Moving from Nexus to ModDB: Questions Thread

I've recently completed the move of a popular mod of mine, from Nexus to ModDB. The main reason for the move is described on the former page but the catalyst for the move was the ease of use of the latter. Once I figured out how things work here, I found it much more comfortable to upload material and document it, despite being quite a veteran at Nexus. Whoever designed this site deserves a kudo.

There are a couple of issues that I need to figure out.

The first is why do I need to specify Genre, Theme and Players for a mod that improves a game's specific aspect. These traits are defined by the the game my mod is designed for, isn't it ?

In addition to this question, I wonder how new ModDB users could search and find a mod by its function. The fields provided at /mods are only helpful for total conversions, essentially new games, but I think that "mod" usually refers to modifications in parts of a game, instead of a whole. "Addons" on the other hand seem to refer to what most users consider as standard mods. So my mod would probably fall into the /addon category, but then I would find it hard to separate the main file (which everyone is calling a mod) and the patches (which could be called addons).

Sorry for the confusing content of the paragraph above, but I really can't find a better way to explain my lack of understanding of the ModDB taxonomy.

Second question: is there any way define a file version in a manner that could be used by Mod Organizer and other mod managers ? If not, is it possible to define a file/mod/addon version that can be tracked by registered users of ModDB ?

Firstly, thank you massively for the compliments - we put a lot of effort into usability (mind you we still have a long long way to go).

Genre, theme and players is a relic of our early site implementation which had a strong number of FPS mods, and so multiplayer / singleplayer fit those types of mods well. We have since introduced tagging, which helps you attach custom tags to define your mod and plan on allowing games to define the categories that make the most sense for the type of mods they support.

Secondly, we are aware of the mod / addon distinction and the problems that causes. You have clearly picked up the site very well. Again our hope is to merge the two and make search functionality a lot better down the road. While this doesn't help you, we are working on a new idea called Mod.io which applies a lot of these improvements, and if it works out will be porting these changes to ModDB.

I can add a "version" number field to the download/addon add page if you believe that would help. Your other option would be including it in the title or as a tag, but I realize that isn't ideal. Let me know what is best!

Super happy to hear you like what we are doing, the feedback is greatly appreciated as we are planning our 2018 roadmap and have rather ambitious goals in mind.

What a detailed response, thanks!

Tagging is a great way to help users find content. It can be a little risky sometimes because both mod authors and users can abuse it, but on the whole it can work very well.

As for versioning, I'll use version on the file titles as you suggest and postpone my suggestion until I get a better understanding of how files are being watched (tracked) by users. Versions, after all, are meant for users, not authors. So let me be a user before I can talk about it

Just subscribed to mod.io for notifications. Super excited about it and its effect to ModDB!

INtense!, I've started tracking mods to understand how the versioning/watching system works. I think I'll have enough data in a couple days to answer your request for a version field suggestion.

I have another question: is there any way to reorder images ? It seems that images are organized in a queue, but sometimes I want to change order of a certain image. Of course I can simply replace a current url/placeholder with another image, but I was wondering if I could do this by simply dragging thumbnails.

Edited by: Axonis

I'm afraid there is no interface to reorder images at the moment. So you would have to do it the painful way.

Oh and mod.io is quite a different product from moddb.com - but we plan on porting the best ideas from it over in time, if they go well. It will be an interesting testbed!

OK, I now have a good understanding of the "watch" system at ModDB and I can make my suggestion about version display.

Yes, a version field is definitely important. Displaying version next to release date would allow me to immediately understand if I want to download the new version of a mod, for example:

and

In addition, I think it would be great for users to have the option to only Watch a mod's version instead of any other update. As an author I would much rather prefer to have the freedom of making regular updates to my page without spamming my users' Watch feeds about those changes, and I could always release a new version when I want them to.

So the version would be configured on a "mod" level not "file" level?

Also we've never had a problem with people watching everything, I don't think people see the updates as spam, they like and engage with them.

I think on the mod level is more useful overall because most mod authors at ModDB, based on my short research, are already using the file's title to display their version. But you are right, in some cases the file's version and the mod's version are different so the former might be equally important. In fact my own mod is such a case: I have combined two different mods from the Nexus into a single ModDB page. So yes, if you could add a version on files that would be great; not to mention the possibility of such a field being supported by mod managers in the future.

By "spam" I was referring to my experience at Nexusmods: I was regularly updating the changelog during the summer and I realized that some users stopped watching (tracking) my mod because their update logs were flooded by my changes. This particular action wouldn't be a problem at ModDB because I've noticed that I could update my changelog article without spamming anything.

Again thanks for your attention.

The move is complete and I'm quite proud of how my page looks at ModDB