You seem to have many personal reasons not to trust the Nexus, I know there's a lot of infighting in the modding community - like in every community, however I suggest at least using the Nexus as a second hub if anyone still cares about publicity and new players, it's called advertising. If your mod gets rejected by the Nexus staff, no harm done, it's still on the Vault or you can create NWNLoverslab or whatnot. I personally care most for PWs, both NWN1 and 2, because I've seen many great servers die that deserved much more and everyone's just hanging around on the five huge ones anymore.
As an example - I'm not sure, but on the Vault, the number behind the files, is that the downloads? If so, Compare, say, the Icewind Dale NWN2 campaign downloads on the Vault to the downloads at the Nexus: Vault about 2600, Nexus 55.130 (11.702 unique).
My own little hak has 300 downloads on the Vault, 9.822 on the Nexus.
Personal reasons?
I certainly don't a have vendetta against The Nexus. To borrow your verbage: My own little mod on the Nexus has 82,227 downloads with almost half a million views.
I appreciate The Nexus as a hosting site, a publicity tool and a community resource.
However, I am also aware of it's limitations, it's structure, it's rules and the enforcement of it's admin team.
And just based on the permissions rules NWN:EE cannot thrive within the Nexus Environment.
No CEP, No Project Q, No PRC, No DLA... No server hak compilations.
Server Hak's violate the Nexus terms of service as they use other peoples work without express permission.
Persistent Worlds will not be better off on The Nexus.
Point of clarification - the new vault is neverwintervault.org. It's confusing to call it NWVault - that was an IGN site that died years ago, players will be disappointed if they search for it. Better call it neverwintervault or "the vault".
There is a critical difference between NWN modding and the mods permitted by the Nexus.
NWN has an informal open source policy (with recognized exceptions). My own work depends on contributions from over a hundred artists and content makers, which I have included without seeking or needing permission. Everyone is cool with that.
The Nexus boss became notorious in our circle during the short-lived Dragon Age modding era by leading the charge against open source. He is entitled to his opinion, but I for one will never publish on his site.
That's before we even consider the censorship and bullying by his sidekicks.
Heaven forbid a community commit the carnal sin of openly collaborating with one another.
It used to be like that for Morrowind Modding... But the Chalice was replaced by the Nexus. Then Oblivion happened.
I think Neverwinter is one of the last few remaining collaborative communities and not just a series of pompous boutiques. Thank you for all of your work in helping to keep the NWN community alive all these years.
I don't mind people downloading from the Nexus, or mirroring their work to different sites No one's going to be forced to go anywhere. And while Beamdog will never have the vault (that's a good thing), keeping up with the times and making sure it's accessible to its intended audience is a good discussion. It's also one that's gone on now and again at the vault and has been recently started again (by Proleric :P).
For me personally, I think of these as the vault's general goals -
To be an independent community host for NWN custom content. It was not meant to kill IGN if all ended up being well (yeah right), but to safekeep if it didn't. If people can upload to Steam or BD forums in addition to the vault and the Nexus, for me that's okay, and not a fight I want to have. But the vault should be forever-minded, with a long view that prepares to be let down and is run by members of the NWN community. People should know that uploading there will keep it safe and available. Independent is more important there than "only".
To be a repository for years of NWN knowledge, some thought lost, others that might even live only in a few veteran brains. The vault is home to a great deal of information and tutorials that should be accessible to those that benefit from them.
To provide a place for discussion and collaboration with regards to custom content. You can ask about builds or best henchmen at the vault, but there are probably better places, and that's okay. The environment should be both encouraging to new and old alike, and useful to those looking for critical eyes for improvement.
Keeping those in mind helps me form more specific questions and bring areas of potential improvement to mind. For example, framing the vault's independence as key to its existence makes it more clear that no, options for takeovers are non-starters, and while some people may move to one site or another, the vault will always be a thing. At the same time, for it to serve the greater community in the areas it is irreplaceable in, there's no doubt there are things it could do better, and there are projects that are really just started, eg the wiki. Hopefully as more people rediscover the vault, some might also be able to contribute their time and skills to the volunteer effort!
@Proleric "NWVault" is fine and much more pleasant to type anyways. We've been squatting that term since forever, and if you google it, you'll see us at #1 for it.
I'm totally for a UI overhaul of the current vault, but it's a fragile project and needs TLC to not break anything. It's also a significant time investment that I cannot put in personally. This puts the vault in a difficult position: As the tech admin, I'm loathe to give anyone access to such a precious resource (despite extensive backups, ofc) without due process, and testing of any and all changes before deploying them; but otoh, we don't really have a staging/test environment either, so sigh. Trusted volunteers with the technical knowledge and appreciation of the difficulties to manage this process are extremely hard to come by.
I can't even begin to imagine how much work it has been to rebuild and maintain all of that knowledge that by all rights should be lost to the sands of time. You have mods I didn't even remember working on until I saw them alive once more floating in this vast repository of knowledge. The Vault may as well be magic.
I firmly believe The Vault is one of the legs that has propped up NWN for us to be seen as commercially viable enough for an Enhanced Edition.
@niv I opened a discussion here on exactly that topic.
I greatly admire everything you've done. What you just said is spot on, too. The remaining question is what action we need to take to obtain the resources and safeguards to move onwards and upwards. You're uniquely placed to advise on that - a discussion best held at the vault itself, I suggest.
Really appreciate the kind words; but honestly, all of the praise should go to the community itself whom this is about, and those that did the rescue/recovery work initially. My part is technical in principle, financially in hosting, and some kind of pretense at holding up ethics standards to the extent that I dare, and some PR work.
I'll pick up the continuity discussion on the vault thread to leave this one for discussing content hosting!
It seems to me that download volume will be solved a bit if Beamdog promotes NWVault with NWN EE.
a reason there will be if bd is collaborating with the Vault ...
GOG didn't do a collaboration with the Neverwinter Vault, they didn't make it change. They did get input from them for a recommended mods thing and showed people where to go. Personally I say BD should go the same route, recommended mods as suggested by the Neverwinter Vault or just let people know they can go there to get great mods for the game.
You know if they did that you would probably see mods on the Neverwinter Vault as a new section, NWN: EE for thos mods that are really only for that edition.
I say use what is working and not created more problems and mess by trying to reinvent the wheel.
Comments
I certainly don't a have vendetta against The Nexus. To borrow your verbage: My own little mod on the Nexus has 82,227 downloads with almost half a million views.
I appreciate The Nexus as a hosting site, a publicity tool and a community resource.
However, I am also aware of it's limitations, it's structure, it's rules and the enforcement of it's admin team.
And just based on the permissions rules NWN:EE cannot thrive within the Nexus Environment.
No CEP, No Project Q, No PRC, No DLA... No server hak compilations.
Server Hak's violate the Nexus terms of service as they use other peoples work without express permission.
Persistent Worlds will not be better off on The Nexus.
Persistent Worlds will be better off if: @BelleSorciere is talking sense. Listen to Belle.
NWN has an informal open source policy (with recognized exceptions). My own work depends on contributions from over a hundred artists and content makers, which I have included without seeking or needing permission. Everyone is cool with that.
The Nexus boss became notorious in our circle during the short-lived Dragon Age modding era by leading the charge against open source. He is entitled to his opinion, but I for one will never publish on his site.
That's before we even consider the censorship and bullying by his sidekicks.
It used to be like that for Morrowind Modding... But the Chalice was replaced by the Nexus. Then Oblivion happened.
I think Neverwinter is one of the last few remaining collaborative communities and not just a series of pompous boutiques. Thank you for all of your work in helping to keep the NWN community alive all these years.
For me personally, I think of these as the vault's general goals -
To be an independent community host for NWN custom content. It was not meant to kill IGN if all ended up being well (yeah right), but to safekeep if it didn't. If people can upload to Steam or BD forums in addition to the vault and the Nexus, for me that's okay, and not a fight I want to have. But the vault should be forever-minded, with a long view that prepares to be let down and is run by members of the NWN community. People should know that uploading there will keep it safe and available. Independent is more important there than "only".
To be a repository for years of NWN knowledge, some thought lost, others that might even live only in a few veteran brains. The vault is home to a great deal of information and tutorials that should be accessible to those that benefit from them.
To provide a place for discussion and collaboration with regards to custom content.
You can ask about builds or best henchmen at the vault, but there are probably better places, and that's okay. The environment should be both encouraging to new and old alike, and useful to those looking for critical eyes for improvement.
Keeping those in mind helps me form more specific questions and bring areas of potential improvement to mind. For example, framing the vault's independence as key to its existence makes it more clear that no, options for takeovers are non-starters, and while some people may move to one site or another, the vault will always be a thing. At the same time, for it to serve the greater community in the areas it is irreplaceable in, there's no doubt there are things it could do better, and there are projects that are really just started, eg the wiki. Hopefully as more people rediscover the vault, some might also be able to contribute their time and skills to the volunteer effort!
I'm totally for a UI overhaul of the current vault, but it's a fragile project and needs TLC to not break anything. It's also a significant time investment that I cannot put in personally. This puts the vault in a difficult position: As the tech admin, I'm loathe to give anyone access to such a precious resource (despite extensive backups, ofc) without due process, and testing of any and all changes before deploying them; but otoh, we don't really have a staging/test environment either, so sigh. Trusted volunteers with the technical knowledge and appreciation of the difficulties to manage this process are extremely hard to come by.
I firmly believe The Vault is one of the legs that has propped up NWN for us to be seen as commercially viable enough for an Enhanced Edition.
Thank you!
I greatly admire everything you've done. What you just said is spot on, too. The remaining question is what action we need to take to obtain the resources and safeguards to move onwards and upwards. You're uniquely placed to advise on that - a discussion best held at the vault itself, I suggest.
I'll pick up the continuity discussion on the vault thread to leave this one for discussing content hosting!
You know if they did that you would probably see mods on the Neverwinter Vault as a new section, NWN: EE for thos mods that are really only for that edition.
I say use what is working and not created more problems and mess by trying to reinvent the wheel.