X Mods and Nexus Mods

[[Nexus]Dark0ne]

Hi folks,

Robin from NexusMods.com here. A few of the members at Nexus Mods recently asked me if I had ever considered making a Nexus site for X2/3 mods. Truth of the matter is, before X2 came out I was hosting a site for X2 called X2 Source. If you're a vintage veteran of the community you might remember it from way back in 2004-2006. Unfortunately I went off to university and lost track of the site, and the site's creator, Raven, went in to the military, so it all got a bit hairy. Fast forward to the present and things are a lot different.

I just wanted to touch base with you, as a community, to see if you have any need for a Nexus site to host your mods. The X modding community has always been very centralised on the Egosoft forums, which is absolutely great and I'd never try to change that, but I think it comes as no surprise to anyone that it creates a relative barrier to entry for new comers who are simply looking for a user-friendly site to find and download mods for the game. I myself never got around to playing X3 (I think the steep learning curve I eventually mastered from X2 has put me off during the last few busy years!), and I'm just getting in to it now, but trying to find the myriad of different mods available for the game through these forums alone is a daunting task, irrespective of a particularly well maintained sticky thread at the top of the forums.

If the general consensus is that everything is fine and couldn't be improved upon, and that the majority are happy with how things are then that's great, there's no need for a Nexus site at all. However if you think there's room for improvement then by all means please air any constructive feedback you might have that might enable me to create a solution to the problem. Would a Nexus site be worthwhile for the X series? Would it be used? Have you ever used one of the Nexus sites for another game? How could they be improved to provide a better service to the X community?

If you've never heard of Nexus Mods, we're a modding community from multiple different games including Skyrim, Oblivion, Morrowind, Dragon Age, Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas, The Witcher, Neverwinter Nights, Mount & Blade and World of Tanks. Coming up on 4.5 million members, we're one of, if not the largest dedicated modding communities on the internet.

Thanks to anyone who can air their feelings on the topic

[flopsies]

As a member of the Nexus I would love to see an x nexus. It would definitely be very different, but I think (myself included) many people would love how you wouldn't have to wade through forums to find a single ship or script.

[TrixX]

Sounds like a good way to get more exposure for a lot of very good X3 Mods. Having a mod advertised in a forum thread on the Egosoft website is one thing, having a site that has the throughput of the Nexus websites is another

May even raise the profile of X3 TC/AP a bit in the process

[DJ_D]

As a frequent user of TES, Fallout, NV and Skyrim Nexus, I really would love to se a X-Nexus.

90% of my games mods come from there and having a database for the mods is a great idea. Everything in one spot and with links to the appropriate Egosoft forum threads could bring alt more people and their amazing modding skills to the x series. It might even spread the word about X.

[Moonrat]

I'll donate, just let me know how and when... Seems like a win-win, Egosoft get a greater exposure and us modders get a larger fan base.

[Jack08]

I agree seems like a great idea; im just worried about the uptake - perhaps if an announcement is posted on the egosoft main site and a sticky thread here too - to make it easier for newcomers to the egosoft boards and old members returning to know that it exists.

Hopefully the mod makers post all there existing mods/scripts on there too - however lots of them are MIA. I guess we will have to see. Looking forward however this could be invaluable to X:Rebirth.

[vuohi]

I think it would be great. I am a big fan of the Nexus sites. Those of us who go there frequently appreciate it, and it helps spread mods around.

[flopsies]

There is only one thing that I think that would not work, which is people actually using it. There are almost no m and b mods, so will it actually be used

[batolemaeus]

I think it's a great idea especially in preparation for the new game.

The current system is maintenance intensive and error prone due to the reliance on forum posts. There's no central hosting, links go dead eventually, some mods use .spk, some are manual install, some use custom installers..

A unified directory with tagging support like the nexus would be awesome. Imo you should get in touch with Egosoft directly. It makes business sense to make it easier to acquire and share mods. And you have no sense, you lose profitsss.

[Chinz]

That would be fantastic, I am a regular user of your nexus sites and want to bestow my thanks on you for maintaining such a great website
It could really benefit the X franchise as well as you have an unbelievable amount of people visiting nexus every day. Thanks for the offer much appreciated

[apricotslice]

My experience with such sites is that I upload the mods to them once, then totally forget about them. Mainly because there is nothing there that holds my attention. So where I have mods stored in such sites, they are probably long since out of date.

I host my own mods, so when one gets changed, its just uploaded onto my own download site.

In theory, I like the idea of a central place for all mods, but the reality of keeping it up to date hasnt been solved in any way that works for me.

Ideally, such a site needs to be self updating. So when I post on the thread here that an update has been uploaded, the site detects it and downloads the updated version itself. That way, its not dependent on people remembering to update the site as well as where they normally host.

Alternately, if a modder was to store host details, the site could check the host on a semi-regular basis, or triggerable basis, for anything new, and download it. Since most mods have a version number in the name of the file, new files should be detectable. By "triggerable", I mean event driven, such as 1 month after a new patch comes out, go looking for mod updates.

I know this probably means a lot of work for being able to access the different host systems, but a self updating site is the only way I see the concept working best. Certainly if you rely on my memory to keep my mods and scripts up to date on an external site, it isnt going to happen.

Also, bandwidth is a consideration. Uploading all my TC and AP stuff to a new site, would be a lot more bandwidth for me than I'd want to use. However, someone else downloading all my stuff off my site, is a different matter, as the site bandwidth (huge) is different than my access bandwidth (small).

Put another way, your welcome to copy all of my stuff to your site yourself, but relying on me to keep it up to date will mean is isnt. Each game has its own download area on my site, and each file is named for the game.

[SS_T]

There have been some attempts over the years to create a centralized database for mods for the egosoft games. However very few are kept upto date or complete.
The modders on this forum seem to do what apricotslice does, even I do. I hosted the x1 mods on my own server then I uploaded them to places like moddb for publicity and as a backup.

I also created the xdownloads website which hosts 1276 mods. Its not exactly perfect, but I think it has the most upto date database of X3TC and X3AP mods as I updated it at the end of july. Its gaining popularity but still relatively unknown it gets about 3200 unique visitors a month.

However if you do plan to make one for only X:Rebirth, I think it would be a good idea.
I think as long as you get it ready before X:Rebirth's release and make modders aware of it, it could be the main hosting for modders to upload their mods. I would certainly link to it on the XDownloads website, but what we don't need is for another hosting site in which some people upload their mods and other people go elsewhere.

[Texhnolyzed]

I like the Nexus sites a lot so this is definitely something I would support.

[Raider480]

Sorry, but this is something I would not support at present.

[Jack08]