game modding general

boreal cryptid

i want to start this thread with the news, but you're free to write anything about modding here.

Founder Robin 'Dark0ne' Scott announced the transfer of ownership in a post, officially ending his direct stewardship since launching the site in 2001.

a few things about it: mental health and burnout, which is understandable, and i'm glad Robin decided to make time for himself. and the other... the future of the NexusMods. i've found a short video about the new staff (owners), and it's not looking good, to be honest (damn, i forgot how to embed videos here...). TL;DR: bizznazzz slang everywhere, monetization and NFT ideas... as the person in this video said, i don't think it'll be quick horrible downfall or anything. just sliiiding down. i guess it's time to back-up my modlist and favorite mods somewhere!!!

Ross_R

Nexus was good, like, 15 years ago. It lost a lot of its practical use. Well, actually, it lost most of its practical use. I remember using it a lot back in the early 2010's. And in the last five years I only logged into Nexus once.
Removing mods based on political agenda didn't help either.
So, like, who even cares? Nexus Mods is an empty shell of itself, honestly. Whoever bought it can do whatever they wanna and it won't make things worse.
Major games like GTA have their own sites - and multiple - dedicated to the mods related to the games in the series. Most other modders hide on the Discord servers. It creates problems, of course: it is hard to find such a scene. But it is also a plus: whoever owns the game will not be able to order cease and desist to anything if he cannot find the scene. Just to name a few: among my servers is a one that is dedicated to moddng Cars video games, one for old PS2/Gamecube/XBox game named Gladius, one for Motorstorm, one for Watch Dogs, and so on. Pretty much every game has its own specialized server. This is how it works today, unfortunately. Sites like Nexus Mods and various forums are obsolete.
Also, truth be told, most people are really interested in modding massively popular games, like the aforementioned GTA. I guess, it is quite straightforward: popular things attract most people, including most modders. But I still find popular mainstream stuff sad. Well, otherwise I wouldn't be posting here, but on Facebook or something.
Small games, like Gladius, Motorstorm and the others I mentioned have tiny dedicated communities at best. I have no idea how, but yes, there are still about a dozen of guys who enjoy modding a 2006 game named Gladius. Either way, the communities are way small and barely attract any new blood.
And yet still, I enjoy hacking and modding unpopular games, even the ones that have no community whatsoever. It happens rather often that I am actually first at modding some barely-known game. I guess, I just enjoy picking code apart, and I also try my best to bring good games (and the ways to mod them) to the public.
Can't say it works, but I still run a channel dedicated to this stuff, and though I kinda hate posting my own videos, I did post a number recently. It seems like it is going to become a bad habit, but we are in a thread dedicated to it, so it seems foolish not to share a link or two:
https://www.patreon.com/collection/157462?view=expanded
https://www.patreon.com/posts/99749430?collection=157462
https://www.patreon.com/posts/88052780?collection=157462
https://www.patreon.com/posts/76361331?collection=157462
https://www.patreon.com/posts/51490036?collection=157462
https://www.patreon.com/posts/61324457?collection=157462

Aero

What games are even modded these days anyways? What are the sites out there that don't rhyme with bexus?

boreal cryptid

Aero i'm insane about modding Skyrim (both old and new) and Morrowind! my modlists are like a treasure for me, because they are carefully crafted to make my game truly my own :3
i can assure you, modding is alive and well! and not only for Skyrim.

same with Sims2&3, but creators for it don't use NM often. most of what i see is on Tumblr and modthesims. not sure about Sims4, because i don't play it, but i still see many people modding it.

as for other sites (that i know): moddrop and moddb.

Ross_R

Aero What are the sites out there that don't rhyme with bexus?

Much like with everything else about modding, it is really fractured. Mostly depends on which game you are looking for.
A lot of Fallout modders are on No Mutants Allowed.
Fans of Sea Dogs and other pirate games occupy Pirates Ahoy!
GTA games have about a dozen of websites, with GTA Garage being my favorite, albeit I uploaded my own small mods on GTA Inside.
Just above my post there's ModTheSims for The Sims, which adds to my point too.
So on, so on. Pretty much every major mod, like OpenMW or Fallout: London has its own website.
A good overall repository would be (bleh) Steam. Its workshop and community discussions can hold a number of tech-savvy guys, and with some know-how it is actually possible to download Workshop mods separately and apply them to non-Steam releases. To name a few, Steam was a place where I got mods and tools for Rebel Galaxy and remastered Homeworld.
GOG has recently launched its own modding program - well, we'll see how that one will go.
Still, I have to repeat that I find that the Discord is the biggest place at the moment. Especially if you want to find some really niche stuff, like ways to write trainers for XBox 360 or PS3. All the old 360/PS3 forums are pretty much dead and people moved into Discord, so that's that.
Creator of must-have Living City mod for the first Watch Dogs also didn't bother with his own website and just went with a Discord server - and he is far from the only one. For better or worse, the majority of modders and mod tools are in Discord nowdays, even though it kind of pains me, both figuratively and literally, making those communities a pain in the buttocks to find.

Somnolence

Sing it with me folks: "the big problem is the consolidation of the internet".
I'm mostly familiar with Bethesda mods, and I'll say that if you want Bethesda Mods you go to Nexus (or rarely) ModDB.
There are a few non-nexus blogs that host links to smaller mod sites, but the majority of them are for niche interest such as:

Eskyrim for clothing and armor mods,
TESGeneral that one of our own here has worked on, mostly providing links and guides,
Babo / Baka Factory hosting Korean autism.

More generally,

Loverslab for lewd / sex mods (again, mostly Bethesda games),
FPS/GameBananna for mostly Valve game mods but all sorts are included,
Playground.ru for mostly Russian-pirated mods,
and lastly Basedmods for hosting mods for that are generally not deemed community-guideline-compliant anywhere else.

Ross_R

Somnolence Playground.ru for mostly Russian-pirated mods,

Totally didn't expect to see the Playground mentioned. Frankly, I think the website is rather usseless in terms of modding. And in terms of... anything else. It fell in quality greatly way long ago, when they started to include movies and whatever else into their news reel. Nowadays seeing news about actual games on the Playground - and not about gaming community or devs of particular game - is something akin to seeing a unicorn.
I only really downloaded several trainers and CE tables from the Playground in the past few years. The only good recent mod I saw there is from some guy who worked on the game named Saboteur.
I'd like to say that is not about pirated mods, but... personally I use Playground precisely to host some Kickstarter-exclusive files. I'm not sure how much of a piracy that is, but I feel Playground is the safest place to host them.
I also uploaded several tutorials there for whatever reason, plus several savegames, but, really, overall I'm not fond of it much.

Somnolence if you want Bethesda Mods you go to Nexus

They still hold a monopoly over Bethesda games? That's a surprise.
I have to admit that the last Bethesda games I played was Fallout 3, and even though I want to get back into Morrowind and Oblivion one day, I have no time for such a massive adventure.
I was dead sure though, that Bethesda games left for other places long ago... On another hand, didn't Nexus start off as a site for TES mods? It was so long ago I barely remember... But if I am correct - well... old habits die hard or something.

Somnolence Babo / Baka Factory hosting Korean autism.

->boobs
->bigger boobs
->even bigger boobs
->improved bear trap
That warranted a chuckle, if anything.

I think I'll also throw TESAll into the pile of sites with mods for Bethesda games, if you don't mind russian. Old-ass site which I haven't visited for a while, since I, once again, didn't play Bethesda games for about 10 years... but the site still exists. And it seems like it expanded a little beyond Bethesda games too... Not sure if it is a good thing, but there you have it.

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