Vortex is Awesome (Really, not being sarcastic)

[Marek357]

I've been modding games on the PC for a long time going back to Doom, for the last decade or so mostly Elder Scrolls going back to Morrowind and Fallout 3 & 4. I do extremely complex mods, 100's over the limit with merged patches, ENB's, Script Extenders, you name it. For most of those, I used NMM. I've also dabbled in modding other games like Witcher III using a proprietary modding tool designed for that game. I've "been there, done that".

 

So, when I learned about Vortex and my daughter asked me to mod the heck out of Skyrim SE I told her I was going to take a little longer to do it because I was going to educate myself about the tool and use it. Spoiler, I did have to read quite a bit, watch a few videos, etc. to get up to speed, but the modding process was super quick and easy and I got the game working on the first try once I puzzled out an out-of-date Script Extender dependant mod problem.

 

What do I like about Vortex? Everything. It works exactly as advertised if you check your ego at the door and follow the instructions. Stop trying to manually do it the way you've always done it, learn something new, and be pleasantly surprised.

 

I particularly liked that I could literally install, enable and deploy my selected mods in alphabetical order, no thought whatsoever to what overwrote what. Then I followed Vortex's prompts to resolve load order conflicts.

 

I also loved that when looking down through the Mods or Plugins (I forget which), icons showed me which mods to expand the view into, which prompted me to install a number of needed mods and patches from Nexus, including links to all of them. I'd already spent a day reading down through mod descriptions, following links, etc., and likely never would have realized I had missed these files.

 

I finished and had no prompts that anything was wrong, so when it CTD without starting I knew it was the game itself, the script extender, or a mod. One slight criticism is I would have loved if Vortex had clued me in to the Script extender dependant mod that wasn't up to date with the latest version of the Script Extender, and pointed me to a patch, but I puzzled it out on my own and got lucky that it was the second mod I researched further on Nexus. My apologies if it does that already and l missed that feature.

 

The takeaway here is that Vortex isn't magic. It can't overcome all the limitations of the game, mods, patches, incompatibilities, etc. But it is a HUGE improvement over NMM or other manual modding tools. And I suspect as it's worked on and improved it will become more and more automated, give more and more insight into issues that would take hours to troubleshoot and fix, and grow in popularity as new people to the scene ponder why doing it all by hand was ever popular, just like no one uses DOS as their OS anymore in the age of smart, graphic UI's.

 

Great work Vortex team! Have the patience of Job dealing with the daily criticism. Hang in there until it's perfect knowing that you do already have grateful users.

 

edit: Thanks for the input! I appreciate the thought, but offering people help with Vortex/modding in exchange for money is against our site rules. I have, therefore, removed that last part. - BigBizkit

[rmm200]

For a Job Wanted ad - this is not bad. Not bad at all. I wish you success!

Maybe offer to write extensions for games that aren't supported yet. That should be popular.

Sure beats our usual Rant.

[AugustaCalidia]

"Vortex is Awesome (Really, not being sarcastic)"

 

Ditto

[BigBizkit]

Hi Marek357,

 

Thank you for the detailed and positive feedback!

 

Just as you said: Vortex is different than what people are used to, so there is a bit of a learning curve. You also highlight one core advantage though: the fact that you can just install loads of mods without thinking and only after that worry about how to resolve the file conflicts - and if you don't like the result, you can change your mind and resolve the conflicts another way without having to reinstall.

 

As for your slight criticism regarding Vortex not alerting you to a mod that is dependant on an outdated version of the script installer: I am afraid there is little we can do about that. It is non-trivial to figure out which mods need SKSE in the first place (for instance, it could be a single script function in a script inside a bsa archive).

 

One question if I may: you said you needed to watch loads of videos and do a lot of reading to get the hang of Vortex. Do you think there is anything we can do to make the initial adaptive process easier on the user? There will always be a process as Vortex is different, but, ideally, we do not want people to have to spend a very long time reading up on Vortex before they can use it.

 

Lastly: I appreciate that you are offering your help, though offering support or any other service in exchange for money is against our site rules (https://help.nexusmods.com/article/77-donation-options-guidelines#Non_Solicitation_Rules). if you could please edit that last part out it would be appreciated.

 

Thanks again for the input :thumbsup:

 

edit: I have since edited your post to remove the last part.

[duwardl]

Didn't know where else to put this but I love Vortex I was using Mod Organizer before and it was great but Vortex is much better. It only took me an hour or so to figure everything out the first time I used it but it was mostly my fault because I was rebelling against loosing mod organizer. Now mods just drop right in with no problems. I do have one question though I don't see the play button was it removed or am I just old and blind?

I figured all out on my own without watching videos so that could be why I missed the play button.

[HadToRegister]

Didn't know where else to put this but I love Vortex I was using Mod Organizer before and it was great but Vortex is much better. It only took me an hour or so to figure everything out the first time I used it but it was mostly my fault because I was rebelling against loosing mod organizer. Now mods just drop right in with no problems. I do have one question though I don't see the play button was it removed or am I just old and blind?

I figured all out on my own without watching videos so that could be why I missed the play button.

 

 

Play button in the upper left hand corner in the game thumbnail?

Or the play button in the dashboard?