Well when a modding community can do the job of several mods packaged into 4-5 mods (ToT) you tend to pretty much lose touch.

I am sympathetic to the comments issue, they can provide valuable information about the state of a mod, and allow prospective subscribers to quickly read any questions and answers between players and modders. In my experience, players have pointed out bugs and issues for my mods I was not even aware of. I would certainly consider it a net-positive.

On the other side, though, the comments are only as useful as the diligence of the players posting there. Players sometimes make incorrect claims about mods I've made that are pretty easy to disprove. Addressing these comments and possibly getting into some kind of back-and-forth argument is a drain on time and energy.

A more cynical interpretation would be that shifting commentary to Discord would allow modders or their lieutenants to ban people from the server and restrict their ability to provide commentary. Some modders don't handle negative feedback well, and would prefer to exist in a 'positive' environment. I think this is the reason more often than not, judging by Xevyr's response. Personally I never had the need for that option, even when I had mods with many more subs, but other modders handle their playerbases differently.


Putting aside that rambling, what is broken with IQOL?

I'm not being facetious when I write this, but I don't have time to fully go through your response at the moment. And I don't really want to get into some back-and-forth writing novellas, I just want to elaborate on my points.

I get the sense that I worded a particular phrase poorly.

Originally posted by Dread Swoop:

Some modders don't handle negative feedback well, and would prefer to exist in a 'positive' environment. I think this is the reason more often than not, judging by Xevyr's response.

The first statement is an observation I've made throughout the years, and I didn't assign it any malice. It is akin to the assertion that modders want to avoid abusive commentary from portions of their playerbase, but framed from a different angle. The second statement was drawing from your commentary that some modders do indeed go the Discord route for reasons like that, not lumping you in with them, especially since I believe you leave your comments open. I should've been more specific to avoid that implication, but unfortunately since the original comment no longer exists, I can't point to the exact section I was referencing.


I think my observation is correct, whichever framing is preferred. Modders tend to be young and self-selected from a creative, more artistic predisposition. They put some amount of their self-worth and prospects for the future into their modding projects. No one likes negative feedback, but I think for those reasons it affects them more viscerally than others. You could argue game developers are often drawn from the same pool.

How they deal with that negative energy is important. The intent of an overly-negative commentator is to draw the modder or his/her supporters into an argument or insult-throwing, and giving them what they want rewards bad behavior and darkens the spirits of the other side. Bad actors can't be banned on Steam, only their comments can be deleted, so the best option in dealing with them is to ignore them or make a simple refutation and leave it at that, and they tend to leave out of boredom shortly after. Modders should keep in mind that they hold the power in situations like that, and impotently-flailing random ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ make themselves look like fools to everyone else reading. More egregious behavior can be reported to Valve to be acted upon.

The critique implicit in my first quoted statement is that, in pursuit of minimizing the amount of negative energy they encounter, these modders are willing to deprive their playerbase, current and potential, of a useful tool. And whether the modder intended it this way or not, it expresses rather negative connotations to the player about what he/she thinks of his/her playerbase. It leads to resentment, resentment to negativity, and negativity to further resentment.

The problem with shutting oneself off from criticism like that is it begins to cultivate an environment of 'enforced positivity' which begins to expand upon what kinds of criticisms are considered 'abusive'. The effusive praise from sycophantic followers begins to ring hollow, and the modder becomes mentally tortured guessing at the reality of the microcosm he/she's created. In the spirit of some edgelord quote, the presence of the bad accentuates and imbues sincerity into the good.

Modders can of course do as they please, I just happen to think that, perhaps counter-intuitively, they would be happier and have a more supportive playerbase if they respected that playerbase well-enough to allow open expression and let the ~5-10% of overly-negative drivel wither on the vine.

Oops..
The reason my original message is missing is because it was probably reported and subsequently removed by a moderator (apparently they're starting to moderate this wild west again, which is a good thing!).
So in light of that I am just going to delete my long post there as well and just not bother, since the truth is that even if I somehow get this one person to realize they probably should've been asking for help, rather than bashing mods, the next one is probably right around the corner.

Yea otherwise, fair enough. I get what you're saying, I just think that's not the assumption we should be starting out with and I also don't think that would describe any notable majority. As I tried to explain in my other post, there are very legit reasons for it and it's especially getting more relevant as people are evolving to the point where they do not LOOK anymore, they just ask.. either straight in the comments.. or they go and rather ask AI etc.. the information could literally be on their screen, staring at them and they are simply blind to it.

the opening comment is just one example of why i have disabled the comment function for all my mods. simply throwing an assertion into the room without substance. If you have something like that under your mod, then you can either spend hours and days trying to put it right, or you can invest endless amounts of time deleting such nonsense. same thing with the discord server... it's easier to remove nonsense in just one place than in several. the steam comment section is unsuitable for things like instructions or bug reports either way. so you end up with an alternative solution like discord in any case, and the steam comment section is just ballast and extra work.

That is the one thing about the steam workshop I never understood.

On the Nexus ALL mods have comment sections and no one ever questioned that.

For the Skyrim Special Edition p.e. I have to use the Nexus and the comment sections are helping me to choose which mods are for me AND if they have any issues. No problems there.

Originally posted by TheStoryteller01:

That is the one thing about the steam workshop I never understood.

On the Nexus ALL mods have comment sections and no one ever questioned that.

For the Skyrim Special Edition p.e. I have to use the Nexus and the comment sections are helping me to choose which mods are for me AND if they have any issues. No problems there.

No offense, but Nexus is far from the Gold Standard on how things should be done. They're more like a robber baron monopoly.

Yea. You should disable comments and discussion and sequester yourself to a non-index platform instead. /s

I realize the OP is the prime example for going this route and this is probably the wrong thread to debate these things as a result since we're far into the red right from the beginning.

I'll just say that if you disable comments and hide on Discord, you are not a good mod creator.

Originally posted by Greyhawk The Angry:

No offense, but Nexus is far from the Gold Standard on how things should be done.

It is easy to say who is NOT Gold Standard for modding. But WHAT actually is it?

Is the Steam workshop the Gold Standard?

Or ModDb?

Or skymods?

Or somthing else?

I mean, if the Nexus is not the Gold Standard, then some other community or platform has to be.

Otherwise the Nexus might still be the best modding platform around.

Originally posted by TheStoryteller01:

It is easy to say who is NOT Gold Standard for modding. But WHAT actually is it?

Is the Steam workshop the Gold Standard?

Yes, from a modder's point of view, with the Steam integration into the DevKit, it's easy to upload and manage your mods. With the deactivated comments section, it's easy to remove all the parts of the Steam Workshop that don't work so well and redirect to a more suitable platform for support and bug reports.

You could argue that Steam is a good platform for mod users, but ultimately, it doesn't matter from the modder's point of view. It is usable, which is all that matters.

Originally posted by Ghennkin:

I'll just say that if you disable comments and hide on Discord, you are not a good mod creator.

That's nonsense; you can tell that you're not a modder.

Steam is only good for uploads and downloads as a mod platform. If you need a platform to support your mods, or something for bug reports and documentation, you won't find anything on Steam. Disabling comments is just a consequence of the missing features on Steam. Managing multiple platforms with user questions and problems is time-consuming, so it is necessary to reduce communication channels to one that fulfils all your needs — and that is not Steam.

Uhhhhhmmm, I hate to interrupt the heated discussion here, but what's wrong with IQOL?

Sorry for the interruption.

For me the mod is ok.

We never found out :)

Originally posted by Hammer Goblin:

Well when a modding community can do the job of several mods packaged into 4-5 mods (ToT) you tend to pretty much lose touch.

Sadly Tot doesnt work in single player

Originally posted by Fahlkirk:

Originally posted by Hammer Goblin:

Well when a modding community can do the job of several mods packaged into 4-5 mods (ToT) you tend to pretty much lose touch.

Sadly Tot doesnt work in single player

But you only need admin rights.