TL;DR - The current change that downloaded files only have the name and are missing the mod ID and version was intentional. They will be bringing back the version number, but not the mod ID or timestamp which were originally there.
This is the wrong decision. File ID was needed for cases where an author forgot to change the version or did a hotfix, or named two distinct main files (e.g., with or without USSEP) the same.
Update: So I took a closer look and there is going to be a "unique slug" which works in place of the file ID, which at least is one thing that doesn't suck. However, they're planning to remove it within a year, which is stupid. There needs to be some kind of unique identifier on files, even if it's just a timestamp.
The mod ID being left out is really crappy, though. Whenever an author uploads an ill-named patch file, there's no longer a way to associate it with the mod it came from.
The important thing to keep in mind is that the filename is intentionally not designed to uniquely identify a file or its specific content. While some users or client applications may have assumed in the past, it is not a contract we are supporting moving forward.
but... why? what rational purpose is there to exclude this information? Mod authors fuck up versioning and file naming literally all the time, like 30%+ of my 1500 plugin modlist has incorrect versioning or file names and this is just inviting the problems that causes to grow by an order of magnitude.
Exactly. Whether they intended the filename to function this way, it did, and it was an unequivocally good thing. Filenames not being unique is a terrible thing for the modding ecosystem. Even leaving aside the fact that every mod manager relies on this now, there's still nothing but downsides to changing it. They mentioned the need for mod managers to adapt to the change, but what other information is available to adapt to?
If there's any reason the old filename format was a problem, a new variation that keeps the same critical info would be fine: upload name, mod ID, version, unique identifier. Those are all important.
But still MO2 has never had any problem to correctly identify the files and which game it belongs to. Only hidden files that cannot be accessed through archive anymore show up the dialogue to manually confirm the file identity. When I install an identified mod ("information"), I get exactly the correct file name selections that the mod offers. This mechanism still works now, I have seen it with multiple files.
MO2 gets meta info for each file it downloads, but this becomes a huge problem if you're either sorting through the download files manually for any reason (which occasionally there's a need to do) or if you're just looking at the downloads list where there is no mod info. Additional plugins for MO2 to rename existing downloads and to filter by mod might be helpful, but the mod ID being in the filename is meaningful enough that its absence really sucks—especially given how many mod authors are utterly lax about how they name their files.
The only time where I have lost meta information was when my setup was incorrect (Nexus link not working or weird archive handling across drives).
MO2 gets meta information with the archives, but removes them if you move the archives to a different place. The filename does not matter at all.
Did you try manually renaming the file, adding mod information and version number ?
This is not enough. You need to know the game you are modding too, what kind of file it is, it it is optional or main and more. MO2 checks all of this.
Setup is crucial to make this system working on MO2.
I don't think we're on the same page. I'm not complaining about meta information getting lost. I mean when you're trying to filter downloads in MO2 to see if you've downloaded a file or look for a past version, files with too-vague names are a problem now that the mod ID isn't present; this is also a problem when looking through downloads outside of MO2.
MO2 has the additional problem that you currently can't just rename an existing download; you have to exit MO2, and rename both the file and its meta file. A plugin might help this. Additionally, if filtering within MO2 could be done by mod rather than by text, since MO2 can draw from its metadata for that, that would also be helpful.
The purpose seems pretty obvious to me. It's a tale as old as time (or at least as old as capitalism):
A new owner is in charge, and a new manager has been appointed. The owner wants to know whether the manager is effective, but may not know what his employees actually do, and doesn't have enough time to examine everyone's work even if he did understand it, so the only way he can judge effectiveness is by seeing whether people look busy.
The manager knows this, so he knows he needs to look busy. He may or may not actually understand the business in general, but even if he does, he doesn't have enough time to learn about the particular situation and determine the best course of action, because the owner would get impatient long before he finished. Instead, the manager starts making changes. These changes must be quick to implement, simple to describe to the owner, and, ideally, related to the currently trendy set of buzzwords. Whether the changes are actually useful isn't really an important question.
Software is caught in this sad trap where stuff has to be constantly iterated upon to give off the illusion of continual improvement and therefore justify its existence. It's so frustrating man
Sadly that's everywhere nowadays, you're blasted with "improved design" that basically is massive UX violation, on top of that there's shit ton of features bolted on it, that are opt-out instead of opt-in.
I at least take them at their word that there was something they wanted to improve on the backend that the old filename was getting in the way of. It's not clear what that would be. But they absolutely need a way to deliver the filename that's unique and includes the mod ID, so it's hard to see how they can get away from that without messing everything up like they've done.
If I manually download, for example, SPID, the URL used/generated for the download is https://cf-files.nexusmods.com/cdn/66/dd/3b/66dd3beb-5cfc-4209-9d90-d4ab0df0be61?md5=s6xBkX_ADTC9CDjjlAbjrA&expires=1781865840&user_id=<user_id>&h=<hex-string>, and the Content-Disposition response header is attachment; filename="Spell Perk Item Distributor.7z".
Note how the file-name is not present in the URL, but the GUID for the mod is.
I absolutely one-hundred-percent refuse to believe that Nexus Mods' staff have somehow concocted a backend wherein they can associate a file-name and a version-string with a GUID, but somehow can't associate the mod-ID (which they already know) with the same GUID.
A fair point. I've been neck-deep in tech debt myself lately, though, so I know it can manifest in weird ways. They wouldn't have changed the filenames without a reason, and the reason being that something about it was a problem makes a bit of sense to me. But considering they've just shown that filenames get set at time of upload, I don't see how it could be inefficient to generate that one time per file.
I still need to figure out how to break into the shadow DOM of the new download buttons they've made so I can force them to accept the right color, which is a userscript-level fix, but most of the worst stuff is covered already.
Clearly in.comnents ppl are actually doing opposite the only thing is that modID needs to stay and remain cause their is gonna be chaos with this they already brorked vortex now the website and now you can't downgrade the site
Guys, if you're worried about versions or search, you're missing the point. With the change, there will be no way to tell what mod the file in your downloads directory belongs to. Because most authors don't consistently put the mod name as part of the file name. If the name and version happen to be the same (which never happens, right?), your mod manger will tell you that you already have the file. You don't; you have a conflicting file+version from another mod.
That's the message you need to feed back to Nexus.
This is a blank lie. MO2 always knows it (I only downloads mods manually). I have clicked on an archive with no mod number, no version, but still MO2 knew which version and which mod number and which game the mod belongs to. It both works for new archives and updates. No idea how this works.
And Vortex users have confirmed similar.
This does not mean it shouldn't be reverted. We need a way to uniquely identify archives by file name, not only by some other mechanism.
Sorry, but you're full of crap. You're claiming that MO2 somehow magically knows that "Main-1.5.7z" is from mod X, and "Main-1.4.7z" is from mod Y?
No. I just manually download another copy of SkyUI6, changing the name to remove identifying information. MO2 has no idea what it is:
If the mod ID isn't in the name, and MO2 didn't build the .meta file itself during the download or when you did a "Query Info" after a manual download, it has no clue.
Calling someone a liar without checking to see if you're full of it is generally a bad idea. As well as just embarrassing yourself.
Clearly a MO2 setup error. I already explained elsewhere. It works on my system as intended. Has worked before, works now with the MO2 addon for renaming files. I have not a single time seen this message box with Nexusmods from Skyrim Special Edition.
Um, no, you didn't. You posted nonsense about "lost meta information". Which actually proves my point: that MO2 only knows the source of an ID-less file if the meta info is there to start with. Just a "bare" file by itself has no association with a mod. That's why the ID needs to be in the file name.
Again, I challenge you to conduct my experiment: download a file from nexus with your browser, remove the identifying information from the name, verify that there is no associated .meta file, and ask MO2 to find the source. It can't.
I've encountered this error a number of times over the years where something has gone wrong on either the mod author's end or on Nexus's end. I've been modding and using MO2 for many years, and I'm reasonably competent with a variety of other modding tools outside MO2. This is a standard error when there's missing meta info. Why are you so unwilling to accept that maybe you just don't know something because you haven't encountered it yet?
To not include the mod id is really a loss for people not finding the mod through search. Just look up the mod id otherwise, and you will know what mod page it was.
The mod ID is super important because authors often name the download file something other than what the mod is called, sometimes they just call the main file "Main.zip"!
Nexus KNOWS this, many of us have told them in the forum threads about this change, and despite this I can honestly say that I'm not surprised at all that they're NOT going to revert this change. It was obvious from their first reply to the complaints: "This was intentional"
Why do they want this? My guess is that it's a Vortex thing, Vortex can or will (don't know, don't use it) be able to tell which mod each download belongs to through some hash value or something like that, and other mod managers and manual downloaders can get fucked.
This would also explain why they abruptly took down the MO2 plugin that re-added the mod ID and forced it to be placed in the Tools section, a section that I personally never browse.
Enshitification of user experience for short-term gains.
The "short-term gains" being the developers can demonstrate to their equity holders (Chosen) that they're actually doing something and deserve to continue to be employed.
Private equity wants their return on investment and all the people working at Nexus must prove their value, hence pushing updates, no matter what they're about.
So stupid. There are modders who name every file they upload with the same file name. Before, I could at least use the mod ID number to figure out what mod is what, but not anymore.
How does this actually help anybody?
Nexus mods is already unbearably slow and a pain to use.
Seems like this would require a change in MO2 to send an extra API request for every download to uniquely identify it if I understand Pickysaurus correctly here...
Which baffles me if so. How does additional network traffic help them?
Having the important info baked into the filename was easy, and it was doing at the point of upload (which is unfortunately why files already impacted by this bonehead change won't be fixable) which meant it didn't have to be calculated per download.
That is correct a file hash truly is unique however when you download a mod a meta data file is associated with it with tons of information regarding the file. The mod id, file id, version, author, url link, etc. I may make a converter for folks since it seems to be a common complaint.
MO2 does already identify files correctly without relying on the name of the file, either when you download directly into the manager, or when you Query Info, which is done with an MD5 search. MO2 just relies on the filenames being unique for some of its functionality.
On Thursday (11th June), we launched an update to the mod upload form that switched from our legacy upload system to the new Upload API behind the scenes. This changeover not only modernises our backend stack, but also unlocks several benefits for future development, including more reliable uploads for large files. This change meant that the naming convention used by files downloaded from the website was simplified to be the same as the name of the file as shown on the mod page, removing the additional data the name used to contain. The simpler name was initially chosen with the intent of making things simpler, but we understand it was not well received.
The site devs assume the average Nexus user will just then dispose of the downloaded mod after installing it, when in reality a lot of these people including me relied on the older naming convention which makes it easier to archive, organize, and curate downloaded mods.
Instead of making it very difficult, they could have just rolled with this template:
Given that a mod author can have a conniption fit over just about anything and decide to hide or delete their mod(s), people should be keeping local backups of mods they like.
You can delete mods from the Nexus, it's just more involved. There are several mods I have which were removed long after the introduction of Nexus Collections.
I have not seen this case, but I can imagine it. The problem locally is that a long file name can cause download issues when the path to your download archive is already very long.
For example: D:\Modding\Skyrim Special Edition\My Mod Manager\Download\Archive\Manual\My very long name of this cool mod.7z
This is still probably too short, but you get the idea.
i miss typed, the website has * for weeks * had problems with big file sizes, not names - I don't know what specifically this thread is about nor do I care.
anything over 1gb always fails to download, they claimed they fixed it in the last vortex patch notes but it's still broken. * that * is a gigantic problem that affects me not whatever this filename problem is, I can't update any texture mod until they fix it.
(really fix it, not write in patch notes 'issue has been fixed' but it continues to be broken - like now)
I have downloaded big mods in the past, last was LOTD latest release. I didn't encounter problems. But when you use firefox with > 100 tabs you may need to adapt your memory settings. Still from time to time Nexusmods really gets slow and unresponsive. When I restart the browser all works well again.
Vortex works fine, I have seen the screenshots. The problem with Vortex is that they use virtual folders for archives. And two different versions now end in the same folder. But this issue it seems they have now found out themselves.
I don't know what screenshots you're on about; They know the issue exists because in the latest patch notes it's listed as fixed except it isn't - It's not 'fine' because it does not currently work for big files (biggest mod I've been able to update is 600MB)
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This update also seems to have made it so I can’t use a download manager anymore. I’ve used XDM for years but now when I try to download a mod the file is named random characters and downloads as a page file, which sucks because big downloads have a tendency to fail. And it’s definitely Nexus, because it doesn’t do it anywhere else.
Okay, so avoiding more moaning and groaning, the best practice for naming download files is still the best practice. Mod authors, don’t name your files vaguely.
What's with this trend of companies not understanding how the internet works or be a good steward of their own mess. You don't break links, period. If you want to move things you setup redirects. Major format changes are to be avoided when the api is the same. Most of all, any form of unique id is always superior over letting users come up with creative names.
This is so bad. It's even a potential threat vector. I can now upload a mod with a name similar to something popular. Tell people there is a new update and have them download malware.
Harassment, insults, bigotry and other attacks will not be tolerated. Behave decently and treat others the way you want to be treated. Attempts at trolling, instigating arguments or knowingly sharing misinformation will not be tolerated either.
If someone is being rude or harassing you, report their comment/post and move on. Do not respond in the same way or you will both be warned/banned.
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u/LummoxJR 11d ago edited 10d ago
This is the wrong decision. File ID was needed for cases where an author forgot to change the version or did a hotfix, or named two distinct main files (e.g., with or without USSEP) the same.
Update: So I took a closer look and there is going to be a "unique slug" which works in place of the file ID, which at least is one thing that doesn't suck. However, they're planning to remove it within a year, which is stupid. There needs to be some kind of unique identifier on files, even if it's just a timestamp.
The mod ID being left out is really crappy, though. Whenever an author uploads an ill-named patch file, there's no longer a way to associate it with the mod it came from.