Feedback: Coming from NMM with no MO Exposure

[Casuallycryptic]

First off let me say that the Exfat issue made this thing take longer than expected to get working, but since that one problem I've had 0 issues, which is pretty snaz for an alpha release. The exfat thing is annoying but I understand supporting the file format is not feasible. It might be a deal breaker for some people though. For instance, in order to use a hard drive for PS4 you need it formatted exfat (which is why I had it that way in the first place), but I also need to use it for my PC since my hard drive is small. Fortunately, I didn't NEED the drive for Playstation as I only used it for a transfer, but if I had it would have forced me to choose between Vortex or Playstation and it would have been easier just to go to MO instead probably.

 

Running NMM mods with the Vortex worked great, and even worked when I had the drive partioned Exfat. This brings up an interesting point. The Vortex dialogue seems to suggest that it is importing the mods from NMM which is misleading I think. It really just emulates NMM right? I mean it doesn't reinstall the mods the Vortex way, it just keeps them operational. I would have preferred the option to go ahead and bring the mods in entirely, even if it took a while. If that's not possible, better clarity would still be good. I ended up uninstalling and reinstalling all my mods for a proper start. Until I did that though, everything seemed to be working aces.

 

I've found a tendency for the manager to double download through the nexxus button, more so than NMM (which I don't ever recall doing it). I think this comes from the fact that it (sometimes) immediately begins a download when you click the button and other times only does it once you click the download button after clicking the initial download with MM button, which is tricky because if Vortex then picks up the initial download it downloads twice and you need to cancel one of the downloads. A couple of times I didn't notice the second download until later which was (admittedly fairly minor) inconvenience.

 

I understand that MO did this as well, but I've been fairly impressed with the way Vortex handles file relationships and deployment. That alone was worth upgrading from NMM. Not sure about making Vortex better than MO, but I digress. The integration of key tools (some of which I don't think I had downloaded) such as TES Editor and Loot is pretty excellent. I actually didn't know that several of my pre-existing mods had conflicts with each other until I loaded into Vortex. Nice! Speaking of MO, I had it downloaded when this went Alpha, but kept shying away from it due to the interface seeming less than friendly. I know about MO, but mostly from watching moding vids and traveling the nexus. Vortex has a very user friendly interface. Very steam-ish.

 

In terms of Layout, the Vortex looks very snazzy, but there's not much reason to have "games," "extensions," and "downloads" in such a prominent location. I keep finding myself stumbling into those tabs for no reason. Especially with how automated the new download system is, I don't really see a point to not having those somewhere out of the way (like in settings).

 

One thing I'm going to miss dearly from NMM and would be very thankful to see returned is folders for the mods screen. I understand that Vortex autimatically sorts mods via set categories, and it looks like custom categories are in the works, but this is a poor substitute for proper folders, as I find myself constantly searching for specific mods, without easily finding them. When you get above a 100 mods it starts to become fairly hectic to find things without folders. This would be my most desired feature in all honesty.

 

Like others, I find the forced instillation to C: extremely annoying, for the same reasons as others. My drive is small. I can't afford 200 megabytes for non-essential files on that drive, beyond which I don't want the clutter there. I hope you do as you mentioned in the stickied threat and allow us to choose the instillation directory in the future. I understand your reasons for wanting to force the instillation, but there are legitimate reasons that this is less than ideal for some users, and might force a choice between this mod manager and MO (or whatever the rival of the day is).

 

Overall I would describe my experience as fairly positive and very stable with a few design hitches that range from very mild to fairly moderate.