prinyo

In response to post #57249476. #57250746 is also a reply to the same post. > "Vortex screen space usage is very inefficient" I was thinking the same looking at a screenshot of the plugins tab - all those white spaces that mean you need to scroll way more and you see less plugins at a glance (less plugins visible at the same time). My mind breaks with data been presented in such an inefficient way. Hope there is a "compact view". As Google offered when they inserted similar white spaces in the mail listing and people started complaining. Looking at the screenshots it seems that Vortex is targeted exclusively at casual users.

[edited] I didn't believe I can be more disappointed in Bethesda - no new IP, delayed FO4VR and showed a not very promising trailer about it, but this... If it turns out SkyrimVR is a PSVR exclusive ... very disappointing.

Whoa, hold on there, I don't remember electing you to represent everybody, and you certainly don't represent me. I'm confused now, after reading your next post. Do you want virtual install with links or not. My point was this. The MO crowd wants the new manager to use virtualization of "pure nature" with "pristinely clean" data folder as MO does it. The NMM crowd wants direct mod installs as NMM 0.5* does it. (Almost) nobody wants it to handle the mod installs as the current NMM versions do - a mix of the two ways. Now, I hate the virtual install with links and I believe that Talos himself can't create a mod manager that uses this way of installing mods that will not confuse me and that I would be able to use with pleasure. I, been a vocal NMM 0.5 fan on other forums for some time, recently started transitioning to MO with the idea to use it for the future games. The fact is the way MO deals with mods is easier to work with than the new NMM. That said, I, been a programmer myself, have a pretty good idea why Tannin is pushing for this kind of system and I realize that if I was in his shoes I would go ahead and implement it exactly the way I believe is right. This means that, as an user, I need to wait a month or two and see what happens. It seems there will be one mod manager able to handle Skyrim SE and we have no way of knowing what the response of community to this development will be.

Everything I said in my post was in regards to the concept and not the implementation. That's why at the start I gave an example with the type of problems I'm not going to discuss (the half-install thingy). I need to specify also that I'm talking about the experience of the more "advanced" users. For most of the players it doesn't really matter what happens in the background if everything works as they expect. What I'm talking about is the "tweaking" users. Many of those tweaking users will start by modding mods and can one day create and publish their own mod. Discouraging them is really not a good idea. And a very important point is that we are talking about the basic tool. The idea been that this tool will operate in a way that is easy to use and easy to understand. And would allow additional functionality to be "plugged-in" later. Also I would like to give an example that might sound strange at first, but the invention of the automobile didn't make the bicycles obsolete. Even if you develop different tools and modules for the advanced users lots of them can and will prefer to use the basic tool depending on their way of thinking and on what level of complexity makes them feel comfortable. So my point about the learning curve stays the same. If this basic tool uses the current NMM concept the learning curve will still be steeper than MO for the advances (tweaking) users. About the backup - I was talking about an outside-of-the-manager backup. A simple and universal backup that 98% of the users want to do - copy and paste. Not a backup that is tied to specific mod manager. <edit>I'm not talking about backup of the mods. I'm talking about a backup of the whole game, including the main game folder. Except mods that includes also cleaned .esm, ENB files + Settings, SKSE and whatever else is there.</edit> Also another thing when speaking about using a basic modding tool. For example - how do I switch between Skyrim and Enderal. There are 2 folders in my Steam directory - SkyrimEnd and SkyrimMain. Renaming one of them to Skyrim is everything I need to do in order to switch. This will be impossible to do with a linked virtual install as renaming the main Skyrim directory will immediately consume additional 50GB. Switching profiles - how long will it take to any linked virtual install based manager to remove/create all the needed links for mods like 3DNPC? Something that can be done in a second will now take quite some time. And it is also simpler. Yes, I understand how cool it is to drive a car, but I prefer the bike. After all we are talking about the basic modding tool here. On point 4 - I'm not really sure how this is different between linked VI and direct file install. In both case you need a manifest to know which files you need to restore. The way MO does it doesn't have this problem, but when you end up writing some kind of files in the data dir the problem will be the same. <edit>Also with direct install it is not necessary to always unzip the archives in order to find the file that needs to be restored. If for example there is a directory Overwritten then any file that will be overwritten can be moved there and then directly used.</edit> On point 2 - I completely agree that at the end it is the same. But it is not the same in the head of the user. That's why I was talking about the fact that the linked virtual install is confusing. Way too confusing for a base/basic modding tool. I do realize that my points are made by a person who "doesn't know better" and probably my bad experience with the implementation is influencing my understanding about the concept in was I can't appreciate. I simply wanted to share my experience in what it means to run a "basic" and an "confusingly virtual" tool. And I hope other users will do the same and add their experience.

This will only escalate with Skyrim SE. I have asked here on this forum if they would be willing to add support for it to NMM 0.56.1 but got only silence as an reply. The only good thing in this regard is that it will take some time before SKSE/SkyUI and other fundamental mods are available for it (as well as for FO4) and by then I guess the dust will settle and the big picture in regards to mod organizers will be more clear. Seems to me that the possibility that someone will fork NMM 0.56 and start working on updating it is getting more and more real.

That's what I was expecting after reading the posts here but then after reading on the STEP forum I realized this is not what they are actually planning to do.

Even if we assume that the problems that now exist with half-install and half-removing of mods leaving stray files in the data directory are caused by old and un-optimized code, there are still enough reasons that turn such a system into a nightmare for the advanced users and are now forcing them to use 0.56.1 as the last version of NMM that is actually usable. And those reasons have nothing to do with the quality of the software itself but the problems the concept of linked virtual install creates. Having the files in one place is logical and easy to work with (like MO and the old NMM), having ghosts of files in more places makes the experience quite limiting, confusing and annoying. 1. Backups - it is not possible to make an usable backup independently of the manager. What do you copy - the files in the data folder or the files in the VirtualInstall? Or both? Whatever you do there is no meaningful way to use such a backup. You are forced to make a copy of the two as this is the only way to use it and that means - 2 times longer do make/apply the backup, 2 times more space for the backup, 2 directories to backup instead of one and most importantly - twice the size of the game folder after the backup is used. This is a huge deal as most players put those games on small SSD drives. If you have 50GB of mods and want to use a backup then your game will now consume a total of 100GB. And even if the drive space is not a big problem, having several games inflated like that is not really acceptable. Because yes - when you install a mod and create links for all the files then you are not using twice the space - you have one and same file with two different addresses. So 1k file in data = 1k file in VI = 1k total. But when you copy the files and put them somewhere else the bond will break and you will end up with two independent "real" files. And yes - you need to make and use a backup of both data and VI folders. If you only use the data folder the game will work but the mod manager will become useless. If you only use a backup of the VI then there will be no mods in the game... So you are forced to endure the double backup and inflated drive space usage. 2. Freedom, predictability and flexibility (and way less chaos) - it is surprisingly easy to break the link and end up with two different files. This limits your possibility to reuse self-modified mod assets on a new install, create confusion when you edit a file that you don't immediately realize is not tied to it's counterpart anymore, forcing you to constantly think about which files are tied and which not and which copy you are editing. The "schizophrenic" state an install like this exists in is extremely confusing and adds way more complications than it is worth. 3. Learning curve. It is been mentioned many time on the forums that the learning curve for NMM 0.6* is steeper than MO. And it is true. Introducing this to the "basic" variation of the software seems strange. 4. For what? People would probably accept all this complications and problems if the would see the benefit such a system brings. However there is none. The predictability, usability and stability of the "one file" install logic is sacrificed for what... For profiles? Let's be honest, everybody who wanted profiles was already using MO. Now if you want to create the basic modding tool and with options to add modules and upgrade, are there Profiles in that very basic tool? There is no "greater good" here. It is complication for the sake of the complication. None of the potential benefits of the virtualization are realized by the linked virtual install, only the negatives. I would suggest starting a new thread about this and letting all people that still use the old NMM versions tell their reasons. Because I'm pretty sure none of them would be using this new manager if uses the same logic that made them stay away from the new versions anyway. I understand from the point of view of the MO crowd the phrase "advanced NMM users" is an oxymoron, but in reality there are advanced users who have experience in both pre- and after- 0.6 NMM.

This sounded really good until I read the comments on the STEP forum where there is this: "The default setting will probably work similar to what NMM is doing currently, using symlinks or hardlinks into the game directory because this is simply more robust " This is bad news. This is exactly what nobody wants. This is exactly what people want to get rid of. When people talk about "the way NMM works" they mean pre-0.6. If the new manager uses the current NMM logic then everybody loses. It was obvious that the choices you make about this will upset one of the two crowds. But upsetting both of them at the same time... hmm

Well, it is obvious the first and probably most important decision they need to make is the hardest - what system for mod install to use. And there is no correct answer it seems as whatever they do there will be a vocal opposition. On one hand you have people who want "a clean data directory", "mod isolation" and virtualization. And there are those who want it to work the way NMM used to work before 0.6 was introduced. I guess nobody wants it to work the way NMM works now - with the virtual install and the symlinks. They can probably do those 2 things with no problems. Make the base manager install mods directly and provide a module that would change that to some sort of virtualization. If instead they choose one of those paths there will be an outcry. It seems there is simply no correct answer to this except in providing a switch.

From what I understand the VRAM cap for DX9 applications is added by Microsoft, not by any of the GPU manufacturers. But it only affects DX9 games. It is expected the Skyrim RE to be DX11 so there will be no limit anymore. This is what the tool provided by the author of ENB shows on my PC. First window - Skyrim now, second window - expected Skyrim RE. To make things easier, I think we can agree that Skyrim faces 2 different limitations: - RAM - been a 32bit app it can't consume more that 3.1GB of RAM - VRAM - been a DX9 app it faces a 4GB VRAM limit, arbitrarily added for unknown (or no) reason Those two are completely unrelated to each-other. (This is what the thread on the Nvidia forum is mostly about). Also as the game puts it's eggs in two baskets - the meshes and textures are duplicated in RAM and VRAM, removing one of those limits will not help much. The confusion seems to start when ENB Boos is added to the picture. Been an independent process that has it's own caps my logic says that the total limit for RAM and VRAM for the ENB+Skyrim combo should be greatly increased. Also what I've seen in my game is that the reported memory usage of Skyrim itself is 2 times less with ENB Boost running, which led me to believe that the rest is "outsourced" to the ENB. However judging by the fact that the author of ENB complained about the VRAM limit on the Nvidia forum and some people reporting problems when they hit 4GB it seems the VRAM cap is not increased. Again there are lot's of points of view about how it works and why. The way I understand is that ENB Boost can provide RAM, but not VRAM and this is where I was wrong in my previous post. When Skyrim consumes it's 4GB of VRAM it will continue to expand into "fake" VRAM - as in RAM that ENB provides under the disguise of VRAM. But as the RAM is not fast enough graphic problems start to appear in the game. It will not crash, but there would be problems. So it seems I was wrong - ENB Boost can help the game not crash when it reaches any of the two limits, but it will not help it use more than 4GB of VRAM regardless of how much you have.

It would be really great if somebody explains all this in terms more people can understand, including myself. The thread you point to has all the problems I was talking about - it is toxic, it is way too technical when it is on point and everybody seems to have their own idea about how things work. This last problem is actualy the most serious for me in trying to understand what is going on. STEP explains this: http://wiki.step-project.com/Guide:ENB AMong other things it says: "This means that although TESV.exe can only use a maximum of 2GB of system RAM on 32-bit Windows systems, it can access up to about 3.1GB of system RAM (4GB - about 900MB of system resources) on 64-bit systems. To drive the video card in displaying Skyrim's 3D rendered graphics, TESV.exe must store object geometry (the shapes of things in the game) and texture data cached in its memory space, which is then copied to your video card's VRAM to display." Hence my understanding that because the meshes and textures are duplicated even if there is no limit on the VRAM the game will still crash because of the RAM limit. Further STEP explains that "ENBoost overcomes this memory limitation by ... using available VRAM on your video card " And also " The effectiveness and performance of ENBoost is determined by a number of factors, such as size of system RAM / VRAM" This seems to imply that with ENB Boost you can actually use the additional VRAM that you have if you have it. Or not? At the end my understanding is that ENB Boost works by reserving VRAM and RAM for itself and then "providing it" to the game. So I would image running it does in fact help Skyrim use more of the VRAM you have than it would have used without it. In other words, it changes the VRAM cap. No for Skyrim itself, but for the Skyrim-ENBBoost combo which for the player means more RAM and VRAM available. Again, this is based on my lamers understanding after reading quite a lot of threads and reddit posts. If I'm wrong I would really appreciate any corrections.

I might be (and probably am) completely wrong but I was under the impression that Skyrim keeps the textures in both RAM and VRAM. So you can't really use all the VRAM if the game crashes at 3.1GB anyway (both RAM and VRAM limits will kill it). I've read a lot about this and tried to understand as much as possible with my limited understanding and the only thing I understood is that it is not possible to change the limitations and the only practical solution is to optimize the memory usage of the game - what ENB Boost does. I've been trying to read and try to understand more about all this graphic setup stuff, but it is not easy because all the forums about it are full with people who shout at each other and the technical discussion is always in the shadows of everyone trying to explain to everybody else how stupid they are. It doesn't help that different people have different understanding about how things work.

So many posts and no one points to the solution/workaround. ENB Boost (correctly configured) from http://enbdev.com/ It will not allow the game to use more memory, instead it makes Skyrim use two times less memory. Under Win 10 the game in fact crashes when it reaches 3.1GB of memory usage. And it is really easy to reach it. The second part of this video helps with the configuration:

Are there any news about this? Any, no matter how small? After seeing the GTA room-scale VR mod it drives me crazy there is nothing even similar for Skyrim/FO4. I'm willing to help and experiment as much as I can.

Actually if you are serious about modding - NMM 0.56 or installing by hand. The paradigm of MO is wrong as it makes you think about modding the game in terms of arbitrary file "packets" - mods. The misguided ideal about a "clean" data directory sounds interesting and I can see how it can be sold to people. But it is a bad way to organize the user's workflow. Having all the files in the data directory makes you think about modding the game in terms of the game itself and the files it will see and use. If I see an outfit I want to change I don't need to find the mod that adds it in order to edit it. I just open the file and change it. That's just a simple example. Also to all condescending MO evangelists who continue to pollute threads all over the internet - if you read the forums here you will see that most people who actually use NMM want the return of the old system and not more virtualization. I'm glad you have found your perfect mod manager, now stop insulting everybody else and let us be. Thanks!

They have found the bug that causes profiles to break and mods to migrate between profiles and the other similar problems. Not sure if it is fixed in the current version but it seems it is fixed in the beta. This was very good news for me :-) Not sure if they have found the reason NMM sometimes doesn't fully activate or deactivate mods (failing to create or remove all the symlinks for all the mod files).

If you want to share a profile that includes LL mods you can provide links to those mods in the profile description. The user can download them as usual and use your profile. The only problem that can arise is if the non-Nexus mod gets updated and the file name changes. In this case you can update the shared profile or instruct the users to rename the mod archive before adding it to NMM. The sorting of the mod and plugin order is so everybody else can have a setup identical to yours. It is not auto-sorting them, it is remembering the sorting done by the person who created the profile.

It can't handle modified mods when sharing or backung-up a profile. When you download a profile it will check the mods you have and will download from Nexus the ones that are missing. If a mod is not on Nexus you can download it and add it to NMM yourself. NMM will recognize the archive file name and will use the mod as part of the profile. But the profile sharing and backup is all about the meta data about the mods - what is installed, activated, in what order. It is not about the files themselves. You are not going to be sharing fles with the people you share profiles with. If you want to use the backup feature you will need to pack the changed files in a custom "mod" and install it via NMM so it will able to work with it in the future. Not sure if I managed to explain exactly. P.S. I'm part of the test group and I've been using the future version for some time now.

Is it possible to swap bgsm files via script?

I tested the beta with the profile backup/sharing for several hours. I don't think it is appropriate to discuss it in an open forum outside of the dedicated channels for this. But I also don't want to leave some suspicions and worries I have expressed here earlier hanging. That's why I want to assure everybody that the profile backup/sharing is indeed implemented as an optional feature. It doesn't affect other aspects of the way the software works and it will not inconvenience you in any way if you choose to ignore it. I do believe many people will use the online backup even if now they are skeptical about it. If only for the "peace of mind" that there is a "off-site" backup that is quickly created and used. Also because the feature is designed in a way to keep the install order, the load order and the choices made when installing mods, such a backup is way superior than simply copy/paste of files. P.S. Really not sure how appropriate is posting this at this time. If the moderators think it is not please delete the post.

What I meant, and what I should have said, was once 0.60 is installed, using the profile functionality within NMM is completely optional. Yes, it changes the installation method of mods to use our virtualised system, something which is separate from profiles, but you can use 0.60+ without ever creating or interacting with the profile functionality within NMM. That is what was meant when I said that using profiles is completely optional, e.g. you don't need to be there, making lots of different profiles, switching between them all the time. Your post goes off on a tangent based around a meaning of "optional" I did not intend to put forward, so I'm not going to argue most of your points simply because I know what you're telling me already. I completely understand everything you said and also I'm not interesting in blaming and hating because I know that it's easy to criticize when watching from outside and I'm not the one looking at the bigger picture and making the hard choices. My post was a reaction to several earlier posts from the thread. My points were two. The ghost of the 0.60 drama is still pretty much alive and it is still haunting the communication from the both sides. it is time that both users and Nexus put the 0.60 drama in the past. I believe our 2 posts managed to put side by side the 2 points of view in a direct and open way. And while I'm not happy with what happened I can completely understand and appreciate why it did happen and everything you now do in order to prevent it from happening again. And I'm ready to put all of this in the past. I really hope those 2 posts side by side help more people do that. This goes both ways - because both sides allow the frustration to influence the communication and it doesn't help anyone. On the second point - I'm a bit worried about the part of the post I left in the quote above. "Optional" means something that is not required. Maybe users are not required to use the new profile feature in certain ways - creating, switching, deleting additional profiles, in addition to the one the system already created from them. But they are required to use it - they need to activate it and they can not opt-out of it. The "VirtualInstall" can not be separated from the profiles feature as it is simply the way to make it work. I can completely understand why it was done but that doesn't change the facts. I don't think is possible to estimate how many people benefited from this and how many were hurt by it with no benefit. On one hand it is not possible to know how many people actively use the profiles. Maybe there are people with only 2 profiles that they really use and others with 10-20 profiles that were created once for testing an never used again. On the other hand it is also not possible to estimate how many people were actually inconvenienced by the switch. I can imagine most users that didn't have mods with scripted installers or with requirements for the installation order did not have any problems. (Still, CBBE was one of the mods that was breaking initially :-)) So it is not possible to say if the change benefited more users than it hurt. What is important to understand is that the profiles and the virtual install system that they introduced are not an optional feature and it had a wider reaching consequences for people that don't use them and never asked for them. And now when new features are added - also as optional, most users hope that they will really be optional and will not create problems for the people that don't want to use them. There is one question in my mind that I know I have no right to actually say, but I'll say it anyway without wanting an answer. Given the limited development resources isn't it better to use them for further fixing the speed and stability that would benefit all the users instead of using them to develop a new functionality that almost no one is asking for and that is very limited by design? But as I said I'm not in a position to ask this so it is more of a stray thought. I have been in positions to make similar decisions and know that it is never that simple the way it looks from the outside. It also seems it is not possible to know what the reality will be in a month when the current FO4 beta is released. If the wild rumors all over the internet are to be believed we are now in the quiet period before the s#*&#33;-storm.

People want different things :-) You want an empty "data" directory, I want to see my mod files there all the time. I don't want "ghost" files feeded into my game. And I don't want any "virtualization" with the mod files. The main reason I chose NMM at the beginning was the what-you-see-is-what-you-get approach. Open the game's data directory and there are all the files that will be used by the game when it starts. You can see them, you can change them, you can sort them by date or by size (unfortunately no longer the case with the new NMM versions), you can see exactly the files the game will see and use. If two different mods affect partly an aspect of the game I can see their files in the "data" folder all put together - exactly the way the game will see them and get a pretty good idea how they will interact. I tried to understand why the "clean data folder" is such a holly concept but I still can't. The "mod isolation" concept sounds terrifying to me. My complaints about the new NMM versions are exactly because it started going the MO way with the virtualization. I'm writing this not because I want to start an argument is the MO's approach good or bad. My point is that some people prefer the way of MO, some prefer the way NMM does it. Some people tried both and chose to install by hand with the argument that it gives them better control and less complication. None of them "is wrong", it just a preference. You think MO Is superior, I think NMM is. The good thing is that we can both continue using the one we like :smile: And also all this makes a difference for a small part of the NMM users. I imagine more than 90% are not interested in what is happening "behind the scenes". They want to download mods and play. So comparing features, the idea that we see in OP about one-click download and install will have probably the maximum impact on the users. And more than 90% will be happy about it.

This is NOT true and this misconception is the main reason for most of the misunderstandings and miscommunication in the forum. Before I go further I want to say that I use NMM to mod all my games and that my only motivation is to help make it better. I'm a developer/programmer in real life and in my posts I'm commenting on the software itself and it's usability and nothing more. I'm not interested in flame wars, I'm not a "hater", I'm not a "fan-boy", I'm not interested in anything else but to discuss the facts - objective, measurable facts and their impact on the users, including myself. With the only motivation that I need/want to use a reliable, predictable, stable and usable mod manager. By definition an optional feature is one that the user can choose to activate or not and to use or not. The user can opt-in or opt-out of it. The profiles are incorporated in the latest NMM versions (post 0.60) as a mandatory, core functionality. 1. There was no option to not activate them. Many users payed tens of hours and lost custom changes in dealing with this activation (complete reinstall of all mods from scratch that in many cases led to complete reinstall of the games themselves). There was (is) no option to chose to not use profiles and have NMM work as normal. 2. There is no opt-in It is pretty straight-forward - you need to accept using the profiles if you want to use the next versions and mod the games that are yet to be released. The way it was communicated was actually quite simple - you need to activate and use the profiles if you want to mod Fallout 4. 3. There is no opt-out You can't turn off the profiles. Even if you never create a profile yourself you are still using a profile - the one the software created for you by default. You can not opt-out of the profiles and the VirtualInstall setup. Even when it makes it impossible to backup your game when using an SDD (trying to use the backup actually doubles the space the game uses because the symlinks are copied as real files). You can not turn off the profiles and the VirtualInstall setup even if this adds additional layer of complication when trying to create a new mod. You can not turn off the profiles and the VirtualInstall setup for whatever reason you don't want want to use this feature and keep the software working the way it was before. As any optional feature would allow. So you can't choose to not activate the profiles, you don't opt-in and you can't opt out. Want them or not - you are going to need to use them. Why is this relevant now? 1. It was unexpected I did read the red warning when I upgraded. I also did read the whole text. Including the part where it promised me it will only take 5 minutes. And my programmer mind calculated that nothing should go wrong, Because: A. It has the source archives of all my mods in it's "mods" folder B. It knows the order the mods were installed C. The pre-0.60 versions weren't that slow so there was no way to predict how long it would take So I thought "OK, by the time I go to the shop it will be done. Nothing can go wrong." And clicked Yes... Several hours later the result was half-installed mods in completely random order. I was actually amazed that a software can produce so much chaos. The whole weekend after that was spent in reinstalling games and mods. 2. It was and still is dangerously broken I have filed several bug reports about how dangerous using the profiles actually is. So far I don't think they have been addressed. NMM keeps randomly adding or removing mods from the profiles and if it crashes while switching profiles then it can "forget" tens of mods belonging to a profile. Actually using the profiles is still a gamble - the game might start after you switch profiles but it might crash as well. 3. Insult to injury I keep reading, even in this thread, that it's user's fault if they had problems with the 0.61 update. They should learn to read... For example, just several posts above this one: " I also encouraged people to read the release notes and any warnings prior to clicking "next" continuously on future updates until the update process is finished without reading anything." This is somewhat offensive because: A. There were no details about the update in the dialog window on the old version that was telling you to download the new one. It simply said - there is a new version, you need to upgrade. That's all. B. The warning in red about the mod reinstall was shown when it was already too late. I actually killed the install when I first read it and spent 30 minutes trying to find an older version to download, but could not. It turned out the link is hidden under a spoiler tag... I expected when the software presents such an important choice to give you options to easily go both ways. It did not. C. The warning message was actually quite reassuring - we know what we are doing and in 5 minutes your mods will be reinstalled and there is no need to worry. So I was trapped into upgrading to the profiles feature, I was not given a way to postpone it, I was told it would only take 5 minutes, I was warned that there will be no further updates if I don't accept... and now it is all my fault - apparently I can't read.... 4. And apparently this is still an issue Months after all this happened there is still a lot of finger pointing going on. Nexus says "We are developing a cool new feature". An user replies "Oh, God, not again..." And Nexus is upset... And I'm sitting here thinking "The users and Nexus want one and the same thing - a nice, useful, stable and user-friendly manager". Why can't they work together? Yes, there are trolls and flame wars in the forums but there are also people who genuinely want to help. What is the point to further the divide? Is it really that hard to work together?

This answer is quite reassuring, thank you for clearing that up! The only thing your post doesn't explain is what will happen if I have even one mod that is not on Nexus added to a profile I want to backup/share? Or what will happen if even one of the mods in my profile, hosted on Nexus, is hidden or deleted by it's author? Also doing all this on a profile level defeats it's own purpose. What you actually need is "bundles" or "mod packs". The real life situation will be that user A shares a profile that has weapons mods collected and setup the way I want. User B shares a profile with body replacers and clothes conversions that I like. User C shares a profile that has really good tweaks of the world objects. Sharing on the level "profiles" will not help me in this situation. I can appreciate what you try to achieve, but doing it on the level of the profiles is simply unusable, even for the main target group you have in mind. I'm really curious to see what real life use cases you have in mind for the profile sharing feature and what % of users you expect to use it. Because I can't imagine how you are going to justify the time and the manpower invested in a feature that is flawed by design and un-helpful for most of your users.

What I meant was that concern is that adding the new functionality will reflect on the usability and modder-friendliness of the software for those who don't want to use them. About the privacy... it seems there is no way to prevent NMM from trying to match one's mods against the database on Nexus so I guess it is not possible to prevent it from regularly sending my mod-list to the Nexus's servers. So I guess I have already agreed to give-up my privacy by using it. The Privacy Policy http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/privacypolicy/ doesn't really say anything about what happens with this data. It says the logs are been " analysed " but doesn't specify for what purposes and there is nothing about sharing it with 3rd parties or not.