Vortex vs MO2: Electric Boogaloo (Whats up with Vortex's 'LOOT Messages'?)
Guys hear me out, I know this has been asked and answered atleast 254 times here and elsewhere; Ive read and viewed about 2/5th of them personally I think.
Some barely relevant context for why I'm here now and asking:
>!I'm returning from a ~6yr skyrim hiatus and previously had only used NMM for 'oldrim' before my old PC died and I couldnt be arsed resurrecting my install (till now - I actually got it working but also realised how ghetto and half finished everything about it is); during this 6yr hiatus I actually have used MO2 for FO4 and Vortex for BG3 and both seemed fairly usable all things considered.!<
From a decent bit of reading, sifting through conflicting information and playing around with the apps firsthand, I've made about 4 observations and 3 conclusions:
The end-user functionality is almost identical between them - albeit slightly different to navigate and interact with; sorting, conflicts, updating, profiles - both can do all of these things with similar efficiency.
Deployment Methods (as per the hyperlinked wiki) - this seems a pick your poison, Vortex *maybe* faster but MO2 keeps your data folders cleaner, the latter seems especially double edged as while its 'easier' to run and test vanilla its also 'harder' to interact with all your mods alongside the base game data e.g. for modding reasons (I'm an extremely amateur modder so this maybe a bad analysis). Though I believe one can 'uninstall' all their mods with vortex by swapping to a vanilla profile quite easily and quickly also(?).
Collections - most Wabbajacks are made for MO2 but Vortex is 'best' (perhaps the only option) for Nexus Collections? I think? tbh I'd probably prefer to build my own list unless I find a *genuine* 'essentials only' collection I agree with; so not too fussed here.
The Big One - essentially the only reason I felt the need to make a new post here and seek further advice at all - 'LOOT Messages'. Are these new? I've not seen anybody else mention this when talking about Vortex or 'which one to use'; yet it seems, to me, like the biggest difference in actual user offerings. For those who don't know wtf I'm talking about, if you double click an installed mod in the Plugins tab of Vortex and scroll down in the info box on the right hand side you get a bunch of options and a header titled "LOOT Messages (only updates on sort)" - under which you get small little recommendations of other mods to use or things to be aware of (perhaps also more but this much atleast is true from my limited testing). Naturally these notes aren't perfect: for SkyUI it tells me its "highly recommended" to use a 'SkyUI flashing savegames fix' mod- despite it not being needed in version 6.x of SkyUI (which I'm using), as per the nexus page for it. For Ordinator it 'highly recommends' getting "Bug Fixes SSE" and reading compatibility notes - as someone whos never played SSE before I wasn't aware of such a mod and appreciate being made aware of and recommended to it - especially since it leaves the ball in my court to actually look into and act upon this advice. On the top right of the Plugins tab there is even a cogwheel option to include these 'LOOT Messages' inline, for better or worse depending on ones needs and setup I suppose.... Does anyone know if these messages are any 'good'?
so tldr; does anyone have any experience or advice about these Vortex "LOOT Messages"? are they generally solid recommendations? are they a noob trab? have I missed or misunderstood anything else about the differences between mod managers?
cheers!