Is the modding scene toxic?

[Reficul]

Been browsing some new mods and came across a series called TTW (Tale of Two Wastelands) and after maybe an hour of conversation I've come to ask a question. Why are all the big mods full of ♥♥♥♥♥♥ people? Like I've never met a modding community more anti newbie then Fallout. So many people ask for help or elaboration and all everyone ever says is "Oh don't use mod X cause y and Z" or "Just read the guide" cause every big mod has an install guide that never seems to answer all the questions. For example I spent an hour trying to get the TTW team to help me understand the mod since it's so fragile and uncooperative with other mods.

It turned into me being muted and banned cause I asked to many questions. I've also used the Nexus Mod Discord and they also are very anti newbie. Now I understand if your gonna mod you need to learn how to do it, but it's very hard to learn when you aren't allowed to ask questions to make sure you are doing everything right. Guides are very helpful yes but guides don't answer all questions. SO my major question is why are so many Fallout modders so inhospitable? I understand they probably get tones of stupid questions but your an expert with mods you have a duty to help educate new modders apart from "Just read the guide, it will tell you everything" (It never does) like today I was ostracized for using Vortex instead of MO2. Instead being educated why MO2 was better I was given a half assed "Oh it's more user friendly" which tells me nothing.

To end this I just have to ask, is there a fallout discord or community here on steam not full of ♥♥♥♥♥ who resent new modders or modders who want to learn more and socialize instead of watching a YouTube video or reading a guide?

[shit-for-brains]

truth is fallout modders secretly have massive brain tumors from the cancer of modding this old ass game. only thing i could really do for ya is answer your questions. MO2 is better than vortex because you can change your load order, edit files within the app, i think find errors and crashes easier and a few other stability things. if you wanna play ttw then i'd follow the viva new vegas guide https://vivanewvegas.github.io/ and then install ttw with the viva new vegas' mods only should take you an hour max

[AC Denton]

Gamers are toxic.
Engineers are toxic.
Mixing the two is just gonna be more toxic.

I would just say... ignore them. You really don't need their help. Any YouTube video will show you what you need to do. Any large mod will have a guide. Any small mod is a 2/3-click install.

If you have loads of questions, i suppose my response to that would be, why?
I can understand how a modder that's put a lot of work into their mod and provided a guide would get annoyed at, as you said, too many questions when in their mind the answers have already been given and they have other stuff to do. Why should they sit and answer all your questions when the answers are already available online? Keep in mind they gotta do it for every single person.
Even I get annoyed when people make spam posts on Steam asking the same questions that have already been answered and could be found by just using the search bar next to the new post button. If the answer is already available, and one still asks, I'd call that rude.

If your questions relate to the deeper inner workings of the mods, you're asking them to spend their time teaching you stuff when there's better alternatives like again YouTube or a Udemy course in programming or a Discord for whatever you're trying to learn.

Again, sorry to make the assumptions but I do not know what your questions are or I'd try to answer them and help you out. It just [s]seems[/] you're asking stuff beyond what you need.

Sorry, I understand it's not ideal; you want to interact with the community, but sadly the community is pretty toxic. Not just modding but the Fallout community in general.
Radposting anyone? Oof.

For the record, Vortex > MO2
People swearing by MO2 are just stuck in their ways. If you prefer it, fine, but stop pretending it's better because you're scared to try Vortex. Both are fine, Vortex just simplifies things. There's nothing MO2 does that Vortex won't, and if there is then it's not needed. Vortex will let you sort the load order, will do it all for you, find errors etc etc.

[Vex Hilarius]

I've been modding this game for 5+ years and while I've seen some very toxic and unhelpful people I would say they are more of a minority.

Issue is they are usually the ones in charge of the bigger projects. They probably have no time to answer, to what they perceive, basic questions that answers can be found somewhere else.

On the other hand, I've seen some newbies who are so incompetent they don't understand how to copy and paste a file into another file so why would a mod author waste time hand holding how to install TTW for someone when they lack basic computer knowledge. People really need to know basic computer work before modding it's that simple.

My biggest gripe is the lack of testing when a big mod comes out. Sometimes a mod author is good at updating it to fix bugs and issues but sometimes these mod authors release a completely unfinished project and wait months to update it, and it still is broken. WMIM I will probably never get to use because of this.

[Salamand3r-]

Come on now, man.

You kept refusing to follow basic advice, and essentially refused to follow a guide which was designed specifically to answer all questions you had in a concise and organized fashion.

The TTW discord doesn't discourage asking questions - it *does* discourage spamming the channels with questions to which you have already been provided the answers to, and refused to accept the answers to.

You were also not "banned and muted" - you were given the nohelp role which *only* excludes you from the two specific support channels - you could and did still post in the other channels.

And even better, that role *has already been removed* and you are *currently posting in the help channels again* after making it clear that you weren't wasting the time of others in the support channels.

I get you were frustrated, but at least update your Steam post, especially since it was already resolved.

Originally posted by Power Fisting Lesbian:

WMIM I will probably never get to use because of this.

Eh? WMIM is still an ongoing project, but nothing currently contained in it is "buggy" or "broken". Most of the Nexus bug reports are due to conflicts with other mods that rely on the old, broken meshes or issues when JIP breaks things. The changes it has are constantly tested not only on their own, but as part of TTW.

Originally posted by Captain Denton of the Unreliable:

People swearing by MO2 are just stuck in their ways. If you prefer it, fine, but stop pretending it's better because you're scared to try Vortex. Both are fine, Vortex just simplifies things. There's nothing MO2 does that Vortex won't, and if there is then it's not needed. Vortex will let you sort the load order, will do it all for you, find errors etc etc.

Baloney.

I've used both, extensively. Vortex is fine for hundreds of other games (because it's the literal only option) and for Creation engine games that have updated LOOT masterlists.

LOOT sorting and error checking for NV using Vortex is 100% useless. The LOOT masterlist for NV is 100% non-functional and useless - Vortex's sorting is literally a random dice roll. Two people can install absolutely identical mod lists and it will sort them differently.

Yes, you can technically re-order plugins in Vortex. But not easily, and not intuitively. The rules system doesn't let you place mods where you know they need to go, it lets you set up looping rules that end up a mess extremely easily.

Overwrites for loose files are similarly unintuitive. Want one texture to overwrite another in MO2? Simply drag it lower on the list - it's sequential, intuitive, simple. Want to do the same with more than a couple different texture mods in Vortex? Welcome to "cyclical rules" hell with a more complex mod list. It takes me an hour in Vortex to set up a simple texture overhaul for NV, and it takes me literal seconds in MO2. And this is with literally hundreds of hours in both mod managers.

Vortex doesn't simplify - it complicates by creating new methods and terminologies for simple procedures, like literally putting a load order IN ORDER, to an insane extent.

As to things MO2 does that Vortex doesn't? Easy integration with all the basic tools everyone will need - FNVLODGen, xEdit, merging, all designed with MO2 in mind. Rootbuilder, letting you non-destructively manage your root files as well as data folder. Proper virtualization instead of symlinks like Vortex (symlinks can be treated weirdly by Windows - you may end up randomly with everything taking up double the space). Integrated and simple ini editing, asset previews of basically everything, bsa decompression, bsa parsing, and a lot more stuff that I use at minimum for each modded install, some of those tools literally weekly or daily.

[Vex Hilarius]

Originally posted by Power Fisting Lesbian:

WMIM I will probably never get to use because of this.

Eh? WMIM is still an ongoing project, but nothing currently contained in it is "buggy" or "broken". Most of the Nexus bug reports are due to conflicts with other mods that rely on the old, broken meshes or issues when JIP breaks things. The changes it has are constantly tested not only on their own, but as part of TTW.

Idk still seemed buggy to me. And I'm not talking about what JIP caused or conflicts with other mods. I'll have to double check at some point. I remember how bad it was in like 2019 or something so I waited years for an update and when it finally came there was still a lot of bugs in my experience.

I'm not trying to sound impatient. Mod authors do stuff on their free time and bugs are bound to happen. Maybe WMIM wasn't the best example to use here but there are a plethora of huge mods that come out that seem like little to no testing was done.

[BigCunggus]

when it comes to modding, you have to do your own homework, you can ask but please research first, im Malaysian, my english isnt very good and second language but i managed to understand by reading nexus comment, reddit discussion, youtube videos and others for how to make mod worked, so i understand where you came from, these modder had so many question in their head, thats why they dont like people ask too many questions........especially the one who love complaining

[EnclaveEyebot]

The thing about modding is that you have to figure things out for yourself. The community can definitely be toxic to newcomers, but in the wake of fairness, a lot of folks get tired of answering the same questions repeatedly when there are significant amounts of threads/websites/etc that cater to folks just dabbling in the modding scene. Any large group of people in a community will have aggressive and or toxic individuals populating the ranks, its simply human nature unfortunately.

Best thing you can do is learn the basics yourself, there is, depending on numerous factors, a potential high learning curve to modding - it takes some time and patience.

On another note, speaking of Vortex/MO2, anybody out there still use NMM?

I do :) *gasps*

[Salamand3r-]

Originally posted by Power Fisting Lesbian:

Eh? WMIM is still an ongoing project, but nothing currently contained in it is "buggy" or "broken". Most of the Nexus bug reports are due to conflicts with other mods that rely on the old, broken meshes or issues when JIP breaks things. The changes it has are constantly tested not only on their own, but as part of TTW.

Idk still seemed buggy to me. And I'm not talking about what JIP caused or conflicts with other mods. I'll have to double check at some point. I remember how bad it was in like 2019 or something so I waited years for an update and when it finally came there was still a lot of bugs in my experience.

I'm not trying to sound impatient. Mod authors do stuff on their free time and bugs are bound to happen. Maybe WMIM wasn't the best example to use here but there are a plethora of huge mods that come out that seem like little to no testing was done.

WMIM is an offshoot of what's fixed for TTW, so progress is sometimes limited or predicated upon what is done in TTW. It has seen big updates at similar times to TTW updates, and the latest version is definitely one I can vouch for (since I use it via TTW)

That said, since a lot of other stuff relies on the old broken meshes (including Hit's S1 animations), they will re-break everything that WMIM fixes. It's more of a mod that you want to use on an otherwise rather vanilla (weapon-wise) playthrough.

Originally posted by EnclaveEyebot:

On another note, speaking of Vortex/MO2, anybody out there still use NMM?

I do :) *gasps*

At least you can reorder things sensibly in NMM :D

[NovaJuice]

Originally posted by f- f f f- f- funky town:

truth is fallout modders secretly have massive brain tumors from the cancer of modding this old ass game. only thing i could really do for ya is answer your questions. MO2 is better than vortex because you can change your load order, edit files within the app, i think find errors and crashes easier and a few other stability things. if you wanna play ttw then i'd follow the viva new vegas guide https://vivanewvegas.github.io/ and then install ttw with the viva new vegas' mods only should take you an hour max

I'd like to point out that the creator of VNV also has a TTW modlist:
https://thebestoftimes.github.io/
It tells you how to set it up, too.

[Salamand3r-]

Originally posted by FrizzleFry:

Originally posted by f- f f f- f- funky town:

truth is fallout modders secretly have massive brain tumors from the cancer of modding this old ass game. only thing i could really do for ya is answer your questions. MO2 is better than vortex because you can change your load order, edit files within the app, i think find errors and crashes easier and a few other stability things. if you wanna play ttw then i'd follow the viva new vegas guide https://vivanewvegas.github.io/ and then install ttw with the viva new vegas' mods only should take you an hour max

I'd like to point out that the creator of VNV also has a TTW modlist:
https://thebestoftimes.github.io/
It tells you how to set it up, too.

The same person who nohelp'd him on the TTW discord literally maintains the TBoT guide now, and had referred him to both the TBoT and WSG guides for TTW.

He was refusing to read/follow anything in either TBoT or WSG guides at the time.

Again though, it's been resolved - he was allowed back in the support channels and got TTW installed (or at least, installing).

[Reficul]

Originally posted by Salamand3r-:

Come on now, man.

You kept refusing to follow basic advice, and essentially refused to follow a guide which was designed specifically to answer all questions you had in a concise and organized fashion.

The TTW discord doesn't discourage asking questions - it *does* discourage spamming the channels with questions to which you have already been provided the answers to, and refused to accept the answers to.

You were also not "banned and muted" - you were given the nohelp role which *only* excludes you from the two specific support channels - you could and did still post in the other channels.

And even better, that role *has already been removed* and you are *currently posting in the help channels again* after making it clear that you weren't wasting the time of others in the support channels.

I get you were frustrated, but at least update your Steam post, especially since it was already resolved.

Originally posted by Power Fisting Lesbian:

WMIM I will probably never get to use because of this.

Eh? WMIM is still an ongoing project, but nothing currently contained in it is "buggy" or "broken". Most of the Nexus bug reports are due to conflicts with other mods that rely on the old, broken meshes or issues when JIP breaks things. The changes it has are constantly tested not only on their own, but as part of TTW.

Originally posted by Captain Denton of the Unreliable:

People swearing by MO2 are just stuck in their ways. If you prefer it, fine, but stop pretending it's better because you're scared to try Vortex. Both are fine, Vortex just simplifies things. There's nothing MO2 does that Vortex won't, and if there is then it's not needed. Vortex will let you sort the load order, will do it all for you, find errors etc etc.

Baloney.

I've used both, extensively. Vortex is fine for hundreds of other games (because it's the literal only option) and for Creation engine games that have updated LOOT masterlists.

LOOT sorting and error checking for NV using Vortex is 100% useless. The LOOT masterlist for NV is 100% non-functional and useless - Vortex's sorting is literally a random dice roll. Two people can install absolutely identical mod lists and it will sort them differently.

Yes, you can technically re-order plugins in Vortex. But not easily, and not intuitively. The rules system doesn't let you place mods where you know they need to go, it lets you set up looping rules that end up a mess extremely easily.

Overwrites for loose files are similarly unintuitive. Want one texture to overwrite another in MO2? Simply drag it lower on the list - it's sequential, intuitive, simple. Want to do the same with more than a couple different texture mods in Vortex? Welcome to "cyclical rules" hell with a more complex mod list. It takes me an hour in Vortex to set up a simple texture overhaul for NV, and it takes me literal seconds in MO2. And this is with literally hundreds of hours in both mod managers.

Vortex doesn't simplify - it complicates by creating new methods and terminologies for simple procedures, like literally putting a load order IN ORDER, to an insane extent.

As to things MO2 does that Vortex doesn't? Easy integration with all the basic tools everyone will need - FNVLODGen, xEdit, merging, all designed with MO2 in mind. Rootbuilder, letting you non-destructively manage your root files as well as data folder. Proper virtualization instead of symlinks like Vortex (symlinks can be treated weirdly by Windows - you may end up randomly with everything taking up double the space). Integrated and simple ini editing, asset previews of basically everything, bsa decompression, bsa parsing, and a lot more stuff that I use at minimum for each modded install, some of those tools literally weekly or daily.

Who are you? I've never talked to you once in my life.

[Salamand3r-]

Someone who watched your whole meltdown on the TTW discord and subsequent redemption, and you literally posted right above me being quoted about 45 minutes ago.

Frederick Khons — Today at 5:51 PM
Wait what!?!
Man I need to play the story of Fallout 3
I just did side quests and explored

Forgive me, it seems a bit ungrateful to get the nohelp tag removed, and actually get help from people, only to ♥♥♥♥ on them on Steam.

Edit: Hope I wasn't too "toxic" helping you in the discord just now.

[Valder]

Worst thing about modders is that they can get mad about from some trivial thing and then they remove their mods from the nexus. From bruised ego or modders fighting each other and start targeting on mods. Some good stuff have been lost over the years.

[TheGovernor]

protip: never join a mod discord or any fallout community discord or forums

[Salamand3r-]

Originally posted by ApostleOfToes:

protip: never join a mod discord or any fallout community discord or forums

Nah, just don't be a disrespectful dickwad when you do.