Update on NMM version 0.60 and FAQ

[Behelit79]

In response to post #28799344. #28799979, #28801029, #28801234, #28802034, #28802934, #28804459, #28804489, #28804644, #28808129, #28813574 are all replies on the same post.

Vyxenne wrote:

Dear Dark One:

 

Sometimes, I think it is difficult to see the forest because all the trees are in the way. I just read your post above, and would like to offer you a different perspective- MY perspective as a long-time Nexus fan (I have been using my husband's account for years and only recently established my own Nexus account.)

 

You said you were surprised that so many people just blindly accepted the NMM upgrade. This is because over the years, NMM has been largely stable and trouble-free, and a tremendous help to us in managing our mods- and much more user-friendly than MO. Each upgrade has been an improvement over the previous version, and we have received upgrades quite frequently. In other words, based on years of good releases, we trusted you, your expertise and your "product." Based on that trust, when NMM said an upgrade was available, we didn't think twice: click, click, clicketty-click. The outrage now is largely because you betrayed our trust with NMM 0.6.

 

You said that there were warnings in the new version that should have tipped us off that this upgrade was dangerous (my paraphrasing). You're exactly right: the warnings were IN THE NEW VERSION and came only after it was far too late to back out of the upgrade- our Skyrim was already bricked by the time we got the warnings. As someone posted in the Boo thread, the warnings are on the inside of the can. The only choices at that point were [No] or [Cancel] and manually install all your mods (because NMM has already trashed them) or [Yes] to continue and let NMM *try* to fix your system. Epic fail. The warning should have been BEFORE IT WAS TOO LATE TO BACK OUT AND LEAVE OUR PAINSTAKINGLY-ASSEMBLED AND NURTURED WORKING GAME INSTALLATION INTACT. However, in all fairness, even had I received clear warnings of the impending destruction in time to leave my system intact, I probably would've clicked [YES] anyway because I trusted you and never imagined you folks would unleash something so destructive on your fans and supporters. Only in hindsight did it become clear to me what I should have done. The warning should, at the very least, have been clearer about the imminent destruction and included a strong recommendation to quit NMM now and back up our entire game installation.

 

You said in the Boo thread, sarcastically, "...or you could go here [link] for help" but the "here" is undocumented, not linked to from anywhere that I can find, not returned in a Google search for "Nexus Mod Manager Support" and particularly not conspicuously linked to from within the NMM interface as far as I can see (Of course, I have never needed NMM support before, so I have not searched diligently for a support link within NMM, and based on what it just did to me, there is no way I'm going to open NMM 0.6 ever again in my lifetime.) Especially with a "potentially destructive release" like NMM 0.60 that deliberately destroys our working game installation and *hopes to* reconstruct it but has ZERO revert or undo capability, there should have been before-the-destruction warnings. On a so-called "beta" product (0.60 acted more like a pre-alpha release, but I digress), there should be a conspicuous [sUPPORT] button on the NMM Header. We are merely users. We do not spend all day, every day, dealing with The Nexus and/or Nexus Mod Manager. How are we supposed to know about hidden "support" forums when they are not conspicuously linked to from Nexus mod pages and/or the Nexus Forums pages, and not returned in Google searches using the logical search terms?

 

You seem to be complaining that nobody read the "Site News." Where is that? Even when you mentioned it in your post here, you did not provide a link to it. There is no [sITE NEWS] button on this page's header frame, nor is there a "Site News" sticky at http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?. Again, we don't spend all day every day here, and don't know where to go for what unless someone who DOES spend all day every day here helps us by providing conspicuous links.

 

So, half a day after the rogue NMM update acted like malware and destroyed my Skyrim installation with no way to opt out of it until it was already too late and no revert or undo function whatsoever, I STILL do not know how to reach the alleged page that details a recovery process. All I know for sure is that you think these things should be obvious to your users and supporters- but they are not only not obvious, they seem to have been hidden by design- otherwise there would be conspicuous links to them everywhere on the Nexus.

 

Hope this helps clear up some of your bafflement regarding the reasons for the uproar, confusion and outrage resulting from the NMM 0.6 disaster. I, personally, feel blindsided and betrayed by an old friend. It would really be great if you could stop developing NMM for a few days and write a recovery tool to help those of us whose games you trashed revert to the pre-NMM 0.60 condition.

Zettadude wrote: This deserves attention. Exactly how I feel.

Though I'm not completely angry, nor am I going to stop using NMM 0.6, I feel like you summed up what a lot of people are feeling here, including me. Thank you for wording it in a way that is not only attention-grabbing, but also informative.

toonamove wrote: I agreed totally with you and your words and feelings.

Yes a "recovery tool" can be really useful for fixing and helping everyone have their game mess up after the last NMM version update.

I can suggest to adding on the future versions a button for "importing" old NMM versions settings and mods dirs with another button for converting to the new NMM system after have imported users configs, but without touching games dirs or uninstalling mods.

Also adding a automatic backup system before the new installed version is started or starting to made any kind of changes, sounds very necessary, for avoid this kind of mess for everyone, and preserve every users modded games.

Toonamove

Morandone wrote: Yup, my feeelings exactly. Trying to put my old Mods back in the corrupted install. Wipe out all the hardlinks first (or whatever they're called) just to be able to write the data of the wiped out mods back, because explorer hangs when trying to replace them.

A warning for backing up the Skyrim-install befor installing NMM would have been nice and helpful.

GothikaGeist wrote: Wasn't the big red warning in the INSTALLER of NMM 0.60.0? You definitely had the chance to avoid this and be informed as to what it does. Regardless, I still think a TES5Edit-type pop-up prompt with a timer should force you to at least acknowledge the fact that 0.60.0 could potentially break your entire setup.

unhot wrote: Well said ... several hours later and all is not as it was and rather than spending some time relaxing in the wasteland I'm off to something else.

Very disappointed.

Annafire33 wrote: I would also like to add, when a product has been relatively stable and trust worthy, you assume warnings like that, are for the worst case, this will almost never happen type of deal. NOT a this will happen thing. I also agree that the warning should have been the first thing to pop up to give people a chance to say, "hey, i'm not gonna do that" instead of locking us into it with no return. I really hope people pay attention to this post that Vyxenne wrote, because it really speaks for the average user who doesn't work on something all day everyday. Its like, if your writing a story, you know exactly whats going on, because you made it and you work with it all the time, so you take short cuts because you figure its obvious whats happening. When in reality, someone will come along and be like, "what?" I'll leave it there.

Behelit79 wrote: Are there seriously still people not knowing that when there's a major change in a program version (0.50.x -> 0.60.x) there will surely be something important to take into account? I understand what you say about trust but, believe me, no offence, the automaton "click, click, clicketty-click" behaviour will surely have sooner or later negative consequences.

phantompally76 wrote: I'm just glad it didn't prompt to update when loading the software itself.

For me (and I can only speak for myself), the issues with the new build are eclipsed by the unremorseful contempt being shown by those responsible for said build towards the growing number of ad-revenue generators who were caught off guard by what they were getting into. Blaming the end-user for one's own poor communication and poor implementation is not the answer.

SabreWalrus wrote: I think this post nails on the head that the more casual people are probably the worst affected. And I'm not trying to use the word casual as an insult. I'm sure there are lots of people who only have the confidence to mod their games because of an amazing tool like NMM. They trust it and maybe aren't as wary as they should be, especially if it's not given them trouble before.

We're all dumbasses for clicking through and going ahead with it even after seeing the message about the uninstalling of our mods, but still. A warning about what the update contained before clicking "yes" would have been very welcome. Lots of people won't go looking on the forums for an explanation of the update if they're not expecting trouble in the first place.

rubenpaca wrote: @ Behelit79 Seriously? I expect major changes from 0.5 to 1.0, from 1.2 to 2.0, or something like that. 0.5 to 0.6 looks like yet another minor beta bugfix.

@ Vyxenne Exactly how I feel. We blindly click on next because we blindly trust.

@rubenpaca For simple bugfixes they change only the "x" part in the nomenclature (0.50.x -> 0.60.x), as we can see now is 0.60.4 (4 releases with bugfixes in the 0.60 branch). They've always used this long nomenclature cause NMM, as they always say, is still a Beta program.

[zarrazee]

Love NMM and love all the work you guys (and galls?) do. Keep up the good work!

[prinyo]

This might help some users having problems with dependencies as some of the problems are not shown in LOOT and other tools : http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/51038/?

 

It has the diagnostics enabled and it will tell you exactly which files are missing.

Edited September 19, 2015 by prinyo

[a6414464]

Möchte mich nur für den neuen Mod Manager bedanken Alle Save Dateien sind im A...Danke!!!

[Roguespear]

First, I think that a totally software solution to setting up a game is a nice idea, but the nexus team overlooked on or two things, Mod authors for starters, the small alert triangles telling me there is an update for various mods are sometimes bogus. I have 12 of these triangles that I can not get rid of because the mod author has either hidden the mod I am using (visible only to the nexus software but not to normal users) and the authors not updating the xml file telling NMM that it is in fact the new version. Leaving me with 5 of 0ne type and 6 of the other, and no matter how many times I download the "new version" NMM still tells me the file is not updated. What might this have to do with .60's problems you ask? the answer is , I am not sure, what I an sure of is that automated software systems of a type NMM seems to be striving to be, simply have no AI. The software can't tell if the mod is properly set up by the author and it seems to me that this could cause a problem when NMM try's to identify what mod to download and install.

 

Secondly, as a user who lives at 7200 feet in elevation virtually in the woods, I live with slow internet. Where we live our best speed is 3.2 megabits and that is on a good day. I am not sure if that is a problem, but it impacts other software systems I occasionally need to access. The other caveat is that users in the US find themselves living in a country that is 27th in the world for internet speed and reliability, I do not know if this could be an issue but just saying, who knows.

 

I have been playing Skyrim since it was available for preorder, and NMM just as long, I don't download the new NMM till it has gone at least a week without an update, and I never use the auto update feature when NMM starts, That way I have the old version on my computer if the new one blows up.

Having said all this I still would not use any thing else to maintain my game, keep up the good work.

[Deleted6919211User]

In response to post #28805459. #28807169, #28807474, #28807489, #28809154, #28809529, #28810269, #28811029, #28812189, #28812314, #28813549 are all replies on the same post.

Dark0ne wrote: We have just released version 0.60.4 of NMM that has a number of fixes for bugs reported with the help of users using the bug tracker, the list includes:

Fixed issue causing the migration process to be unable to reinstall some mods. Fixed issue preventing NMM from properly handling the load order for Fallout and Oblivion. Fixed issue causing the Morrowind game mode to hang while performing the mod migration. Fixed issue causing the Morrowind game mode to install files in the wrong folder. Fixed issue preventing NMM from automatically retrieve the Morrowind game path during the startup scan. Fixed issue preventing the ReadMe Manager from properly catching readme files. Fixed issue with the Backup file management.

Now waiting on some brave souls to try it.

Squashnoggin wrote: :ohmy: ..Not Me!!!! :teehee:

LazarusGrimm wrote: Brave soul here: Okay... So... uhm... is there like... a reason for why the speed to delete a mod has been decreased with about 500%? Took me over an hour just to uninstall and delete Raven Castle, while in previous versions it took about 4 - 5 minutes.

Hiwatcher1 wrote: Trying it now. Tried 60.3 last night and it seems to lock up on "overhaul" mods. Crossing my fingers.

Update: Locked up on "Complete Crafting Overhaul". Downloaded NMM 56.1 from my downloads file and game works(so far).

Majic7 wrote: Blindly up-dated to 60.3 yesterday, just clicked buttons. After up-dating Skyrim wouldn't open. NMM showed all 68 mods activated but it wouldn't run, even after re-installing Skyrim and starting over from the beginning. Had to de-activate all mods and re-activate them. Then I could restart the game from the beginning. Today I tried 60.4 on Morrowind and it worked fine. No fiddling around, just worked. 90 mods.

lexx005 wrote: Just updated to 0.60.4 without any issues, but there was no migration process since i had already updated to 0.60.3 yesterday, it just updated the version of NMM.

Squashnoggin wrote: In THAT case..
Squashy was afraid it would be another 'fresh start' type deal. If it's just a standard Nexus "worry-free" update, then, mayybee.. ;)

spiritwolf1 wrote: I used it and maybe I don't understand how it works or something , but all the mods it migrated never showed in my load order. I just reverted back to older version and reloaded new game, it seems to be the best solution for me. I am not blaming anybody for it not working for me. I tried using Mod organizer that was recommended also, and never had any clue how it works. I used obmm( tesmm) before NMM . which had some functions that NMM doesn't have, but I have learned other ways of doing the same thing with tes5edit. I would use NMM 0.60 , if there is a read me file to teach me how it works or a step by step video like the ones Gopher used to make, because they make it easier for me to learn how to use the programs.

hyp3rstrike wrote: Trying it. I've just fresh installed Skyrim.

mwhenry16 wrote: I'm blindly brave in the sense that I'm of the click it and hope crowd, with no tech experience at all. I just like things to work. That being said, I clicked on the update, and after 10 minutes it was all over, and my 50 some mods worked, and Skyrim didn't crash. And that on a Mac running a windows partition. Go figure. Blind luck I bet. I knew I was taking a chance, and I wouldn't have enjoyed spending several hours trying to reconstruct mods, or even to get the game to run.

I have to agree with folks that just because you have big red warning signs, doesn't absolve responsibility. In this day and age an "update" is oft times either immediately necessary, or the user sees the writing on the wall. Perhaps a great deal of what to do before you update to protect your game would have been in order.

Theseus12 wrote: considering my laptop refreshed, all my mods are already uninstalled. So what have I to fear?

"Brave souls"... I'm so flattered, Dark One! I'm glad you continue to pay attention to what I have to say. Borrowing my words is a compliment. ;)

[Dragonfire12]

Here's the issue I have. A number of mods effect the same or similar things, so I installed them in a certain order which I recorded on a piece of paper for further reference.

 

Been a long time and I cleaned my desk off. I'm not looking forward to trying to figure it all out again.

 

If I decline to upgrade, am I stuck with .56.1 for ever without support, etc.?

 

I understand that you think you need to compete with Mod Manager but I liked NMM the way it was.

 

Ooops, I meant Mod Organizer. Yeah, been that long since I tried and hated it....

Edited September 19, 2015 by Dragonfire12

[dvergenlied]

In response to post #28805459. #28807169, #28807474, #28807489, #28809154, #28809529, #28810269, #28811029, #28812189, #28812314, #28813549, #28819349 are all replies on the same post.

Dark0ne wrote: We have just released version 0.60.4 of NMM that has a number of fixes for bugs reported with the help of users using the bug tracker, the list includes:

Fixed issue causing the migration process to be unable to reinstall some mods. Fixed issue preventing NMM from properly handling the load order for Fallout and Oblivion. Fixed issue causing the Morrowind game mode to hang while performing the mod migration. Fixed issue causing the Morrowind game mode to install files in the wrong folder. Fixed issue preventing NMM from automatically retrieve the Morrowind game path during the startup scan. Fixed issue preventing the ReadMe Manager from properly catching readme files. Fixed issue with the Backup file management.

Now waiting on some brave souls to try it.

Squashnoggin wrote: :ohmy: ..Not Me!!!! :teehee:

LazarusGrimm wrote: Brave soul here: Okay... So... uhm... is there like... a reason for why the speed to delete a mod has been decreased with about 500%? Took me over an hour just to uninstall and delete Raven Castle, while in previous versions it took about 4 - 5 minutes.

Hiwatcher1 wrote: Trying it now. Tried 60.3 last night and it seems to lock up on "overhaul" mods. Crossing my fingers.

Update: Locked up on "Complete Crafting Overhaul". Downloaded NMM 56.1 from my downloads file and game works(so far).

Majic7 wrote: Blindly up-dated to 60.3 yesterday, just clicked buttons. After up-dating Skyrim wouldn't open. NMM showed all 68 mods activated but it wouldn't run, even after re-installing Skyrim and starting over from the beginning. Had to de-activate all mods and re-activate them. Then I could restart the game from the beginning. Today I tried 60.4 on Morrowind and it worked fine. No fiddling around, just worked. 90 mods.

lexx005 wrote: Just updated to 0.60.4 without any issues, but there was no migration process since i had already updated to 0.60.3 yesterday, it just updated the version of NMM.

Squashnoggin wrote: In THAT case..
Squashy was afraid it would be another 'fresh start' type deal. If it's just a standard Nexus "worry-free" update, then, mayybee.. ;)

spiritwolf1 wrote: I used it and maybe I don't understand how it works or something , but all the mods it migrated never showed in my load order. I just reverted back to older version and reloaded new game, it seems to be the best solution for me. I am not blaming anybody for it not working for me. I tried using Mod organizer that was recommended also, and never had any clue how it works. I used obmm( tesmm) before NMM . which had some functions that NMM doesn't have, but I have learned other ways of doing the same thing with tes5edit. I would use NMM 0.60 , if there is a read me file to teach me how it works or a step by step video like the ones Gopher used to make, because they make it easier for me to learn how to use the programs.

hyp3rstrike wrote: Trying it. I've just fresh installed Skyrim.

mwhenry16 wrote: I'm blindly brave in the sense that I'm of the click it and hope crowd, with no tech experience at all. I just like things to work. That being said, I clicked on the update, and after 10 minutes it was all over, and my 50 some mods worked, and Skyrim didn't crash. And that on a Mac running a windows partition. Go figure. Blind luck I bet. I knew I was taking a chance, and I wouldn't have enjoyed spending several hours trying to reconstruct mods, or even to get the game to run.

I have to agree with folks that just because you have big red warning signs, doesn't absolve responsibility. In this day and age an "update" is oft times either immediately necessary, or the user sees the writing on the wall. Perhaps a great deal of what to do before you update to protect your game would have been in order.

Theseus12 wrote: considering my laptop refreshed, all my mods are already uninstalled. So what have I to fear?

dallesse wrote: "Brave souls"... I'm so flattered, Dark One! I'm glad you continue to pay attention to what I have to say. Borrowing my words is a compliment. ;)

Just updated from 56.1 to 60.4. I had previously tried 60.0 and .1, and decided that I wasn't ready to fight with it. I haven't the time now, but will dig a little deeper later. However, at first glance, nearly half my load order doesn't look like it was able to be reinstalled. I'm not sure if this is tied to my previous install, since my previous attempts at creating profiles were there when I went from 56 to 60.4, or if it is something deeper in the code. I think I'll probably have to do a clean install. This isn't necessarily a bad thing for me, since I've not changed some things in a VERY long time. Just a pain. I do recall feeling like 60 was not as intuitive for me as the previous versions were, and reminded me why I didn't want to mess with MO. Life happens, though, right. If anything terribly bad sticks out, I'll let y'all know. Kindly. I promise.

[black1saber]

So far, so good. Instead of letting Nexus reload all of my mods, I took the longer way around and reinstalled all my mods manually. The mods were still there, only they were all disabled. It just took a little time to enable something like a 150 or so mods. The only problem I found was that I had forgotten the order in which some of the extra plug ins occurred. Point in case being Ciries armor and sword had vanished, leaving my char naked. The files were still there, only missing visually, just as if I hadn't made them yet. Otherwise, no complaints, as the intro said, this may take a little time to complete.

[TheThirdRace]

First thing first, I want to say how much I appreciate your work on these sites. You're doing an awesome job, keep up the good work.

 

Now, there's something that irks me a bit with how you envision the whole NMM BETA situation. You firmly believe that labelling a software as BETA is warning enough.

 

The truth is, it's not. Any software in BETA phase for more than 6 months is gonna be perceived as a final product. People do understand what BETA means, they're fully aware there might be problems when they first install your software.

 

Then, time goes on and users see things are working pretty good, they have nothing to really complain about and their perception goes from BETA to "Yet Another Lazy GMail BETA tag". I mention GMail here because it became a joke after being in BETA for more than 2 years. GMail was already rock solid after 3 months, yet Google believed that labelling it BETA would relieve them from any responsibilities/expectations... they couldn't be more wrong. People used their product on a daily basis, they still do, because that was the only version available and they became dependent. Any hiccups at that point would obviously stir a commotion.

 

NMM has been in BETA for more than 4 years, if you believe people perceive it as a BETA you're disconnected from reality on that point. You would have to either release it as a "BETA of BETA", an Alpha, an "Experimental version", anything that would tell people "we really mean it this time". Because right now, you cried wolf for 4+ years and people don't believe you anymore.

 

The other problem with perception is your revision number. It's pretty old school, I don't mind it that much, but if a product is below revision 1.0.0 for more than a year while being supported constantly, people expect it to fully work. Again, it's perceived as crying wolf and it's not cutting it anymore after 4+ years. Had you release version 0.5x as 1.0 and release 0.6 as 1.1 BETA, you wouldn't be in that position today.

 

No amount of "clarification" will work at this point. People ARE lazy, they see a new version, they don't even check the release notes anymore. They expect the new version of their "final" product to work just the same as the version they're using. Technically, it's not your fault, you're pretty straight forward about the fact it's a BETA with all the problems it could ensue, but public perception isn't on the same page as you are. That's a battle you can't win unless you put a tremendous amount of efforts to reverse the tide. At this point, the tide is more like a tsunami, good luck if you want to change it...

 

If I were you, I'd just bend to the public opinion in this case. I would simply rename NMM versions so it's clear you have a current branch and a BETA branch. I know you'd love to have version 1.0 to be the new UI and all, but you'll need to realize people don't care if they install version 1.0 or 34.5 at this point. They just want to know what is the current "stable" version and which version is a real BETA. You're overcomplicating things and you're reaping what you sow.

 

Anyway, that's just me playing devils advocate. I love the way this site is running. I think you have a pretty levelled headed team and you're doing great things for the community. Don't take my comment as anything bad, I'm not even remotely angry with the current situation, I didn't even installed NMM in the last 2 years. I just thought it would be a good opportunity to do a wake up call to you guys on something you've let on the back burner for too long now.

Edited September 19, 2015 by TheThirdRace