As many are aware, in the Mod Talk section, there are subsections delegated to mods which are known to be very popular. In the past, this was just for info/discussion about these mods, but further along the line, I believe someone suggested that the main mod pages for major mods have to be put into these sections as well, and if I recall correctly, this was under the belief that the big mods were stealing attention away from smaller mods.
However, in recent times I have found that being relegated to these sections is damaging to major mods, and leads to their swift death if they are not extremely active mods that are being constantly updated. The reason for this is that people go to the List of Mods section, since that section is very clearly marked out as the place to find mods, and there is little to no indication for new players looking for mods that the Mod Talk section, where major mods are forced to reside, would contain any download links for any mods, much less major mods. This is heightened by the fact that on the discord, the command to bring you to the mods page (?mods
) exclusively brings you to the List of Mods section.
This means that Major mods, supposed really popular mods, will just go unnoticed for long periods of times unless they were extremely popular and used by thousands of still active players. For example, the Galaxy in Flames mod had the highest post count on its main page at one point, and was the most popular Bounty Hunter mod for a rather long time, however, after being given a mod section, the amount of people posting on the page decreased, and it wasn't because the mod was dying, as the mod was having some big updates at this time. I believe this happened because of the aforementioned reason, people go to the List of Mods section, not the Mod Talk section if they are looking to download mods.
People on the discord, and sometimes the forum, say they cannot find mods like SWACD (a mod that garnered a ridiculous amount of downloads in its prime), and not because they don't know it, but because they just don't know where to find this mod since it's not in the List of Mods section, no doubt the seemingly logical place to find any and all mods.
Another proof that the majority of people don't look in the Mod Talk sections as often as the List of Mods section actually lies in necroposting, ironically. Necroposting, until a little while ago, was rather rampant, especially when it came to mods that haven't been updated in a while. I have noticed that mods such as Bubbet's Placeholder (2017, Necroposted 1 time), Automation ++ (2018, Necroposted ??? times [Admittedly there are too many threads for me to look through them all and count the necorposts]), Galaxy in Flames (2018, Necroposted 0(?) times), all major mods that haven't been updated all that much, which all haven't been necroposted in as much as the Poking Stick mod (2018, necroposted 5 times), Parts Galore Mod (2018, 8 times), NWADM (2017, necroposted 8-9 times). Now, I don't think necroposts don't mean all that much, but there's a bit of a difference between the major mods, and somewhat popular mods in the list of mods section. This could be attributed to the fact that people looking for mods are simply not looking in the mod talk section, therefore not looking for major mods.
At the end of the day, it could be said that major mods are being smothered out when they get their sections. I don't believe it's a good cycle for mods to grow in popularity, gain a lot of steam and be awarded their own sections, only for those sections to cause the mods to lose most of the traction they had in the first place and plummet into abandonment. That's not a good environment for modding to thrive.
Complaining over, here's some solutions. While I do understand the reasoning behind giving major mods their own sections, I don't think it's going to be fixed by making it more clear that there are mod download links in the Mods Talk sections, since as I've stated numerous times, people go looking for mods in the LIST OF MODS section.
Solution one: Allow major mods to have a thread in the List of Mod sections, either being a simple download page, their main page, or a thread directing people to their main thread in the mod section (It would be preferable in the latter option for only the mod creator to be able to comment in this thread, but that may be unable to be done). This is basically what was the norm before major mods were forced to be exclusively in their own corner.
Solution two: A pinned thread in the list of mods section, titled MAJOR MODS, which contains a list of links to the main pages of the major mods. This would be updated when there are new major mods, and if a major mod was to be abandoned, removed off the list.
Apologies if this seemed like a bit of an angry rant, it's something I've been thinking about for a very long time and I finally decided to make some noise about it.