Some suggestions on making vortex a better program

[LordLochNess]

Besides the odd bug here and there Vortex is a pretty decent program. But, it could definitely be made a bit better with some simple (or at least what I personally consider to be simple, not sure if it's actually simple development-wise) quality of life tweaks and adjustments. Here are my ideas:

 

1. A form 43 check warning script built into the program: This is more SSE specific and I don't know if/how this would be possible, but I think a script that runs whenever you install/enable a plugin that checks to see if one of your esp's has a form 43 record structure if you're running Skyrim Special Edition would be useful. I've heard before that form 43 can mess with special edition save files in very bad ways so this might benefit people. This could also theoretically work backwards with Skyrim Legendary Edition (i.e. check form 44) but I guess people don't tend to accidentally install special edition mods when they play Oldrim. Either way, I think this is a good idea.

 

2. Change LOOT Message dialogue box colors. They're kind of awful to be honest. The baby blue color for miscellaneous information looks really bad and hurts the eyes. I would suggest a darker blue. The orange for the standard LOOT message is… suboptimal. It’s not bad but maybe another color (or a darker orange) would suffice. LOOT messages for errors that would normally be red in the standalone LOOT program have no colored box around them at all. Why not use red again?

 

3. LOOT Messages should be clickable in the same way that they are in the standalone LOOT program. I'm not really sure why they aren't in Vortex but this is the reason why I still have the standalone LOOT program installed and why I still use it regularly.

 

4. Add “Tools” option to the Mods and Plugins pages of Vortex. Right now the tools you can add to the program are in an obvious-yet-not-so-obvious spot. Making them more obvious will reduce user confusion that I notice on Reddit and in various Skyrim modding-oriented discord servers. Yes, "read the documentation." I get that, and I don't disagree with that but I'm sure you guys know that most people won't do that. It's better to avoid confusing people who you know won't read even if you tell them to if you want them to give the program a chance. Also, having a tools button on both of these pages to easily access my tools like xEdit and NIF Optimizer means that I won't have to constantly go to the dashboard whenever I want to deal with something. It's just less effort.

 

5. Maybe a mission statement about what vortex is trying to accomplish? I think you guys should make an interactive tutorial that walks users through the program and everything it's capable of. Yes, you can watch Gopher's youtube videos but people seem to completely gloss over those and Gopher's Vortex videos, in my honest opinion, don't really drive home the point that Vortex is about eliminating micromanagement, forgetting load orders (to an extent) and streamlining many of the things you'd have to deal with meticulously and accurately in MO2. I think that if the development had a walk-through tutorial that explained the idea behind Vortex you'd observe a bit less stigma over the program and a lot less of a brain dead "use MO2" response when people talk about how they're using Vortex on other forums.

 

6. Conflicts dialogue box could be better. I've definitely met more than one person who gets completely confused about how the conflicts dialogue box works. It isn't difficult to figure out but it just looks weird and I can understand why it confuses some people. Maybe something more intuitive like:

 

"How should Vortex deal with these file conflicts?

 

Mod A should load... [before/After dropdown menu] Mod B"

 

... or something to that effect. Right now the current setup of Mod A being a title and then "[load after/load before]" looks weird. I don't personally find it confusing but I can see that quite a few others do and I think it would be better to deal with that.

 

7. Better detection of esp update (when a file is just an update all the conflict shows is [mod x] should load… [before/after] [mod x]. The Riverside Shack mod is a great example of this. All it says is "Riverside Shack should load After/Before Riverside Shack" which just looks weird and confusing.

 

Anyway that's it for now. Not sure if any of this stuff is planned for the future and maybe my suggestions are not helpful, I don't know. But these are just my ideas. I hope to see Vortex become even better in the future as I know it has potential.

 

Thanks for reading.

[BigBizkit]

Hi,

 

1. This would necessitate looking inside the plugin, which is not something Vortex is capable of and would require the assistance of other external tools.

 

2. You can specify your own theme colours via Settings > Theme

 

3. Not entirely sure what you mean by clickable. Can you give me an example?

 

4. I can see the use case for that, though, I am not convinced that it could be much more convenient than clicking "dashboard" and launching the tool from there (2 clicks to launch a tool).

 

5. This is not only found in various news posts related to Vortex, but also featured prominently on the Vortex download page:

 

 

"What is Vortex?

Vortex is the new, modern mod manager from Nexus Mods. It is designed to make modding your game as simple as possible for new users, while still providing enough control for more experienced veterans of the modding scene. Lead by Tannin, the creator of Mod Organizer, Vortex takes the lessons learnt during the development of MO and Nexus Mod Manager to provide the most powerful and intuitive modding experience available.

Our approach with Vortex aims to take complex tasks such as sorting your load order or managing your mod files and automates as much of the process as possible with the goal of having you achieve a stable modded game with minimal effort. We want to help you spend less time modding and more time playing your games. "

6. I can see that and it is something we are looking into as conflict management is so pivotal.

7. I am a bit confused because you mention esps (plugins) but then relate to mod conflicts. If you have two mods making changes to the same files then these mods are in conflict. There is no way of knowing that one of the mods is "just" an update. It is still trying to overwrite the files added/altered by another mod.

Suggestions are always appreciated. Open dialogue with our userbase is exactly why we have these forums :thumbsup:

[LordLochNess]

 

3. Not entirely sure what you mean by clickable. Can you give me an example?

 

5. This is not only found in various news posts related to Vortex, but also featured prominently on the Vortex download page:

 

 

"What is Vortex?

Vortex is the new, modern mod manager from Nexus Mods. It is designed to make modding your game as simple as possible for new users, while still providing enough control for more experienced veterans of the modding scene. Lead by Tannin, the creator of Mod Organizer, Vortex takes the lessons learnt during the development of MO and Nexus Mod Manager to provide the most powerful and intuitive modding experience available.

Our approach with Vortex aims to take complex tasks such as sorting your load order or managing your mod files and automates as much of the process as possible with the goal of having you achieve a stable modded game with minimal effort. We want to help you spend less time modding and more time playing your games. "

7. I am a bit confused because you mention esps (plugins) but then relate to mod conflicts. If you have two mods making changes to the same files then these mods are in conflict. There is no way of knowing that one of the mods is "just" an update. It is still trying to overwrite the files added/altered by another mod.

Suggestions are always appreciated. Open dialogue with our userbase is exactly why we have these forums :thumbsup:

 

 

For point 3, what I mean is this:

 

 

The link to Bruma patch for Convenient Horses is clickable in the standalone LOOT program. If I click it it takes me directly to the Nexus page for the corresponding patch.

 

 

In vortex no part of this box responds to being clicked. If I click on the link, nothing happens. Vortex requires me to manually type out the link in my web browser.

 

For point 5, I understand that, and I can see that. What I guess I'm saying is I still don't feel as though that's enough because it seems like most people completely gloss over that and still don't get what Vortex is trying to do. Criticisms of Vortex on reddit and various discord servers seems to suggest this.

 

For point 7, I guess what I was trying to communicate is that, when an update is nothing more than a .esp (or even a .esl) file that you be given the option to skip the whole conflict dialogue box thing. But then again, this also ties into point 6 about the dialogue box looking weird, and maybe a better way of putting this would be that version info should be displayed in the dialogue box so that it doesn't look like this:

 

 

See how it just says load Riverside Shack after Riverside Shack? I always have to double-take and make sure I'm not doing this wrong.

 

Thanks for being open to user feedback.