Skyrim

[viper37]

If you really mod your game so much that you are hitting the mod limit, you should learn ways to go around it.

I have reached the mod limit, more than once, and there is no work around for the esp limit.  You can convert some mods to .esl, but not all of them.  As for merging mods, it is not that easy, you need to learn a lot of xEdit before you can really do that, something I have no time to devote to.

[viper37]

I can see the sense to each side's position, but, frankly, Nexus Mods is correct that the downside of having a mod deleted is worse than the downside of having mod versions that a developer no longer wants to support.  A big problem with the Paradox/Steam approach is that changes in game engine or mod versions can wreck a savegame that has a hundred hours invested in it.

On the other hand, this controversy is kind of meaningless, since anyone using Vortex just doesn't understand what a mistake that is, and the "collections system" is purely a Vortex issue.  Adding the collection system to Vortex is like adding whipped cream to a patty of cow shit.

Vortex is an ok modding tool for most games, but for Skyrim specifically, there are much better tools available.

As for the drama, it's a tempest in a teapot.  I had to dig a little to find out what it was about.  Basically, the mod will be archived and only inaccessible from the site, but it won't be deleted.  Nexus offered mod authors 1 month to request a partial or total deletion of their files.  One mod author who was enraged, convinced many others to remove their mods from the Nexus, but himself didn't do it.  Meh.  Cheap shot, imho.

But Nexus has always been full of divas.  The terms are clear.  Past authors were given a choice to drop their work from the site.  Newer authors will know how Nexus terms of service works.  If it's not satisfying, they could all band together and launch a competitive site to Nexus.

[grumbler]

If you really mod your game so much that you are hitting the mod limit, you should learn ways to go around it.

I have reached the mod limit, more than once, and there is no work around for the esp limit.  You can convert some mods to .esl, but not all of them.  As for merging mods, it is not that easy, you need to learn a lot of xEdit before you can really do that, something I have no time to devote to.

I believe that only .esps with scripts cannot be converted to .esl.  If you have that many scripted .esps, your problem isn't going to be the mod limit, but the fact that the game engine itself is going to get totally clogged by running scripts.

Make sure you have the latest version of xEdit. It can automatically convert all eligible .esps to .esls.

[Solmyr]

If you really mod your game so much that you are hitting the mod limit, you should learn ways to go around it.

I have reached the mod limit, more than once, and there is no work around for the esp limit.  You can convert some mods to .esl, but not all of them.  As for merging mods, it is not that easy, you need to learn a lot of xEdit before you can really do that, something I have no time to devote to.

You have time to put 255 mods in your game (I mean, just ensuring that they all work well together can take hours), but don't have time to learn to use xEdit?

[Jacob]

I started with Vortex and am now in too deep to trivially change to some other mod organizer. If I ever have reason to rebuild my modlist from zero rather than tinker with what I have, I might make the switch. Sunk costs and all that. I assume that you folks favor MO2?

As for xEdit... are there any good guides? I've changed a few things here and there, usually following some idiot proof step by step guide, but it still feels a bit like dark magic to me.

[viper37]

If you really mod your game so much that you are hitting the mod limit, you should learn ways to go around it.

I have reached the mod limit, more than once, and there is no work around for the esp limit.  You can convert some mods to .esl, but not all of them.  As for merging mods, it is not that easy, you need to learn a lot of xEdit before you can really do that, something I have no time to devote to.

I believe that only .esps with scripts cannot be converted to .esl.  If you have that many scripted .esps, your problem isn't going to be the mod limit, but the fact that the game engine itself is going to get totally clogged by running scripts.

Make sure you have the latest version of xEdit. It can automatically convert all eligible .esps to .esls.

I haven't touched the game since last year, I'll have to check where xEdit is at now.  I guess I'll wait for that new edition, see what's its about really.

[viper37]

You have time to put 255 mods in your game (I mean, just ensuring that they all work well together can take hours), but don't have time to learn to use xEdit?

I start with a derivate of the STEP guide, insure it's stable before running Dyndolod, then I had some mods, than the patches required to make them work together.

It is a long process, and I went overboard by a couple of mods, because of these patches. But, compared to learning a scripting language, that is not that long.  I can do the basic stuff in xEdit, but manually searching for conflicts that won't be detected is long to learn for a non programmer like me.

[viper37]

I started with Vortex and am now in too deep to trivially change to some other mod organizer. If I ever have reason to rebuild my modlist from zero rather than tinker with what I have, I might make the switch. Sunk costs and all that. I assume that you folks favor MO2?

I do favor MO2.  It easily integrates all the needed tools, easier than Vortex.  The original creater of MO is the lead programmer on Vortex.

But Vortex is made to support all kind of games, where as MO2 will only support Bethesda games like Fallout and The Elder Scrolls, so it does that best.

But lots of people have found Vortex easy to use for Skyrim.

As for xEdit... are there any good guides? I've changed a few things here and there, usually following some idiot proof step by step guide, but it still feels a bit like dark magic to me.

https://tes5edit.github.io/docs/

[Jacob]

But lots of people have found Vortex easy to use for Skyrim.

It's been "good enough" so far for me.

https://tes5edit.github.io/docs/

Thanks!

[viper37]

But lots of people have found Vortex easy to use for Skyrim.

It's been "good enough" so far for me.

People should use whatever tool they feel comfortable with.

[grumbler]

My problems with Vortex were twofold:
1.  It kept doing shit that I didn't expect, like running LOOT when I activated an .esp, forcing me tow wait a few minutes before activating the next .esp, when it would stop me and run LOOT again.  I couldn;t figure out how to make it stop doing those thins so I could do it once when everything was installed, and
2.  It was terrible at replacing and removing mods, leaving behind active .esps from mods that were uninstalled or replaced, or leaving .esps active that were from mods not active in a profile you switched to.

The whole Vortex concept was to make things invisible to the user, which meant that the user didn't have to (and, in fact, couldn't) worry about them, but I found that it was not only inferior to MO2 in terms of loading times and transparency, but actually harder for me to use.  MO2, because it doesn't actually load mods into the data directory, is much cleaner for adding, removing, and replacing mods, or switching from one profile to another.  I also found it much more transparent.  I can easily see what mods are overwriting other mods, for instance, so that if I have a mesh improvement mod for swords but it isn't appearing in-game, I can easily see what mod is actually supplying that mesh and drag-and-drop the load order to get the meshes I want to appear.

[grumbler]

It's been "good enough" so far for me.

That's the important thing.  Better is the enemy of good enough.

If you get a new game that you want to mod from the  Nexus, give MO2 a try.

[viper37]

My problems with Vortex were twofold:
1.  It kept doing shit that I didn't expect, like running LOOT when I activated an .esp, forcing me tow wait a few minutes before activating the next .esp, when it would stop me and run LOOT again.  I couldn;t figure out how to make it stop doing those thins so I could do it once when everything was installed, and
2.  It was terrible at replacing and removing mods, leaving behind active .esps from mods that were uninstalled or replaced, or leaving .esps active that were from mods not active in a profile you switched to.

The whole Vortex concept was to make things invisible to the user, which meant that the user didn't have to (and, in fact, couldn't) worry about them, but I found that it was not only inferior to MO2 in terms of loading times and transparency, but actually harder for me to use.  MO2, because it doesn't actually load mods into the data directory, is much cleaner for adding, removing, and replacing mods, or switching from one profile to another.  I also found it much more transparent.  I can easily see what mods are overwriting other mods, for instance, so that if I have a mesh improvement mod for swords but it isn't appearing in-game, I can easily see what mod is actually supplying that mesh and drag-and-drop the load order to get the meshes I want to appear.

I think #1 has been solved since.  #2, IIRC, the whole concept of Vortex was to be about virtual directories...  I don't know, I just couldn't understand how to make the thing work, so I waited on a MO2 for SSE.

[Zoupa]

Skyrim is 10 years old. Who's gonna buy that edition, seriously.

Are they even working on the next one?

[Josquius]

Somebody must be buying them, as they just keep churning them out. It be madness.