[FEATURE REQUEST] Bulk uninstalling

[Duchey101]

For the love of all that is holy allow users to bulk-uninstall mods.

having to uninstall ~200 mods manually is a pain in the ass, especially when uninstalling barely functions as is (program freezing for up to 10 seconds every time i click that button of perpetual torment)

[ebkr]

Sounds like you should be using profiles.

If you’re deleting over 200 mods it’s probably quicker to just make a new one anyway

[Duchey101]

it was for example, im right now just clearing out some mods for H3VR that have either broken with time or I no longer use to increase loading times. However i have no way of easily just scrolling through the list once and calling it a day. and i'd rather not track down everything i want again.

this is also a fairly basic feature pretty much every mod manager i have ever used has and its goddamn holy in every single one.

[ebkr]

The manager is designed to be easy to use for beginners, and checkboxes add far too much repetitive useless function to the screen IMO. If it’s only relevant occasionally it’s not something that should always be present.

I try to avoid clutter where possible and I don’t believe there’s an easy way otherwise.

The manager helps by uninstalling mods if you remove their dependencies.

Your best bet is to go to Settings > View dependency strings, and record all the mods you had previously. You can then delete the profile without having to try to remember what you had before. If you’re uninstalling 200 mods then I’d recommend starting your profile over again anyway as there’s likely still clutter left behind

[Duchey101]

if you want a manager thats "easy to use for beginners" i'd recommend checking out something like the vortex manager, its got a fairly easy to figure out GUI if you just take a moment to read everything.

you don't have to over simplify to make something usable for new people. and even then if someone can't figure out how to google things they probably shouldn't be trying to mod games.

and you dont even need to use the checkboxes approach, you can just add a "bulk uninstall" tab to the left (since there's literally nothing in all that empty space anyway), that just lets you select what you want gone.

[ebkr]

I get where you’re coming from and I can see why it would be useful.

People routinely get confused between the game and server tab on the game selection screen. A tabular approach would not help this issue.

It’s something that’s hard to solve in a nice way, and avoiding clutter is in everyone’s best interest. It may be part of your workflow, however I’m sure many people also wouldn’t need it.

Again, the quantity of mods you’re removing is excessive and is probably quite an edge case for a lot of users.

Assuming multiple of one type of mod has issues, you can likely remove one of the dependencies and nuke them all which would save a lot of time at least

[Duchey101]

Maybe you missed some context and dont realize im modding H3VR or maybe you don't entirely understand how H3VR is modded. so to elaborate; H3VR in terms of modding is up there with fallout, skyrim, and KSP. mainly since every single gun and patch/rework you download is 9/10 times its own mod, so for example if you want to turn the game into tarkov with all of its systems and such, you'd need around 50-60 mods (dependencies of dependencies counted) which is already painful to manage in this 1 at a time approach your manager provides.

the manager you've built here seems like its meant to be running 10-20 mods at best but for games like H3VR pretty much every user (that I know and also runs mods) has at least ~150 of them and some might even have every single goddamn mod that's online installed because they're insane.

and if you want it simpler/more intuitive or whatever a simple shift-click multi-select with a right click context menu with for example the enable/disable/uninstall features set up to it.

also for extra clarification, in the previous extra tab solution i was not saying add another tab to the game selection menu, but for example an extra option between the mods/installed and mods/online buttons.

hell i'd be happy if it was a bit clearer where all the files related to a single mod are stored so i can just delete them myself through file explorer. Since I did try that a few weeks back but it just reinstalled the mods when they updated so that obviously didn't work.

I've also asked a couple of my H3VR playing friends and their average mods boils down to around 300 mods each (which i also perfectly fit into myself). I'm trying to get some more numbers right now from the discord itself but it's not incredibly active so that'll take a day or so.

[Duchey101]

i've gotten some responses back from the discord and after running the math the average number of mods is 252.5, this average has been completely buggered by a few people running ~25 mods but most of them run ~300. (this is from 6 of the most active people in the h3vr modding discord that actually bothered to respond to my question)

i'd give better numbers but noone's really responding when I ask them which is understandable I guess.

[zoqin]

Just supporting ctrl click and shift click and some right click functionality would help, like disable/enable, install/uninstall, update/swap version

And for a software that aim for ease to use accessing profile when you are already in one is not easy at all, all my friend are confuse and I need to explain them everytime

I made a profile for all my friend and each time I make a new one they are confused on how to install it

Then one of them have play with another friend with only one mod, I was not there to explain, they have disable every mod one by one to install the only one they need and then they ask me how to enable back all the mod, there was no option

Shift, ctrl and right click is intuitive for most user as its how most shell and software work

And you put aside checkbox because they are hard to understand, you literally have switch button to toggle on/off mod, that's literally a checkbox with extra step

Prism Launcher is extremely easy to use if you want to do the basic, you should take inspiration on what they do if you are aiming for intuitivity

[ebkr]

Just supporting ctrl click and shift click and some right click functionality would help, like disable/enable, install/uninstall, update/swap version

Ctrl+click isn’t intuitive without a shortcut menu. It relies on people having to know about that functionality in the first place, and I can guarantee you were using a computer for a long time until you figured that one out.

And for a software that aim for ease to use accessing profile when you are already in one is not easy at all, all my friend are confuse and I need to explain them everytime

This is incredibly unrelated to bulk uninstalling. Worth making a new issue with a feature suggestion containing improvements that could be made.

they ask me how to enable back all the mod, there was no option

There is, it’s in Settings

And you put aside checkbox because they are hard to understand, you literally have switch button to toggle on/off mod, that's literally a checkbox with extra step

It’s nothing like a checkbox other than a visual state. A checkbox in the bulk uninstall sense would be to select several items. The toggle is not used for selecting items and controls/represents the enabled state of a mod without having to expand the card. Again, these are two wildly different concepts.

Prism Launcher is extremely easy to use if you want to do the basic, you should take inspiration on what they do if you are aiming for intuitivity

Sure, but what about it? Bulk uninstalling specifically? Other features?

[ebkr]

i've gotten some responses back from the discord and after running the math the average number of mods is 252.5, this average has been completely buggered by a few people running ~25 mods but most of them run ~300. (this is from 6 of the most active people in the h3vr modding discord that actually bothered to respond to my question)

i'd give better numbers but noone's really responding when I ask them which is understandable I guess.

As for this, a survey is fine and I’m sure some people would find it useful, especially in a H3VR context, but the manager isn’t exclusive to H3VR either.

Like I said before:

It’s something that’s hard to solve in a nice way, and avoiding clutter is in everyone’s best interest. It may be part of your workflow, however I’m sure many people also wouldn’t need it.

I’m not against it, it’s just not easy to design

[zoqin]

Ctrl+click isn’t intuitive without a shortcut menu. It relies on people having to know about that functionality in the first place, and I can guarantee you were using a computer for a long time until you figured that one out.

I think most player have explored shift/ctrl modifier and right click by a game or an other. But maybe you are developing for people that start gaming recently ? And even tho good software does most of their functionality without modifier when they required modifier its to do advanced operation that casual user would not have done anyway

I don't think exploring my personal experience is worth trying as I was really invested on exploring possibility when I had hand on a computer it will not be the case of most end user Nor does I think it's a constructive way to explore feedback to denied someone's need pretexting to fulfill a supposed need in a supposed difficulty whithout even exploring a possibility where the two need could be fulfilled without conflict between need or expectation of group of user

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ebkr commented _ Sounds like you should be using profiles. . If you’re deleting over 200 mods it’s probably quicker to just make a new one anyway [...] The manager is designed to be easy to use for beginners, and checkboxes add far too much repetitive useless function to the screen IMO. If it’s only relevant occasionally it’s not something that should always be present. [...] If you’re uninstalling 200 mods then I’d recommend starting your profile over again anyway as there’s likely still clutter left behind [...] People routinely get confused between the game and server tab on the game selection screen. A tabular approach would not help this issue.

zoqin commented . And for a software that aim for ease to use accessing profile when you are already in one is not easy at all, all my friend are confuse and I need to explain them everytime

ebkr commented _ This is incredibly unrelated to bulk uninstalling. Worth making a new issue with a feature suggestion containing improvements that could be made.

Your suggested solution to our issue was profile, suggesting it's easier to use and to make the modlauncher less cluttered My testimony was directly showing that your suggestion is the direct opposite of ground truth user experience, a simple back function to come back to profile is relegated to a cluttered tab of settings. Confusing the casual user for which this very specific design, reading you, seems to be designed for. I fully agree profile is incredibly unrelated to bulk uninstalling and it's worth opening a new issue to going through the specific, but I need to address your principal argument for abondonning out bulk operation apparently to hope making it back a feature worth your time and consideration. And as you agree with me that profile is incredibly unrelated to bulk uninstalling im still confused on why you suggested it as the only solution to the previous feedback and confused on why you are telling it to me as I was bringing the subject to the thread.

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they ask me how to enable back all the mod, there was no option

There is, it’s in Settings

We did look into settings but I guess I missed it enough time looking for it that my friend just started to reinstall the profil and I have tab back to lethal company to do BadAssCompany dance with my friend to kill time while we let the last casual user fight against the mod launcher

As someone with really great observation sayed

People routinely get confused between the game and server tab on the game selection screen. A tabular approach would not help this issue.

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It’s nothing like a checkbox other than a visual state. A checkbox in the bulk uninstall sense would be to select several items. The toggle is not used for selecting items and controls/represents the enabled state of a mod without having to expand the card. Again, these are two wildly different concepts.

The toggle is selecting which items is enable for the loading A toggle could be use to select items that will be subject to a future operation like loading or for example uninstalling (in bulk) As checkbox Toggle and checkbox are visual boolean, none of these thing is more or less clutery than another, it's literally a matter of visual taste It's literally the same

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Sure, but what about it? Bulk uninstalling specifically? Other features?

For starting bulk operation would be a good start.

But if after that you still have good will and motivation, I mean the sky is the limit, contact me. I will be happy to give feedback with my lab rats of casual gamer. Just don't count on me to open new feature request or anything really, the experience was negative enough I know that unrequested/proactive feedback is not your cup of tea for now on.

Have a nice day