Blaze69

Massive kudos for this. Most average modders don't give a damn about beast races and neglect them while at the same time calling their mods "complete" or whatever. I understand they're not everyone's cup of tea but they're still a vanilla playable race used by (N)PCs and as such must be accounted for as well. I don't give a damn about male characters but all my custom race mods have fully working male versions as well because a proper race mod needs to have both males and females implemented and working to be complete. And that goes for everything else.

You don't see any spam because Ashal took swift action after concerns were raised and disabled uploads on the "Sims 4 - Sims" category (the main source of that spam) from showing up on the "New Files" section of the main page. The rest of the discussion concerns other measures being considered to curtail the kind of unethical behavior that's the cause of that spam in the first place, since while it's (thankfully) not as obvious/obnoxious now due to those measures, it still exists and that files section is still full of those files.

Oh, I understand laziness and entitlement just fine. I just don't consider it a valid excuse, lmao. I am trying to push you to follow the fucking law, genius. I'll just quote what DoctaSax already said: The fact that 90% of the so-called Sims modding community wipe their asses with intellectual property because it's not convenient for them and they don't directly profit from respecting it doesn't mean it ceases to exist. Analogies like these are retarded, but I'll bite. The actual closest example would be me being forced to ride the "stinky bus" because you stole my car, joyrided for a while, and then sold it to a chop shop for $$$. Since, y'know, you're breaking the law for the sake of making a profit here. Not that I consider stealing a car nearly as bad as stealing intellectual property, but they're both against the law so maybe that will get the point across, since it seems so hard to understand for whatever reason. That's the point, there's no rules explicitly stating it's forbidden to pull any of those underhanded tricks yet because there didn't need to be, because the community was built around people modding as a hobby and happy to share their content with the world for free, so there was still some honor. Now that the honor is gone and this is just another grift like a scam call center would be, new rules need to be added to curtail that despicable behavior. Which is what we're discussing here, and why Ashal came up with that draft for the new rule(s). Irrelevant since it's not "Grandpa Irving or good old pal Angus", it's intellectual property and copyright law.

Thanks for that, it was a very insightful post indeed, and laid everything out much better than I'd ever hope to. It's funny how it basically boils down to "Skyrim modders mod as a hobby and to enrich the community, Sims modders mod as a hustle and to enrich themselves", however. Actually that's very straightforward. Check the original mod(s) whose assets you use. If the permissions info says you can use/modify them freely without giving credit, then you're good to go. If they say credit is mandatory, then you credit them and that's it. If they say you need to get permission from them to do it, then you message them to ask politely (and save a screenshot of the conversation once they reply in case it's ever requested as proof). If there's no information then it defaults to "you have to ask for permission first" or at the very least to "you need to provide credit" if you want to push things as far as it gets without being a thief. The Beth game modding community has been doing this for years now, and it all works out fine. Nexus even has a specific "permissions" section with toggles for each kind of situation and use. But I guess that's too hard mmkay for you people. If you're a simmer, don't open this! It is the stuff of nightmares! (Trigger Warning: properly credited mod asset use, clear permissions information on a mod). 👻

I got ninja'd by this post, so I'll share my thoughts as well. I would say either make an exception for such mods that reasonably don't have anything that can be showcased on screenshots, or do what people do for Nexus (which does have a mandatory image upload per mod page) and just post an image of the mod name text over a white background or a meme or a funny drawing or whatever. See my post above regarding thoughts on that.

Sounds very good, I'd reckon. The part about needing "a detailed description, clear installation instructions, and at least one screenshot or other visual aid showcasing the mod" is certainly welcome; overall I think that does apply to most Beth game uploads (even if there's outliers still), but it's severely lacking in the Sims section, where you can have all the emojis and cringe unreadable weird-fonted text in the world but zero clear explanation on what they include or what each of the files (if there's several) does. That or the ones where they straight up upload a .package file with the filename as the mod name and zero info whatsoever (which I presume is bots trying to upload malware or whatever? I don't understand the point otherwise). Oh gods, yes please. Those multi-uploads are way out of hand. I understand splitting out things that aren't closely related, like keeping a furniture set separate from clothes or whatever, but when you have things like differently-colored versions of the same base clothes/makeup/hair/whatever as separate mod pages, it's just ridiculous. I would assume if the mod authors aren't active anymore then those files can be grandfathered in and exempt from the rule. But if the mod authors are still very much active (i.e. uploading new mods), I'd try politely asking them to revise their older mods' pages and consider stronger action if they refuse or ignore the request. This is a good idea overall. Might need to be fine-tuned a bit to avoid loopholes like the aforementioned word salad or making text big or small to play with things (the "listings don't count for size" quirk is a good start), but ensuring mod pages are actual mod pages first and foremost and not just vehicles for Patreon shilling sounds good to me. The people that benefit (sometimes monetarily in the case of Patreon shilling) don't show their support for something that would cut their freeloading and free advertising. Color me surprised. I am surprised none of those paywalling slobs and Patreon shills haven't come screeching about it yet, actually. That's all relative. Personally I suck at character creation (at least for humans lmao) so if I wanted to make a good-looking human character in any game of the ones I play/mod (Beth ones or Sims), it would take me a ton of time and effort, and I won't state otherwise. At the same time, it's ultimately just a bunch of slider/chargen values which anyone more talented could churn out in 10 minutes and I would never consider that actually "high-effort", or not on par with, I dunno, FO4 weapon mods with handmade animations or hours-long voiced quest mods or stuff like Fallout London, and I certainly wouldn't consider a single Sims household or a Skyrim/Fo4 character preset to warrant the kind of blatant and extreme Patreon shilling and paywalling we're seeing. Bold of you to assume "us Beth game modders" like that stuff either. If all those "beasties XXX photos" mods disappeared I wouldn't shed a single tear. But anyhow, that's irrelevant here. I don't think anyone minds those "low-effort" (whether you consider them as such or not) mods being uploaded that much; there's always gonna be some audience for pretty much any mod anyone would ever want to make, and as long as they aren't unfairly straining LL's storage or bandwidth capacity then that's okay. The real issue is that they are all but guaranteed to not be genuine mod work but rather the minimum required "effort" to be considered a "complete mod upload" so they can use it as an excuse to shill their Patreon or paywalls. If none of those mods included any Patreon or paywalling at all then I'm pretty sure nobody would have a problem with that (but then again there would be no incentive for the uploaders to follow such scummy tactics so chances are there wouldn't be such a spam in the first place). Oh, look, the "you're being paid in exposure, don't you dare complain about it" spiel people use to try and get free art out of artists. I see that a lot. /s But seriously though, as I said I am not (that) dumb, I understand that the kind of... demographics Sims mods bring in are the most likely to not being tech-savvy enough to use adblockers and thus the most likely to bring actual revenue for LL. So I don't think Sims players should be forbidden from benefiting from their mod uploads here. Again, the real issue is how unfair it is. They profit from it by shilling their Patreon and their paywalled crap, but the free content they give back to the community is blatantly lazy and not fair towards LL for offering them such a platform in the first place. No it won't, providing some basic info on what the mod does and how it works is the only basic requirement I'd ever consider for a mod upload. And if someone doesn't have the time or care to write up two or three clearly readable lines of information about their mod maybe they should reconsider their priorities. Disclaimer: my own work is the minimum standard I hold other people up to (because I'm already a lazy bum myself). You can check all my mod uploads here and on Nexus to see what I consider a "proper" basic mod description to look like regarding sections and information, so I'm not just talking out of my ass here. As mentioned above, I do think exceptions should be made for absent creators (unless they are shown to be still active and uploading and trying to maliciously avoid updating their older mods to comply with the rules). In which case this issue wouldn't apply anymore. Honestly this is fair, I think if moderation action is taken towards a file the author should at least be told what rule they broke and (possibly) how to avoid it in the first place. Perhaps even do a warning first when there's a decent chance of it being the result of an honest mistake, and providing some grace period to fix it, but ultimately this would be up to the moderation team, and people uploading mods should always read the rules closely in the first place and ensure they are following them to the best of their abilities before uploading anything themselves. Most Skyrim mods already include the required information, whether following a clear and defined layout or not. I don't think I've seen the issue of descriptions being just a word salad/literally nothing at all/just a shitty backdrop for Patreon shilling anywhere outside of the Sims section (although admittedly I've only ever really browsed Beth game sections + Sims ones). So I don't see what your point is. If anything, it's a good thing since it means higher quality for Beth game mod pages from there on as well, regardless of what the average quality is already.

I was definitely tired of the crappy sim preset spam with blatant Patreon shilling and artificial description editing to bump mod pages up, so I have to say I'm very pleased both with the previous measures of splitting them off into their own ghetto category where they won't shit up the main game category as much, and with the latest action of preventing them from showing up on the "New Files" section. I actually got to see a file I was interested in, which is a first ever since it's usually just full of that endless spam. So thanks for listening to people's concerns and taking action. Re: Patreon shilling, if it was up to me I'd just ban any Patreon advertisement whatsoever, other than LL's own of course (because the site needs to be up for people to continue posting mods). Alternatively, ban any Patreon advertisement for Sims mods in particular, since those are the real issue IMO; not that there aren't greedy slobs making low-quality/effort mods as blatant shilling of their paywall in other games, but in this specific case they are the worst offenders here. But I'm also not (too) dumb so I'm fully aware greed and blatant paywall shilling is deeply entwined with Sims modding as a whole so doing that would probably have a lot of drawbacks. Oh, well. Guess those of us making mods for fun and to share them with the community are a dying breed, and it's all about the grind and the $$$ now. I hope at least some of those "people" actually contribute to keeping LL up, since they're obviously making money from the site themselves. 🙃

Human bodies with furry heads means there's some other plugin loading after YiffyAgeConsolidated.esp and messing with race data. Make sure to move the YA plugin to the bottom of your load order so all the other plugins load before it (other than YA's own patches/addons, of course).

The ghoul issues have already been solved in the latest version of the Furrifier (grab it from Github). You can choose which race you want to use to replace ghouls' looks (i.e. no more hardcoded Snekdog ghouls, you can also use Hellhounds from the K9 pack or Proto-Argonians or whatever other race you may want), and the script will also make sure all the ghoul NPCs lose their original/vanilla headparts and get the ones from their new target race instead.

All canine races share the same "canine" body and all feline races use the same "feline" body, so that + horses + deers should be everything.

"Furry_Fallout_Vn.m" just means whatever the latest version of the main mod file is in the GDrive folder. In this case, Furry_Fallout_V3.4. There's a small "tutorial" on how to set up the base Furry Fallout 4 package using just the pre-made NPC replacer in the GitHub wiki, although the section as a whole is meant to be more of a guide on how to use the Furrifier xEdit script to customize the furry race distribution in your game.

I don't want to be a dick, I want AAF to be updated with all the features it can, so that sex mods for FO4 stop being too much work for too little shitty result and become something on par with Skyrim. And I do want to believe that you guys are all working hard at getting it done. But when the response to NAF is to keep throwing temper tantrums and trying to pull connections to get the competition unperson'd and haram'd from LL and/or Nexus, with (seemingly, until this very post) no talk of updating AAF whatsoever, then it gets harder to root for the AAF team and not have a cynic outlook on the whole ordeal. Maybe if there wasn't a Patreon involved, I would be more willing to side with AAF. (Although for the record, I do know Snapdragon has a Ko-Fi, so that side isn't completely innocent on that topic).

Can't wait to see AAF get updated to break the Bridge (and break a ton of other 3rd party mods in the process), and then for this to become an arms race of AAF code getting more obfuscated and the Bridge finding a way to work around it. If the FO4 NSFW modding scene was kinda crap compared to, say, Skyrim's before, it'll only get worse once mods need to be updated every few days to keep them working with whatever new contrived system has been added to AAF. Of course this whole thing would be a nonissue if AAF was updated to add the functions NAF has and people want, because then everyone would use AAF and everybody would be happy. But I guess actually putting time and work into mod development is hard, mmkay. Easier to just fight tooth and nail to keep a monopoly so people will throw money at Patreon for doing nothing, like every other scam porn game on F95Zone or whatever. 🙃

...no? They're different mods with different requirements and different install steps.

The latest version is SFW by default, but if you want NSFW you'll have to add the NSFW patch as well. If any files are still kept in the Drive but their version number is lower than the main file's own one, that means they didn't need to be updated so they can be used with the latest main file just fine. Not sure what you mean there. The NSFW patch already includes nude bodies with species-appropriate(ish) genitals for males. If you mean something like SOS where you can change each individual (N)PC's genitals on the fly and such, that's not possible because FO4 lacks a system like SOS and the way the character bodies are built makes it extremely hard if not outright impossible to create such a system in the first place.