@KhaineGB or
@khzmusik could you explain yo him how this work?
No idea why you pinged me, but I'll put in my two cents.
Personally, I have always used SphereII's Mod Launcher to launch modded games. The reason is simple: I will
never, ever mod the game that is in the Steam folder.
I have always played concurrent modded and vanilla playthroughs. I have also always played the latest experimental as soon as it's available, even though I usually have a long-term playthrough on the previous alpha that I still play until the next alpha is stable (and sometimes after that).
Not to mention mod development. I have done lots of development where I have totally broken the game saves. I've sometimes broken things bad enough that I've had to re-install the game.
But that has always been OK, because every mod I've played has been on a different copy of the game, in a different folder on the hard drive, each of which has a different mods folder. The Mod Launcher makes this very easy which is why I recommend it.
So, the move to keep all the mods
in one place is a very bad idea to me. It doesn't matter where that place is. If mods have to be in
any one place, and that place only, then I'll have to stop playing mods, and my relationship with this game will end a whole lot sooner.
Having said that, the game has always allowed things to be loaded from different directories through command-line arguments. (It's how the Mod Launcher keeps game saves and worlds for different game installations in different places.) As long as that is still an option then I will be OK.
But it would be better if the game could specify these locations in some way that is far more convenient. A new entry in the game's settings screen, a "browse" option in a launcher, whatever. It should be easy enough such that anyone who knows how to open a folder can do it.