This is all fine and well, but am I the only one a bit concerned about how NexusMods is practically a monopoly in the modding scene? Why does literally every modder have to use a rate-limiting host as a platform, especially when Github exists?
Mods uploaded to github does really suck for discoverability though. There’s the roguelike Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead. The modding scene exists entirely on Github and you’d basically never find them unless you go searching for mods on their Discord channel.
That's even worse though. Plenty of games (e.g. Stellaris and RimWorld) are also available on platforms like GOG or, ugh, Epic. But if you want to use mods and you bought the game on any platform other than Steam it's fuck you.
I know it is, developers can block downloads unless the user is signed into a Steam account that owns the game. But as an end-user that's distinction without difference.
steamworkshopdownloader.io never gotten this to work myself but I put the least amount of effort in as possible. There may be others as well but I remember when I did my research a couple years ago that it was a real trudge and almost not worth it.
I know there are workarounds, but this is true. There are very little games I buy (at least directly) through steam nowadays, because I didn’t like what it became after the Greenlight/Direct debacle and I didn’t want my library to be that dependent of them anymore.
I have playnite as a unified game library launcher (with GoG, itch.io, humble, Ubi, EA, even Amazon Prime and freaking EGS just for the free games), so where I get my games from doesn’t matter much for me now.
But workshop integration is basically the only thing that makes me want a Steam copy for a game.
Though among the games in that case, there were Rimworld and Dwarf Fortress, and for both if you get a copy directly from the developers, you get DRM-free and a Steam key. So, that’s what I did.
There’s a couple issues with it. I mean, it’s simple for games where you’re not using a bunch of mods, but at some point it just becomes excessive. Not to mention that when a mod updates, the mod will automatically update breaking your game sometimes, or when you’re trying to play a game, a mod just doesn’t update causing it to break the game that way too. There’s just a lack of control that’s often necessary when modding.
For beatsaber (which doesn't use steam workshop), the there's no steam integration and its a pain to deal with.
For terraria (which uses steam workshop), the modloader is smart enough to know which mods don't work with the current version of the game and disables them and steam lets you easily change which version of the game you have by using the "beta" options. Only time I've had issues with updates breaking things since 1.4 release was during beta-builds of 1.4 tmodloader (and those were generally easily fixed by going to the discord and finding the file to fix it). Since then, no needing to find files and paste them over the existing files, etc. No trying to install one mod at a time out of a dozen or two until you find which one breaks it and redoing the whole process over again. Pretty sure it also just uses the version of mods that support the game version you have, deals with dependencies automatically, etc.. The modloader will also direct you to things like the non-steam pages for mods (sometimes forum posts, sometimes discord, etc).
I don't think the steam integration is needed for such a seamless mod experience, but its certainly compatible with it. And terraria is an outlier because the game devs encourage mods and has a huge and dedicated community. For smaller games with devs that don't like mods, simply trying to keeping things working may take so much work, so that time that making a good integrated user experience is probably difficult.
Let’s be real here though, Terraria is an unfair comparison considering it’s modloader is integrated into the game itself and holds significantly greater support than most other mods with Steam Workshop support. (Oh and that the modloader is basically a community made mod manager anyways and is akin to using the community mod managers for the games mentioned below)
Stellaris, Rimworld, Divinity: Original Sin 2, Total War: Warhammer 3, Binding of Isaac, Dwarf Fortress, Space Engineers, Cities: Skylines, all of these very popular games with massive modding support are still plagued by the issues I mentioned above. And you know what? It has the issues you mentioned as well. Did you subscribe to an outdated mod? Oh, well, good luck figuring out which one that is. Forgot to download a dependency? Crash. Did a mod update and Steam just didn’t update the mod? Figure out what mod that was and unsubscribe to it and subscribe to it again. Did a mod just update and Steam updated the mod, even though the update breaks save compatibility? Well, unless the mod author uploaded the older version of the mod, good luck trying to have fun.
I think it’s just the internet being the internet. Or at least how it’s been for awhile. There are big sites that a lot of people crowd to and that becomes the default. Like auctioning things off online. Ebay. That was where everyone went to. Need to order a few different things online? Amazon. Are there other online stores? Plenty. But Amazon is seen as cheap and convenient.
Nexus mods is just the popular site, but the moders have other options.
Yeah, an alternative using git would be good probably, but maybe don’t use github. Preferably though, it’d be agnostic and just target some git repo anywhere. It’d pull from a description file for the page to ensure a uniform appearance preferably, and it’d show and manage versions from some uniformly named folder on the repo.
I was really hoping thunderstore and mod.io would take off more since they seem more platform-agnostic and FOSS-like with their integration with git and versioning (and for some games they have), but people just prefer convenience of nexusmods and steam workshop unfortunately. They just have a bigger community and better discoverability in the end
I don’t think that term really applies here. It’s not like the barrier to entry for a webservice hosting game modification data is all that high. It’s very different from the railway, waterworks and power grid markets.
Also there are at least the competitors Loverslab, Curseforge, ModMD and Modrinth from the top of my head.
Indeed, it applies as much as accusations of monopoly. Two sides of the same coin. Really, it’s not a monopoly situation or any kind at all. It’s just by far the best of its kind and it has no competition.
Network effect creates barriers to new competitors, regardless of quality. Either for the upstarts or the leaders. See: Twitter. Once some choice is the default, anything else faces an uphill battle.
Does any one of those integrate with Mod Organizer or do I have to download the mod (often also with an annoying wait time) and then point Mod Organizer to it. Do they have an API that enables “a new version is out” notifications, or do I have to hunt everything down manually.
It really wouldn’t be that hard, but none of them cares. Nexus kinda has itself positioned well there as they would not have to support any third-party API endpoints in Vortex, but Vortex isn’t even the popular choice for many games.
Well, for one thing, Nexus gives modders a share of ad revenue. Under a different name, I have a mod that’s a backend requirement for a big, popular mod, and that nets me a reliable few bucks a month.
That said, a good portion of the modding community also exists on Gamebanana. If you want BotW, ToTK or Source engine mods, GB is the go-to.
Wait I have a stupid subscription to nexus and idk why I haven’t canceled it (used it for one month for some mod back in the day). I use nexus for all mods. Should I keep my sub then because all I care about is modders getting something.
R2Modman and thunderstore.io has grown it’s catalogue quite a bit as of late, but it’s mostly (don’t know if it’s entirely or not) unity games. It’s my favorite modding platform with features that make sharing modlists for multiplayer a breeze.
There’s stuff like Curseforge, but it’s only for some games, mostly Minecraft. The problem, if someone considers it a problem, is really that communities for games generally centralize around one site for their mods for the most part, and Nexus has garnered a lot of trust and therefore has more pull/inertia for communities working those things out.
As for Github, I believe the vast majority of mods have Github pages, but Github itself doesn’t really have a UI suited for mod downloaders, and no real incentive to implement one. So sites like Nexus and Curseforge are still a necessity.
Nice! Personally I don’t have any particular issue with Nexus, but it’s always nice to see diversity. Monopolies are pretty much never good for end users.
My only issue with Nexus is that I have to create a login to download mods there. I don’t want to sign in to websites just to DL something. Curseforge is good for Minecraft mods and doesn’t hassle me with a login prompt
Nexus has the lions share, but only for some games, I had a premium subscription but still found for like half the games I mod that nexus either didn’t have a modpage for them or that most modders for that game used other sites to host their mods
Not really sure curseforge is better. Its another of those sites with an sketchy bloaty overwolf launcher that makes you jump through hoops to load mods onto a server.
It’s concerningly hard to avoid overwolf in modding
There’s also steam workshop. Neither are shining examples of a free modding community. I think nexus mods starting out better and slowly enshittified but I don’t know the extent of it.
Their rate-limiting isn’t bad at all, their integration into everything is excellent, and for games without much of a community Vortex is often the only mod manager. Their API isn’t closed down, so Mod Organiser can integrate with Nexus just as well, and they probably would also do it with other mod sites if those ever bothered to set up a version check etc. API. They have an excellent search function.
In short: They provide a good service. Like the most annoying part about Nexus as a freeloader is the five or what seconds wait before your mod manager picks up the download.
And, no, their rate limiting really isn’t bad. 1.5MB/s for people with adblock, 3MB/s for people without. How often do you download gigabytes worth of mods it’s not like they’re bullying you into a subscription.
Github has other ways to make money, and Microsoft capital to back up everything. And granted Nexus could use a better bug tracker, but you won’t see them getting into the private repository business any time soon.
Tbh I don’t even know why the option even exists. I have 2 days worth of playtime and not once does it go on about pronouns or anything like that. So to me the menu seems completely pointless. If i can recall i also don’t think the NPCs have even referred to me as male or he/him. Maybe Bethesda added it last minute or something to try to appeal to a larger group of people idk. I’m just enjoying my spaceship man.
I’m not super far in, but I have heard it. The first time I remember hearing it is in the opening act when Lin is telling Barrett about you. Also when Sam talks to the marshal about you in Akila City. I suppose there are only so many opportunities for other characters to talk about you while you’re standing right there, but it does pop up, so it’s nice to have the option for those moments.
Do people really care what gender the MC is? I just role play as whatever gender the character is.
If I’m playing Tomb Raider, I am Laura Croft. If I play GTA, I’m CJ or Trevor or whatever. If I’m given a choice, I’ll sometimes look up if the gender matters (e.g. in Mount and Blade it can impact relations), and otherwise just pick randomly. When there’s a character creation screen, I usually randomize it a few times and get into the game.
I wouldn’t mind role playing as a gay or trans person, though I’d be a little worried about the content because I’m not looking for anything with relationships, I want to wreck monsters and solve puzzles.
Depends on if the character's supposed to be a self insert. In a game with deep customization you may be trying to make yourself, and not playing as Lara Croft or Geralt, so being able to choose your pronouns helps immersion, and immersion's a big deal to many players who'll take it anywhere they can get it in a game, whether it's pronouns, or being able to see your torso and feet when you look down.
Huh, I guess I never want to insert myself because I’m not that interesting. :) I play games to escape myself, and I really hate seeing my own name show up in games.
But that’s probably more my personality (I hate being publicly praised) than anything else.
But that’s probably more my personality (I hate being publicly praised) than anything else.
Revisit this thought whenever you consider if other people “really care” about something that you don’t instead of questioning whether inclusion is ever “necessary”.
It’s just not something I have experience with. Even my wife, who likes public validation, also prefers to role play in games.
But that’s the great thing about most RPGs, they have options to get whatever character model you want. So whether I understand people wanting to play as themselves or not is irrelevant. You can make your character look like yourself, I can make my character look random, and a trans person can make their character look like they see themselves. How I choose to make my character look has no impact on anyone else’s experience.
How I choose to make my character look has no impact on anyone else’s experience.
Tell that to the idiots making mods like this. Not that it changes anything for anyone but themselves, but it does promote bullshit bigotry over a menu selection of all things and fully deserves to be shut down.
And none of this is about “public validation”. It’s about having even just one more avenue for people that don’t happen to be cis white males to make a character for themselves that’s more relatable. More options should always be welcome. It hurts nobody and lifts up many.
Most guys choose to be guys when given the choice, for example. Apparently a lot of people do care. Gender fluid, agender people, casgender people, etc may not care or vary more.
Idk. Why would someone want to have a man's ass and voice? Seems weird to me. Yet about half of the world seem to want to be guys. And most of those are happy to be a choose to be a guy when customization is an option. I can't answer why so many guys consistently and choose to be guys in game (and sometimes have pride in their characters appearance and try to brag about their it) or some tease other people they perceived as guys for choosing to be a girl in-game when I can't understand why they want to be guys in the first place.
For me, I relate more to those who make fun of themselves for using that excuse because they were in denial. I've definitely been there. Of course there are guys (cis or trans) who like playing as girls too; I just can't relate (aro-ace spec).
Or one of the many, many people involved with development suggested it because it applied to them or someone they knew and the decision was made to include it out of respect for the people involved.
Or, maybe, inclusivity is never a bad thing, regardless of your personal level of cynicism. Hate the world all you want, but there are people out there that appreciate and deserve things like this.
When you meet Sam & Cora they'll refer to you by your pronoun while they talk about you.
The whole thing is just to make the character generation non binary, that's it. I don't see why this is such a big deal for some people. I'm a cis male, I select a masculine body type and go with he / him, or maybe they / them, and be done with it. It does nothing but help others feel more included.
Ohhhh. Wow i never noticed that tbh. I was so focused on trying to win sarah over. Never met a more picky person in my life. Now she resides on europa because she bitches every time i steal or a innocent sounding dialog option makes her mad. Sam is cool every ounce and a while he says something about me stealing but it’s not as annoying. I’ve yet to come across cora. I spend so much time in the ship builder.
You might've missed their initial dialog in the lodge, which happened in that garden area. You can find her typically in the basement where she has her room and she will be on board of your ship if you assign Sam onto it. The kids in Starfield are actually pretty cute and wholesome, unlike the literal spawns of Satan from Skyrim.
Ohhh that kid! I completely ignored that little stinker. I remember her trying to con me out of 50 creds for books. I’m too greedy for that i got ships to build.
They finally give you something that controls how people refer to you in their games, and dipshits wanna remove it? This is as close as you’re going to get to having characters refer to you as a choice you’ve taken other than Codsworth and Vasco having like 1000 generic names recorded to use.
I mean, I sorta get it. Identity politics are political and often divisive, and some people don't want it in their escapism.
It's not a perfect analogy, but if a role-playing game had a mandatory character-selection choice to choose if my character was pro-choice or pro-life, I could see myself mildly resenting it.
Not really a good example. A more apt example is if these people were getting angry that the character creator allowed a player to create a woman, or a person of colour. The game offering you a choice of pronouns is not asking you for a political opinion, it's literally just an option to create a type of character that these people don't think should exist.
And that's the crux of it, they aren't angry about pronouns, they're angry about trans and non-binary people becoming normalised.
I dunno, being a man, woman, or black person isn't political. Trans, non-binary, etc is, and normalizing it is political, regardless of if it's right or wrong. I think that you're correct and that it seems like something done as ammunition in the Culture War; normalizing identity politics rather than a design decision done out of a necessity to improve the quality of the game apart from that.
My earlier analogy was about having a pro-life/pro-choice option forced on you, but I guess to make it more accurate it would be more like the game just telling you that you're pro-life as part of your character settings? Because it's not just putting the politics in the game, it's taking a strong side. Again, rightly or wrongly, I can see why some people would resent that in their escapism.
I dunno, being a man, woman, or black person isn't political.
I agree, they should not be, but people still try and make them political.
Trans, non-binary, etc is
No. Absolutely not. Trans people and non-binary people are types of people who exist. Exactly the same as men, women, people of colour, and so forth. They are no more or less political than those other types of people. People still make them political, but that's exactly the same thing as with other groups.
My earlier analogy was about having a pro-life/pro-choice option forced on you, but I guess to make it more accurate it would be more like the game just telling you that you're pro-life as part of your character settings? Because it's not just putting the politics in the game, it's taking a strong side. Again, rightly or wrongly, I can see why some people would reset that in their escapism.
You are mistaken. There is no political opinion here. None is being asked for, and none is being assigned. The character creator having additional options is just allowing players to make trans or non-binary characters. This isn't asking you for a political opinion, it's simply adding options to create more types of characters.
Which is why the bigots are upset. Because they don't think those types of characters should be allowed to be made.
Your previous comments implied that there was a difference in type between the inclusion of women or people of colour, and the inclusion of trans of non-binary people.
There is a difference in magnitude of the controversy. But not a difference in type. Something can be more or less controversial, but it's still the same type of controversy.
Yeah, it seems we agree. My stance was only ever that I can understand why some people would've wanted to remove political controversy from their escapism if it made them uncomfortable and added nothing to the gameplay itself.
If everything is political then it’s impossible to make a game that isn’t political. This is no more valid than someone complaining that including an option for skin tone is political.
I guess my existence is “political” then, I guess I can’t exist in a space without having something “forced” on people.
We were male/female, now were women/men/other, that’s it. It’s a personal matter that we go through and we want to simply exist. That’s only “political” when your dealing with people who actively want to harm our rights. I cannot stress enough that these people shouldn’t be treated with respect as if they’re not trying to destroy people for a simple personal choice.
Aside from you being transphobic, you should realize that the people complaining about pronouns are also the people who complain about the "replaced white people" and "female leaders" in the game. So I guess black people and women are also political, by your logic?
being a man, woman, or black person isn't political
Being a woman isn't political... until I do it? Kinda seems like there's no actually valid (sound? I forget the terminology) argument for how our existence is a problem, nor for how supporting or acknowledging our existence is a problem.
I don't actually quite understand what you're on about but it kinda seems like you're arguing that allowing people to play characters that don't match your preferences exactly is some kind of forced political thing and that's kinda horsecrap, y'know?
Anyway I'm gonna go exist at that bigot up there now. Byeee ö/
I dunno, being a man, woman, or black person isn't political. Trans, non-binary, etc is, and normalizing it is political, regardless of if it's right or wrong.
Women and black people getting the right to vote and be treated equally has always been "political" you fucking jackass.
I wouldn’t. I mean, I hate Nazis but I don’t mind a game where I can choose to play as one (so long as the context makes sense like it’s a multiplayer WW2 game or Diso Elysium). It’s a fuckin’ choice. If you don’t like one of the options: Choose a different one.
Terrible analogy. It's just turning the binary male / female into non binary body types & pronouns to be more inclusive for those who fall outside the norm on the spectrum of things.
They definitely use your pronouns a lot. It’s all they refer to you as, aside from cute nicknames like “Dusty,” or “rook” or “renegade.” Probably doesn’t stand out if you chose your normal pronouns, since they’d just be say he/him or she/her or they/them.
We can’t be far from text-to-speech tweaking a ton of voice acting. Might have to pronounce or IPA your custom name, to get an AI voice to nail it… but maybe it’s better-off being wrong. There’s disarming verisimilitude in schmaltzy NPCs confidently fumbling your character’s name. Or if some characters heard it, but haven’t seen it, and you catch some mutter ‘so that’s how it’s spelled.’
I am just picturing the orc noble who uses words incorrectly/mispronounces shit. Forgot what those are called, but they have similar characters in most of their games. In Starfield, they even called him “Dumbrosky.” Dumb Bro ski.
I would imagine a bare handful of people install them.
There's some number of people who are so angry and stupid that the mere sight of something like an option to choose pronouns fills them with blind, seething rage, so for them, mods like this are essentially QOL improvements.
option to choose pronouns fills them with blind, seething rage
Yeah I was there when BATTLETECH (still dunno why its name has to be so LOUD :P ) launched. Every hatefool was raging about it, apropos of anything or nothing. Try to talk about any part of it and it's "OH YOU MEAN FUCKING PRONOUNWARRIOR?!?!" and a bunch of incoherent senseless bile. There's a sizeable group of people who deeply love being offended, and it's not us (queerfolk/LGBTQIA+/QUILTBAG/GSM/whatever). Like, I'm neck-deep in queer over here and every time I play a game with a pronoun selector at the beginning I promptly forget about it but oohhhh nooo, not these bellends. They somehow think a button at the beginning of the game that matters like three times ever has entirely DESTROYED videogames with LIES and FALLACIES 🙄
They'd be a joke and an insignificant oddity if they didn't deliberately make messes of everything else (say, going to MWLL/other games, ranting about "pronounwarrior," pretty sure some critters got teamkilled over it...) for no good reason.
They'd be a joke and an insignificant oddity if they didn't deliberately make messes of everything else
My opinion exactly.
In ways, I actually feel sorry for them. In the first place, it has to suck just to be that angry and spiteful, but underneath that, it must really suck to feel so powerless and desperate and insecure that something as trivial and irrelevant as pronouns can send you into a compensatory rage.
My pity is greatly diminished by the fact that they're toxic assholes who try to force the world to accommodate their own failures though.
Meanwhile, my canonically enby commander is rocking a fabulous magenta mohawk and having fun headshotting all the King Crabs so they can sell them to afford catperson surgery.
I’m not hunting them specifically, their cockpits just happen to be magnets for my Marauder’s laser and autocannon rounds. :P
The first one I saw, in an early “titan” mission, got taken out by a single alpha strike from long range and dropped three salvage. (I renamed it Queen Crab when I noticed that some parts of the mech were white after applying my blue/pink paint scheme.)
That’s amusing. I played that a couple months ago. I don’t recall ever selecting a pronoun, but I’m sure I did and then just moved on like a normal person.
Yeah, that's the one. There was so much outrage because it had the word "pronoun" in it at all 🤣It's just a little thing on the side during character creation and its effect is absolutely trivial. Actually I think the other MechWarriors 'have pronouns' too if you deliberately open the character editor for them. It's really the bare minimum, like I'm trying to come up with something sarcastic but those people were freaking out over nnnnooothing like the one word in one game is gonna ruin videogames for them forever, or some crap.
Which, like... if we could somehow trans so hard they'd go away don't they think we'd do it instead of just getting yelled at?
I’ve seen that in videos, but I always assumed it was for show to get their viewers riled up. I honestly can’t imagine an actual person doing this on their own, unless they were encouraged to do it by some influencer.
As in, how many people fire up a game, get mad that pronouns exist, and then search online for a “fix”? I think that number is pretty small.
But then again, I tend to be pretty careful about distancing myself from bigots.
Also, this is something new and different. FPS games have been my go to for years now. A FPS with abilities and magic instead of guns seems like it could be fun. Something like a simple multiplayer demo could let people get a taste of what this is and try out. I likely wouldn’t drop $60 on it just to try it out. But I would buy it after playing if it was fun and offered a different experience.
The part that confuses me a bit is that it’s a mod that removes functionality from a single player game. Usually features get added, not removed. When something is removed it’s usually to improve stability or performance. Or to rebalance the gameplay. This change falls into none of these categories.
Well I guess if the mod author did it to garner attention or make a point he/she/they succeeded.
Rule of thumb - if there are two sides to the issue, but one side is only supported by heartless idiots, and these heartless idiots happen to be identified with the political camp you oppose - then it’s a political issue.
Remaster as in upscaled graphics and leaving the janky controls untouched and unoptimized?? Or as in a whole reimagining that bastardizes the source material?
Interestingly- I’ve found a few people not only think that there won’t be a new control scheme, they actually hope that they don’t add one. To their point, I guess the game would fall apart navigating the exact same environments with more responsive controls.
That'd be like playing Goldeneye 64 on a PC with mouse look. It'd be hilariously easy because all of the enemies are tuned to be handleable with the primitive control scheme.
Which one? I played the one that was released on Switch, which is just the OG and had the same controls. What do you mean recent? You mean the 2010 remake?
Oh wow, how's it hold up? I think the Xbox version of that 2010 remake came out in 2011, the original was a Wii game. I assume that means they made it backwards compatible.
That's a full on reimagining of the original game, new Bond and everything, so the balance wouldn't be comparable to playing the actual original with modern controls, but I heard it was a better game than you'd expect from messing with the original Goldeneye.
I was talking about the original Goldeneye 64 that came out on Switch's NSO N64 games.
The new world has to be pretty similar to the old, given that the article says that one can flip between the modern and original graphics.
Talking of nostalgia, all three games are being released with an option to switch between the original blocky polygon graphics, and lovely patched-over modern designs. If it’s anything like the Monkey Island remakes, this means I will spend the entire time obsessively switching back and forth, unable to cope without knowing how every scene looks in each incarnation.
So, like HaloCEA and Halo2 Aniversary. But these work fine because the originals already had decent geometry to work with. TR1-3 though ? The levels are basically cubes upon cubes. Not sure how they’ll make that work
The Halo remakes were shit because they made the “original” version look way worse than it actually was on the original Xbox. The main reason is a handful of clever texturing techniques for bump mapping that they didn’t bother replicating in the remake. The result was much flatter-looking textures.
Can you not stick close to the source material but make it all new and nicer? Lol God this place is just as pedantic as reddit and annoying as reddit. It really is a human problem and not a platform problem.
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