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Starting to get some questions on this topic. Figured might as well address here. May update this periodically as new information becomes available or circumstances dictate.
What is a mod pack?
There is no commonly agreed upon definition at present.
What is a “Nexus Mods” mod pack?
We don’t know yet. Nexus will presumably clarify at some point. We can speculate that a Nexus “mod pack” system will work similarly to Wabbajack or Automaton.
Those tools do not copy, host, or distribute mod files outside of Nexus. Instead they generate a list of instructions allowing a program to automatically recreate the contents of a mod list onto your computer, using a Nexus API.
The mods are still downloaded from the original mod pages on Nexus, only now the download and organization of these mods is automated, and you never have to visit the actual mod pages on Nexus.
Do I have permission to add Depravity, Project Valkyrie, Outcasts & Remnants, or Fusion City Rising to a mod pack using Wabbajack or Automaton?
I don’t have a personal objection to you doing that. Not that it matters, since mod authors on Nexus are not currently able to opt out of their mods being included in a mod pack. More on that below.
If you want to PM me a list of all the mods you're planning to include in the mod pack so I can see what issues (if any) the combo is going to cause, and better anticipate what crazy bug reports from other mods are potentially headed my way, that would be great, but the rules are clear you're under no obligation to do so.
Why is Nexus Mods now accommodating mod packs?
Nexus Mods has two primary sources of revenue: advertisements and premium memberships. Many (most?) of us use an online ad-blocker. Few of us have Nexus premium memberships.
Although it continues to diversify, Nexus Mods is primarily a Bethesda mods site when measured by downloads and page views. When a new Bethesda Game Studios game releases that is open-world, single-player, and easily moddable, it results in a surge of new users to Nexus Mods.
It has been four years since the last such BGS game (Fallout 4). Timing of the next game (Starfield) is uncertain, nor can we say for sure whether it will even be moddable to the extent previous BGS entries were.
The website now known as Nexus Mods started as a passion project, when the site owner was quite young. Priorities change as a person grows older, and it’s not reasonable for users to expect the site owner to still hold the same passion for the website decades after it was created.
It is reasonable to expect that he would want an exit plan, and that exit plan likely entails a sale of Nexus Mods to a larger company.
Q: How do you make a website more attractive to a buyer when ad revenue is fickle, and the types of games that significantly increase your site traffic are no longer being made?
A: You make premium memberships more attractive to users.
Why does Wabbajack require a Premium Nexus membership?
Mod packs are huge and require extra bandwidth. Not charging to cover the costs of the extra bandwidth would be financially unwise, especially when users of Wabbajack are no longer looking at ads because they’re not visiting the individual mod pages.
What benefits do mod packs offer users?
They save time and frustration. You obtain access to a collection of a few hundred mods with 10 minutes of effort rather than 10 hours. And theoretically, the mod pack has been tested and is free of mod conflicts.
Are mod packs safe to use?
In terms of not containing viruses, mod packs are safe, provided the underlying mod files are downloaded from Nexus. In terms of not breaking your game…. we’ll see. There’s no quality control.
A mod pack containing a few interface mods, a bunch of textures, some weapons and armor, some settlement mods, and a few player/NPC appearance mods is unlikely to cause problems.
Start throwing in multiple overhaul, quest, location, weather, radio, landscape, and companion mods, and producing a stable, conflict-free load order becomes trickier. There are probably only a few dozen people qualified to make an “ultimate” mod pack for Fallout 4 containing the best of all mod categories. What are the odds that one of those people made the mod pack you’re downloading?
That statement may sound bizarre, but I’m saying that as a quest mod author. We don’t have to be especially good at any one thing, but we do have to be familiar with basically everything- not only mechanics in Creation Kit and FO4Edit, but how the stories, locations, and features of the top few hundred mods on Nexus interact with each other, and with the vanilla game.
Suppose someone who knows what they’re doing publishes the ultimate mod pack. Then one of the mods in the pack releases an update affecting the balance, but the mod pack curator hasn’t stayed current on the changes.
Now what?
Why are some mod authors so vocal about opposing mod packs?
Modders are not paid in money. As users, we have to pay them in some other form. Usually that’s a combo of feedback and appreciation. Mod packs threaten to remove these elements, and no modder wants their role reduced to that of a customer service rep answering dumb questions about mod packs.
Specific mod author concerns about mod packs include:
- They don’t appreciate publishers of mod packs earning money via Patreon off work the mod author did for free.
- They don’t like being ignored while the mod pack publisher receives all the credit. “Thank you” is a powerful phrase- one never heard from a user who doesn’t visit your mod page.
- They miss out on constructive feedback to improve the mod, add new features, or improve their skills for future mods.
- They may receive blame for errors made on the part of mod pack publishers, or errors stemming from other mods included in the mod pack. I’ve personally received some of the dumbest comments imaginable, up to and including Skyrim bug reports on Fallout 4 mods. Mod packs will not improve this situation.
- They may get pestered about altering their mods to make them compatible with certain mod packs.
- The mod page may include information critical to enjoyment of the mod, and we’ve all seen users who struggle with basic reading comprehension. Some of these users will publish mod packs, and some people will be foolish enough to download them.
- When users don’t have to visit a mod page to download a mod, they won’t necessarily know which elements of the mod pack came from which mod, and they won’t know which mod authors to donate to, if they wish to donate (although hardly anyone does).
Damanding, of Creative Clutter fame, perhaps summed it up best:
“We become anonymous cogs in a sweatshop providing content and the only people getting any recognition (and sometimes very large amounts of money) are the people who compiled the mod pack rather than the people actually creating the content.”
Examples?
Exhibit A:
If you’ve played Depravity and Heather Casdin, and you’re laughing right now, it’s because you’ve read enough of the mod pages to know how absurdly funny this situation is. But suppose you’d never heard of Depravity or Heather because you downloaded a mod pack? You’d be confused. There would be no sneaky thrill of having both Heather and Kellogg as companions at the same time. It would just be WTF?
This isn’t a hypothetical either. Both mods were apparently in at least one mod pack already, and as both are in the top 100 of Nexus “Top Files” as of this writing, it’s likely they would both be included in future mod packs that attempt to include some of the more popular quest/companion mods.
Exhibit B:
Someone made this post on the Depravity comment section a couple weeks ago.
“Had the most awesome Alerios moment in Concord. . . it was a dark and stormy night . . . fighting broke out with some random enemies who spawned from another mod. Many dead, two surrendered. I'm standing in front of one of them, another near where Alerios is standing decides to makes a run for it. The NPC is screaming like they do when they're running scared, and yes, Alerios started walking after her with his machete out. She ran into an abandoned house that was open because of Beantown interiors, screaming, Alerios walking across the street in the dark with lightning and such. I could see him hacking at her with his machete through the window! All I could say was ‘Perfection’.”
Endorsements are always nice, but it’s comments like these that can really make a mod author’s day. It feels fantastic knowing that you helped create a unique experience in someone’s game, and that they appreciated the moment enough to come back to the mod page and write about it. This type of interaction can be completely lost with mod packs if the user doesn’t even know which mod the content came from.
How can Nexus get dissenting mod authors on board with mod packs?
That’s for Nexus to figure out, but it’s worth asking what mod authors really care about.
Is it donations? Probably not. Mod authors say that, but hardly anyone donates. The real issue is not lack of donations, but rather mod authors not wanting to see other people profiting off their work when they receive nothing. Maybe a “Terms of Service” clarification that if someone publishes a mod pack from Nexus Mods, they can’t solicit donations for it, directly or indirectly.
Is it screenshots that users share on the mod page? Probably not a big factor.
What about written feedback? That’s often part of it. Personally, 90% of the mods I make are never published. When I do publish, it’s with an expectation for feedback on how to make the mod better and improve my mod skills.
What about endorsements? This is probably key. If downloading a mod pack automatically endorsed all the mods in the mod pack, you’d see mod authors become more receptive to the idea.
The current endorsement rate, compared to unique downloads, is only 5-10% for any given mod. If 100% of a mod’s unique downloads (via mod packs) became endorsements, the mod popularity rankings would shift dramatically, and many authors wouldn’t want to feel left out.
As for the elephant in the room….
Why can’t mod authors opt out of mod packs?
We don’t know yet. Maybe Nexus will tell us. The following is speculation, but it might not be practically feasible to opt out.
Take Outcasts and Remnants as an example. It uses assets from dozens of other mods, and some of those mods use assets from multiple mods as well. Suppose Outfit A in OAR uses Outfit B from another mod, which uses elements of Outfit C from yet another mod.
Permissions were obtained to use that stuff in the mod, but not in a mod pack, because mod packs didn’t exist back when that mod was published.
What if the author of Outfit C opts out of mod packs? Does that mean Outfit B and Outcasts and Remnants (because of Outfit A which uses Outfit B which uses Outfit C) can’t be included in mod packs either?
What if the authors of CBBE opt out? Would that mean basically no more female armor mods in mod packs?
But don’t most mod authors support mod packs?
Yes, and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was unanimously re-elected to the country’s parliament after every single eligible person in his constituency turned out to vote.
Nexus Mods conducted a survey of mod authors in mid-2019. Nearly 2,000 people responded. You can read the survey results here. (This has been linked all over social media, so assuming it's safe to do so here). The survey questions included:
1) For how long have you been making mods? (50% of respondents said 3 years or longer)
2) At this point my attitude towards the idea of Nexus Mods “mod packs” is…. (Very Negative, Negative, etc. up to Very Positive. 75% of responses were positive or very positive)
3) To me, the term “mod pack” has a _____ connotation. (Positive 38%, Negative 19%, Neutral 43%)
4) Would you be interested in making “mod packs” other users can use? (Yes 31%, No 16%, Maybe 53%)
Questions NOT asked on the survey included:
- My attitude towards mod pack publishers monetizing work that I did for free is….. (Positive, Negative, Neutral)
- My attitude towards Nexus Mods monetizing my work via additional Premium subscriptions is….. (Positive, Negative, Neutral)
- To me, “mod users completely bypassing my mod page” has a ______ connotation. (Positive, Negative, Neutral)
- Do you have concerns about mod packs, or would you like some basic information on how this system will function before forming an opinion? (Yes, No, Maybe)
Consent is all about how you ask the questions.
What is the long-term danger of mod packs to the modding community?
“Pressure makes diamonds, not hugs…. You think kids were nice to Bill Gates in high school? Hey, Gates, you Charlie Brown-looking motherf*cker. F*ck you, Gates. You four-eyed b*tch…. You think kids were nice to Mark Zuckerberg in high school? Hey, Zucker-f*ck. Zucker-f*cker. Mother-Zucker…. He invented Facebook after somebody smacked him in the face with a book. He invented Facebook just to get friends.” – Chris Rock
Not defending bullying in real life, but…. some bullied kids channel that frustration into accomplishing great things. And so it is with modding.
A modded Bethesda load order can feel like being bullied you when you first try it. Your mods don’t install right, your game constantly crashes, your save file becomes corrupt, you feel stupid not knowing what things like LOOT, xEdit, MO2, CBBE, F4SE, FNIS, etc. mean. It’s a hassle, and a lot of people quit, deciding it’s easier to just play vanilla, or on a console.
But some of us persevere. Small victories at first: merging two mods, changing the value on a game setting in xEdit, making a simple re-texture, getting Creation Kit to load without crashing. We gradually adapt and overcome, and eventually we're able to tame the bully. Anything we don’t like in the game, we change it. It can be a powerful feeling, knowing what we're able to do versus where we started out.
100% of the mods you are playing and enjoying right now are because someone struggled, overcame, and learned how to mod. Because they were motivated to do it.
How many of those mod authors would have made mods if they never had to struggle? If they could have just clicked a few buttons and had all their mods install for them? And so they never opened xEdit, Creation Kit, Nifskope, GIMP, or Photoshop? They never learned to mod.
Modding needs to be easy enough where it doesn’t scare everyone away, but hard enough that it still encourages people to struggle and learn. That’s how we get great mods, and that’s also the situation we enjoy right now. When old mod authors leave, new authors take their place, and the circle of life continues.
If the goal is outstanding mods, and more of them, this community doesn’t need more novice users who never progress beyond that. It needs a pipeline to educate and convert novice mod users into advanced mod authors.
Now some people will argue that the sheer number of new users that mod packs will bring in is going to coax some of them into learning how to mod, and as a result we’ll get more mods. While modding isn’t a cakewalk, it's not rocket science either. If those new users currently on the fence were willing to invest the time to learn modding, wouldn’t they already be doing it?
There’s nothing wrong with growth in user counts, unless it fundamentally changes the attitude of the average user, and a consumer mentality takes root where a problem-solving attitude used to be.
If mod authors see their work being monetized by others, while they’re left doing unpaid customer service for people who seem to resent their very existence, is that a community you want to be a part of?
If Bethesda sees Nexus making a killing on mod packs and decides they want to get back into paid mods, like they originally proposed back in 2015 (their rep has since been ruined so why not?), and users on Nexus are treating authors like crap because they don’t understand what goes into modding, at what point do you as an author decide, “F*ck it, I’m selling out to Bethesda and putting my mods behind a paywall”.