[suggestion] Easier load order

[NikitaDarkstar]

Can we please have an easier way to manually sort our load order? Back in the days of NMM we could just drag things to where we wanted/needed them which was time consuming yes, but frankly far more practical than the auto sorting and fiddling with groups and rules to get things to where you know they need to be. i'm not saying remove the auto sorting, but could we have a way to disable the entire system AND just drag and drop plugins in the load order? If nothing else it'll be easier to trouble shoot our load order that way.

[2much4l1]

+1

[Guest deleted34304850]

why would you want to manually sort your load order?

[NikitaDarkstar]

why would you want to manually sort your load order?

Because LOOT doesn't always do a good job. Because you're running legacy mods mixed in with things. Because you're running custom patches. Because you want to trouble shoot specific mod interactions and see if you can get the glitches down to an acceptable level without turning your sorting rules on their heads. etc. Oh and lets not forget the "I just plain don't trust LOOT and would rather do it myself." option. Just... it's a very basic feature (from a user point of view) that seems strange to not have?

[Tannin42]

This has been debated to death, so I'm just going to give you the summary:

a) We (Nexus Mods) will not provide drag&drop load ordering but it's possible for others to add it through extensions.

b) I don't consider drag&drop ordering "easier" since it requires an entire separate, complex, process to figure out where to put the plugins in the first place. Rule-based ordering doesn't just replace drag&drop ordering, it also provides you with sensible default ordering thereby replacing 99% of that process as well.

c) I consider the LOOT distrust to be very ill-informed, practically all users that actually took the plunge seem to be happy, the users having trouble are those that define dozens of rules trying to force an order on LOOT that's not actually necessary.

[Guest deleted34304850]

 

why would you want to manually sort your load order?

Because LOOT doesn't always do a good job. Because you're running legacy mods mixed in with things. Because you're running custom patches. Because you want to trouble shoot specific mod interactions and see if you can get the glitches down to an acceptable level without turning your sorting rules on their heads. etc. Oh and lets not forget the "I just plain don't trust LOOT and would rather do it myself." option. Just... it's a very basic feature (from a user point of view) that seems strange to not have?

 

If LOOT doesn't do a "good" job, and by that, I'm going to assume it has sorted a plugin in the wrong place in your load order which has triggered this request, then surely, I mean absolutely surely, it's much easier for you to create a bespoke rule in Vortex to say put this mod before/after that mod, so that you have a clear and easy to follow audit trail, should, some months later, something changes and you forget the one thing that needs to be set a certain way, rather than blindly dragging and dropping mods all over the place?

 

Unless you have some sort of amazing memory retention techniques, whereby you know the exact and precise order of your mods, it's got to be better to store this information in your mod manager once, so that it can perform the required re-ordering automatically for you each and every time?

 

Also, if LOOT does sort a mod into the wrong order - why don't you gather the data that shows this error and present it to the LOOT developers and the mod author, so that they can work together to update the meta data LOOT uses to ensure the mods are sorted correctly (should an update be necessary)?

 

I'm confused by this request, and it provokes me to ask again, why would you want to remove any/all automation and heavy lifting from installing and maintaining a working mod setup, and by implication, force people back to something from the last century? Vortex/LOOT are insanely good at what they do and are getting better and will get even better if outliers are reported so that they can be fixed.

 

This request seems to come from the "I've always done it that way and never want to change" attitude, which is ludicrous.

[HadToRegister]

The problem is, people that come from NMM, believe that they have to micromanage their esps because you HAD to do it in NMM.
So, when they transition to Vortex, they end up having a hard time because they end up fighting AGAINST Vortex rather than working with it.
That's what I did at first, I INSISTED that the esps be ordered MY WAY, so I started making rules for all of the esps and ended up getting cyclic rules, and I'd get frustrated.

Then one day it clicked, I realized that I need to let Vortex sort my esps, and focus on what Vortex was telling me about my BSA, BA2, Texture, and Mesh files.
Those are far more important.

Once I let Vortex handle the ESPs, I was free to follow Vortex's warnings about file conflicts with BSA, BA2, textures, and meshes.

THAT made a huge difference, because I started to see textures and meshes, that I could never quite get to work when using NMM because I couldn't really sort anything except ESPS with it
I wrote a post about how you have to think differently when using Vortex, you have to 'let go' of the old tedious way of incorrectly sorting ESPs and let vortex do it.

If there's an ESP that absolutely must go at the bottom of the load order and it's not going there, just put it in a "Late Loader" group of a "Dynamic Patch" group

[2much4l1]

NMM had good rule based ordering and manual ordering.

Once you've found the conflict nothing is easier or faster than adjusting your load order manually.

The fact that this has been debated forever would suggest that current Vortex design is suboptimal.

Trying to add XEdit functionality is just bloatware.

[Guest deleted34304850]

I don't think you get the fundamentals here. Bloatware? Do you even know what that means? That's adding a whoie raft of functions that are not required. In this case, adding manual sorting would be the bloatware because the existence of a rules based system negates it.

Have you used the rules that are available in your mod management of your games? if you have, what is missing from it that an unnecessary addition of drag/drop brings to the party?

[2much4l1]

Bloatware=Unwanted software. Feel free to post the entire definition if you like.

Do you agree with my other points?