Why is Vortex so cryptic and unfriendly?

[Cheetah1971]

This program is really confusing, compared to NMM. I hand imported mods from NMM, first I had to go to each and every mod separately and change it's source to Nexus and click that 'guess' button. Seems like a lot of clicking for something it apparently could've figured out on it's own. Oh and I have to clear the category before I click 'guess', or it won't fix the category.

 

Sometimes when I enable a mod, it gives a message 'The mod "xxx" has multiple plugins [Enable All] [Dismiss]", but there's nothing anywhere about what this means. What does this mean? What do I click?

 

i'm trying to update mods I imported from NMM. Seems simple enough, right? But this thing has made it so frustrating and confusing. I got mods with multiple versions now but they say the same number. I try uninstalling one and both go away. I even tried removing both, redownloading and I get both again. Other mods, with Multiple version, I pick one, it asked me to install or replace, I pick replace, but I still have two versions.

 

I am so confused, am I just going to have to wipe the slate clean and redownload EVERY mod I have? I really don't wanna redownload 90GB of Fallout 4 again to get it cleaned up.

 

Can we just have NMM back? This program is really aggravating. I've been screwing with it for 2 hours now and I just wanna play my fricking game.

[Guest deleted34304850]

the answer to your opening question is this; you didn't read any of the literature or watch any of the videos that were made, it has to be said, for YOUR benefit. Instead you poked about, got frustrated and projected that frustration into your post on these forums.

 

However, do not fret, for help, good and abundant and friendly help awaits you. All you need to do is read this post, cut/paste it into a reply, and see what occurs.

 

https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/7332636-how-to-post-request-support-for-vortex/

 

if you want NMM back then go get it. There are a lot of posts from people, like you, who didn't bother to read anything, who think/assume NMM has vanished into the ether. It hasn't. It's still out there, still works. You just need to click a bit, search a bit, install a bit and do a bit.

[Cheetah1971]

If you have to read tutorials and watch videos to use a mod manager, you're not doing it right.

 

But thanks for the non-answer.

[Dark0ne]

I'm not sure we need to be unfriendly to people who come to these forums confused after moving over from NMM. I understand some can be very rude, but someone has to be the bigger person :smile: In an ideal world, Vortex would have a "beginners walkthrough" built straight into it for these situations. I'll be talking to the community team about that on Monday.

 

In answer to your issues, Cheetah, the main issue with the NMM import is that NMM is such a mess behind the scenes that it is impossible (actually impossible, this isn't hyperbole) to create a 100% functioning "this will be exactly how it was in NMM" import functionality. It's why we recommend people only move over if they are starting fresh. There will be some "tidy up" required if you import a lot of mods from NMM because, while Vortex will try to work things out as best it can from what it gets given, it's not going to work it all out.

 

On top of that, if you're moving over from NMM and NMM is all you've ever modded with, Vortex is bound to seem confusing at first. Vortex completely changes the mindset behind modding (we think for the better), and if you have extensively used NMM it's going to take some getting used to. If you dive straight in at the deep end by importing tens, if not hundreds of mods all at once, it's going to compound on that problem. Thus, it's easier to approach Vortex how you would any new thing, slowly, and one at a time until you get the hang of it and understand the process.

 

What we're finding is that people that start fresh are having a better experience than those who import all their mods from NMM. Yours is not the only thread that highlights this issue in these forums. My personal preference is actually to remove the NMM import functionality entirely, but the Vortex devs think the time-saving benefits of the import process, even if it doesn't always work 100%, are worth the UX hassles that it causes for new users.

 

We're currently hiring for both a UI/UX designer and a front end developer and it's my hope that, at some point, they can tackle this issue head-on from a UX point of view.

 

NMM has not gone anywhere, you haven't lost it. It's also open source, so it cannot be lost, even if we wanted it to get lost. And we kind of do, because it's a mess and makes our lives harder while gradually making million's of people's modding setups a mess as well, which leads us to the very issues we're speaking about in this thread :tongue:

[Guest deleted34304850]

the answer I provided isn't a non-answer, rather it is what it is.

 

Vortex is not NMM or MO2 or any other mod manager. It has a learning curve. How you scale that curve is open to you. You can, quite easily, fire it up and poke around and that's fine. There are consequences to doing this however. You could get frustrated because it's different to what you know, and, while that's not a good thing, there is also the very real possibility that by poking around, you could break a game you have invested a lot of time in because you may have ported your mods over and not done it correctly.

 

The other method of scaling the curve is to invest a modest amount of time in understanding what Vortex is, and how it goes about its business.

 

The devs and this community have been excellent in trying to help people scale the learning curve - but - and it's an important but - YOU need to invest some time into it so that YOUR games are not wrecked beyond repair. The investment has to be made by you, and only you.

 

There are an absolute ton of resources in these support forums, an in-app knowledge base, a wiki, and the mod itself. It really is a very good, very comprehensive application, but because it's comprehensive and because its different, there will be frustrations, but - they key here is this - everything you're facing now - loads of people have faced previously and resolved.

 

The post I linked to is designed for you to give information in a very generic and centralised format which will help others to know information that can help them to help you. You are not obliged to use it but if you do, it makes everyone's life easier.

 

Also, I mentioned that NMM has not gone anywhere. Again, it's on YOU to go and find NMM and use it if you wish to. It is still out there, still being supported, works with everything as it did 6 months ago, a year ago....all this information is freely available, but again, YOU need to do a little bit to help yourself along the path.

[HadToRegister]

If you have to read tutorials and watch videos to use a mod manager, you're not doing it right.

 

 

 

Vortex has a learning curve, you wouldn't expect to use a 3D Modeling program, or something like Excel without reading a tutorial or the manual, the reason you need to read the knowledge base and watch video tutorials is because Vortex is a lot more powerful than NMM ever was.

It's like comparing a Volkswagen (NMM) to a Lamborghini (Vortex).

People say that "NMM was so easy to use", and that's because NMM didn't do anything, it didn't sort your load order for you, it didn't detect conflicts (except at the last minute when installing a mod that had files that would overwrite another, which ended up being a mess, because if you chose to overwrite the wrong files, you'd have to uninstall ALL the mods that had their files overwritten and install them in the correct order), while Vortex can do this easily.

If one MOD needs to overwrite another MOD, it's as simple as telling MOD A to LOAD AFTER MOD B, and if that was the wrong choice, then you just need to change the rule to have MOD A LOAD BEFORE MOD B, and Vortex automatically restores the overwritten files without having to uninstall/reinstall all the affected mods in the correct order.

 

That is why you should take the time to read the knowledge base and watch the tutorials, because under the hood, Vortex will do all of the hard work for you, if you take the time to learn it.

 

Also, the best way to start using Vortex is to use a fresh installation of a game, that way, if you mess up, you haven't lost anything and won't become frustrated while you're learning.

 

I suggest installing something like FO3 or FONV, or OLDRIM or something that you're currently not playing or modding, and just have Vortex handle that game and start from scratch.

Start with some simple mods to get a feel for Vortex, and one very important thing, FORGET all of the Micromanaging of ESPs that NMM has ingrained into your brain, and just let Vortex do its job of sorting your ESPs (It has loot built in), that way you can focus on sorting the IMPORTANT stuff, like BSAs, BA2s, and Textures and Meshes, (Something NMM CANNOT do)

 

Give it a try.

[AugustaCalidia]

If you have to read tutorials and watch videos to use a mod manager, you're not doing it right.

 

As HadToRegister has pointed out, trying to fit Vortex into the traditional mod manager box leads to misunderstandings and frustrations. Vortex has functions and capabilities built into it that are not found in other mod managers. That's why it's so important to do some initial study.

 

As for your "mod manager rule," I would ask you this. Did you ever use MO or MO2? If so, were you able to use them without once having to consult a video or various forums or the excellent S.T.E.P. articles? How about Wrye Bash? Were you also able to dive in and use it without having to consult some of its voluminous documentation? Did the developers of these mod managers not do it right because they required some study?

 

This said, I would encourage you to make a trial run with Vortex, following HadToRegister's suggested plan. Yes, there's study to be done, but there's a good reason for that. The reason is that Vortex, as the most powerful mod manager available, will give you modding control over your games that you've never had before.

[Dark0ne]

I would argue that even NMM isn't exactly intuitive. What's a "plugin" and how is it different to a mod? What are profiles? Why should I use them? NMM certainly doesn't tell you. There are so many functions and features that have absolutely no help attached to them, so you have to learn as you go along, break and then fix things. People think NMM is intuitive because they've learnt to use it over many years. Perhaps they've forgotten that, to begin with, they had to learn how to use NMM and how to mod their games, too.

 

Vortex has that same learning curve, but it is made worse by the fact that people already know NMM so they come into Vortex with certain expectations based on their experience of NMM.

 

Having said that, we know this. Everyone posting here knows this. So Vortex needs to do a better job of handling these situations. It's all well and good telling users who come here complaining about the learning curve for Vortex to "read the documentation" but, in an ideal world, all of this would be explained, or made more obvious, in Vortex itself (and not just in the Knowledge Base).

 

For those of you who post here regularly, we really appreciate your vocal support of Vortex. But if you could please take a leaf out of my book here and try and approach things less from a "RTFM" approach, and more from a "this user has issues and they're annoyed, I'm going to focus on their issues and ignore their anger" then this forum would be a lot more welcoming, a lot more helpful, and a lot more conducive to creating an environment that provides helpful feedback and constructive criticism. Focus on the issues and don't focus on any snarky comments or get baited. Once you get baited you start ignoring the actual point of the thread and stop providing actual help to this user, or any other user with a similar problem or similar feelings.

[HadToRegister]

I would argue that even NMM isn't exactly intuitive. What's a "plugin" and how is it different to a mod? What are profiles? Why should I use them? NMM certainly doesn't tell you. There are so many functions and features that have absolutely no help attached to them, so you have to learn as you go along, break and then fix things. People think NMM is intuitive because they've learnt to use it over many years. Perhaps they've forgotten that, to begin with, they had to learn how to use NMM and how to mod their games, too.

 

Vortex has that same learning curve, but it is made worse by the fact that people already know NMM so they come into Vortex with certain expectations based on their experience of NMM.

 

Having said that, we know this. Everyone posting here knows this. So Vortex needs to do a better job of handling these situations. It's all well and good telling users who come here complaining about the learning curve for Vortex to "read the documentation" but, in an ideal world, all of this would be explained, or made more obvious, in Vortex itself (and not just in the Knowledge Base).

 

For those of you who post here regularly, we really appreciate your vocal support of Vortex. But if you could please take a leaf out of my book here and try and approach things less from a "RTFM" approach, and more from a "this user has issues and they're annoyed, I'm going to focus on their issues and ignore their anger" then this forum would be a lot more welcoming, a lot more helpful, and a lot more conducive to creating an environment that provides helpful feedback and constructive criticism. Focus on the issues and don't focus on any snarky comments or get baited. Once you get baited you start ignoring the actual point of the thread and stop providing actual help to this user, or any other user with a similar problem or similar feelings.

 

There's only so much we can suggest before telling people to actually spend some time learning Vortex.

 

We all make it a point to describe some of the things that Vortex can do, and the features it has, and how much easier Vortex is doing certain things, but it's up to people to spend some time learning it as well, yes?

I mean, that's what the knowledge base and tutorials were made for.

 

Nobody is coming across as "RTFM" only.

If that were the case, then our responses would be once sentence instead of several paragraphs.

 

As I said, there's only so much we can point out to a person the excellent features of Vortex before they have to take on the task themselves of learning Vortex.

There's plenty of information there, and a lot of people who are angry are usually people who have just jumped in with both feet expecting Vortex to be easy to use without learning about it.

Problem is, there are some concepts involved with using Vortex (just like MO and MO2) that require some effort on the users part to learn about.

 

I have no problem helping people, but people have to be willing to learn as well.

 

I myself went into Vortex with the NMM mindset and fought against Vortex for a long time and was frustrated until I learned to stop fighting Vortex and work WITH it instead.

We're trying to encourage people to dig into the tutorials and knowledge base to help them learn more than we can explain, we're being diplomatic and helpful, and yet we're still being told we're doing it wrong.

I just don't understand.

 

[Guest deleted34304850]

"RTFM approach"? Wow.

 

 

 

We're trying to encourage people to dig into the tutorials and knowledge base to help them learn more than we can explain, we're being diplomatic and helpful, and yet we're still being told we're doing it wrong.

I just don't understand.

 

I understand it perfectly.