sites own supposed "Mega Manager" as the only option and all page exposure alone does that, even without the Download with Manager buttons. It is actually a disservice to the community, NMM should stand or fall on merit, when it was Timeslip's FoMM and ObMM it did that very well indeed. I firmly believe it would have been a much better manager as SkMM than it is as NMM.

 

My Advice is ditch all the Under 10 Mod Games, support the older, well modded games and concentrate on new games. At the very least, put the main Games on Menu dropdown list and to top of Games page list. Hide the below ten games in a subfolder, they make the site look dead and buried, (barely) alive, no the thriving community it really is.

[Dark0ne]

Setting aside your obvious bias (big font signature kind of gives it away) for a minute, lets just stop right there and once again address this now tired debate with a very simple fact. NMM and MO are inherently and fundamentally different from the ground up. NMM is built as a standard general use mod manager for multiple game engines. MO is built as an advanced mod manager for one game engine.

 

To say NMM should simply stop production because it's not as advanced as MO is like saying Microsoft should stop packaging MSPaint with Windows because of GIMP. I like to be able to take print screens, press Windows+R, type MSPaint, press Ctrl+V and be able to save things. Takes 10 seconds with no setup time and no learning curve. That's NMM compared to MO. And guess what? Lots of people like to be able to do that too, and have no need for anything more advanced. And guess what they do when they do have that need? They look it up and get directed to MO. Exactly how it should be. Plenty of people just want a simple, no-frills mod manager that does everything they need it to and there's an obvious market for it. Just look at Steam Workshop. Forcing these people to use MO is like forcing someone to use Photoshop to save a print screen. It's an unnecessary overkill.

 

Now, all these "debates" really make me do is question why we've left our web services open for MO to use at all. I know the reason why, it's because Tannin is a good guy who hasn't stepped a foot wrong with us at all. A lot of the MO advocates, however, are less than nice and their rank bigotry in regards to NMM, and why anyone would want to use NMM, does not endear me to keeping the web services freely available for MO and others to make use of.

[Thandal]

M.O. It's just for BethSoft games, and nothing else. :armscrossed:

[JimboUK]

It's nice to have choices isn't it? NMM is just that, another choice. 99% of the time all I want is something to activate and order mods, NMM does that just fine, if I need more then I can use the appropriate tool. As for supporting other games, yes some of them have their own communities but few have the resources of the Nexus, hell some use third party hosts for files, there's nothing more annoying than having the mod you want on the end of a broken Mediafire link, as is those communities can still exist while using the Nexus as hosting.