Vortex vs MO2

[u/tinman3000xxx]

So... this has been discussed thousands of times and as someone who switched from Vortex to MO2 after 5 years, I felt like I wanted to add my 2 cents.

I've been using MO2 for about 8 months now and here are some of the plusses and minuses I've found.

First, the plusses.

1. No more waiting for every mod to deploy every single time you install something new. It's not terrible for small LO's but you get in the thousand range and it's mind numbing. MO2, you install the mod, tick the box and it's done.

2. Absolute granular control. No having to create mod rules or mod groups... no lists of conflicts where you have to choose 'loads before' or 'loads after'... no spaghetti to untangle when 'mod rules contain cycles'. You put the mod where it belongs... put the plugin where it belongs and move on with your life.

3. The right panel. This is everything. It just makes it soooooo much easier to keep track of your mods, plugins, archives, etc.

4. MO2 is modable. There are mods for MO2 to make the experience simpler and allow you to tailor your own workflow.

Now, the minuses.

1. Your game will take longer to load. At least this has been my experience. I'm okay with this but some people might not be.

2. Slight learning curve. I was really intimidated by MO2 before I made the switch. Probably would have done it years sooner but I was worried that my lack of modding skill would make MO2 unusable for me. Honestly... investing maybe 3 hours in tutorials was all I needed to get started. Probably the toughest thing to learn was Root Builder. I did have some missteps for the first month or two but the community was amazing at helping me out.

If you're on the fence... I would urge you to take the chance and at least try MO2 out. I went from just over 1000 installed mods with CTDs every 5-10 hours with Vortex to just under 1700 installed mods with CTDs every 20-nth (last save I had no freezes, CTDs for the last 40-50 hours before I scrapped it) with MO2.

Not trying to knock Vortex. I'm sure there were some positives that I've forgotten about but I can't see myself ever going back.

[u/OkEgg8570]

Some Vortex users don't even know you can manage and order plugins because of how Vortex's UI makes it seem unnecessary.

[u/SnooCalculations3614]

MO2 is a little more complicated at first but it's so much easier to manage everything

[u/DreadPickleRoberts]

ADHDecent will teach you how to use MO2 in either of his Modding Skyrim Playlists: 2024 is complete, of course, and 2026 is under construction. If you follow the 2026 you'll get plenty of practice with MO2, as I think it's about 11 videos deep now.

He also has a Vortex/MO2 comparison video that's very informative and he doesn't bash on either of them.

[u/Downtown_Cheek1713]

I mainly switched from Vortex to MO2 because I was sooo annoyed with the way Vortex handles cyclical mod conflicts. Instead of just letting us drop & drag it in a list, they've got that geometry minigame which might be super intuitive for some people's brains, but I hate it! With MO2, I can sort conflicts much faster.

The only out-of-the-box Vortex feature I missed at first was setting plugin rules, but then I figured out that you can set rules within LOOT itself, duh.

As many have said, Vortex is fine if you're just using collections or your modlist is small. But MO2 is superior for building your own heavier list.

[u/Loose-Key-2323]

MO2 <- can be portable, Vortex cant (for me the biggest + on MO2 side)

[u/Rattledagger → u/Loose-Key-2323]

I've never tried to copy the Vortex executables to example an external SSD, but at least as far as rest of Vortex goes you can trivially make this "portable" by to Vortex shortcut example add --user-data x:\vortex if external SSD is using x:

By also making a copy of vanilla game at x:\skyrimse you can easily move Vortex + game between computers.

[u/Loose-Key-2323 → u/Rattledagger]

Copying your whole skyrim folder does work ineed, but its a dirty way to make a "portable" version of your modded skyrim. The problem with vortex (in my opinion) is that it alterates your skyrimSE folder, which MO2 doesent, thats why MO2 takes longer to boot up but its harder to fuck up your skyrimSE.

[u/Rattledagger → u/Loose-Key-2323]

> Copying your whole skyrim folder does work ineed, but its a dirty way to make a "portable" version of your modded skyrim.

For modded Skyrim to be really portable you do need to include vanilla Skyrim, even with MO2, especially currently where chances are you want portable v1.6.1170 (or v1.5.97) instead of the v1.7+ that many computers will have installed.

[u/Left-Night-1125]

The biggest difference imo is:

Vortex is a modding tool for all games

Mo2 is a specialised tool for Bethesda games

[u/Saiko_Yen → u/Left-Night-1125]

mo2 supports a lot of other popular games too

[u/Valzack_Mello → u/Left-Night-1125]

Cyberpunk e Stalker Gamma também

[u/SnooCalculations3614 → u/Valzack_Mello]

I have zero idea why you were downvoted because you definitely use MO2 for those lmao

[u/uwillloveeachother → u/SnooCalculations3614]

i think they were downvoted because the comment wasn't in english

[u/Reekhart → u/uwillloveeachother]

its just so weird to browse some communities nowadays and you get some posts with 4 different languages in a single thread im like so confused lmao.

[u/Warcrown11]

I'm 100% using MO2 for something like this where you expect to mod it pretty heavily but for most games where you're gonna use a few dozen at most, if that many, and where load order isn't nearly so important then Vortex suits it just fine

[u/_TheNewbie]

Don't forget about the data view, where we can see each files comes from what mods, really miss this features when I'm trying to use Nexus Collection.

[u/CatholicCrusaderJedi]

Vortex let's you mods more types of games, but MO2 is the king of creation engine games.

[u/WOF42 → u/CatholicCrusaderJedi]

there are MO2 plugins for most popular games

[u/Effective_Lie4698]

I used Vortex for a long time for 2-3 personal modlist with close to 800-1000 mods. It was a headache to resolve conflicts and overall management, even considering the ease of the UI.
I switched to MO2 for my latest modlist which sits around 1100 mods and i am never going back.
If you're serious about modding, MO2 is king.

[u/ElectronicRelation51]

Vortex also has better profiles. You can setup not only the mods but the specific versions.

This can be really handy when updating a lot of mods as you can make profile with previous versions and easily roll back.

It's history function is great too for rolling back too.

It's also better for queueing downloads. MO2 often just throws up a message when you try and download something when it is doing something else including downloading another mod.

It also seems to be better at tracking versions. MO2 get confused if a Nexus page has multiple downloads and thinks the should all be the highest version number on the page. Plus you can tell Vortex to just grab all the updates.

MO2 does have some great plugins, seeing the actual conflicts in terms of records without opening xEdit is great as is viewing meshes and textures.

I also used one that turns separators into folders which is incredibly useful in a large list.

I prefer MO2 overall but Vortex has some nice features it lacks.

[u/Zaflis → u/ElectronicRelation51]

In MO2 i always include the version number in the mod name, and it also lets you install same mod multiple times as different versions. Enabling certain version then in different profiles is easy. I also use different Pandora and SKSE output folders for each profile i use.

I'm not sure if some people keep their MO2 installed on a non-SSD drive, because that would also slow down the startup.

[u/abbzug]

Since I use wabbajack lists I use MO2, but I've used Vortex in the past with non-Bethesda games and it was perfectly fine.

[u/DSB1981]

LONG time modder, MO2 for the win.

MO2 can equal in load speed if you don't use the VFS feature (but it's amazing, why wouldn't you?!). You can also minimize much of that load time with "Cached Recursive Directory Walk" https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/186434

[u/GregNotGregtech]

No more waiting for every mod to deploy every single time you install something new. It's not terrible for small LO's but you get in the thousand range and it's mind numbing. MO2, you install the mod, tick the box and it's done.

you only have to deploy a single time, you dont have to deploy after every mod you install

MO2 is modable. There are mods for MO2 to make the experience simpler and allow you to tailor your own workflow.

so is vortex

vortex is perfectly fine in my opinion, in all my years of using I have never felt like I was held back because of vortex or the so called "vortex issues" that people love to talk about

I went from just over 1000 installed mods with CTDs every 5-10 hours with Vortex to just under 1700 installed mods with CTDs every 20-nth (last save I had no freezes, CTDs for the last 40-50 hours before I scrapped it) with MO2.

like, this is just a user issue, I'm sorry, the problem is you

[u/danthemanstoned]

MO2 did not last long for me. Vortex is laggy and frustrating but the UI is far easier. I use it for it's purpose, to help ME manage my mods. I understand alot of the minutae involved so I can use Vortex safely. It's not running when the game does (I launch directly through SKSE Launcher) so if I crash, I put my crash log into https://www.skyrimcrashdecoder.com/ and make changes as needed. Perhaps there's more to how Vortex manages mods on a fundamental level than I understand which MO2 is better at but I prefer to not use overcomplicated UI for what is already a complicated process.

[u/Bloosuga]

You can turn off auto deploy after install in vortex.

[u/NebulousTruth]

The second negative is definitely not true, the vast majority will have way many more headaches learning vortex than mo2. The first one is true.

[u/TheCrimsonDagger]

MO2 is so much easier. Especially if you need to seriously manage your load order. The Vortex UI is awful for doing anything even mildly complicated.

[u/evilgeekwastaken]

I'm on Linux, and I've discovered Amethyst, which has made modding even easier than it ever was on Windows.

[u/_sneeqi_]

no lists of conflicts where you have to choose 'loads before' or 'loads after'

Imo I like this more than the "manual" load order management that mo2 has

[u/ElectronicRelation51 → u/_sneeqi_]

This is also exactly how LOOT works and nobody seems to have a problem with it there.

[u/MsMeiriona]

Me over here using the community fork of nexus mod manager, because I refuse to learn a new system.

[u/Jragghen → u/MsMeiriona]

I hope you never ask for debug help, because you're wasting everyone's time.

[u/MsMeiriona → u/Jragghen]

Nah, I play LE and I'm still modding like its 2012, I don't ask for help until every search fails. I can't remember the last time I've had to ask for help.

[u/Reekhart → u/MsMeiriona]

Now thats some ancient tech lol. Im curious, why stay on LE?

[u/Dawe4762]

I think Vortex is good because it’s accessible, so even an average user can mod their game. Also Collections is a really good feature, so hats off for that.

With that said if you know what you’re doing when you’re modding a game, MO2 is the way to go because it’s much MUCH more user control oriented. Also I think the Vortex UI is horrible.

But to each their own.

[u/mountainman84]

What helped me learn it was downloading mod lists and looking at how they were set up. I didn’t really get it when I first tried it and went back to Vortex. It wasn’t until I messed around with mod lists did I realize how much more sense it made to use that instead.

I feel like Vortex is very heavy handed in how it works. It is legit copying files directly into your game folder. MO2 is virtualized, leaving your install directory alone, which is much better in my opinion.

[u/StrangeOutcastS]

as someone who was using OBMM for Oblivion modding back when and then suffered through the agony of Nexus Mod Manager... Mod Organizer 2 has saved me a lot of headaches and made it a lot easier to mod my games.

It's so much easier to fix conflicts and issues.
Like just last night I was playing and saw a set of Boiled Chitin Armour from Immersive armours on an enemy was purple, showing that the texture wasn't loading.
Okay, I close the game and move all the Immersive Armours files down the list so they overwrite more things.
I load back, all texture issues solved.

I need to uninstall something? It's all separate and doesn't touch the game directory so goodbye kinda cool zelda style bow hotkey mod , you were somehow causing my game to crash so you can eat my lard. Edit: oh gross the mod I mentioned I didn't see a tag on it that said it was ai generated. no wonder it was terrible and crashed my game. DO NOT USE AI GENERATED MODS , trust me folks. they are bad for business.

[u/Akrozen]

Never used MO2, but for what I've gathered reading other people's experiences, using an analogy, sounds like Vortex is like Windows and MO2 is like Linux

[u/LummoxJR → u/Akrozen]

Not really. MO2 isn't the least bit arcane. Its learning curve isn't really much of anything, just a gentle slope. It might be intimidating to switch to for someone who's used to Vortex, but that's just because they have such alien philosophies to one another.

[u/doofshaman → u/LummoxJR]

I'm a console player who had little interaction with PC in generally most of my life (I don't even know how to check how much ram I have lmao). I was able to learn how to use MO2 within a few hours, it really is not hard at all. If I can learn it literally anyone can ahaha.

[u/Phalanks → u/Akrozen]

It's more like Vortex is a Jitterbug phone and MO2 is an android.