Difficult to Understand

[ray0071]

If I could make a suggestion it would be to make the guide easier to understand.  

Example:  2.B Clean the Update ESM - I got stuck on it because what the instruction were stating was not what I was encountering with Mod Organizer.  

 

When someone knowledgeable creates a guide, they can tend to skip over details which they assume others know.  For those who rely heavily on the guide, this is a huge problem.  

 

To be clear - I appreciate the work everyone has put into this project.  Huge respect to all of you.  My comments are just my own personal views/feedback.

 

RayT

 

[ray0071]

STEP Moral support? :)

Good idea - cause this can make anyone depressed.

 

I attached some images from MO.  If anyone has time, maybe look at it - tell me if anything stands out, obvious issues.  
If I can salvage what I have done so far, I may try to get through it, but starting all over - not so sure about that. 

Edited August 18, 2015 by ray0071

[TechAngel85]

So far it looks okay. You have an odd grouping of mods at the top, but the priorities look about right. Don't worry about those qt errors. The Ruffled Feature is not installed correctly because it's greyed out.

[TechAngel85]

It would be best to use the Guide to verify your mods are in the right order, but I've taken a series of shots to show you mine. Please note there are some mods in there that are for testing or that will be in the next version, but you should get the general idea. I've purposefully not shown you my plugin list because you should use whatever LOOT sorts them as.

 

 

 

 

Here is the SKSE setup:

[ray0071]

Is there a way to increase the limit of images I can post?  I could only upload 4/8 images of my load order?

Edited August 19, 2015 by ray0071

[krossbonzz]

Looks great when it worked. And it is difficult to understand at first till you've redone it 3-4 times LOL. Then removed Win10 (shouldn't have tried it in the 1st place!) wiped my C: drive (Skyrim & MO on D: SSD) and so redoing the whole damn thing again in Win7. I'm new to modding and thanks all the Mod Authors & Gopher's videos. Make sure you guys make a backup! If you hadn't already... And don't click on an old bad backup like I just did like a dumb nerd... Now a real friking pain in the starfish hole has emerged. So this whole afternoon will be a coffee and Mod Organizer day again. 

[ray0071]

 removed Win10 (shouldn't have tried it in the 1st place!)

Is STEP not compatible with Win 10?

[TechAngel85]

Is there a way to increase the limit of images I can post?  I could only upload 4/8 images of my load order?

Just don't attach them. Upload them to an online service (not Google Drive...most the staff uses Copy) and use the image button in the toolbar. Paste the link in the window that opens. You' can post up to 30.

 

Is STEP not compatible with Win 10?

It is. Several staff members have already made the switch, but it's unknown if all the tools work as they should. I personally will not be switching for a few months so any kinks can be ironed out.

[CovertSlinky]

Couldn't resist this post without commenting. The STEP Guide, when I first embarked into modding Skyrim, I had downloaded and ran several mods from nexus, things were great, till things started breaking. After a while on nexus I stumbled on to STEP. Read it and was in complete awe of it's description (coming from a total newb standpoint). I had to get into it, had to have it. When I first starred at the guide, my brain froze, I was seriously feeling overwhelmed. Sooo, what did I do to help this, I read....and read.....and read some more.....and read alot more. Got a warm fuzzy from everything in the guide and in the forums, then started, hit roadblocks, did ALOT more reading, found more things to read than before I started, got confused on something I misunderstood, asked questions, got answers, continued on. Rinse and repeat till I got through my first complete STEP install, played the game, things seemed great, till it broke. Looked into the problem by asking questions and reading ALOT more...again. Fixed one problem till I found more broken stuff. Rinse and repeat till I have installed complete STEP so many times I lost count. It's been over a year since I started my adventure with STEP. Lots of headaches along the way, but in the end, I wouldn't have missed it for the world. The amount of information, in reality, is EVERYTHING Skyrim modding, and if it aint fully covered here, there is usually a link referring out. But, looking back, I can say that as a newb, I started with a viewpoint of being concerned with doing something wrong, i.e, breaking ****. All I can say is, try to rid yourself of this feeling as soon as possible. BREAK STUFF, and ask questions and read, and in the end you will have so much knowledge, that when you do have a problem, you will know where to start and the odds of you fixing it yourself is greatly improved. I have a mod setup now, that is rock solid....so solid, I love it. But I had to put in an ENORMOUS amount of effort to get here. And as the guide goes, it IS overwhelming for a complete newb, at first, it ain't perfect, it can't be, it was made by humans. The guide goes through changes constantly. STEP requires practice, you have to keep at it, just like trying to learn ANYTHING for the first time. And you might ask why is this? Or think that it should not be. But the reality is, that modding Skyrim, the right way, requires an intensive amount of knowledge, because of the shear bold nature of STEP. The amount of mods in STEP is why. Heavily modding Skyrim is a bold adventure. So much in fact, that if it weren't for mods, ALOT of mods individually and mods collectively would not be able to happen.

Before I go I wanted to add this, quoting the STEP guiide: "Read the ReadMe and other mod-related documentation that comes packaged with most mods. This includes the mod description on the Nexus. If the mod author has seen fit and taken time to create these reference materials, then they are relevant and important in the eyes of the mod author. This means that they are relevant and important to you!"

I always loved that statement, can't be any farther from the truth, it's amazing what can be learned and accomplished just from reading. Anyways, thats my two cents, love it, hate it, tell me I am a moron, or whatever you feel like, or nothing at all I suppose too XD. I am a real thick skinned guy.

 

Regards,

Slink

[ray0071]

CovertSlinky,

 

Any challenge that is overcome can provide one a sense of accomplishment.  Kudos to you for engrossing yourself in the process, and successfully modding the game.  That said, a distinction needs to be made between those with time availability to undertake such an effort with those who don't.

 

Between work, children, and other pursuits - finding the time required for get through the STEP guide for many will be nearly impossible. 

So though I agree most of what you wrote, I just don't think everyone has the same situation.

 

My suggestions have always been aimed at making the guide easier and less time consuming so that more people will be able to enjoy it - not just advanced modders. 

 

Got to get back to work :)

Edited August 20, 2015 by ray0071

[Nozzer66]

Yeah but to some extent, it's always going to take time. Modding isn't something where you can just buy the fully set up modded game off the shelf, plug it into the main game and then play.

 

So the point is one really has to pay the piper. Do you have a certain amount of time to sit down and mod, or not? There's no really quick way to do stuff aside from being 100% sure you know what you need to do first. 

 

You're not just going to be able to make 200+ mods work seamlessly without investing some time into it, both during the process and before even starting the process. 

 

The guide could lay out every single step for every single mod 100% and it would STILL take a few hours to do.

[z929669]

... and if we laid out every single step and/or created a video doing the same, it would need to be modified and updated several times a week. It would be monstrous to maintain and even more confusing to all users ... not just those new to the project.

 

The fact is that we provide a guide that really does provide detailed instructions on doing just about everything (or links to external refs). We rely on users' understanding the general principles and tactics though in order to follow along without issue. This requires time out for learning. Nevertheless, if even a complete n00b were to follow the guide from start to finish, it is not that hard to get STEP installed. Just read the guide ... completely from start to finish.

 

If in doing so, any user is confused about an instruction or a method, then be specific about what is confusing. Give us specific feedback on what the specific instruction(s) is telling you and how you are interpreting that instruction(s). From there, we can rephrase or augment in some way to account for anything that may be unclear or misleading or even outdated.

 

Just saying that N. Patches is too convoluted/difficult to follow tells us nothing. We just assume that the user is not reading carefully enough or inserting their own assumptions or just not following the instructions. I still await specifics to address on this thread with regard to instructions and how they are flawed or confusing.

[krossbonzz]

Got some insight after reading through some of the guys chit chat and as Akatosh mentioned I can see the editing being laborious. BUT the files are still old as is the guide so when on multiple instances your asked "Merge, Replace or" there's no info within the detailed instruction so ya gotta wing it. This is my 3rd time installing the program and I see things I missed before and things I'm getting better at understanding. I'm  more of a stickler than most for wanting things to be exact and precise. Understandable otherwise the Military would not function for squat and my shipmates would drown. Details are imperative for success and not having to waste another day of modding instead of gaming.... We get enough half a$$ garbage from EA/Bethesda/2K or whomever. I'm an unemployed Vet so send me a list of edits and I'll do it as long as they're accurately detailed... And thanks again to all the mod Authors & Gamers poets video series for their work.

[DoubleYou]

I can't reconcile the contradiction of playing Skyrim and having limited time. How do you find time to play a game if you can't find time to mod it?

[Nozzer66]

Well if you're not sure whether to Merge/Replace, then you haven't done enough reading up on how MO works.

[TechAngel85]

Well if you're not sure whether to Merge/Replace, then you haven't done enough reading up on how MO works.

Exactly what I was going to say. This is a basic function of MO which users should be familiar with. It's laid out in the MO Guide.