A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Vortex

[AugustaCalidia]

Modding games used to be a very "hands on" experience. You assumed all the risks associated with modding a game. Therefore, with few exceptions, no one blamed modding sites and/or modding tools if their games crashed and burned.

 

Nexus Mods changed all of that with the introduction of NMM. It is a fairly simple tool for mod management. This tool, together with the auto-download feature, opened up modding to a host of gamers who would never have survived in the wild and woolly days of "hands on" modding.

 

What Nexus Mods has accomplished with NMM is a praiseworthy achievement. However, with NMM has come an unintended consequence. NMM has slowly but surely led to a whole generation of spoon-fed gamers who no longer sweat over their game setups and who no longer accept responsibility for the integrity of their heavily modded games. Rather, they have shifted the burden of making their games work to NMM and Nexus Mods.

 

This then is the world in which Vortex now makes an appearance. Vortex does everything NMM does, but it does it better plus adding more functionality. While it doesn't take a rocket scientist to use NMM, neither does it take one to use Vortex. However, you wouldn't know this from the screams of anguish in these Forums. You would think only an expert in quantum physics can handle Vortex.

 

There are probably any number of reasons for this anguished response to Vortex. Three which stand out are: (1) resistance to change, (2) the "out-of-the-box" syndrome, and (3) a fundamentally different way of dealing with load order and file conflicts.

 

The first reason is self-explanatory.

 

The second reason is based on the myth that you can get NMM up and running "out of the box." According to the myth, little effort and study are required to accomplish this. Consequently, Vortex is criticized for not being "out of the box" and for requiring effort and study. (If you think this is not a myth, then you have not followed the NMM forums from the inception of NMM to the present day.)

 

The third reason is based on how Vortex handles load order and file conflicts. Vortex requires a "paradigm shift" in our thinking about these matters. Although Vortex achieves the same results as NMM, it does so in a different and much more effective way. Failure to understand how and why Vortex does this leads to errors, mistakes, and VDS (Vortex Derangement Syndrome). To effect this "paradigm shift" in our thinking takes some time and study. This, however, is something that many seem loathe to do. It's just easier to blame Vortex, Nexus Mods, and the Vortex developers when things go wrong.

[Grestorn]

+1. Thanks for writing this.

[HadToRegister]

Well said!

 

I've been modding since 2003, where the only option was to manually install mods, and it wasn't until Oblivion (IIRC), where "Omods" and OBMM by Timeslip and WryeBash first came about, that made things much easier, but there was still a certain amount of 'babysitting' to install and uninstall mods, then along came FOMM with Fallout 3, and here we are, to Vortex, where I can actually download and install without needing all of my previous experience to do so, (which might be a BAD thing actually ;) )

Thanks to Vortex, (or maybe not) I don't worry about what mods work or don't work together, and my current procedure is to have Vortex open on one monitor, while I open the TOP FILES (of all time) list on my other monitor, click on "Open page in new tab" for every mod I like and download them all, and just install all of them without worrying about compatibility, and dealing with Conflicts when Vortex complains.
Vortex has reduced the hassle of installing mods and working out conflicts by about 75% for me.

[sopmac45]

100% agree with Augusta Calidia and thank you for writting this, hoping that newcomers read it.

 

The first thing any newcomer have to do is to mentally adapt to Vortex and forget about comparing it with NMM or MO2. But as you well said it, it does require a bit of reading and investigation, watching videos and ask valid questions before touching anthing. Obviously, they are not doing any of that because as you well said, they do believe is going to work as expected out-of-the-box.

 

The silly thing about that approach is that they did those research when they started to use NMM or MO2 but they do not follow the same pattern when trying to use Vortex. I think they do believe they "have enough experience" so they won't need to investigate anything else. They break it and they blame the world but themselves. The natural behavior of humans is to blame others and never accept we are wrong.

 

It took me more mental effort to digest Vortex than anything else, because in my mind, NMM was present and I was comparing both and that was my main mistake. Once I divorced to NMM, everything got clear. Once I put faith and trusted Vortex, everything was easy to understand and apply. NMM is gone from my PC and I am very happy with Vortex.

 

From preparing my game to be ready to be played till the action of playing my game, Vortex has made it so easy that I do not have words to express how peaceful and happy I am with it.

[HadToRegister]

Interesting choice of topic title, a takeoff of the 1966 comedy movie "A funny thing happened on the way to the forum" starring Zero Mostel.

[AugustaCalidia]

Interesting choice of topic title, a takeoff of the 1966 comedy movie "A funny thing happened on the way to the forum" starring Zero Mostel.

 

 

Exactly.

[chanchan05]

Over 70% of the issues posted here would have been avoided if people read or watched the tutorials.

 

Honestly I think it would best if the devs just remove the "import" from NMM option and tell everyone that you have to start fresh when using Vortex.

[Grestorn]

 

Honestly I think it would best if the devs just remove the "import" from NMM option and tell everyone that you have to start fresh when using Vortex.

 

Exactly. That feature should be hidden, only available to advanced users with a proper warning. The idea that you can just move over from NMM to Vortex with an existing mod config just like that is totally misleading. And the cause of most of the negative backlash we're seeing here.

[sopmac45]

Over 70% of the issues posted here would have been avoided if people read or watched the tutorials.

 

Honestly I think it would best if the devs just remove the "import" from NMM option and tell everyone that you have to start fresh when using Vortex.

 

 

I did not want to advise that to the dev team but I am completely 10000% agree with you.

 

I have been advising to some users, not to use the IMPORT function. I never did use the iMPORT because I wanted to learn Vortex piece by piece, I decided to completely delete my games from NMM, remove NMM from my PC, install Vortex and restart the whole thing from fresh.

 

It was a pain to reinstall the games again but it did help me to learn Vortex better. From simple to complex .... downloading mods one by one and observing how Vortex was handling everything. Never had any trouble doing it my way and I am happy I never had to use the IMPORT function. Honestly, I have never trusted it !!!

 

I completely agree with you Grestorn .... there are a couple of issues with newcomers : IMPORTING from NMM / MO2 ..... and .... the INSTALLATION path.

 

I have been filtering those trends and they are the most common.

 

The IMPORTING function should be as you well suggested it. The second, the INSTALLATION path should give a 3 warning messages ( at least ) or have some kind of information about the consequences of not doing the right thing.

 

Since newcomers continued lacking reading, the dev team should make it HARDER to use the IMPORT / INSTALLATION in another directory so less errors and frustration will arise.

 

The second 'stage' of issues, once they pass the importing / installation, are : to create a New Game Profile and dealing with GROUPS. Of these two, Groups requires a special attention because we all know that changing / tweaking something in there will completely screw up their game.

[chanchan05]

I mean really. I took like what, less than an hour to skim through Gopher's videos, read stuff on how this was supposed to work and another hour to explore the program, and I was running a 200mod base build to test it almost straight out of the box. Then you got people complaining here about how it's not working and I'm the one scratching my head at how did you make it fail?