Managing the Load Order...

[sopmac45]

@ Jpitner .... first you were very grateful that HadToRegister was trying to replicate your error and after you were practically ranting on him after he tried to help you. That says a lot about you.

 

On one thing you are right : there is a Pro-Vortex-camp and Anti-Vortex-camp .. but not in the way you think it is. The Pro-Vortex-Camp are those who completely eliminated from their brain to deal with mods and plugins as we used to do it with NMM, so we embraced the new approach but again, first we had to "wash" our brains and learn Vortex as it was intended to be used, adapting ourselves to its logic and evolute with it.

 

We have been advising over and over, not hundred, but thousand of times not to do this, not to do that and giving to new users, all kind of support, beside all the procedures written by the dev team and videos from Gopher and still, people do not read and continue to make mistakes and at the end of the day, they blame Vortex. Those are the Anti-Vortex-Camp, the stubborn who are in denial because they simply do not want to read and apply what they are supposed to and want to use Vortex in the same way they used NMM.

 

You look like an experience person modding your game but others with more experience than you have been humble enough to embrace Vortex and adapt to it and they are not in what you called, the Pro-Vortex-Camp. If you continue trying to use Vortex in the same way you used NMM or MO2, then you will get in trouble. My recommendation to stick to what you have and forget about Vortex.

 

Now if you try to suggest how Vortex should be doing things, I wish you a very good luck and you should talk directly to Tannin, the creator of MO2 and Vortex. So, you have a choice : Pro-Vortex-camp or Anti-Vortex Camp !! Pick !

[jpitner]

sopmac45 - I stopped following this forum a few days ago but a friend pointed out your post to me. I was originally not going to bother to reply but there is a potential learning experience here. So if you read all of the conversations concerning my initial post you may get what I am about to say. First, I am far from blameless in everything that transpired and that I will openly admit. I had been reading through a lot if not all the comments here prior to my last reply and was already seeing the trend of certain Vortex and NMM "bashers". So when I read HadToRegister's post to me a second time I was a bit taken back by this particular comment, " I use Bijins among other and never experienced the black face bug and I didn't have to spend hours with Vortex doing it." My interpretation - "You did not read my whole comment and just called me an idiot for not being able to correctly install those mods in less time." Would not a better way to say the same thing have been - "What would normally take hours of messing around with in NMM can easily been accomplished in less than an hour with Vortex." causing no feeling of condescension or feeling patronized?

 

Now concerning your comments on the Anti-Vortex/NMM camps. I am in Vortex/NMM neutral camp. They are both tools and an end user should use the one that best fits their needs. I, however, feel Vortex has great potential to be an outstanding mod manager, and it looks pretty (just had to throw that in there). Wednesday I did a clean install of SkyrimSE and Vortex on one of my drives. My initial installation was not so great, not Vortex's fault, but something related to download or installation. I was missing icons that allowed me to manage a game. Not a problem - uninstall, remove all remaining Vortex files, download, and reinstall - problem solved. Yes, for me Gopher is my bible when it comes to mod managers. While people were up in arms about FNIS not working for Mod Organizer I turned to a tutorial of Gopher's first for the correct solution. So now time to install mods and check things out.

 

A little background, for SkyrimSE I use (to my surprise) 14 appearance mods, some from Nexus and a couple I have made, that conflict with each other in one way or another. In NMM they must be installed and loaded in the same exact order to play nice. Running LOOT messes up that order so the need is there to manually sort the order afterwards or get the black face bug for the Companions, Thieves Guild, Bards College, and a few other NPCs.

 

So I load these mods plus 100 others. On purpose I installed Guild Members Overhaul in the incorrect order to see what happens. I set up the rules for the correct order and to my surprise everything worked perfectly. Many sorts later and still not one NPC had the black face bug. The only problem I had was with a texture only file I have and Vortex ignoring it after install. I am sure there is a way to get that to work, I just haven't researched it yet.

 

Now this is with SSE and my initial problem was with FO4 and an older version of Vortex (I think) so I don't know. So pick a camp! No, pick a tool and forget the camps. Then be a bit more selective on the forums I view. This one is on me.

 

Contact Tannin - never going to happen. I feel bad for him. He must get 1000's of requests demands from users to add/change/remove things from Vortex for their own personal experience. I am just a mediocre mod author and I get those demands and IMHOs all the time. I will help those who ask/request nicely, even the not so nice ones.

[sopmac45]

@ jpitner ... understand what you are saying and I also used NMM before and perfectly understand the kind of approach we must had when dealing with NMM but that does not apply in Vortex anymore.

 

The only thing you need to do is to install your mods ( it won't matter in what other you donwload / install / enable them because what it matter is to resolve any mod conflict between them if any. My practice is to resolve mod conflicts as they appear, not till I finished downloading all of them because it will be more confusing.

 

Also, in Vortex you do not need to run LOOT at all. Just by turning ON the auto-sort function in the Plugin Section is enough and Vortex will sort them out properly and forget abou them. If you run both, the auto-sort and LOOT ( outside ), you will mess entirely with the plugins load order. I always would recomnend to turn on the auto-sort function. I do not use LOOT anymore !!

 

You should not have any problem with the mods that you mentioned if you follow the above simple approach. Again, the most important thing any new user can do before dealing with Vortex is to completely forget the process we used to have back with NMM. I tried to apply what I did in NMM when I first started to use Vortex and my life was miserable in the first days. It took me a little while to remove from my brain NMM's process and adopt the new one. As soon as I did that, Vortex was absolutely free of problem for me and since then, I have been successfully using it without any problem.

 

You were the one who mentioned the two camps and they exist : either you are a successful Vortex user or not. Those who have been successful will defend it because simply, why should not we defend something that is working perfectly for us ? On the other side, those who have been trying to use Vortex as if they were using NMM, will never be able and obviously they will criticize and blame Vortex which is not fair at all. The fault lies on the user not the program. The program is neutral and free and it is up to the user if he/she adapt to the new logic / process or not.

 

Let's be serious here, there are people who do not like to learn and when you are learning something new, becasue it is new, it will be different from the previous and as such, it will require for the new user to "learn" how to use the "new" tool. Going in the opposite direction is unreal since the previous has been replaced by the new, so why to insist in to apply what we did before in NMM when we are using a new program completely different from it ?

 

I have been helping in this forum as much as I know about Vortex. I have posted several times how to install it, how to set it up and how to use it, but I cannot be repeating over and over the same thing. People do not like to investigate or read and ignorance continue to be a matter of choice in this world. Those who uses the tools and have the discipline to investigate and learn, will always have questions, but very few and will not blame the program but themselves for not learning properly or any mistake that they made as all of us do. Those who do not dedicate to investigate or read, will always come up asking question that have been answered already more than a thousand times, and from the very beginning, they are confused and they are blaming Vortex.

 

I will not help this kind of people because I already did it not only once but several times. There are others that continue repeating the same answers over and over so it is up to them if they want to continue doing that but I won't. I think that there are a lot of new users ( I am not saying that you are one of them here and do not get it personal please .. ) that love babysitting and I believe it will be very unfair to treat them like babies cause they are grown up and as adults they are, they need to act as such.

 

Tannin, the dev team, Gopher and several other users in this very forum have been posting answers to all possible questions being asked. The answers are here, in this forum to be reviewed by whoever would like to learn Vortex. Not doing that, is to ignore all the effort we have put to help others. Repeating what I have been said or other have said already, is simply redundant and I do not like to waste my time helping people that from the very beginning, are ignoring all the help we have provided.

 

Happy gaming mate. :cool:

[rmm200]

I have a pretty simple criteria for who I help.

Those that want help, I try to help, even if it means copy / pasting my answer over again.

Those that don't want help, but just want to rag on Vortex, I recommend stay on NMM. We don't need them in this forum.

Saves me a lot of frustration trying to help someone who does not want help.

[AugustaCalidia]

I have a pretty simple criteria for who I help.

Those that want help, I try to help, even if it means copy / pasting my answer over again.

Those that don't want help, but just want to rag on Vortex, I recommend stay on NMM. We don't need them in this forum.

Saves me a lot of frustration trying to help someone who does not want help.

 

Of your many wise words in the forums, these are the wisest.

[HadToRegister]

I have a pretty simple criteria for who I help.

Those that want help, I try to help, even if it means copy / pasting my answer over again.

Those that don't want help, but just want to rag on Vortex, I recommend stay on NMM. We don't need them in this forum.

Saves me a lot of frustration trying to help someone who does not want help.

 

 

Agreed, I wasted a LOT of time with this one.

[TarvinDracken]

As far as camps, I would say that I'm sitting on the wall and contemplating the best way to tear it down. I will confess, technical things are not my specialty but I do understand things like crafting user interfaces very well from my time as a game designer. Even though I eventually decided to let my studio wind down ... I learned a lot from the effort. User interfaces and functionality are sometimes seen as trade-offs. I can see this easily when looking at the arguments between the two camps.

 

NMM camp desires the convenience of being able to sort load orders manually.

Vortex camp desire the east of having the mod manager do most of the work for them, so they don't have to.

Why not do both? Merge the best aspects of each into a single whole.

Part of the idea to help Vortex sort things more easily is to ask content creators to edit their mods to meet specific qualifications. Many of the best mods haven't really been updated in years. The likelyhood of them coming back from their busy lives to edit mods they'd long abandoned the development is absolutely ... nill.

 

Fix 1: Allow users to set categories to their mods. This would group like (and more likely to conflict mods) together. Currently, I'm trying to set dependencies to get different mods to play nice with each other in Fallout 4 for settlement building. I had everything working, more or less, after working a long time setting dependencies while scrolling back and forth and trying to remember the name of all the different mods. It took over an hour just to sort out the five or so mods so they played nice but I had to uninstall and reinstall a common dependency that the mods shared, keywords. Then guess what? All dependencies and rules reset. Back to sorting back and forth through a list ... which is made worse by the fact that it doesn't register half the time when I drag the line across the long list and drop it on the correct place. User defined categories would streamline the process incredibly.

Effect? Greater user control (+) and maintains the strengths of the Vortex automated sorting (+).

 

Fix 2: More streamlined interface. I have the option to view the install order ... which doesn't seem like beneficial or usable knowledge. It would make it easier to set dependencies if I could select a sorting column that displayed the mod deployment order. If it's there ... I can't find it. (Back to the not a technical person for navigating complex things despite having designed games from the ground up including streamlined menu systems ... Eh ... Don't ask why one doesn't lend itself to the other.)

Fix 2B: The ability to make dependencies by clicking on the first mod in the 'set dependency' column and then have the line be held without having to hold down the mouse button. It would make it easier to navigate the list.

Fix 2c (I'm going for the alphabet here): The ability to use the search function while the first mod for setting a dependency is still selected. It would make it easier to find mods and offer a way to skip directly to the needed mod in even the longest of lists.

Fix 2d: The ability to shift-drag and ctrl-click to select mods for when multiple mods are dependent on single or a group of other mods.

Fix 2e: The ability to set one category to have a blanket dependency on another category or a single uncategorized mod.

 

Effect? Easier to navigate, set dependencies, and doesn't interfere with the Vortex features. (+, +)

 

Fix 3: TUTORIAL! (sound party horns here.) Having a tutorial in a youtube video is all well and good, by the most effective method for teaching people is a step-by-step method as they do things for themselves. My suggestion is to create a glossary with all the things that you can do within Vortex to manage mods. Clicking on the desired action in the glossary would provide a simple no-frills text-based description on how to do what's needed ... Though pictures don't hurt in this.

 

Effect: Those like myself who aren't as good figuring out more ... nuanced things ... could figure out how to take advantage of the full functionality of Vortex. Again, a win-win.

As the glossary would be a list of actions that could be sorted by either name of the action or the action, it would be easy to find what's needed.

 

Fix 4: Don't you think that's enough?! What do you want from me?!

(Eh. Humor. It's been a long day.)

Edited April 22, 2019 by TarvinDracken

[HadToRegister]

As far as camps, I would say that I'm sitting on the wall and contemplating the best way to tear it down. I will confess, technical things are not my specialty but I do understand things like crafting user interfaces very well from my time as a game designer. Even though I eventually decided to let my studio wind down ... I learned a lot from the effort. User interfaces and functionality are sometimes seen as trade-offs. I can see this easily when looking at the arguments between the two camps.

 

 

 

 

Fix 1: Allow users to set categories to their mods. This would group like (and more likely to conflict mods) together. Currently, I'm trying to set dependencies to get different mods to play nice with each other in Fallout 4 for settlement building. I had everything working, more or less, after working a long time setting dependencies while scrolling back and forth and trying to remember the name of all the different mods. It took over an hour just to sort out the five or so mods so they played nice but I had to uninstall and reinstall a common dependency that the mods shared, keywords. Then guess what? All dependencies and rules reset. Back to sorting back and forth through a list ... which is made worse by the fact that it doesn't register half the time when I drag the line across the long list and drop it on the correct place. User defined categories would streamline the process incredibly.

 

You already can, also from the rest of your description, I'm not sure if you're "getting" how Vortex works

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fix 2: More streamlined interface. I have the option to view the install order ... which doesn't seem like beneficial or usable knowledge. It would make it easier to set dependencies if I could select a sorting column that displayed the mod deployment order. If it's there ... I can't find it.

 

You only have to set dependencies if Vortex tells you there's a Conflict.

If Vortex doesn't tell you there's a conflict, then Vortex has already sorted the mods for you, and no other action needs to be taken.

But, here's how you sort using columns, like most Tables and Databases do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fix 2B: The ability to make dependencies by clicking on the first mod in the 'set dependency' column and then have the line be held without having to hold down the mouse button. It would make it easier to navigate the list.

Fix 2c (I'm going for the alphabet here): The ability to use the search function while the first mod for setting a dependency is still selected. It would make it easier to find mods and offer a way to skip directly to the needed mod in even the longest of lists.

Fix 2d: The ability to shift-drag and ctrl-click to select mods for when multiple mods are dependent on single or a group of other mods.

Fix 2e: The ability to set one category to have a blanket dependency on another category or a single uncategorized mod.

 

 

The MANAGE RULES button.

Also, Unless Vortex is telling you about Conflicts, you DO NOT NEED to be messing with your load order as much as you keep describing, again, you are attempting to force Vortex to deal with Mods and Plugins like NMM used to force you to do.

 

So far, every one of your bullet points is either already addressed in Vortex, or it sounds like you're expecting to micromanage your load order like was necessary in NMM, and you're following a "load order Guide" that worked for NMM, but isn't needed with Vortex.

 

 

 

 

There's also a RULES button in the PLUGINS section.

 

 

 

Fix 3: TUTORIAL! (sound party horns here.) Having a tutorial in a youtube video is all well and good, by the most effective method for teaching people is a step-by-step method as they do things for themselves. My suggestion is to create a glossary with all the things that you can do within Vortex to manage mods. Clicking on the desired action in the glossary would provide a simple no-frills text-based description on how to do what's needed ... Though pictures don't hurt in this.

 

Did you check out the Knowledge Base, a clickable glossary with simple no-frills text-based descriptions on how to do what's needed?

 

 

[AugustaCalidia]

@TarvinDracken

 

 

As far as camps, I would say that I'm sitting on the wall and contemplating the best way to tear it down.

 

A conciliatory approach to this issue of load order management is always welcome. I would propose that the best way to tear down whatever wall exists is to let Vortex be Vortex and NMM be NMM. Those who like manual plugin management have NMM, and those who want that management burden lifted have Vortex. There's no need to fight over this issue since both groups have mod managers that meet their needs.

 

Full disclosure. I have used Vortex for over a year and consider it the most powerful and effective mod manager that I've ever used.

[HadToRegister]

@TarvinDracken

 

 

As far as camps, I would say that I'm sitting on the wall and contemplating the best way to tear it down.

 

A conciliatory approach to this issue of load order management is always welcome. I would propose that the best way to tear down whatever wall exists is to let Vortex be Vortex and NMM be NMM. Those who like manual plugin management have NMM, and those who want that management burden lifted have Vortex. There's no need to fight over this issue since both groups have mod managers that meet their needs.

 

Full disclosure. I have used Vortex for over a year and consider it the most powerful and effective mod manager that I've ever used.

 

 

Good lord, I wish I possessed your powers of brevity