The most complicated mod manager. Why?

[lordderryth]

Help me understand something here. Every mod manager out there works flawless. Choose your game>Download mods>install with all one click of a button. Want to know if there's an update? It will show you the mod needs updating. It's a simple UI. Why is vortex so complicated and confusing? I can't seem to wrap my head around how this software works. Will there be any changes in the future to simplify the manager and make it work like every other manager does?

[showler]

Vortex does everything you described. What's the confusing part?

[Guest deleted34304850]

its complexity is inversely proportional to your understanding.

invest a bit of time in learning how it works. its not complex at all.

[Pickysaurus]

Yeah you've not really provided anything constructive enough for us to comment on. There are definitely places the UI/UX needs some work, but it almost sounds like you took one look at the UX then decided it was too complex. If there are specific parts of the actions you mentioned in the OP that you find difficult, please do expand on why and how you think they can be improved.

[lordderryth]

I can give a simple example. I've been an avid wow player since day one. I've used mods 100% of the time. I found that adding and updating addons to wow was user friendly and simple. Currently I use WowUp. Launch it, see the games that needs to be updated. Press update or update all and viola, all done. Most mod managers work this way. Why vortex is complex beats me. It's not a program that allows you to search for mods and install or update on the fly. You basically have to still manually download mods and install them yourself or choose from vortex to install via already downloaded to your computer.

 

Change my mind!

 

Note: It's been hell for me updating Valheim mods as I have to search weekly to see if there are updates. Currently, my game is broken and can't use the updated mods because something is broken or not updated. You see the problem here. It's not simplified like the other mod managers.

Edited December 20, 2021 by lordderryth

[Guest deleted34304850]

your example makes no sense.

 

how many games does wowup support? it supports wow, right? so that's one game which is made to have mods added and removed easily without causing impact or abends to the game client as you're not modding the game files, you're modding local files that customise your UI rather than the game executables themselves.

 

how many does vortex support? slightly more than one. it has to support many games each of which has unique modding requirements.

vortex is not a difficult program to understand, you're just refusing to understand it.

Edited December 20, 2021 by 1ae0bfb8

[AugustaCalidia]

I can give a simple example. I've been an avid wow player since day one. I've used mods 100% of the time. I found that adding and updating addons to wow was user friendly and simple. Currently I use WowUp. Launch it, see the games that needs to be updated. Press update or update all and viola, all done. Most mod managers work this way.

 

"Most mod managers work this way." Really? Of the most popular mod managers for Bethesda games, would you please indicate which one or ones work exactly in the way that you have ascribed to WowUp?

 

Adding to 1ae0bfb8's comment, Vortex currently supports about 170 games. How many does WowUp support?

[showler]

Vortex is designed to work with Nexusmods website. You're asking for duplicate functionality as a web browser, which is not what Vortex is designed to simplify.

 

Though I would also point out that there is a "check for updates" button.

 

Honestly, it seems like the in-game Bethesda.net mod manager is what you want.

[rmm200]

OP is happy with WowUP. I suggest he stick with that for all his modding needs.

Vortex is not the best match for some users - and I would rather see them beating their heads against some other mod manager than Vortex.

There are enough folks that actually use - and like Vortex - to keep us busy.

[Tannin42]

I can give a simple example. I've been an avid wow player since day one. I've used mods 100% of the time. I found that adding and updating addons to wow was user friendly and simple. Currently I use WowUp. Launch it, see the games that needs to be updated. Press update or update all and viola, all done. Most mod managers work this way. Why vortex is complex beats me. It's not a program that allows you to search for mods and install or update on the fly. You basically have to still manually download mods and install them yourself or choose from vortex to install via already downloaded to your computer.

 

Change my mind!

 

Note: It's been hell for me updating Valheim mods as I have to search weekly to see if there are updates. Currently, my game is broken and can't use the updated mods because something is broken or not updated. You see the problem here. It's not simplified like the other mod managers.

 

It really depends on the game. With a game like WOW, which is an MMO so modding is fairly limited (to ui enhancement I presume), sure, things are simpler.

But most games aren't like that, mods for single player games let you change a lot more but that also leads to more problems.

 

With Bethesda games (Skyrim, Fallout) and many others, modders have to take care of load order and compatibility patches between the mods they installed. Games like GTA5 or Dragons Dogma, modders have to open custom archives, arrange their mod files in there and generate new archives, taking care of keeping backups so they can restore the original game.

Games like Flight Simulator, Witcher 3 or Dragon Age you have to merge multiple text files (e.g. xml or scripts) together to get the mods to even get loaded.

Unity games (like Valheim) for example require a mod "loader" on top of a manager that needs to be kept updated when the game updates.

 

No mod manager can turn that into a one click affair or they will be super limited.

E.g. GTA5 mod managers, all except Vortex afaik, only manage one type of mods (script mods) while others (asset mods, as in new models, sounds, textures) have to be installed manually. Or Dragons Dogma: sure, NMM supports it and some find NMM simpler, but you can install exactly one mod for DD with NMM, the second one you install will replace the first one (with few exceptions).

 

Vortex supports > 170 games and for many of them it's the most fully featured manager there is and when it's not that's purely a matter of us not having the time, the framework is there.

Sure, the UI could be a bit nicer but by and large, for the interface to be simpler we'd have to drop functionality that maybe you don't need but others do.

 

Regarding updating: Vortex does update your mods but it is indeed more complex than on other services for a few reasons, not least because this site (Nexus Mods) doesn't force mod authors to provide an exact update-path for mods. Authors can upload an arbitrary number of files for each mod, those files can be updates, options, variants or completely separate mods.

Vortex (or any other mod manager) as a tool has no 100% reliable way of figuring out which file is actually the newer version of what you have installed, it has to guess.

And even if the site changed that today, that would still leave tens of thousands of mods for 1500 games, a lot of which have been abandoned that will never get fixed up for a proper, robust, update mechanism.

It may be secondary to you but this problem is not because of Vortex but because this site has existed as purely a download page for mods long before we started providing tools around downloading&installing mods.