Dear Follower Mod Authors, please include refids for your followers in the description or faq area.

[CONTRABARDUS]

I love you guys, really. You do great work and a good follower mod can do a lot to breathe new life into Skyrim...

 

...but hardly any of you include refids for your followers to help us lowly end users with troubleshooting when things go wrong and they disappear.

 

This is more Bethesda's fault than yours, I know.

 

Still, this has been something that frequently would have saved me, and I'm sure many other users, a lot of time trying to troubleshoot when the game swallows them up or they don't spawn where they're supposed to be.

 

The refid's first two characters are found easily enough with just a "Help Followername" command. However, this doesn't get you the proper refid to force spawn them. "Save Funclist 1" is also somewhat useful, provided you've already interacted with the follower, and know how to navigate that huge text file it generates and what to look for.

 

Just adding a line with the refid, and a quick line about "moveto player" and using it as a last resort would make troubleshooting that much easier.

 

Please include this information somewhere in the description or faq. Vanilla NPCs can be looked up with the various wikis in case troubleshooting is needed, but follower mod refids aren't listed on sites like that. It makes things difficult when they aren't being cooperative because Bethesda's engine decides it doesn't feel like spawning them when it should.

 

While I'm sure it won't completely eliminate all the "Help! Followername isn't appearing where they should!" or "Followername has disappeared, what do?!" comments, it would probably reduce them a bit, so it's a win-win for all of us.

 

Please include this information for your follower or followers somewhere in the documentation.

[3aq]

do it yourself, use SSEEdit open up the follower esp and then locate the value. No need to add additional work onto others.

[CONTRABARDUS]

do it yourself, use SSEEdit open up the follower esp and then locate the value. No need to add additional work onto others.

 

Why shove it off on the enduser though?

 

I could do that, but I'm not confident a lot of end users would have any clue how to go about that. SSEEdit doesn't exactly have the most user friendly interface, and fapping about with it can mess up your game if you don't know what you're doing. It's not extremely complicated, but is a bit beyond novice modding, not to the point of being "advanced". Even a novice can handle simple console commands if they have the information available.

 

It's not really what I'd call "additional work" for a modder to add a line of text to the description with this information. It's not like it's something they'd have to go digging for when working on a mod or updating something, it's information that is easily accessible in the files they would already be working with.

 

If anything it would create less "work" on the modder's end as it would lessen the amount of comments asking about how to troubleshoot things a "moveto player" command could easily fix that aren't really their fault to begin with.

 

It seems counter productive to not include it in a faq or description to help with basic troubleshooting actually. Especially considering it's not information the basic "help" console command will provide like it would with items added by a mod and is a fairly common bug for follower mods in general.

Edited April 24, 2018 by CONTRABARDUS

[Deleted3897072User]

If you are using the console then you already have the solution in your own hands. The first time you encounter the follower in your game, target it in the console and its FormId will be displayed. Write it down on a piece of paper for future reference. Problem solved.

Oh horror! We have to write on paper? Don't you know this is the 21^st century? Someone must type it onto a web page for me, so I can just look it up and don't have to search in a museum for a pen and then google how to use one! :D

[cdcooley]

Using "sqv dialoguefollower" in the console will also show you the reference id for your current human and animal follower in the list of aliases for that quest.

[CONTRABARDUS]

If you are using the console then you already have the solution in your own hands. The first time you encounter the follower in your game, target it in the console and its FormId will be displayed. Write it down on a piece of paper for future reference. Problem solved.

 

Oh horror! We have to write on paper? Don't you know this is the 21^st century? Someone must type it onto a web page for me, so I can just look it up and don't have to search in a museum for a pen and then google how to use one! :D

 

 

Using "sqv dialoguefollower" in the console will also show you the reference id for your current human and animal follower in the list of aliases for that quest.

 

Again, why dump this on the end user?

 

This also assumes that the first encounter occurs in the first place, or that a quest is involved.

 

There is no good reason to not simply include this information in a line of text in the description or faq. It's not really any extra effort on the modder's end, and honestly, doing things like this for every follower mod, and every follower someone might be using included in a mod, is expecting too much from the end user's side.

 

Most end users don't expect bugs to happen and won't think of it until it does, nor will it happen for the majority of mods they install, and a simple troubleshooting element like this should be included anyway, just due to the frequency of this particular type of bug.

 

Again, this would actually save a fair amount of effort on their end as they don't have to deal with as many messages from users who encounter these types of bugs, as they'll be able to troubleshoot for themselves without extra tools or more advanced console commands that novice users aren't going to have a clue about.

 

The resistance against this kind of perplexes me. It anticipates a common bug that the engine itself is known for, is an easy no-effort solution to help with troubleshooting and reducing support request comments, is a suitable solution for even low skill end users, and is just good programming etiquette to include this kind of information if it can't be easily accessed in the standard UI troubleshooting interface [in this case, the in game console].

 

A good programmer will do their best to anticipate common engine related bugs and provide a simple solution if possible in documentation. That's not simply to be altruistic, but because it creates less work for them in the long run.

Edited April 24, 2018 by CONTRABARDUS

[Deleted3897072User]

I think you are overdramatising the problem. For the past five years, I've been doing user support on a mod that offers, amongst other things, upwards of a dozen potential followers. The comment thread has recently topped 8k posts. Roughly 4k user comments/questions and 4k replies (those are just ballpark figures but it's of that order). In all that time, the number of posts asking for a list of the RefId's for the followers has been ... one. One. Players aren't as helpless as you seem to think. Or as careless.

 

If you find that you often lose track of where your followers have gone, you might be tempted to suppose that it's the same for everyone, that the game is broken and that it constantly needs fixing. It simply isn't so. Followers follow.

[CONTRABARDUS]

I think you are overdramatising the problem. For the past five years, I've been doing user support on a mod that offers, amongst other things, upwards of a dozen potential followers. The comment thread has recently topped 8k posts. Roughly 4k user comments/questions and 4k replies (those are just ballpark figures but it's of that order). In all that time, the number of posts asking for a list of the RefId's for the followers has been ... one. One. Players aren't as helpless as you seem to think. Or as careless.

 

If you find that you often lose track of where your followers have gone, you might be tempted to suppose that it's the same for everyone, that the game is broken and that it constantly needs fixing. It simply isn't so. Followers follow.

 

I don't think I am.

 

For starters, that is anecdotal. One individual example does not represent the whole.

 

The most common bug I see posts/comments about on the whole for Follower mods is "Help! Followername isn't showing up/spwaning/has disappeared/has vanished and I can't find".

 

That doesn't mean there aren't more reports of other types of bugs for any single mod, or that an individual mod necessarily has any comments regarding this type of bug, just that it seems to be the most common single type bug for this type of mod as a whole.

 

It's also worth pointing out that this information is also useful for troubleshooting and fixing other types of bugs. "Follower is stuck in scenery, unclickable, etc..."

 

There really isn't a good reason to not include it in documentation, it really isn't any extra work as it's probably less than a paragraph in most cases, and will reduce [but not eliminate] instances of support requests for things that can be easily fixed by a "moveto Player" command when a bug occurs where you can't necessarily click on them to get their RefID.

 

It just seems counter productive to not include it.

Edited April 25, 2018 by CONTRABARDUS

[jones177]

Hi

 

Most people that use lots of followers use multi follower mods. ATF is the most popular on SE & it has a summon command. It is for getting followers unstuck or a quicker response than the follow command.

 

The only time I need an ID is when a follower dies & I can't find the body. This is rare since I set follows to essential. It is quicker for me the go back to a previous save, get the ID & then use player.moveto console command than it would be to get out of the game to look up an ID.

 

Later

[Lemnear]

In case anyone else stumbles across this thread looking for a real solution for mod companions falling through the floor:

save funclist 1

will create a text file with all form and ref ids in your current game.

ctrl-f for the NPC name and try the id in the first colum for prid, NPC should be listed once with formid and once with refid.

 

As always make a manual save before using console commands, in case you move some identical named storage container for a merchant npc to you or something like that.