Is Anyone Else Dissatisfied with Vortex?

[zachinthetackleshop]

Relatively new to the forum, at least the posting side of it but I just wanted to share my experiences with Vortex thus far and, as is probably clear from the Topic Title, I've had few good things to say about it. Before I continue though, I apologize if this is in the wrong section or if there's another thread/topic elsewhere but I couldn't find it.

 

To continue:

 

I've now tried to get Vortex to work for Skyrim SE/AE on 4 separate occasions, following video and forum guides on how to resolve issues, and have not ONCE gotten it to work: every solution I've tried has just caused more issues to pop up and they've led me in a circle from one to the other until I give up. I just recently tried to use collections (an admittedly semi-prototype feature at the moment) to try and run an already curated list of mods, hoping that that would solve my problem and alas no dice there.

 

After all the time and effort I've put into this damn mod manager all its left me with is an immense amount of frustration, a lack of desire to play one of my otherwise favorite games due to the associated frustration, and one incessantly burning question: Why the hell did we get rid of ALL compatibility for NMM for this garbage? I never had a SINGLE issue with NMM for Skyrim, even for special edition if memory serves (though it might not), and I've YET to get Vortex to work. So what's the deal? Am I the only one having this issue? I've done some light modding on OTHER games with Vortex and it was fine, but for some reason Skyrim SE/AE just WILL NOT WORK

 

[showler]

I'd recommend you watch some video guides on using Vortex to find out why it doesn't work, but...

 

" Why the hell did we get rid of ALL compatibility for NMM for this garbage?"

 

Where did you get this idea? People still use NMM for modding if they want to. https://github.com/Nexus-Mods/Nexus-Mod-Manager/releases

 

It doesn't have the feature set of Vortex, but it still works with Nexus Mods.

[gnarly1]

Judging from the number of anti-Vortex rants I've read over the years, the answer to your question is 'yes'.

 

However, I can't think of a single one which wasn't clearly a case of PEBKAC or a gripe about the UI.

 

Vortex is fairly easy to use but for games that have lots of sophisticated mods with a number of different options and dependencies (like Skyrim) it is highly recommended to read Vortex's documentation, the mod descriptions & mod comments pages in order to anticipate and avoid conflicts.

[rmm200]

You will get further with us by trying to install ONE mod with Vortex, then posting here if you have problems.

Do one at a time until something breaks, then post exactly what you did and what mod broke.

 

Start here:

 

https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/7332636-how-to-post-request-support-for-vortex/

[zachinthetackleshop]

In reply to showler:

 

like I said, I HAVE watched videos, both Skyrim-specific ones AND general ones and none of them helped me figure out what exactly was causing my problems.

As far as where I got the NMM idea, it was due to the seemingly overnight deletion of any links to NMM downloads that I could find and that in a similar timespan most of the mods I found didn't have an NMM download option either; I knew that there was at least theoretically a way to redownload NMM from somewhere but I couldn't find anyone talking about where and so as far as getting NMM again I had given up a LONG time ago.

 

In reply to gnarly1:

 

I don't doubt the PEBKAC issues in general, but I'm not unfamiliar with tech, and I'm following the prompts Vortex is giving me but it just creates a feedback loop when I try to resolve them.

 

I despise that it is seemingly required to go through a bunch of hoops just to get a fully launched program to function for a single game, but if that is indeed the solution (will try again soon) then thank you.

 

In reply to rmm200:

 

I'm not surprised by this response, but I've tried this. Like I said, I've followed several forum guides AND video guides but nothing has seemed to work. I tried enough solutions I started wondering if my hardware just doesn't support it somehow for awhile (though mostly in frustrated jest). Trying that solution didn't help me because I downloaded one mod and, when it wouldn't work, I would try another and another, until I had tried about 8 or 9 of them and NONE of them would work (keeping in mind these were the same mods I had used before that HAD worked under NMM and had been updated with Vortex install links).

 

I'm gonna check out your link though and see what's up in the documentation apparently for Vortex and we'll see where I end up afterwards. Thanks for the feedback

[zachinthetackleshop]

So having looked into it a bit and then going ahead and downloading NMM, I discovered an error that may be the root of my issues for Vortex as well:

 

Unsuitable file system

 

During the course of NMM auto-detecting my games, EVERY game it detected came up with that error.

 

A bit of setup background: when I first switched to Windows 10, I ended up not liking it and tried to switch back to Windows 7. This ended up bricking my old HDD because I had windows installed on that and hadn't looked up how to disable the fast start up feature (at the time I was under the assumption that it would auto-disable that when rolling back: I was wrong). Now, all of my games are installed on a removable HDD in a FAT32 file system.

 

Considering this was also something that happened before but, for other games, I think my issue is my install location for Skyrim and my other games.

[Tannin42]

This is a good call, FAT32 filesystem is problematic but Vortex does have a fallback for this case. Vortex should have switched to "Move Deployment" when you use it on FAT32.

 

As rmm200 said: A more concrete description of the problem you're having (you talk about prompts Vortex is giving you so apparently it is recognizing a problem, so what are those?)?

[Pickysaurus]

The thing to keep in mind is that NMM was marked "end of life" in 2016 and for good reason. It has a lot of fundamental issues that were so detrimental it was easier to start over with Vortex rather than try and update it. One of the key differences is that NMM tends to ignore or not tell you when there's a problem and just ploughs ahead anyway, whereas Vortex is likely to raise a notification of some kind to tell you what's going wrong.

 

As Tannin said, I detailed account of the actual problem is essential if you'd like us to help you with the problems you are facing.

[zachinthetackleshop]

I went ahead and ordered a new 4TB hard drive so these problems SHOULD go away, but for posterity's sake I'll describe it as best I can from memory. Thanks for all the feedback by the way guys (and gals if you're here); I did complain about it but I would like Vortex to work, it's much more aesthetically pleasing and well organized than NMM.

 

Basically what would happen most of the time is I would download some mods and I'd get some error stating that the mods could not be deployed, and it told me to change my deployment method. The issue is it only ever gave me the one you mentioned, the "move deployment" one, and it STILL wouldn't deploy.

 

Most recently there were additional issues such as error-solution loops such as (keep in mind the following quotes are more for organization than actual quotes) "Mods could not be deployed due to missing dependencies" then it would offer me a solution of finding the dependency, repeat that until all of them SHOULD have been installed, but then it loops right back to the original one being missing again somehow.

 

OR what would happen is I'd have a whole bunch of .esm files installed, but it would also claim that those exact same files were completely missing, even though I was staring at them IN Vortex (almost like some sort of detection issue).

 

Not sure how much of it sounds like BS to y'all, but that's what I can remember, the last two problems happened literally an hour or so before I made the original post so they should be fairly accurate (aside from phrasing and nomenclature obviously).

P.S. I actually didn't know NMM was marked for end of life that far back, that's kind of nuts, especially considering my experience with it being relatively flawless. With that being the case I do understand then why they ditched it in favor of going to Vortex if it was going to be that big of a hassle. I do actually wish there was some setting or version of Vortex that allowed the mods to deploy and such and, if there are issues, let that become obvious when they don't work in-game. Maybe that IS how it works and my issues/OCD kept me from getting that far, but I'm not sure if it is or not.

[Codraroll]

Dissatisfied, yes, but not for the same general reason.

 

When compared to Steam Workshop, it just does so little. I'm trying to run modded Stardew Valley on two different computers. The save files are synched via Steam Cloud, so I need the same mods to be on both of them.

 

One would think there was a functionality in Vortex that kept track of which mods you had downloaded using your account, and a quick button to select them on a list for bulk download on another computer. Steam Workshop even does that automatically. But nope, no such list. The individual mod pages on the website tells you when you last downloaded a file from that mod (meaning that the information is stored somewhere), but I've yet to find anywhere that aggregates which mods you're using.

 

And then forget about the bulk download part. Every individual mod has to be downloaded manually through the website anyway, making me wonder what the point of Vortex even is. Is it just about putting the mods in the right directory? I can do that myself without being bombarded with notifications about games I'm not even playing.

 

I might be missing something basic. Or perhaps Vortex is. I'm not sure yet. The first impression is not good, though.