Vortex or MO2 in 2020?

[anjenthedog]

I agree about the interface. I'd suggest for people to continue to push for a less Kiosk" based interface when their periodic customer poll comes out. The interface, as it stands, is meant to sate the expectations of a "playstation" culture. Hopefully, one day, they'll provide another skin for those of us who prefer a less "playstation" style interface, but that's only going to happen by saying so.

 

In any case, garish UI style or not, Vortex is easy to use and all but bullet-proof, and things people used to have to do manually are now done effectively in the background, making it basically point and shoot.

[greyday01]

I like MO2 because it is so easy when making mods to move files in and out of my mod's folder as I work on them. Also easy to search other mod's folders to see what's in them. I started having a problem with the appearance of the noble bookcases after adding a bunch of mods. It was easy to open each mod's folder and find the texture that didn't look right then reinstall that mod with that texture not checked.

 

Maybe it is just as easy with Vortex to see which files belong to each mod but I haven't tried it.

[FuryoftheStars]

I like MO2 because it is so easy when making mods to move files in and out of my mod's folder as I work on them. Also easy to search other mod's folders to see what's in them. I started having a problem with the appearance of the noble bookcases after adding a bunch of mods. It was easy to open each mod's folder and find the texture that didn't look right then reinstall that mod with that texture not checked.

 

Maybe it is just as easy with Vortex to see which files belong to each mod but I haven't tried it.

In Vortex, in the Mods tab from the left, right clicking an installed mod (enabled or disabled) and choosing "Open in file manager" will open the staging location for that mod, so you can its specific files.

[NikiRandom]

I've stumbled onto this thread because for the umpteenth time I'm embarking on a new game and fresh load order (Skyrim SE).

 

I've been using MO2 for ages now. I know my way around it etc and I'm comfortable with using it. My problem however is that I like to install a lot of mods while at the same time I know pretty much bugger all about modding and how to get them all playing nicely together.

So, without wishing to spark any pointless arguments or fanboy/girl proselitising, is Vortex any better than MO2 at creating a reasonably stable load order and game?

Edited January 29, 2021 by NikiRandom

[HadToRegister]

I've stumbled onto this thread because for the umpteenth time I'm embarking on a new game and fresh load order (Skyrim SE).

 

I've been using MO2 for ages now. I know my way around it etc and I'm comfortable with using it. My problem however is that I like to install a lot of mods while at the same time I know pretty much bugger all about modding and how to get them all playing nicely together.

 

So, without wishing to spark any pointless arguments or fanboy/girl proselitising, is Vortex any better than MO2 at creating a resonably stable load order and game?

 

 

Vortex uses built in LOOT to sort your load order, as long as you let Vortex/LOOT do it's job, and don't follow any "Teh Perfekt Load order" guides/opinion pieces, then Vortex will do the work for you, and if there's a problem, Vortex will let you know, and it's usually something simple as saying LOAD MOD B AFTER MOD C. You click SHOW, and then get a screen where you can pick LOAD BEFORE or LOAD AFTER for the conflicting mods Vortex mentioned and if you pick incorrectly, just go back to the MANAGE RULES Screen and switch your LOAD AFTER rule to LOAD BEFORE, and Vortex wills swap the Textures and meshes around, back with NMM, you had to UNINSTALL BOTH mods and reinstall them in the correct order to fix that kind of error, with Vortex, it's just like flipping a switch, you can do that with MO2 as well, by just dragging the incorrectly placed mod either ABOVE or BELOW the other mod in the load order.

Vortex focuses more on the really important part...the MOD part, the part that contains the BSA, BA2, Textures and Meshes, so that you can correctly have the proper texture or mesh overriding another (like some Mod Page Description tell you to have their texture override a different texture etc.

 

 

MO2, you can drag and drop your load order, which gives you more freedom to possibly mess up your load order, but I imagine of you use it in conjunction with LOOT then you should get similar results.

You can also Drag and Drop the MODS (Textures, Meshes BSA etc, to override another texture or mesh etc, like I described with Vortex) and a lot of people prefer the "Drag ad Drop" for that, rather than making Rules like Vortex requires.

I use Vortex, I've used NMM, MO, MO2, OBMM, FOMM, WryeBash etc, I prefer Vortex for newer games because the mods are packaged correctly for mod installation, and Vortex is very verbose about if there's a conflict with any textures, meshes etc etc

Rule of Thumb, if Vortex didn't complain about ANYTHING when you installed your mods, then you've nailed it right out of the box, the only time you need to do something in Vortex is if it Complains about a Conflict etc.

Most people ruin into trouble with Vortex, and complain, because they try and force THIER load order on Vortex and LOOT, and get frustrated and quit, instead of sitting back, relaxing and letting Vortex do the sorting.

 

So, if you MUST Control every little aspect of your Load Order, then go with MO2, if you'd rather have a lot of the work done for you, go with Vortex.

 

You could always do this as well.

 

If you have two Bethesda games installed and unmodded (Easiest way to compare), Mod one Game using Vortex, and mod the other game with MO2.

Then assess which modding experience you found more intuitive

[DoctorKaizeld]

Ditto what Hadto said

[xrayy]

 

So, if you MUST Control every little aspect of your Load Order, then go with MO2, if you'd rather have a lot of the work done for you, go with Vortex.

thats probably the reason i still stick with mo/mo2. i cannot say much about the other tools but i know some friends who do not touch their nmm setups because they fear the possible instability testing the wrong mod. i never had that problem with mo2. you can throw even the worst mods at it and if you deactivate it everything works like before this mod was installed. and that is exactly what a mod manager in my opinion should be capable of.

 

first i used obmm for oblivion until 2014 (a nightmare compared to mo1, looked nice but worked weird). if you like modding and experimenting while using obmm you can make 3 times a day a new game installation to find out which mod is buggy and you still do not know where the bug is.

with mo1 i just deactivated mod by mod without touching my oblivion installation and i could find and delete the mod without a hassle.

i'm still using my 2015 first and only mo1 oblivion installation.

that is why i also used it for skyrim and it worked stable with 900 mods and 253 esp installed while others complained about their instabilities.

my instabilities were all mod related and i was always able to find the buggy mod without the need of any new setup until today.

so it was a logical step to try mo2 for sse and fo4 and it works like a charm with my heavy modded setup.

so my mo/mo2 experience is reduced to bethesda games including fo3 and fnv (also with mo2) and all i can say is that mo/mo2 are the perfect tools for these games. even fnis and skse, xedit, generating lod worked for me without gliches. so i can not complain and i'm very grateful for that tool.

[DoctorKaizeld]

 

 

So, if you MUST Control every little aspect of your Load Order, then go with MO2, if you'd rather have a lot of the work done for you, go with Vortex.

thats probably the reason i still stick with mo/mo2. i cannot say much about the other tools but i know some friends who do not touch their nmm setups because they fear the possible instability testing the wrong mod. i never had that problem with mo2. you can throw even the worst mods at it and if you deactivate it everything works like before this mod was installed. and that is exactly what a mod manager in my opinion should be capable of.

 

first i used obmm for oblivion until 2014 (a nightmare compared to mo1, looked nice but worked weird). if you like modding and experimenting while using obmm you can make 3 times a day a new game installation to find out which mod is buggy and you still do not know where the bug is.

with mo1 i just deactivated mod by mod without touching my oblivion installation and i could find and delete the mod without a hassle.

i'm still using my 2015 first and only mo1 oblivion installation.

that is why i also used it for skyrim and it worked stable with 900 mods and 253 esp installed while others complained about their instabilities.

my instabilities were all mod related and i was always able to find the buggy mod without the need of any new setup until today.

so it was a logical step to try mo2 for sse and fo4 and it works like a charm with my heavy modded setup.

so my mo/mo2 experience is reduced to bethesda games including fo3 and fnv (also with mo2) and all i can say is that mo/mo2 are the perfect tools for these games. even fnis and skse, xedit, generating lod worked for me without gliches. so i can not complain and i'm very grateful for that tool.

 

Vortex is the same way

[ed1990on]

I use MO2 right now, and it has been working fine, until I hit around 240 mods, and then I started to realize significant increases in load times and the occasional vanilla "micro-stutter after two hours of gameplay" came back. I have never noticed this with my previous generation PC from three years ago that had weaker hardware and was using 280 mods with Vortex.

 

Now, I'm a noob, but I think it would make sense that the read and write speeds would be more optimal if your software is accessing the physical drive directly rather than going through a virtual machine. I could be wrong about that hypothesis, but the first part of this comment is pure fact, pure experience. Make of that what you will. :geek:

 

PS: Just in case it wasn't obvious, I happened upon this thread on the 20th of April, 2021 because I am contemplating going back to Vortex. The reasons I am hesitating is because of the convenient features that MO2 has, namely the INI editor that preserves the read-only flag, drag-and-drop plugin order manipulation, and the bsa packer/unpacker which are all awesome.

[Helmsmasher]

Open nvidia control panel and add MO2, hit apply.

Edited April 20, 2021 by Helmsmasher