ovinnik

They mark such mods as "DELETED" during the archiving/removal process -- by renaming them, it looks like. I suppose we ought to make of that what we will.

Well, it looks like partial deletions are a thing now. Doesnt really fix anything, but if anyone's keen of retaining access to the mod author forums, here it is.

It's worth considering that they will likely continue to look into ways to 1) enhance Premium benefits and/or 2) worsen the non-Premium experience. Think of the extra hoops non-Premium users now have to jump through in order to download stuff. Who knows what else may follow at this point.

If only one could have mods without those pesky authors getting in the way, ruining everyone's fun.

This won't work in every case and situation I find it exceedingly hard to believe that they won't invent some new rule against "nonsensical" updates if enough authors start doing this.

I would say that I do not think it can get any worse, but I have been proven wrong on that before... Considering that Premium users won't even need to be aware of individual mods featured in a collection, yes, I'd say it can get infinitely worse.

It's a hobby for us. For them it's business. That's where the discrepancy stems from. An opt-out would solve exactly nothing, because we still wouldn't be able to properly retire our own content.

No. Once a list is published it will stay as it is. The creator can create an updated version of the list and users will have the choice of using the original or the updated one. That is reliability. The choice will be up to the user. Let me get this straight. Collections are being implemented for the sake of accessibility. (Ostensibly. Yes, there's also the $$$ aspect.) They're targeted at people who are maybe not tech-savvy, likely short on time, whatever. These same people, who are probably not overly interested in the inner workings of the mods they install, are then encouraged to use outdated but conveniently static content, all in the spirit of engaging even less with the particularities of the stuff they put into their games. That's not reliability; it's errant complacency.

It's my understanding, that the list maker, will also be able to include things like a 'bashed patch', etc. In order for things to play nice. Of course, just like mods, there are going to be lists that have issues, and lists that are really good. And everything in between. It will be up to users to police which are which. As always, read the comments/bug reports before downloading. :D The point being, Collections will require regular upkeep and evaluation of user feedback to be (and stay) in any way reliable. Nexus Mods' approach (and subsequent treatment of authors) does not constitute some inherent utopia for end users, much as some would apparently like to believe that. ...This is in reference to someone's post about "reliability" above; I should've quoted that one.

What reason is there to assume that some cobbled together list of mods is in any way reliable, be it on Steam or here? Will these so-called "curators" provide their own compatibility patches? If not, then simply pointing to outdated and quite possibly bugged versions of mods they've had no hand in making seems like a laughably poor approach to "reliability".

Yes, one or two containing some entertaining speculating.

Was it really? It looks like this has been cooking for nigh on two years, and they're obviously not interested in compromise (or discourse, for that matter). At this point, I'm not sure this could have ended any other way. On topic, authors who leave now, especially non-Bethesda modders, are more or less bound to scatter to the winds. Their profiles are definitely the best place to check up on them, but many (myself included) will probably just stop sharing content altogether. At least for a while.

Ah, yes. Obviously, this is just a particularly riveting chapter in the life of us narcissistic hobbyists slash raging nerds who just so happen to produce the free creative content this site and its user base so very much detest to rely on. It not like we've been given an honest-to-goodness ultimatum with a deadline. That would be quite absurd.

On the off chance that anyone's still reading this: I've been cudgelling both my brains and Frosty Editor in hopes of figuring out how to trigger War Table operations. The only ops with easily accessible plot flags are those further down some quest chains. They can be triggered using a flag found in the AfterActionReportActions of their preceding op. Even so, not all consequtive ops seem to be triggered this way; sometimes their preceding ops don't provide any. Unsurprisingly, initial War Table ops (the first ones in a chain of quests) and standalone ops (those not part of any chain) are even more of a mystery. I've tried various approaches, ranging from questionable edits to WarTableAssets to scouting for potential plot flags in JournalSystem.ebx/.xml. So far, no dice. I've also thought about replacing an existing op with the one I'd like to trigger. That would obviously come with multiple caveats, so I'm not too keen on this. The (likely) bug that sent me down this path is Ser Barris' missing War Table quest chain and subsequent promotion when the player disbands the templars. The related dialogue assets look fine: There are flags for whether one has allied with or disbanded the templars, and for whether or not Barris lives and becomes an agent. These all seem to be set correctly and should work. Maybe I'm missing something obvious. In fact, that would be awesome.

@Tannin42 I'm not asking for Vortex to be made compatible with every conceivable form of mod. I'm fully aware that this would be an impossible (and rather unnecessary) task. What I'm worried about is essentially communication. Vortex is said to support games it doesn't -- or apparently doesn't fully -- support. See, for example, the .override file format for DA:O. Your answer is to tell mod authors to repackage their mods to fit your tool. My concern is with reviewing the way it's being advertised as fully compatible. That's it. So no, this isn't about blaming you, or anyone. I have no stake in this other than hoping for fewer frustrated posts by people dealing with incompatibilities and user error. Though I guess that there will always be that. @Zanderat As an aside, No friendly Fire involves recompiling various combat-related base game scripts. It's completely incompatible not fully compatible with Dain's Fixes. And you definitely don't need ZDF alongside Qwinn's Fixpack.

That's ... something? Then at least a portion of those attempting to use it for unsupported games will be stopped in their tracks. Doesn't keep some from trying, apparently, and doesn't keep all bad advice at bay. But yeah. It's something. Let me rephrase this, then: It looks like titles that shouldn't be are in its compatibility list. DA: Origins is definitely one. The Witcher 3 is listed and doesn't seem to be fully compatible either. I thought one or two ME games were included as well, but it's a good thing they're not.

Why does Vortex allow for the "management" of games it obviously does not support? I frequently see bug reports, complaints and nonsensical advice all leading back to this very issue. People try to install mods for games Vortex doesn't work for, then leave frustrated comments for frustrated authors to sift through. Even worse, sometimes users instruct other users to use Vortex for said unsupported games, because apparently the tool is falsely peddled as the gold standard for everything. The titles I'm primarily talking about are the Dragon Age and Mass Effect series, because they're what I'm familiar with. I've no doubt, however, that there are many more such cases. I realise that mod authors can remove the "Mod Manager Download" button from their files, and it helps. If they think of doing this at all -- many don't. But it's, quite frankly, a solution to a problem that shouldn't exist in the first place. Please: Stop Vortex from trying to manage games it wasn't built for.

I second this. Being arbitrarily barred from content is always icky, and so this tweak is very welcome. :)

Sadly, the Shale retexture by Dalishious is gone. I was looking for it too a few days ago. Edit, to contribute some actually working links: Desire Demon HD and Ogre HD by Catachrism (the author of Lady of The Forest HD, linked above) Noble Dress Overhaul by yixura That said, I also recommend just browsing the Models and Textures category. DA:O isn't Skyrim; there aren't that many mods out for this game, and you're bound to stumble upon something of interest to you that no one has thought of linking here.

@theskymoves You know, more and more do I get the feeling that somewhere, you've probably stashed away a completely new version of the game, rebuilt from the ground up. ...After having re-read the OP and actually taken a look at the textures, I feel like discussing tints and MAOs is overcomplicating things. If we're talking about just retexturing the base diffuse (and other) maps, there should be no issue. It's pretty much what yixura did here for the female versions, and quite successfully at that. Granted, they did also edit three TNT files along with a bunch of textures. If you don't want to mess with TNTs at all for fear of explosions breaking unrelated clothing, you should be able to edit the tint map of the textures so that tints affect them less, or not at all. So what I said above about the various texture maps still applies; at least so far as my limited knowledge ain't failing me.

Depending on how the mesh-side of those noble outfits is set up, you should be able to assign different diffuse textures to them by editing their MAOs. Notepad++ works just fine for that. I'm unable to check right now, however, so this is really just off the top of my head. If you create somewhat extensive retextures with different fabric, visible skin and such, you'll likely need to make new normal and tint maps, or at least edit the existing ones. The specular map will probably look fine as is, unless it's the culprit behind the plastic-y vanilla look of those clothes. I've no clue how to create normal maps for DAO from scratch. There's a nice resource around for Photoshop users, but sadly that won't work with GIMP... Oh, and since I use GIMP as well, I can confirm that the invisible-without-disabled-alpha thing exists. Why? Who knows.

Has anyone ever determined working export settings for GIMP or Paint.NET? nvdxt.exe is reliable enough, but it's not exactly the most convenient way of going about things... Edit: To answer my own question regarding GIMP, exporting with the settings Compression: None, Format: RGBA8 and no mipmaps seems to at least not crash the game.

Two thoughts: 1. The 5-second-timer is gone. If they want to throw us a bone, I'd rather have the timer back and instead be spared having to click through and reload a download page just to get past the premium ad. 2. If the premium ad is here to stay, it's extremely tacky that non-premium mod authors see the thing. Up the requirements if you must, make it 10k unique downloads or 20k, but don't taunt the very people who give this site its purpose. I myself wouldn't reach that new number of unique downloads, but at least I'd know there was a line.

The banner at the top of every single download page seemed to get the job of advertising done just fine.

Agreed, the banner was perfectly fine. These new gimmicks, however, feel obnoxious and rather tasteless.