MO Madness

[garthand]

Well, I think we all knew this day was coming. I'm finally going to do a writeup on how to use MO without totally frying your game and have dragons stalking you and refusing to relinquish their souls and only the gods know what else. Maybe, given the large number of MO users, we can finally create a sane procedure that will prevent them from doing something stupid so we can start taking quality bug reports from the MO community.

 

This is very much a collaborative WIP, so feel free to let me know if I've missed something. I've listed any issues I've found, and solutions where applicable. I'll keep frying my game with MO to find any more issues.

 

Resolved Issues

• BSA Extraction: Thank the gods, this feature is no longer provided, and force-disabled. It doesn't appear you can turn it back on, as the relevant UI tab has been removed. OH GODS WHY it's still there. Under Settings -> Plugins you can enable it by double clicking on the "false" title next to "BSA Extractor." We don't want people to do this. NO MAS.

 

• LOOT Integration: A very cool feature but unfortunately requires Tannin to release an updated version of MO every time LOOT has a version update, (masterlist updates work fine). Workaround is to simply use the standalone version of LOOT, although most LOOT updates relate to metadata editing and report generation, which isn't supported by the itnegrated version of LOOT used in MO anyway, so this may not be an issue for most.

 

Under Investigation

 

• MO doesn't install mods directly into the Skyrim/Data folder and instead installs through a virtualized approach of some sort. This is fine as long as you launch Skyrim using MO, but I need to make sure that this doesn't cause issues if you have mods from multiple sources, (MO mods with Steam Workshop mods particularly).

 

• MO's archive management, (if enabled), allows users to enable a BSA archive even when the plugin is disabled. Further, load order is then determined by the order in which you sort the mods in MO, rather than the plugin load order. I haven't yet had any issues with this, but enabling a BSA without its plugin sounds like a bad idea, (can anyone comment more on this/why you would want this feature?) If this turns out to be an issue it can be easily disabled, thankfully.

 

• I'm not sure how well the Bashed Patch works with MO, given that MO can be set to use load-order voodoo while the Bashed Patch uses plugin load order. I've seen something about launching Wrye Bash through MO but there's virtually no documentation... so... yeah. Also, I'm unclear if the virtualized installation of mods through MO would create issues with Wrye Bash's Bashed Patch.

[Elgar]

I track a lot of mods on Nexus and I read their comments everyday, and I'm appalled by all the problems which turned out to be a misuse of MO. MO is maybe a good software, I don't know, but it causes a lot of trouble in the community, that is sure.

 

NMM (which is open source, people often forget it), Wrye Bash : I'm happy with them.

 

EDIT : Did you notice that MO is going to be the File of the Month ? http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/modsofthemonth/

Funny for a tool uploaded in November 2011. I suppose it is a synchronous and planned initiative by some of his supporters.

[garthand]

I track a lot of mods on Nexus and I read their comments everyday, and I'm appalled by all the problems which turned out to be a misuse of MO. MO is maybe a good software, I don't know, but it causes a lot of trouble in the community, that is sure.

 

NMM (which is open source, people often forget it), Wrye Bash : I'm happy with them.

Yeah I see a lot of bugs attributed to MO as well. It definitely seems less stable than the other modding tools, but it also tries to do everything at once, which is part of the problem. I'm personally a Nexus/Bash user, (Nexus to install, Bash to patch), but I know that's not for everyone.

[Arthmoor]

The only reason I could see to enable loading a BSA independently is if it's just mesh and texture stuff that doesn't need the ESP for anything more than loading it into the game. There are some texture mods on Steam Workshop that come this way.

 

The issue of course is, how do you determine where it loads? What then happens with the BSA files you're calling up by way of their ESP files? And really - since this is an ESP slot saving function - who the hell is loading more than 255 mods into the game anyway? Haven't we learned yet with 4 games now that this is a BAD idea?

[garthand]

The only reason I could see to enable loading a BSA independently is if it's just mesh and texture stuff that doesn't need the ESP for anything more than loading it into the game. There are some texture mods on Steam Workshop that come this way.

 

The issue of course is, how do you determine where it loads? What then happens with the BSA files you're calling up by way of their ESP files? And really - since this is an ESP slot saving function - who the hell is loading more than 255 mods into the game anyway? Haven't we learned yet with 4 games now that this is a BAD idea?

That makes sense. I can't really imagine hitting the 255 mod limit in any case. I have a ton of mods on my current playthrough, and it only numbers 78 plugins. I think it would probably be safest to just recommend MO users to disable the BSA handling feature and just let the plugins handle things as intended.

[Elgar]

 

Resolved Issues

• BSA Extraction: Thank the gods, this feature is no longer provided, and force-disabled. It doesn't appear you can turn it back on, as the relevant UI tab has been removed. 

 

Are you sure of that ? According to the MO changelog, "bsa extraction is now handled in a plugin". Yesterday there was a guy in the RFYL comments who said : "I guess I could just set MO to not extract the bsa."

[Arthmoor]

Ah. So that's the workaround for the truly dedicated insane MO users then

[garthand]

Are you sure of that ? According to the MO changelog, "bsa extraction is now handled in a plugin". Yesterday there was a guy in the RFYL comments who said : "I guess I could just set MO to not extract the bsa."

Noooooooooooo.... You're right. Updating to reflect this.

[Easykiln]

I use MO and have experienced no difficulties using Wrye bash and it together. tannin apparently was looking at baking in merge functionality at some point, but decided the current solution of launching Wrye Bash from MO was a better solution at this point. Actually, there was one thing. Wrye bash doesn't like it when you have more than the mod limit installed. Just makes it difficult to update your bashed patch when you are running AT 255 mods. Which I do. Because screw ease of playability I wanna make skyrim perfect.

 

MO gives or gave a popup notification when you enable an .esp that only loads assets, and tells you it is unnecessary. MO seems to load assets through its separate priority function for mods. The program tries to ensure you don't have conflicts between priority and load order, but it is still possible to. 

 

I prefer to use BOSS with BUM at this juncture, as I have my user rules all set up. Launch any from MO and they will work.

 

MO loads anything you have in your data folder but I am unsure of the mechanism. I know the recent update let it screw with dlc for proper positioning.

 

MO is powerful, arguably too powerful given its userbase, but a valuable tool for me.

[Octopuss]

Are you sure of that ? According to the MO changelog, "bsa extraction is now handled in a plugin". Yesterday there was a guy in the RFYL comments who said : "I guess I could just set MO to not extract the bsa."

He's probably using old version.

Currently (and I believe for more than one version already), the extraction is disabled by default, and you have to find it somewhere in the settings and enable it.

 

And Arthmoor, just because people are either stupid or don't follow instructions (or both..) doesn't mean MO is bad. Seriously, stop the hate. You could even try it sometimes

[rickychris90]

@Garthand: Maybe you had something like this in mind? 

http://wiki.step-project.com/Guide:Mod_Organizer

 

@Arthmoor: Wait, you mean you don't use MO? I may be missing something, but wouldn't it's "Profiles" feature be a godsend for developing the various patches separately?

[Arthmoor]

And Arthmoor, just because people are either stupid or don't follow instructions (or both..) doesn't mean MO is bad. Seriously, stop the hate. You could even try it sometimes

I wouldn't count on me trying it anytime soon - my initial assessment (arguably older version) was less than stellar and I simply don't trust it with my game.

 

@Arthmoor: Wait, you mean you don't use MO? I may be missing something, but wouldn't it's "Profiles" feature be a godsend for developing the various patches separately?

Nope. I have no assurance that these "profiles" would fulfill the job my development installs currently handle. It seems like a nice idea, but there's always something lurking in the background that could go wrong with that. The method I'm using now is guaranteed to avoid contamination issues.

[Octopuss]

That's exactly why you should give it a shot, even if for a short while. No idea which version were you using and when, but the changes in just past two months were rather big.

I mean, noone is forcing anyone to use anything, but your attitude towards MO can be rather harmful simply because lots of people take your words for granted, but in reality the program is really, really good. I know half of your attitude comes from the whole neverending bsa extraction thing, but that doesn't mean MO is bad, only that some types of people are imbeciles.

[garthand]

I use MO and have experienced no difficulties using Wrye bash and it together. tannin apparently was looking at baking in merge functionality at some point, but decided the current solution of launching Wrye Bash from MO was a better solution at this point. Actually, there was one thing. Wrye bash doesn't like it when you have more than the mod limit installed. Just makes it difficult to update your bashed patch when you are running AT 255 mods. Which I do. Because screw ease of playability I wanna make skyrim perfect.

 

MO gives or gave a popup notification when you enable an .esp that only loads assets, and tells you it is unnecessary. MO seems to load assets through its separate priority function for mods. The program tries to ensure you don't have conflicts between priority and load order, but it is still possible to. 

 

I prefer to use BOSS with BUM at this juncture, as I have my user rules all set up. Launch any from MO and they will work.

 

MO loads anything you have in your data folder but I am unsure of the mechanism. I know the recent update let it screw with dlc for proper positioning.

 

MO is powerful, arguably too powerful given its userbase, but a valuable tool for me.

 

Glad to hear it's working as expected. I've been toying around with it and got it to work pretty well as long as I left BSA extraction off and didn't use the MO-BSA archive ordering as opposed to basic plugin ordering. My intuition on why this was causing problems is that BSA ordering requires a separate set of priorities than the ones we use to sort plugins, and so this will probably be an issue for a while until MO catches up. That said, I'm probably only going to recommend enabling this feature if you hit the 255 mod limit anyway.

 

@Garthand: Maybe you had something like this in mind? 

http://wiki.step-project.com/Guide:Mod_Organizer

 

@Arthmoor: Wait, you mean you don't use MO? I may be missing something, but wouldn't it's "Profiles" feature be a godsend for developing the various patches separately?

Yes, thank you. I was looking for that yesterday but STEP's site was down and digging through the cached pages wasn't doing the trick.

[Arthmoor]

That's exactly why you should give it a shot, even if for a short while. No idea which version were you using and when, but the changes in just past two months were rather big.

I mean, noone is forcing anyone to use anything, but your attitude towards MO can be rather harmful simply because lots of people take your words for granted, but in reality the program is really, really good. I know half of your attitude comes from the whole neverending bsa extraction thing, but that doesn't mean MO is bad, only that some types of people are imbeciles.

Eh, well it also means there's been some poor design decisions by whoever thought such a feature was even a good idea for Skyrim, but I've been over that ground before and don't really feel like repeating it. Plus I'm not a big fan of the virtualized file system thing, and Tannin obviously isn't going to remove that.

[Octopuss]

Huh, what's wrong about that? That's likely one of the biggest advantages of MO The actual Skyrim folder remains intact, and disabling a mod is as simple as one click. I mean, how can that possibly be a bad thing?

But I guess anything's possible, because there are still people who install mods manually and are being extremely stubborn about it (like the people behind Vilja for example, and unfortunately instructions from such people are confusing as hell, because they make you scratch y our head thinking "why, wtf?!" )

[mordecai71]

Arthmoor and friends,

 

I created an account just so I could reply to this topic.  I am a long-time fan of the USKP efforts, and in general a fan of your mods, so please understand that I say the following with the deepest respect.  Also, I use the Nexus exclusively for modding, so others mileage may vary.  However, I've been using Mod Organizer for the last couple of years, and even in its earliest inception it was useful for testing new mods and not borking your Skyrim install.  Granted, there have been kinks along the way, but to me that is the cost of doing business.  USKP has required hotfixes, and even TES5Edit has experienced this along the way, so this ought not be a red flag for you.  It's current version is stable, and I have found it to be essential and certainly much more user-friendly and useful than NMM.  Yes, there will always be "those people" who can't mod their way out of a paper bag, let alone use MO properly, but again that ought to be expected by you, who stave off countless innane questions and "bug" reports.  I admit, I am a relative nobody, but I give Mod Organizer my highest endorsement, and hope that you and your team are willing to give it an unbiased shot.  If I can be of any use, I would jump at the chance, as I would consider myself an experienced MO user.  Thank you for all your effort for making Skyrim a playable and enjoyable experience!

[Elgar]

The actual Skyrim folder remains intact, and disabling a mod is as simple as one click.

 

 

even in its earliest inception it was useful for testing new mods and not borking your Skyrim install.  (...) I have found it to be essential and certainly much more user-friendly and useful than NMM.

 

 

I'm using NMM (and Wrye Bash for building the bashed patch) and I tested a lot of mods without "borking" my Skyrim installation. FYI, disabling a mod is also as simple as one click in NMM. As for NMM being less user-friendly or useful than MO, I respectfully disagree.

 

IMHO the only advantage of MO is the profile management. I don't have interest at all in this feature (which is going to be implemented in NMM by the way), since I only and always play one character, but I understand that it can be useful for a lot of players.

 

That being said, my biggest concern about MO is how many users misuse it. Like I said I crawl a lot the Nexus comments and the Bethesda forums and you can't imagine how many issues were caused by a misuse of MO (I say on purpose "by a misuse of MO" and not "by MO"). It's very different with NMM and Wrye Bash.

[mordecai71]

I apologize for the double-post, but rather than writing a wall of text, I wanted to address some of the issues that have been brought up in this topic.

 

First, regarding BSA extraction, I can certainly sympathize with you in the havok that it causes in Skyrim.  I do want to mention though, that MO is not a Skyrim-exclusive tool, but is designed to work for Oblivion and Fallout games as well, much like BOSS/LOOT.  BSA extraction can be useful for these games, thus the feature ought to remain.  Also, for certain mods, extracting BSAs is useful for mixing mods that make mesh/texture changes, such as SMIM.

 

This leads me to BSA ordering.  While it defaults to loading BSAs according to ESP priority, sometimes one might want to have an ESP load first, but have certain resources overwritten.  A personal example of this involves Immersive Armors and a house mod.  The house mod happens to use static versions of shields that are part of IM.  LOOT loads IM earlier than the house mod, but I don't want anything of IM to be overwritten.  With MO, I have three options: re-order the mods in the left pane of MO (giving IM priority), extract the IM BSA (not ideal), or re-order the BSAs so that the IM BSA loads after the house mod BSA.  Obviously people shouldn't be messing with this feature if they don't need to, but it has its uses.

 

Finally, the virtualization and profiles features.  I have never experienced any problems with this aspect, except with Oblivion and loading OBSE, which required a specific work-around (this was also last year, so this may be moot now).  My Skyrim folder contains the base install+Creation Kit files+SKSE, and that's it.  All of my mods are handled by MO, as well as my saves, and I use the Creation Kit, TES5Edit, BOSS/LOOT, and FNIS from within MO with no problems at all.  In fact, the "overwrite" folder allows me to use different animation installs (i.e., flying mod) without having to re-run FNIS every time, because I can create a new mod with FNIS files for each setup, and check the box for the one I want.  If people are having issues with these features, they are doing something very wrong and it is not the fault of MO.

 

Sorry for the long post, hope someone finds this helpful.

[mordecai71]

I'm using NMM (and Wrye Bash for building the bashed patch) and I tested a lot of mods without "borking" my Skyrim installation. FYI, disabling a mod is also as simple as one click in NMM. As for NMM being less user-friendly or useful than MO, I respectfully disagree.

 

IMHO the only advantage of MO is the profile management. I don't have interest at all in this feature (which is going to be implemented in NMM by the way), since I only and always play one character, but I understand that it can be useful for a lot of players.

 

That being said, my biggest concern about MO is how many users misuse it. Like I said I crawl a lot the Nexus comments and the Bethesda forums and you can't imagine how many issues were caused by a misuse of MO (I say on purpose "by a misuse of MO" and not "by MO"). It's very different with NMM and Wrye Bash.

Elgar,

 

I can appreciate your opinion, as each of our opinion are certainly subjective.  In my experience, NMM creates more of a hassle for installing updates to mods (let's be honest, not every mod author releases updates in a clean way), and I found myself having to manually install some updates, which for me defeats the entire purpose of the tool.  Also, I really prefer the virtualization, which keeps my Skyrim folder completely clean.  To my knowledge, this is not the case with NMM.  Again, each is entitled to their own opinion, but I find MO to be a much more useful tool than NMM.

 

Edit:  sorry, forgot to write this before posting.  I do agree with you that MO is misused, but I too read a bit of forum posts, and I can't count the number of times I see "How do I install this with NMM?" or "NMM messed up my install of X mod."  I think it's going to be a universal problem when dealing with the public at-large, there is no perfect solution.

Edited July 22, 2014 by mordecai71

[Arthmoor]

Huh, what's wrong about that? That's likely one of the biggest advantages of MO The actual Skyrim folder remains intact, and disabling a mod is as simple as one click. I mean, how can that possibly be a bad thing?

But I guess anything's possible, because there are still people who install mods manually and are being extremely stubborn about it (like the people behind Vilja for example, and unfortunately instructions from such people are confusing as hell, because they make you scratch y our head thinking "why, wtf?!" )

One very big reason comes to mind. If you suspect MO may have done something to your install, and your Data folder is devoid of any mods, you can't validate your setup by launching the game via the official launcher, or in any other way outside of MO. It is effectively a means to lock you in with no easy way to eliminate MO as a potential point of failure in your setup. And it can happen easily enough when people mess with things they should not be touching.

Also, seriously, if a mod consists of an ESP+BSA, you don't need a mod manager to install that at all. The only thing you need is a way to move the ESP into a proper load order position. I would submit if you're savvy enough to conquer MO, you can handle manually installing 2 files to the Data folder and manually sorting them into their proper location. Which kind of means you're bringing a sledgehammer in to do a regular hammer's job.

 

USKP has required hotfixes, and even TES5Edit has experienced this along the way, so this ought not be a red flag for you.

USKP has had hotfixes, and will continue to need them. No project of this size can escape it. Whether or not one uses MO has no bearing on this.

Honestly, I would not count on convincing the team to switch. We're all pretty diehard supporters of Wrye Bash and aren't likely to change that opinion anytime soon unless MO does something shocking that we simply can't ignore - like gain the ability to do Bashed Patches at the level Oblivion could.

Right now though, we're happy with what we have. MO comes across as being far too complex with too many pathways to ruin to be of value to us.

 

I do want to mention though, that MO is not a Skyrim-exclusive tool, but is designed to work for Oblivion and Fallout games as well, much like BOSS/LOOT. BSA extraction can be useful for these games, thus the feature ought to remain.

The point I've made many times before now though - Skyrim is not these older games. Attempting to force it to be treated as such is something I view as a fool's errand. With Oblivion, BSA files are actually problematic in the event they contain overlapping filenames. The game is known to CTD from that, or if you're lucky just load random BS instead of what you were expecting. Even if all the file dates are correct. It's why the vast majority of OB mods use loose files - there's basically no other sound way to handle it. So in that respect, BSA extraction is largely useless since there are very few mods that ship with them, and those who do, the BSA files all contain assets unique to that mod so loading them in screwball orders is meaningless.

I would submit though that it's probably not the place of a mod installation and management tool to include this sort of thing. We have external extraction tools for a reason

[zilav]

I have to agree with Arthmoor here.
When MO just appeared, I wrote my concerns about it on official forum saying that the way it works might cause troubles down the road (and that I won't be using it), and now the current situation proves that I was right. People treat MO like a mod manager, however in reality it is a virtual file system for a game. Needless to say, majority understands what the former is, but don't have a clue about the later. And with wide spread usage of different executable tools in Skyrim modding this became a trouble. I too see comments on nexus from people having problems narrowed down to MO misusing quite frequently, and stumbled on them myself even in TES5Edit thread. And for any developer nothing causes more frustration than dealing with issues caused by (misuse of) 3rd party applications.
Is MO good? Yes, it is. Is it better than Wrye Bash for example? No, it is not. It is actually worse imho.
Additional features like profiles, fast switching and clean data folder don't mean anything for a lot of people who play a single character and use already mentioned Wrye Bash or NMM.
MO is just another mod manager, it has it's cons and pros like any other tool. What I don't understand is the obsession of some MO users luring others into using it saying it is revolutionaty and better than other managers. Feels like a sect

[Leonardo]

That's exactly why you should give it a shot, even if for a short while. No idea which version were you using and when, but the changes in just past two months were rather big.

I mean, noone is forcing anyone to use anything, but your attitude towards MO can be rather harmful simply because lots of people take your words for granted, but in reality the program is really, really good. I know half of your attitude comes from the whole neverending bsa extraction thing, but that doesn't mean MO is bad, only that some types of people are imbeciles.

Well then take my word for it.  I'm with Arthmoor on this one and I don't use MO either for the exactly same reason as Arthmoor has about the features MO have.

 

Also, I've no intention to use MO or even try it either in the near future unless MO were improved with some awesome *super* features that makes Wrye Bash to become an ancient legacy as a reminder of the golden old days.

 

I don't remember when it got started, but there is a thread about using MO for Morrowind floating around somewhere in the Morrowind Mods forum at the officials.  Actually there were two threads about MO.

 

http://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/1471301-mod-organizer-for-morrowind/

http://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/1466764-any-tools-like-modorganizer-or-tes5fnvedit-for-mw/

[mordecai71]

Arthmoor and Zilav,

 

Please, do not misunderstand me in my posting.  I am not trying to convince anyone that they need to use MO, nor am I trying to say that Wrye Bash is sub-par.  My only intent was to explain why I personally endorse MO, and am trying to elucidate any confusion on the (improper) use of MO.  Yes, at its core, it is a virtual file system.  This system is being used as a file (mod) manager to load information into a program.  But it does much more than this, in an effort to help the user customize what information is being loaded into the program, and in what order.  This, IMHO, is perhaps the greatest argument for including utilities such as BSA extraction, as it would be more cumbersome to use external tools within MO just to extract a BSA.  As it is a virtual file system, one would expect it to be able to, well, manage files.

 

If you suspect MO may have done something to your install, and your Data folder is devoid of any mods, you can't validate your setup by launching the game via the official launcher, or in any other way outside of MO. It is effectively a means to lock you in with no easy way to eliminate MO as a potential point of failure in your setup. And it can happen easily enough when people mess with things they should not be touching.

 

This is actually the beauty of MO, in that everything is modular.  It is quite easy to see if something was installed improperly, simply by double-clicking on a mod and going to the filetree view.  You can even look at your virtual "data" directory in the right pane, and it tells you what is where and what mod has priority.  If things are installed properly, then you can view your profile's settings, .ini files, or the program's settings (which really ought to be left at their default).  Yes, people can mess with things they shouldn't be, but I feel that goes for any mod manager.

 

Also, seriously, if a mod consists of an ESP+BSA, you don't need a mod manager to install that at all.

 

I wish this were the case for all mods.  They are for yours, which is greatly appreciated.  But many are not.  As an example, I use Mighty Magick Skyrim.  Unfortunately, the mod author never got around to merging all of his updates into the main file, so there are 5 files to download and install.  This was the mod that drove me away from NMM, because it just could not install properly.  With MO, you download a file, and when it installs you tell it to replace.  Done.  Others, like SkyTEST as an example, have BSAs, but have loose-file patches.  In MO, you just merge the files with the main mod installed.

 

USKP has had hotfixes, and will continue to need them. No project of this size can escape it. Whether or not one uses MO has no bearing on this.

 

I apologize for being unclear, this was not what I meant.  What I meant was, yes, there have been bugs and hiccups with MO releases, which required bugfixes.  I was trying to say that this ought to be expected with a "project" of this size, which you stated as well.

 

I do not think all modders should use MO, as it obviously causes problems when people don't RTFM.  To be fair, people also have difficulty using NMM and Wrye Bash (especially, it seems, with SkyRe/Requiem, ASIS, etc.).  When I first started using Wrye in Oblivion, I felt completely lost.  Instructional videos were very helpful, but it still took some use to gain familiarity.  IMHO, this is the same with MO.  I could have done real damage to my install, but instead I switched over to OBMM and stuck with that.  It was not because Wrye was inadequate, in fact it did too much for my needs.  Perhaps that is why MO is so appealing to me.  It suits my personal needs, as each person is entitled to their own methods.  All in all, I think it comes down to preference.  If you only have one character ever and all of your mods have BSAs, then MO is probably not for you.  If you have 3 people playing on one Skyrim install, and each person prefers their own mod setup, then MO quickly becomes very useful.  There is utility to this program, I promise, for whatever that is worth.  Again, sorry for the wall of text.

[KNakamura]

Speaking as someone who tried to uninstall MO and then promptly had Skyrim go "WTF MATE, ALL OF YOUR STUFF IS MISSING" I can't say I'm a huge fan of the virtual file system