What’s the difference? Are Steam ones more “approved” or something.

Yes, totally new PC gamer here... if UPS ever gets here today...

Personal preference, really. As for on Nexus and not the Workshop, some may contain advlt content and stuff the Nexus allows but the Workshop doesn't.

Using the Nexus Mod Manager to install Nexus mods, you'd be more aware if there are overwrites (especially for texture replacers).

A little more advanced, but if you're using a mod that needs the SKSE_loader.exe to use, than you'd bypass the Skyrim launcher which checks for mod updates off the Workshop. So with me, I'm using NMM and I can track updates via it easier and separately, without needing to connect to the Workshop via the default launcher in the case for Workshop mods.

But I use mods from both, I would just suggest going for the Nexus alternative if the mod has it.

They're just alternative sites to download mods from. There are more, e.g. http://tesalliance.org/, or http://www.tesvskyrim.com/.
There are some differences - the Nexus has a handy plugin manager, a large community, and basically allows uploading many mod formats and content; the Steam Workshop is integrated with the Skyrim Launcher, but has some restrictions on what you can upload there; and so on.
In the end, it's up to the creator of a mod where he uploads his plugin. Some things aren't allowed on some sites, but mostly, it's personal preference. You'll find many mods on several sites, they're in no way mutually exclusive.

The Nexus has been around for years and years under various guises, and many players of earlier Elder Scrolls games have settled into the community and their way of doing things.
You can download mods and install them how and when you want (either manually, or via BAIN/NMM).
More sophisticated mods (those that use external programs, script extenders etc.) can be hosted here.
It's independant, and as mentioned before allows more advlt content.

The Workshop is new, launched for Skyrim, its intention being ease of use - you "subscribe" to mods which automatically installs and updates them - even if you don't want them updated. The workshop allows mod-makers to update their mods more easily than Nexus. Back in the days of Oblivion, "better" updates sometime either broke my game or added new features I didn't want. With Nexus I can stick with the one I'm currently using if I don't want newer features or until I'm sure any bugs in the new version have been ironed out. However many other mods have bugfixes and automatic updates via the workshop means these get fixed. With Nexus you need to keep checking manually to see if there are any updates.

I prefer being in complete control of the mods I install, and am happy to take responsibility if I do something that breaks my game. Others however prefer the ease of use of the Workshop - no worries about having to install or keep things up to date.


One issue though I'm worried about is mod compatibility - by making mod installation easier via the workshop, it doesn't solve issues such as conflicting mods - and those that benefit from tools such as Wrye Bash. A workshop user may not even be aware that there's an issue until its too late. Wrye Bash can alert users to issues and a "bashed patch" can get conflicting mods to work better together. My guess is that many workshop-only users have never heard of Wrye Bash.

The workshop may well encourage newer and less technical players to use mods - but won't help them manage a heavy load order or help prevent them from messing things up with their game.

Sometimes it's just because the author chose one over the other.

I'm using lots of mods from nexus, and a few steam exclusive ones. Using nexus mod manager, I've never had a problem combining both mod sources

Some mods are not on Steam because Steam do not allows mods bigger than 100mb to be uploaded on their servers .... this is why most of my mods are not there .... when their politics will switch from small mods to include also large mods will reconsider that ....

As a mod-a-holic I find Nexus and using NMM much easier than Steam. One of the main reasons as mentioned above is if a new update is incompatible and you need to resort to the older version of the mod, it is right there available on Nexus. Steam FORCES you to use whatever the latest is, so you are stuck with either an unstable game or having to disable the mod until you figure out the issue. In addition, it is easier to "customize" mods through another site than Steam. I have a few follower mods I've tweaked the ESP's and unfortunately, Steam versions will overwrite those as it scans for updates and sees changes that are not consistent with what it has on its side.

For me, it's more about control...I have the freedom to do what I want with other download sites, but Steam forces you to be up-to-date without even asking...

Steam only allows you to upload one .esp, which I really don't like.

Unsubscribing from the mod will fix that - the mod's still there, but the Workshop doesn't check for updates anymore.
But yes, it's ... not exactly perfect.

And now it appears there may be a thrashing issue (http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1369136-thrashing-thread-1/) - when you unsubscribe, the Workshop doesn't delete the file but the engine still scans the file in the directory even when not loading, potentially contributing to a slower load - particuarly if you have many unsubscribed but still present mods.

Not unique to the workshop, but installing via Nexus Mod Manager/BAIN rather than the Workshop would allow you to remove the files associated with the mod to help prevent the thrashing for inactive mods.

In that case, couldn't you simply delete/move the mod that you don't want from the directory?

Of course, but how many Workshop users would be aware they needed to do that in the first place? I suspect that many wouldn't even know where to find their Data files directory if they've never had to look before.

I'm going to speak to my own experience, and in the process make some sweeping generalizations, which I hope can be forgiven.

The user bases and attitudes on each of these sites seem to be very different. When publishing on the Nexus, I feel a strong sense of community; lots of feedback, lots of suggestions, and very merciful forgiveness when things go wrong. Useful bug reports, useful testing, and in general warm and fuzzy vibes. I get the same feeling here; "we're all in this together."

Steam does not seem to be conducive to, or most of its users do not seem to be interested in, the same level of community building. It feels more like a Mod Store, except all of the products are free. And when things go wrong, I don't feel like people want to work with me as much; there doesn't seem to be as much respect for how much donated effort and time goes into building great mods. Instead I feel like a cashier at the front of the Mod Store, being told "this doesn't work as advertised, and damn it, you'd better make it work or I want my (proverbial) money back!" You have a large audience that is used to Steam and professional content and things "just working". There is a strong cognitive disconnect where user-created, free content is expected to be as polished and problem-free as professional, paid-for content. You don't have this disconnect on the Nexus, since everything is already user-generated.

I have a tremendous amount of information I need to convey to the player to understand how my mod is going to change how they play the game, and so I need a lot of space. The Steam Workshop is very restrictive in terms of how long the description page can be, to the point that I've just started directing my Steam users over to Nexus to read the description there. Nexus pages can also use BBCode, which can make it much easier on the eyes with proper formatting.

I can also only offer one version of my mod on my page at a time on Steam, which makes beta-testing out of the question. I currently rely on Nexus users to beta-test new releases, and after they pass muster, I upload to Steam. In general Steam lacks the publishing power that Nexus provides me.

So ends my Steam Workshop complaint letter, and why I really don't enjoy publishing there right now.

They don't need to. The official Skyrim launcher has a "delete selected" button.

Chesko, thank you for that thoughtful summary of the evolution of community functionality, and how individual perception is where the key elements lie. Although... you know, you may be a bit too forgiving about professional content being bug-free. (I know we all know better, but it was funny reading the statement in context, at least for me).

I want to add that the issue of perception is true in any area, not just online communities (or any community, for that matter). Actually, this is the key element that I want to explore with my doctoral dissertation research via Vocaloid Hatsune Miku and her content. I wonder what the results will be like?

First, there is preference. Some people have a bias and hate/love one or the other and refuse to use the opposing host system.

Second, there are limitations to the WS. It wont accept nudity/advlt mods, so those all go to the Nexus and other third party sites. It also cant have ESM mods, or very big mods. Which forces a lot of them to find another place to be hosted.

Third, I'm sure people just don't know. Some people have never heard of the Nexus, and some authors may not even know about the WS.

I use both, along with TESA and Holds of Skyrim. Can't have enough file mirrors out there. Plus you can reach a much wider audience with SW than you can with the others, and in some ways I think using the SW makes you more aware of best practices in mod use.

Fair enough! I don't remember there being a delete button on the launcher, but then again I've been using the SKSE launcher for as long as I can remember.

I think it might have been added by a patch (1.4 maybe?)

I've noticed that the nexus tends to have functional mods while the workshop appears to have more creative content. I personally check both when I'm looking for new stuff.

I do agree though that the CW users are a tough crowd, Woe betide you have a bug in your mod!

Nexus has a much more professional and community atmosphere than Workshop. Just take a minute to read comments posted on both sites and you will easily see the difference. Workshop comments remind me of 12 year olds commenting to each other while playing XBox Live. Horrendous attitudes. Plus you have many more options on the Nexus and better mods. I have only used Workshop for two mods and only then because they were exclusive to Workshop. The atmosphere there alone is enough to disgust me and keep me away from that childish, entitlement complex mess of an excuse for a modding site.

Nexus downsides:

1. The community is notoriously immature, in the sense that all the top mods will always be nvde mods, or mods that add russain anime girls to Skyrim. You'll never find an actual solid built, or non-lore breaking mod in the top endorsed/downloads list. As such, it can be hard to find the actual good mods - they are often buried under a mountain of crud.

2. You pretty much have to use their mod manager. It's nice, but it's annoying that you have to be a member (free) of their site to use it.

3. Mods that compete for popularity via oversized graphics on their profile, massive amount pleas for endorsments, etc are RAMPANT and there's a strong "modder ego" that goes with the Nexus that really isn't found anywhere else. In other words, many of the top modders on Nexus don't really follow the modding spirit, and instead just want to be super popular, even if it means their mod just adds a bunch of flashy, buggy bullcrap.




Workshop downsides:

1. Very limiting to modders. You can only have mods with 1 esp file (so no modular mods that have different options you can enable by selecting which ESP file you want to use), and everything you make is compressed in a BSA file format.. which is bad when there's only a limited number of BSA file formats that can be active at one time, last I checked.

2. No support for 3rd party script extenders, which means you can never get mods like SkyUI on Workshop

3. Search system is FAR worse on Workshop than Nexus. You can generally be pretty specific with what you are looking for on Nexus, while Workshop you can't. It's search feature is hard to find, and it does a terrible job. The only other thing to do is to manually go through giant lists of mods categorized by what they do.

4. You can't directly download mods, you can only "subscribe" to them. In that, they will auto-update whenever an update is released. This is very bad for the single reason that some mods that modify similar things, are often co-dependant on each other. So if one mod gets an update that another mod requires, you've broken the other mod until BOTH mods get updated. With the nexus, you can just hold off until both mods are updated. Sure you can unsubscribe right after you subscribe so you don't get updates, but then you'll never know when to update.

5. Load order (i.e. which mod loads first, which one loads last) is very important, because any mod that modifies something another mod modifies and is set to load last (including very small stuff you wouldn't expect, like adding a tree in a forest that a different house mod adds stuff to) will always have "priority". The default mod manager for Skyrim is really barebones in this, and the Nexus one (as much as I hate how bloated it is) is miles better than the default one. I'm also pretty sure whenever a mod is updated, it'll reset the load order. Which svcks if you have 50 mods in a specific order, then it gets reset on an update... you'll either have to remember what load order you had or go through trial and error trying to figure out crashes.

6. File size limits on mods through Workshop. This severely limits the type of content you can get from the Workshop.

7. Comment system is a bit wacky, unhelpful, and people tend to not care about the development of your mod. Despite Nexus's community ethos being awful, when it comes to small-time mods they are still generally helpful at "working with you" as you develop your mod, and are more able to deal with various bugs.


All in all, Nexus is better. While Nexus might have a pretty awful modding ethos and community, they are at least helpful and tolerant of "mod bugs" should they happen. And using Nexus ironically is much easier than using Workshop when you are actually browsing for and getting mods. The only thing with Nexus is you have to manually install them - while Workshop is automatic "click one button" style, since it is integrated with Steam. Because of manual installation, you can have any type of mod you could possibly make on Nexus, while the Workshop pretty much exclusively supports only simple mods like house mods, quest mods, etc.

Plenty of good stuff on both though.

Read through http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1369136-thrashing-thread-1/. Especialy my findings in post #20 when you get there.

I am a modder and I use the Skyrim Nexus exclusively. Steam is a company and companies make money. Skyrim Nexus is a company and it makes money. I consider Steam to be the Walmart snuffing out the little guy and I refuse to support such a large corporation that is putting it's foot on the Skyrim Nexus's prefounded purpose.

The Nexus site has been around for much longer then Steam when it comes to offering us modders a place to present our work to the public. I am faithful to the Skyrim Nexus because they were there for us modders when no one else was. They give me unlimited storage space and charge me nothing for it, a service they have offered free of charge for several years.

Being able to see when my friends logged on and off and being able to talk to them through Steam was all good and well. I liked that about Steam, no one else was already offering it and they charged me nothing for it. Then the advertisemants started and games started requiring an internet connection. Slowly they slipped in the back door that what they offered became apparent as not being free but rather a means of coorporate take over.

Personally as a supporter of the Skyrim Nexus I was offended to see the Steam Workshop open it's doors. Who do they think they are? I'll tell you what they are, the Walmart snuffing out the small business man. Scumbags in my opinion. They are just another small step towards taking away your freedoms. Remember when you didn't need an internet connection to play a video game that you bought and paid for? Remember when you didn't have to see some stupid advertisemant pop up everytime you exited the game you played?

I do and it's some of the other reasons why I absolutely do not support the Steam Workshop and what it really is. Another means of coorporate America to shut down anyone that wasn't born rich.

Do some research on what I've stated here and the big picture starts to become clear.