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Is S.T.E.P lying about mod management?


Leonardo

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(Please forgive any spelling errors. I'm terrible with spelling and Firefox's spell check isn't working on these forums right now.)

Believe me, I know what you mean since I once use Firefox, but then a Java vulnerability was identified so I switched over to Pale Moon.

 

I'd like to reply to a few of the comments in a constuctive way. One thing I haven't seen mentioned is that STEP used to be completely based on WB. It took a lot of testing and allowing MO to mature before we made the switch so we are very aware of both sides of the fence.

 

MO is a very powerful mod manager and is more simple to use for new users. I realize this is a subjective statement and hard to understand for some long-time WB users, but it's what we found out during our testing and switching the Guide over to MO. I assume it's because the intial interface is less intimidating and more intuitive for new users. MO hides a lot of its features within menus/tabs as Arthmoor (or someone) mentioned; however, this seems like a good thing. You don't need access to all those features and tools all the time so MO declutters the interface by moving them to menus/tabs. We you do need a specific feature, it's only two clicks away in most cases. I don't view this as a negitive as many many programs are designed this way that users are already used to using, but rather I see it as a positive since it frees up the main interface for the most used features and information.

What you just describe about MO is almost the same as it once were for OBMM, easy to use for anyone, however, there were a lot of things you need as an OBBM user to keep in mind and that's what mod(s) you could install in OBMM, but also what mod(s) you shouldn't install in OBMM and one mod that I've used for almost every character in Oblivion is Cobl.

 

You cannot install Cobl in OBMM then start Oblivion without having a CTD, granted it is impossible, because Cobl must be managed in Wrye Bash via the bashed patch to work properly. Otherwise a lot of issues will pop up just like that in-game and who wants to have issues if you can prevent it from happening. That is what makes Wrye Bash so powerful if you have learned from the beginning of how to install mods and manage a heavily modded game in Wrye Bash to make a game stable.

Sorry I if disappoint you a bit, but I can't find anything in MO that actually enhance any Wrye Bash feature with a result that has even better outcome in MO than using the actual feature in Wrye Bash itself.  After reading the quoted S.T.E.P introduction in the OP plus a lot of other stuff, I would say there is nothing in MO as a mod manager that's better for a new player to start with then start to learn how Wrye Bash really works.

 

One of the main advantages of swtiching STEP to MO was a few of its core features. The VFS allowed users to experiment and dive into modding without messing up their Skyrim installation because MO doesn't touch the installtation; leaving it in a vanilla state. I remember when we were exclusively using WB. We recommended users back up their vanilla Skyrim installation, because eventually it will need to be restored.

You know that's one thing I find to be misleading, because you can always restore Skyrim via a Windows System Restore Point entry.  Of course if you had keep it.

 

Almost all new modders run into this issue eventually. WB also didn't uninstall some mods cleanly; leaving some files behind. This is the whole reason we have the "uninstalls cleanly" flag on our mod pages on the our wiki. That flag is leftover from WB days when some mods weren't completely removed from the Data folder when uninstalled. MO's VFS emilimiated much of these issues for us.

What? Have never heard of such thing before that Wrye Bash doesn't uninstall mod files properly.  

 

I am not a member of the Wrye Bash team, but I think Arthmoor and probably zilav would like to read a confirmed test result about what suppose to be an issue for MO users.

If MO's VFS eliminates that kind of "issues" for most MO users, then I'm quite sure that most of those users who once ran into that kind of problems will definitely have issues with MO in the future due to such a feature could cause a lot of other issues.

 

Another great feaure was the "hide" feature. MO allows you to hide individual files for quick and easy conflict resolution. This allows the user to keep the files incase they ever need to revert changes at a later time. I can remember in WB you had to deleted the files for some conflict resolution and then reinstall the mod if you need to undo those changes. The hide feature allowed STEP greater control over the installation of mods without sacrificing the mod installation. If files are needed again, you simply unhide them.

You can do exactly the same thing in Wrye Bash, so that's another piece of information that I find to be misleading in the S.T.E.P guide.

Have you ever heard about the Anneal feature that ONLY exist via BAIN in Wrye Bash?

 

Finally, one of the other facts that led us towards MO was development. It's common knowledge that WB's development has significantly slowed and even coming to a halt several times. MO is under constant development and improvement by Tannin. WB has recently had a bit of updating here and there but nothing consistent from what I can tell by looking at its Nexus page.

That's NOT a valid excuse to abandoned Wrye Bash to start with, and then start to develop MO in a direction that will stray mod users away from Wrye Bash to MO.

How about offer your skill and knowledge to the Wrye Bash team in first the place, instead of crossing a line and simply let Wrye Bash to die out.

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The Wrye BAsh guides on S.T.E.P are really good, not maintained as much as they used to be ( which is understandable now that MO has been chosen as the supporting tool for the whole STEP process ) .. I might get time to contribute on the STEP wiki again sometime, but not just now because RL.

 

Does MO allow you to turn off the VFS ?

 

My only beef with it is it does not do a bashed patch, otherwise I would have adopted it a long time ago. Tannin is brilliant, I had a good look at it when it first started getting developed for Oblivion and the quality of what Tannin can achieve was obvious even back then ..

 

.. But if I need Wrye Bash anyway then I do not need a whole other mod manager to do the same jobs, and the VFS to me just equals loading all your files from a different place on the hard drive, and adding a process to manage the juggling act = No point, and less optimal.

 

 

Wrye Bash is a lot more reliable at keeping track of files again in recent versions - Until Skyrim development started that has always been its main strength versus older mod managers such as OBMM which could royally screw up an install sometimes. OBMMex was better, and NMM has proved to be very reliable in this regard ( probably benefitting from FOMM development finally putting the nail on the coffin of bad file management )

Wrye Bash lost its file management reliability for a few versions, but I dont have any problems with such in the latest version ( though I have a feeling - nothing concrete - that BAIN can still hiccup for some depending on the scripting of the wizard .. I have no examples to offer Bash development of that )

 

Ironically I am currently only using Bash for mod installation - And using a Smashed Patch with a lot of personal tweaking exclusively, that script has lots of potential to be the best patching method we have ever had. Hopefully Mator can get it to be very user friendly and one day implement his proposed Bash Tagging method one way or another.

 

So to sum up, if I could turn off VFS, and BSA management was off by default, and it did a bashed patch .. I might have been a convert. But as it is I just dont need it for anything.

 

 

Edit : Urk ! - Just found out NMM is going to be doing a VFS thing too, more headaches for tool authors which will need to work with it like they have to adapt to having a solution for MO users aswell.

 

Really glad I turn off comments on my mods. Hopefully my dual scripted installers ( Bash Wizard + FOMod xml ) will not fall foul of any of these developments.

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I can be brief, because TechAngel, Spock and Keith have all stated facts and opinions that are accruate and aligned with my own. I just want to address some of the more inflamatory stuff that serves no purpose at all but to spur angst and hard feelings:

 

STEP is not a site devoted to marketing MO, it is a site devoted to the modding community at large. This is stated just about everywhere on that site. Anyone that disagrees has either not read through our guides or web pages or is in some way incensed. Those making such statements have zero credibility in my book and should probably look at the facts rather than succumb to their own or others' irrational emotive forces.

 

STEP advocates the use of WB. I was a personal spokesperson for WB early on in STEP evolution. We began STEP with WB as the primary tool for mod management, and I personally turned my nose up at MO users and with good reason. Since that time, MO has rapidly evolved into a polished tool with more in its toolset than any other mod manager at this point. We moved to MO when it became clear that MO was more actively developed and simpler for modding newcomers to learn. MO also facilitates vastly simpler instructions due to its many features, UI consistency, scant few bugs, thoroughness of documentation, and support availability. Also, MO is modular with other potential tools developed to use its API. We envision using optional MO plugins specifically designed for use with STEP (not yet developed). Adding plugins to WB would be virtually impossible without a complete rewrite of the base code (which arguably is well overdue). Finally, because MO allows integration of other apps to extend its functionality, it is the natural ctool of choice in a guided setup like STEP. WB works just as well, but it is much harder to support and learn ... and WB original devs are not members of our community with any committment to support our users. Nevertheless, we host a unique WB guide with prominent links and dedicated support forums. Sharlikran recently becan dev posting on our site in hopes of garnering support in his efforts. He is well received if not adequately assisted over there. I fully support his efforts in spirit if not in sweat (I am waaay too involved in too many projects). Ditto for zilav and his projects.

 

STEP does not trash-talk WB or its users or developers. Some in our community may have rancorous opinions, but mods and administrators shut them down pretty effectively, just as I hope that the relatively minor banter in beration of the STEP community is shut down over here. We are all into TES modding, so let's all stop complaining and deconstructively fanning the flames of controversy around topics and subjects that are ancillary to that point. Let's all create accounts on all the respected modding-community sites and help each other out (I have accounts at all of the relevant community hosting sites).

 

STEP is not a community of liars. (First, thanks to Arthmoor and a few others for at least disuading that talk.) The thought of addressing this point with any rationale would only add credibility to its inherent redioculousness, so I won't.

 

Have your opinion, state your opinion, but please refrain from non-constructive banter that we all know will just invite more opposing opinions delivered likewise and without value to anyone but the drama queens of the internet. I will post similarly on our site if it has not already been taken care of by our judicious and righteous staff.

 

Finally, we appreciate all that the other factions of TES modding are doing (less the non-constructive stuff), including AFK, and we support their efforts. Modding would not be where it is today were it not for these people, factions, and communities.

 

TIA

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As for the whole BSA argument, one thing that everyone seems to forget is that BSA management by the game is wrong. Tannin fixed it.

See, when I read statements like this, all I can do is this: :facepalm:

 

The GAME is what determines what's right and what's not. The GAME loads BSA files in the order specified by their parent plugin files. Wrye Bash gets this. NMM gets this. Even the other mostly unknown mod managers out there get this. Yes, there are several, so obscure most people don't even know about them. MO is the only mod manager that actively defies what the game has been programmed to do.

 

There was nothing here to fix, so how could Tannin have "fixed" anything?

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Got to agree with Arthmoors last point, BSA management is something Bethesda finally got right for this game ( after a bit of coaching from the community which they actually listened to, and the load order development that happened early in Skyrims life ), anyone who remembers the hoops we used to jump through in understanding Oblivions problems knows this much http://devnull.sweetdanger.net/archiveinvalidation.html ( Scroll down to "Technical Details" near the bottom of the page )

 

Edit : For anyone reading this who still have Oblivion but were previously unaware of the details in that link - Be advised some of it is no longer recommended as good practice : BSA Redirection is the best method ( as used by Wrye Bash when managing that game - See this screenshot from the Wrye Bash Pictorial Guide )

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See, when I read statements like this, all I can do is this: :facepalm:

/snip

 

I just don't see that it is helpful to post snippets from other forums out of context. He was implying that Tannin "fixed it" with regard to how MO was doing things previously. Now MO allows the user to defer BSA management to the game just as you say or it allows the user to apply an eloquent management method that works nicely for those that know what they are doing. We have a guide for a reason, and that is to provide the info necessary to prevent the user from breaking mods like yours that are developed with a specific implementation in mind.

 

If you would post in the relevant venue, then we could stay on topic in both places ;)

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Well that's not what he said. If he meant "Tannin fixed MO's previously broken handling of BSAs" that would be one thing. He specifically said the GAME was wrong, and that's flat out ridiculous. That's rehashing an engine bug that's been resolved for over 3 years now and it presents MO users as isolationists who are not aware that things in the larger world have changed.

 

I still think it's attempting to address an issue that doesn't exist, but hey, that's been hashed and rehashed a million times already. It seems that pretty much everyone is just going to go on treating Skyrim like it's Oblivion, up to and including how to handle BSAs and mod installs and uninstalls. You might guess of course that this sort of thing grates on me like you wouldn't believe :P

 

As far as relevant venues, this thread was doing fine until Octo trolled it via the STEP forum.

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I can be brief, because TechAngel, Spock and Keith have all stated facts and opinions that are accruate and aligned with my own.

Well accuracy is debatable that's for sure.

 

STEP is not a site devoted to marketing MO, it is a site devoted to the modding community at large. This is stated just about everywhere on that site. Anyone that disagrees has either not read through our guides or web pages or is in some way incensed. Those making such statements have zero credibility in my book and should probably look at the facts rather than succumb to their own or others' irrational emotive forces.

I disagree, but I don't think I need to remind you what opinions I have about MO.

 

STEP advocates the use of WB. I was a personal spokesperson for WB early on in STEP evolution. We began STEP with WB as the primary tool for mod management, and I personally turned my nose up at MO users and with good reason.

If S.T.E.P really has that purpose to advocate usage of Wrye Bash then remove this line from the linked S.T.E.P guide in the OP asap, otherwise it might sounds a bit misleading.

 

Although Wrye Bash is a mod manager, STEP recommends that it only be used as a helper application to Mod Organizer exclusively for the functionality of the Bashed Patch."

Wrye Bash is definitely NOT a helper application for MO, instead what really should be recommended for any user is that MO is an application that offer advanced mod management in addition to permanent use of Wrye Bash.

 

So what I'm trying to say here is basically, please stop pretend MO to be a primarily mod tool for any players, especially when some features in MO relies on the features that only exist in Wrye Bash.

 

STEP is not a community of liars. (First, thanks to Arthmoor and a few others for at least disuading that talk.) The thought of addressing this point with any rationale would only add credibility to its inherent redioculousness, so I won't.

I didn't say that.  I was ONLY asking; if S.T.E.P was lying about mod management, which is totally different. :angry:

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Bash may have some rough spots, and an unorthodox UI, but the things you guys are claiming about it are patently false. If they were at all true, nobody would be using it at all and it never would have taken hold as the goto tool for Oblivion either.

 

BAIN was the goto mod manager at the time because it was first to introduce an uninstall feature. I almost instantly jumped at it because of that and advocated for it's use on the bethsoft forums (many mods where packed for Timeslips Manager back then, which used some predecessor of FOMOD but couldn't restore files on uninstalls).

I can report that with several different big installs, two for Oblivion back in the day and one for Skyrim I got some issues though. I think I remember also using it for Morrowind but that is really too long ago, I did most of the Morrowind mod installations by hand when I started. At some magic threshhold of about 450 packages with multiple uninstalls/reorders etc. it started to act bogus. This is quite some years ago so I cannot recall all the details but I certainly checked files in my data folder and I did multiple anneals, anneal alls and reinstall alls in my mod list and not everything was installed the way it should have. If I remember right, I even got missing textures at some point because of incorrect uninstalls.

 

I certainly did not devote as much time to modding TES games as you did but I would probably count as power user. The issues where way too bogus to file a proper report, it could have been all kinds of weird stuff. It might even have been that BAIN didn't like me closing the app before finishing the install check some times (it took ages on my old HDD back then). At times I got impatiant after hours and hours of installing, uninstalling, rebuilding patches, re-reading the install data etc (and I was a younger back then). I used to alt-tab a lot, switching panels a lot, sometimes killing the process so I wouldn't have to wait another 2 minutes for the installer to boot, put new archives into the folder while BAIN was updating/installing etc.

But the bottom line is, I got issues with BAIN on multiple installs with different hardware and different Windows versions, standalone and python installs. I certainly got incomplete uninstalls plus some other issues (like BAIN wanting an anneal for files I really didn't touch etc). While I admit I might have pushed BAIN a little to hard in the past, I also had familliar issues when I got into Skryim for the first time.

 

Since I feel kind of adressed by your marketing post: Most of my BAIN experience comes from a time way before STEP or MO even existed. I'm also not saying that MO is simply the best way to go. And lastly I'm not trying to bash BAIN, WB is a critical and marvellous tool for TES modding (especially the oblivion bashed patch). It was a real boon when Wrye stepped on the modding scene back then!

BAIN just hasn't been the rock solid manager tool for me you make it out to be. Maybe it is now, I cannot tell, but there have been issues in the past. It certainly was by far the best tool we had at the time though (if it still is, is a matter of debate).

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Leo, do you realise that the whole of the STEP Forum ( and the wiki ), is in support of the STEP Project ?. Have you ever used it ?.

 

Its not like any other community, the whole thing has a specialist goal, and anything they say there is for that aim, and not general advice. What is said in the guides is in support and geared towards the whole project.

 

When you consider that, I see nothing wrong with what they have said on one of their guides that Wrye Bash should be considered by STEP users as a helper tool toward the common goal, when MO is the current chosen ( and documented throughout the rest of all the guides ) primary mod manipulation tool for the project.

 

Personally I think this whole topic is just a lack of understanding.

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BAIN just hasn't been the rock solid manager tool for me you make it out to be. Maybe it is now, I cannot tell, but there have been issues in the past. It certainly was by far the best tool we had at the time though (if it still is, is a matter of debate).

You know how others say that most of MO's problems are attributable to user error? Well. This is a fine example of what happens when you abuse a program to the point of insanity.

BAIN is indeed the rock solid manager tool I make it out to be. Thousands upon thousands of users can vouch for the same. It had exactly one problem version where some stuff went wonky - after Skyrim released - which were promptly addressed in the next version and haven't been an issue now for quite some time.

Killing processes and aborting program actions is not even close to a normal use case. I put that on par with people who report vanilla bugs in Skyrim after having heavily abused the use of the console to advance quests and otherwise cheat heavily.

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2. Most of you aren't in the trenches getting hammered by MO-induced problems on a daily basis. It happens often enough, and several have posted that they were directed back to authors to fix phantom issues. It's almost enough to just say screw it and shut down the Nexus comment threads so we can all get some peace from it.

 

Bash may have some rough spots, and an unorthodox UI, but the things you guys are claiming about it are patently false. If they were at all true, nobody would be using it at all and it never would have taken hold as the goto tool for Oblivion either.

As for the trenches and MO issues, STEP is most surely down in there with you guys. We do host the official support forums for MO, after all. If you want to, please send users over to those support forums. We've made some of Tannin's "best helpers" Moderators on those fourms and they are fairly well taken care of. Please send them our way so you don't have to deal with MO specific support! http://forum.step-project.com/forum/62-mod-organizer-support/

 

The same can be said of MO. If all the issues stated here were true. No one would be using it. It's slowly catching up to WB on the user base from if they're not already even yet. It has twice the endorsements; however, you can't really judge anything based on those arbitrary Nexus values.

 

 

You know that's one thing I find to be misleading, because you can always restore Skyrim via a Windows System Restore Point entry.  Of course if you had keep it.

 

What? Have never heard of such thing before that Wrye Bash doesn't uninstall mod files properly.  

 

That's NOT a valid excuse to abandoned Wrye Bash to start with, and then start to develop MO in a direction that will stray mod users away from Wrye Bash to MO.

How about offer your skill and knowledge to the Wrye Bash team in first the place, instead of crossing a line and simply let Wrye Bash to die out.

You probably shouldn't be using Windows Restore for that purpose. Windows System Restore will revert a lot more than just your Skyrim installation. Windows Backup would be better suited or a third-party backup program.

 

It used to be a common problem in WB, that some mods wouldn't uninstall completely. Normal users might not experience it; however, anyone doing a lot of modding and testing like for the STEP Guide will have experienced it.

 

As for support, I can't. I'm not a programmer and from my understanding, that is the main reason for WB's stall in development...lack of knowledgable programmers. I don't code Python or any coding langauge for that matter or I would offer some support because WB is a great tool. I have never said it wasn't. We still use it, for the time being, for the Bash Patch feature.

 

 

Does MO allow you to turn off the VFS ?

 

My only beef with it is it does not do a bashed patch, otherwise I would have adopted it a long time ago.

 

Edit : Urk ! - Just found out NMM is going to be doing a VFS thing too, more headaches for tool authors which will need to work with it like they have to adapt to having a solution for MO users aswell.

You can not turn off the VFS in MO.

 

MO doesn't have a bashed patch because Tannin felt the one in WB was sufficient and MO users can simply use that one. However, as you pointed out Mator Smash has been developed which might replace the Bashed Patch in the near furture. It's too early to tell.

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Leo, do you realise that the whole of the STEP Forum ( and the wiki ), is in support of the STEP Project ?. Have you ever used it ?.

 

Its not like any other community, the whole thing has a specialist goal, and anything they say there is for that aim, and not general advice. What is said in the guides is in support and geared towards the whole project.

 

When you consider that, I see nothing wrong with what they have said on one of their guides that Wrye Bash should be considered by STEP users as a helper tool toward the common goal, when MO is the current chosen ( and documented throughout the rest of all the guides ) primary mod manipulation tool for the project.

 

Personally I think this whole topic is just a lack of understanding.

That is part true. Most of what we do is, in fact, geared towards STEP and not the general public. However, many of our Guides on the wiki are actually geared toward the public. The MO Guide is an example of this. We're going to be recommending to turn off a feature in MO for the STEP Guide; however, this information will not be in the MO Guide because it's geared for general use. Many of our Guides (MO, WB, ENB, etc) are geared toward public use because there was a lack of proper information out there for many of the guide subject matters. Prime example is the ENB Guide. No where can you find, in one place, all the information gathered and presented in that Guide. We did this because we love what we do and wanted to provide this information for the community at large.

 

So right now I would say it's about 50/50. 50% what STEP does and provides is for STEP use only, and the other 50% is for the community.

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:rolleyes: TA you just discredited my attempt to bring this subject to an end.

 

Leo is not a native speaker, and the whole topic hinges around what he believes as your site dissing Wrye Bash as a helper to MO

 

In his opinion Wrye Bash should be the king of the heap not the hired help, which is just wishful thinking these days of course in its current state compaired with what it used to be in Oblivion days ( and that coming from me, a long time Wrye Bash maniac ) .. But I digress

 

My point being was that Wrye Bash is not being slandered, demeaned or otherwise verbally abused, just merely ( in the case where it has been highlighted ) surplus to requirement in the grand scheme of things if you have your STEP Project head on - Which anyone who does not participate there regularly would not entirely understand.

I get that I was not factually correct, and that some articles are indeed very helpful for a lot of people who do not use the project ..

 

Just trying to bring this rubbish to a close

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Maybe...maybe not. I only deal in facts when possible though and I don't want other users reading the thread thinking that STEP only offers things relevant to STEP users. That's not true becuase we do a lot beyond the project itself. I commend what you're trying to do, but I'm not here to change people's minds or opinions. Just looking to keep the information about STEP relevant and factual and maybe answer a few questions, nothing more. I'm not even going to deabte the MO vs WB that seems to have taken over the thread that was originally aimed toward STEP. The versus debate isn't going to go anywhere so there's no point in getting involved in that.

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Seems pretty clear to me that we were right about two things:

 

1. STEP is definitely a marketing arm for MO. Several statements above more or less prove it.

2. Most of you aren't in the trenches getting hammered by MO-induced problems on a daily basis. It happens often enough, and several have posted that they were directed back to authors to fix phantom issues. It's almost enough to just say screw it and shut down the Nexus comment threads so we can all get some peace from it.

 

Bash may have some rough spots, and an unorthodox UI, but the things you guys are claiming about it are patently false. If they were at all true, nobody would be using it at all and it never would have taken hold as the goto tool for Oblivion either.

 

Please don't corral me into the group of people claiming false things about Bash. I did nothing of the sort.

 

I have no interest in making comparisons between mod managers or saying which one is the best for everyone.

 

I know that you won't support those using MO who come posting about issues with the UPs or your mods. That's fine, I respect that. They are your mods, shared freely after countless hours of work into them, and you choose whether and who to help.

 

My post was entirely a response to your statements which add up to imply that MO is flawed in a way that it can never be used to mod the game "properly".

 

I fully disagree with that, and I backed it up with facts from direct personal experience. Again, I firmly believe it can be used to safely mod the game with everything acting as expected and without issue. As I said, people just need to understand how to use the tool properly. That goes for MO, WB, NMM, anything.

 

But I see cases every day, not even remotely as much as you do, of people screwing things up again and again and again. No need for MO for that - it can be done with any mod manager really. Plugin form record overrides of one mod wrecking the functions of another, not following instructions, ignoring "good modding practices", and so on. All due to blissful ignorance.

 

I see your point about the BSA management feature opening up a Pandora's Box, really I do. But take MO out of the picture, and there's still plenty to be complaining about, the vast majority as a result of all that blissful ignorance.

 

Yeah, even if there was no MO, I'd still be subverting the BSA asset ordering by unpacking and installing things the way I want. But at least I know where the limits to doing that are - including knowing what fixed / edited script files need to overwrite what, and I know better than to go running to mod authors for help if things get wonky. But they don't, for me. Funny, that.

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This argument is getting out of hand. =/

 

I'm pretty sure the STEP Forums aren't the marketting arm of MO. They don't really need to be. They're the converted.

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You know how others say that most of MO's problems are attributable to user error? Well. This is a fine example of what happens when you abuse a program to the point of insanity.

BAIN is indeed the rock solid manager tool I make it out to be. Thousands upon thousands of users can vouch for the same. It had exactly one problem version where some stuff went wonky - after Skyrim released - which were promptly addressed in the next version and haven't been an issue now for quite some time.

Killing processes and aborting program actions is not even close to a normal use case. I put that on par with people who report vanilla bugs in Skyrim after having heavily abused the use of the console to advance quests and otherwise cheat heavily.

I really only did this the first time I used WB. Like I said, I was a lot younger by then, learning and stuff...

 

The issues I got with my Skyrim install with BAIN where familliar though. It always started with mods wanting an anneal that I didn't touch at all after moving mods around. And by I didn't touch at all means I didn't change the install order of any mods it showed file conflicts with.

 

Instructions for reproduction: Install a big modlist (e.g. STEP: Extended), add more mods with lots of files (e.g. Falskaar, Skyrim hd texture pack, Immersive Creatures, Requiem etc.), you should hit about 450 packages. Now start swapping file heavy mods, uninstall, change position, anneal etc. like someone who likes to go over the top with his mod list but is unsure what to use. At this point I always started seeing strange issues.

 

BAIN always worked fine until I hit some kind of magic barrier of files it had to handle, it almost felt like some sort of code limit.

 

And to be honest, the system theoretically seems more prone to errors then a virtual file system. Because BAIN has to keep track of every file and every overwrite of every file, even one error can break the system and start to multiply. This is the nature of recursive systems. A virtual file system allows for an explicit handling of the logic behind uninstalling and shifting install orders, which theoretically allows for easier error detection and recovery.

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Only issues I've ever had with WB are the terrible UI and that one time it wasn't uninstalling correctly.

 

If I had the time and skills I might make something like MO except instead of going the loose files route I'd make it auto-package loose file mods :X

 

Actually, I wonder if MO would support that kind of plugin as is?

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I really only did this the first time I used WB. Like I said, I was a lot younger by then, learning and stuff...

 

The issues I got with my Skyrim install with BAIN where familliar though. It always started with mods wanting an anneal that I didn't touch at all after moving mods around. And by I didn't touch at all means I didn't change the install order of any mods it showed file conflicts with.

 

Instructions for reproduction: Install a big modlist (e.g. STEP: Extended), add more mods with lots of files (e.g. Falskaar, Skyrim hd texture pack, Immersive Creatures, Requiem etc.), you should hit about 450 packages. Now start swapping file heavy mods, uninstall, change position, anneal etc. like someone who likes to go over the top with his mod list but is unsure what to use. At this point I always started seeing strange issues.

 

BAIN always worked fine until I hit some kind of magic barrier of files it had to handle, it almost felt like some sort of code limit.

 

And to be honest, the system theoretically seems more prone to errors then a virtual file system. Because BAIN has to keep track of every file and every overwrite of every file, even one error can break the system and start to multiply. This is the nature of recursive systems. A virtual file system allows for an explicit handling of the logic behind uninstalling and shifting install orders, which theoretically allows for easier error detection and recovery.

I've been using BAIN on my Oblivion install with more or less the conditions you describe for years and it's never caused any problems whatsoever, aside from the one version that had an issue with proper cleanup of some files. That issue was also limited to leaving behind empty folders. Not their contents.

 

I have probably 500-600 packages currently being managed by BAIN in Oblivion now, and I do test runs against it regularly since Utumno is trying to address some issues with the slow UI responses. Things have improved hugely in that area recently but there's still work to do. They're also HUGE packages with thousands of loose files being managed.

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I've been using BAIN on my Oblivion install with more or less the conditions you describe for years and it's never caused any problems whatsoever, aside from the one version that had an issue with proper cleanup of some files. That issue was also limited to leaving behind empty folders. Not their contents.

 

I have probably 500-600 packages currently being managed by BAIN in Oblivion now, and I do test runs against it regularly since Utumno is trying to address some issues with the slow UI responses. Things have improved hugely in that area recently but there's still work to do. They're also HUGE packages with thousands of loose files being managed.

And so do I, but in contrast to you I manage to *forget* to update Wrye Bash to the version that had the "no files cleanup" issue due to RL.  Other than that nothing serious in Wrye Bash since I started to use Wrye Bash for Oblivion in late Summer 2010.

 

It would be interesting to see the result when comparing the process of 500-600 packages in BAIN vs MO when Wrye Bash has been started via MO.

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I wouldn't even want to entertain the idea of trying to mass shift 600 mod packages into another mod manager at this stage of things. I don't actually PLAY Oblivion anymore and barely touch it for modding so I have no incentive to switch, regardless of what the converted have to say about MO.

 

I still play Skyrim regularly enough, and I have enough packages in BAIN for that too that switching to something else would be more of a hassle than its worth. Wrye Bash would have to suddenly become the buggiest program ever made before I'd consider wasting that much of my time on a switch.

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I didn't expect this kind of response about a suggested test, that at least I would be interested to know the outcome of such a test.

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The last version of BAIN I used was from 26. October 2013. There has probably been a new one since.

 

"the process of 500-600 packages in BAIN vs MO" do you mean bashed patch building? That would indeed be interesting, there shouldn't be no difference.

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