Why the heck is the backup feature not tell you where it backs up? RANT

[BukaTV]

This post applies to people who move their Vortex installation across drives or even want to keep backups external to their main drives. It is a rant.

After wasting nearly 4 days on this crap I have about had it with Vortex and how convoluted it is for moving the repositories, settings and other whatnots simply and easily.
Every day in the past week was 'how-do-I-move-Vortex-day' and I am sick of it!
Working with Vortex is sometimes like shaving your head with a cheese grader. Doable but very very painful!

Imagine backing up your Vortex setting and then having NO IDEA where those damn settings are?
There are over 5 different folders that Vortex uses and not one single "BACKUP" folder to find! NOT ONE!
Why does the Settings > Workaround > Database backup NOT tell you where the heck it will put those settings?
What is the mystery here? Will there be a prize if I ever find it?
What is the point of BACKING UP YOUR SETTINGS if you can not find them!?!?
We do not get to choose where to put the stupid myriad of settings it just automagically saves them to some magical unknown folder and we hope for the best on the new computer do we?
No possibly of actually putting our settings directly onto a thumb drive or got forbid 'the cloud' (whatever the hell that is) to them download onto a different computer?
HOW DO WE RESTORE the settings from a DIFFERENT COMPUTER!!! Care to show an FAQ on this? There is none and I searched (...don't even get me started on the search!)

Are they in:

C:\My Documents\My Games\Vortex folder ... NO!

C:\Users\Yourname\Appdata\Roaming\Vortex\ folder ... NO!

C:\Users\Yourname\Appdata\Local\Vortex\ folder ... NO!

C:\ProgramData\Vortex\ folder ... NO!

C:\Program Files\Black Tree Gaming Ltd\Vortex\ folder ... NO!

C:\Program Files (x86)\Black Tree Gaming Ltd\Vortex folder ... NO! (there is no such folder)

Can the Devs get their act together and STOP us from WASTING OUR TIME PLEASE!
How about some FAQ HOW to use Vortex with step by step how to get BASIC functions down?
Recording a video and posting it to social media on how to use Vortex BASIC FUNCTIONS is too much effort is it?
Asking ANY of the Vortex power-users to make a video and you treat them with a free subscription for a few months is out of the questions, is it?
Why are software developers the LAST to activate their brains for common sense activities associated with products they develop?

How about a clicky button under 'workaround' (which is a ridiculous name for settings, backing things up is NOT a 'workaround'!) that allows all the settings, all the folders and all the subfolder and extensions to just get COMBINED into one giant file we can just take and drag and drop to the NEW computer and then on the other end imported with same app?
If I knew the super secret squirrel files needed I would do it myself but I do not!
Dogpile about 12 AAA games to this mix with their own settings and utilities and it gets seriously convoluted, complex and a total shitshow to say the least.
Are you people serious that it should be THIS DAMN HARD to move Vortex and all of its associated accoutrements?
This software makes me want to throw my computer out the darn window! Try searching on the 'Vortex forums' for "Backup Vortex settings" and see all the NON-Vortex posts and lack of any discussion on this.
Sure, they talk about specific games but NOT the application that is supposed to 'rule them all' they do not.
I am the first person in the world using Vortex that is moving to a new computer/new hard drive is that what you are telling me? Ridiculous!

Why is this application NOT getting easier to use but harder it seems for BASIC functions?
Why not sit your grandmother down with Vortex if she can do it then it can be released? The grandmother test.
We are BUSY people there is no time for searching things that should be readily SHOWN AND FOUND! GAH!!!!!

The goal of computers is to make our lives SIMPLER NOT HARDER, are we doing this?
What is the goal of this software if it just gets HARDER to use with MORE settings and MORE complexity and MORE folders to search and MORE people flaming you if you protest because you did not spend the past 2 years sitting and digesting all the small intricacies of BASIC FUNCTIONS! Some of us have lives outside of Vortex 'ya know!

/end rant

[Pickysaurus]

You may have missed it, but when you back up your state you get a simple little notification that has a "Save a copy" button, this will allow you to save a copy of the backup anywhere on your PC.

[Rattledagger]

You may have missed it, but when you back up your state you get a simple little notification that has a "Save a copy" button, this will allow you to save a copy of the backup anywhere on your PC.

 

Messages permanently going-away after a few seconds isn't very useful if you expect users to see the message and even less useful if users are supposed to have the option to interact with the message.

[Tannin42]

The backup doesn't (just) back up your setting, it backs up your entire application state. The only supported use for that backup is to restore it from inside Vortex on the same system, so why would you need to know the location?

 

The only thing we would make easier by showing you the location is to shoot yourself in the foot and considering large parts of this community will somehow manage to take their entire foot off with a spoon, it's not in our interest to hand you an actual gun.

 

The way you're asking this question, the thing you were obviously planning to do shows that you are exactly the kind of people why we have to lock these things down. If you had found the "Save copy" function you would have broken something because you didn't read the explanation for what the backup even does, even though there is a fat warning border around it.

Which makes me think we need to lock this down more, not less.

 

Vortex at this time has no functionality to transfer settings or mods to a different system, end of story. It could be done with a third-party extension or you could request it as a feature and we'll put it on the massive pile of features we've been asked for and prioritize

but there is no safe way to do it right now and you shouldn't just look for a feature that looks like it may be this if you squint really hard and then complain that that feature works as described rather than what you wanted.

[BeowulfSchmidt]

Vortex at this time has no functionality to transfer settings or mods to a different system, end of story. It could be done with a third-party extension or you could request it as a feature and we'll put it on the massive pile of features we've been asked for and prioritize

but there is no safe way to do it right now and you shouldn't just look for a feature that looks like it may be this if you squint really hard and then complain that that feature works as described rather than what you wanted.

Where would one look for information about how to at least start writing such an extension? After my last machine took a powder from a lightning strike that took out almost the whole house, including most of the surge suppressors, I was left trying to reinstall my mods from memory. It would be nice to be able to save the set of mods that were installed, with annotations as to which were enabled or something, out to a NAS.

 

I understand that there's no way to do it now, but if it's at all possible, I'd like to try to at least help to work towards a solution, even if it's not feasible in the near term and can't be completed without other features being implemented.

 

Could the "Collections" functionality be leveraged at all to accomplish some of this?

[Marthilde]

The backup doesn't (just) back up your setting, it backs up your entire application state. The only supported use for that backup is to restore it from inside Vortex on the same system, so why would you need to know the location?

 

The only thing we would make easier by showing you the location is to shoot yourself in the foot and considering large parts of this community will somehow manage to take their entire foot off with a spoon, it's not in our interest to hand you an actual gun.

 

The way you're asking this question, the thing you were obviously planning to do shows that you are exactly the kind of people why we have to lock these things down. If you had found the "Save copy" function you would have broken something because you didn't read the explanation for what the backup even does, even though there is a fat warning border around it.

Which makes me think we need to lock this down more, not less.

 

Vortex at this time has no functionality to transfer settings or mods to a different system, end of story. It could be done with a third-party extension or you could request it as a feature and we'll put it on the massive pile of features we've been asked for and prioritize

but there is no safe way to do it right now and you shouldn't just look for a feature that looks like it may be this if you squint really hard and then complain that that feature works as described rather than what you wanted.

This answer clearly shows what kind of stuck-up, arogant egomaniacs you are.

You think you have the right to tell us what to do and what not to do?

How far away do you have to be to let such an insolence from the stack?

[Guest deleted34304850]

 

The backup doesn't (just) back up your setting, it backs up your entire application state. The only supported use for that backup is to restore it from inside Vortex on the same system, so why would you need to know the location?

 

The only thing we would make easier by showing you the location is to shoot yourself in the foot and considering large parts of this community will somehow manage to take their entire foot off with a spoon, it's not in our interest to hand you an actual gun.

 

The way you're asking this question, the thing you were obviously planning to do shows that you are exactly the kind of people why we have to lock these things down. If you had found the "Save copy" function you would have broken something because you didn't read the explanation for what the backup even does, even though there is a fat warning border around it.

Which makes me think we need to lock this down more, not less.

 

Vortex at this time has no functionality to transfer settings or mods to a different system, end of story. It could be done with a third-party extension or you could request it as a feature and we'll put it on the massive pile of features we've been asked for and prioritize

but there is no safe way to do it right now and you shouldn't just look for a feature that looks like it may be this if you squint really hard and then complain that that feature works as described rather than what you wanted.

This answer clearly shows what kind of stuck-up, arogant egomaniacs you are.

You think you have the right to tell us what to do and what not to do?

How far away do you have to be to let such an insolence from the stack?

 

the answer is right on point. what piece of it don't you agree with?

no-one is telling "us" (whomever "us" is - i'll say here you don't speak for me at all) what to do or not to do - where did you see that? can you point it out?

[Tannin42]

 

Where would one look for information about how to at least start writing such an extension? After my last machine took a powder from a lightning strike that took out almost the whole house, including most of the surge suppressors, I was left trying to reinstall my mods from memory. It would be nice to be able to save the set of mods that were installed, with annotations as to which were enabled or something, out to a NAS.

I understand that there's no way to do it now, but if it's at all possible, I'd like to try to at least help to work towards a solution, even if it's not feasible in the near term and can't be completed without other features being implemented.

 

Could the "Collections" functionality be leveraged at all to accomplish some of this?

 

 

We have a couple of tutorials and api reference here: https://nexus-mods.github.io/vortex-api/

 

 

 

 

This answer clearly shows what kind of stuck-up, arogant egomaniacs you are.

You think you have the right to tell us what to do and what not to do?

How far away do you have to be to let such an insolence from the stack?

 

 

You're taking offense because you choose to take offense.

I didn't tell you "what to do and what not to do", I was explaining the limitations of the existing system and how it isn't a fit for what the OP was trying to do.

We deal with a sh*tload of user feedback every day - every opportunity we give users to break something for themselves comes back to haunt us, that's why it's important to us we manage expectations correctly. But if you insist on doing what I told you the feature isn't able to do, go right ahead and find out for yourself.