My first impressions

[Loveblanket]

I know this is a work in progress, and this is genuine feedback, not criticism. Some of these issues may just be my lack of experience using Vortex, but as this was supposed to be the one mod manager to rule them all for casual users and advanced users alike, the fact that someone with many years experience in modding cannot find or figure out these features after using it for hours is also a problem for a program being designed for ease of use. Also, I stayed away from too many other users comments to avoid being influenced so I could give a pure opinion that is as unbiased as possible with one exception that I'll get into later. So if I'm repeating what a lot of other people said, I apologize for that.

 

1) I dislike the overall design of the UI. It doesn't seem like an advancement to me when I'm clicking through multiple menus to do the basic things that could all be done on one screen in NMM. On one screen with NMM I could see the mods I've downloaded, the mods I've activated, the download status of my mods, the install status of my mods, I could select tools, change games, change profiles, launch the game, change settings, one click install and uninstall mods, one click import mods from a folder. It didn't ask me if I wanted to install a mod everytime I downloaded it which just adds more time and mouse clicks. And most importantly, I could one click the mod info button and change the mods name (necessary because of the way some modders don't clearly identify the mod), the mods version number (same reason), the link to the mod, and the authors name. I always change the mod name because I create my own categories, so audio mods are written (audio - music - mod name). I could go straight to the mods page by just clicking the version number and I don't see that feature here which makes checking for updates a guessing game. I click the check for updates button but nothing happens and I can't tell if it has acutally done anything or not. I simply see no reason to have a separate page for downloads, and mods. How is that an advantage over simply having one list with installed mods highlighted or having a check mark next to them? Overall, when it comes to ease of use, I simply don't see anything that Vortex improves upon from NMM other than it's more visually pleasing. I'm sorry, but as of this moment that's just my honest opinion.

 

2) I know this has been gone over and over since Vortex release, but I'm adding my voice to those that say there is simply no reason not to be able to manually sort our load order. Relying on other tools that may or may not be current is not something we can rely on and in some cases there are reasons to move things around to get a different result you may want. The bottom line is that it's a feature many want, and by not including it, Vortex will be a pass for many, myself included, until the community makes the eventual add-on to do it. If read the counter arguments, and they aren't convincing.

 

3) This sort of ties in with point 1, but specifically the dashboard seems like a lot of wasted space. The entire top is nothing but the game launch button and my account name and the next big chunk is my account name yet again, but a little bigger, and a logout button. It seems like so much more could have been done there. Also, I know Nexus has a premium feature, everyone knows Nexus has a premium feature. If you want to promote it, that's fine and I understand it. However, do we really need two large banners on the opening page? Is one not enough?

 

4) This is just a minor annoyance, but it was helpful when downloading a mod in NMM to have it's icon start blinking to let me know it had started. It's a minor gripe, but I and I'm sure many here often are doing other things online while they download mods and it's just a nice quality of life thing to have.

 

5) I also touched on this in part 1, but I want to emphasize again how I can't change a mods name, or version number. I double click on the mod and then click in the box with the mod name, but it doesn't let me actually do anything. If there is something I missed in this process then any feedback would be appreciated, but I should'nt need to ask for help to do something that should be so seemingly easy.

 

6) I don't know if it's a bug, but I can't import my NMM mods. They are on the same drive as my games and as Vortex so I'm not sure what the issue is, but I get the "No NMM install found message". I tried both logged into and not logged into NMM and I get the same result. Maybe it's because I didn't use the standard install folder for NMM, but I couldn't tell you because that was years ago, and that shouldn't be an issue either, I should be able to manually tell it where the NMM folder is if it can't find it. That's a standard feature of any piece of software I've used for many years.

 

I'm sure I've forgotten a couple things, but these are the standouts for me. I assume from what I've read that the goal of Vortex was to make a clean modding tool that anyone could pick up and use with minimal instruction, but that also had features that advanced users could take advantage of. After many hours tinkering with it, I feel it does neither. It isn't anywhere near as easy and quick to use as NMM, and it lacks many of the features of more advanced managers like MO and Wrye Bash. I know that some of those features are coming, but I can only give feedback on what's in my hands today, so I didn't want to speculte on what may or may not be coming. I love the look of Vortex. It's very easy on the eyes and that's a godsend after blinding myself staring at NMM's white screen for hours year after year and unlike some of the other people that have posted here, I acutally feel it's a faster mod manager.It pops up in no time at all for me and mod downloads and installs seem a little speedier, so no idea what that's about as I don't have particularly great internet. So far for me it's nice and speedy. I guess what I'm saying is that I just don't see a reason to make the move. If NMM had just been fixed to work properly and the interface had been streamlined and prettied up, I think that would have been a more enticing switch for me. Sorry for the bummer post, I know how much work must be being put into this, but this is a forum for feedback and that's my feedback. I look forward to where Vortex goes in the future updates and hopefully it continues to improve. Thanks for reading.

[HadToRegister]

+1 to all points

[aquartistjames]

Agreed, the clunky UI is headache-inducing in its current iteration. I'm also really missing the categorization feature from NMM, which made it very simple to find specific mods and hide the ones I'm not currently trying to work with. The notifications menu is frustrating as well - I'm aware I started a download, that it's not installed, and that is is not enabled. I don't need to be told this in two places in the UI, one of which animates every time I do anything, and pops out regardless of whether I have closed it or not.

[Loveblanket]

I also have to say that I experimented using Vortex to download and now I can't use NMM. Download with manager now defaults to Vortex even though I have "Handle Nexus Links" set to no and NMM up and logged in. Also, has anyone found a way to search for a mod by name because I can't find it?

[sopmac45]

Agreed, the clunky UI is headache-inducing in its current iteration. I'm also really missing the categorization feature from NMM, which made it very simple to find specific mods and hide the ones I'm not currently trying to work with. The notifications menu is frustrating as well - I'm aware I started a download, that it's not installed, and that is is not enabled. I don't need to be told this in two places in the UI, one of which animates every time I do anything, and pops out regardless of whether I have closed it or not.

 

I assume from what I've read that the goal of Vortex was to make a clean modding tool that anyone could pick up and use with minimal instruction .....

 

​> I do agree that we are missing the categorization feature from NMM and also, not having minimal instructions from the very beginning, has not been that helpful, especially when we come from using MO or NMM for too many years, we should have had at least some instructions provided by the developer's team. I have been learning Vortex by reading every single thread in the Vortex forum and some information provided by Gopher in his video tutorials, however, we do not have still the most important tutorial that probably everybody is still waiting for : the one related on how to deal with dependencies, difference between sorting using Vortex and LOOT, etc, etc, etc ....

 

​> For some people not to be able to import from NMM is really not good. Personally, because I knew that Vortex was in Alpha state, I decide not to import Skyrim from NMM so I preferred to install a fresh game. I have Fallout 4 still in NMM and even if the import issue is resolved, I will not import it from NMM but I will start a fresh game ( I do have my personal reasons ).

 

​It has been said by Tannin that they did not want to add any instructions because they wanted to find out how simple or not was for us to understand Vortex and to interact with it. My approach on this particular aspect is completely the contrary. I would had provided some instructions from the very beginning to help people understand some features that we were not familiar with, but I am not part of the developer's team. Again, for me, this has been the most important thing that I am missing. I am not lazy, I have read all the threads in the Vortex forum, I have asked questions and I have watched all Gopher's videos but still, I do not have the knowledge I would like to have about this knew tool.

 

​Other issues pointed by the OP, are things that I do not support but I do respect his / her opinion about it. Training, training and more training is IMHO what we need because by knowing, it would be a lot easier for us to provide better feedbacks and help to improve the tool and at the same time, it would be less frustrated for us, to use it. With training, everybody wins !

 

​I learned long ago something that every single company should implement : CEO .... C for Customers, E for Employees and O for Owners. When a company train and encourage employees to perform toward C.E.O., everybody wins. But in order to make this real, the company must train his/her employees first. We are missing that training with Vortex and a lot of "Employees/Customers" are very frustrated and this is not right and as a consequence, the O - Owners are not winning as well.

[BeowulfSchmidt]

I also have to say that I experimented using Vortex to download and now I can't use NMM. Download with manager now defaults to Vortex even though I have "Handle Nexus Links" set to no and NMM up and logged in. Also, has anyone found a way to search for a mod by name because I can't find it?

 

I believe you have to explicitly tell NMM to take back control of the links, simply turning it off in Vortex won't revert it back to NMM (or MO, for that matter). It's an operating system setting that applications set, not a setting in the application itself. I haven't used the new NMM, but the old one had an option somewhere in the menu system to take control of those links.

[HadToRegister]

I also have to say that I experimented using Vortex to download and now I can't use NMM. Download with manager now defaults to Vortex even though I have "Handle Nexus Links" set to no and NMM up and logged in. Also, has anyone found a way to search for a mod by name because I can't find it?

 

Open NMM, click on the Gear icon, on the General Options tab, if the "Associate with NXM URLs" is checked, UNCHECK it, click OK.

Click on the gear icon again and on the General Options tab Check the "Associate with NXM URLs"

 

You might have to do this a couple of times, because even if you set Vortex to NOT take over the NXM Urls, it still does, and makes it so NMM won't open when you click "Download with Manager"

 

 

[Loveblanket]

Thanks for the help guys, worked like a charm. NMM is downloading again. I also had to run it as administrator if anyone else with this problem happens to see this thread.