We're forced to use so many useless plugins

General Issues and Bug Reporting (Unreal Engine)
1

Summary

Hi everyone. There are a lot of plugins in 5.8 that cant be disabled even though a lot of people including me dont need them especially since most of them “beta” or “Experimental”, which is horrible because UE 5.8 is the last major update.

Right now 5.8 seems like a huge mess of unused plugins that we’re forced to enable because either we need some specific plugins - e.g. chaos cloth (that is connected somehow to Landmass and other plugins whose connection don’t make any sense) or because we can’t package the game without them anymore (interchange plugins - they should make importing easy but instead they’re nothing but forced uncomfortable tool)

Here’s the list of plugins that can’t be disabled and it should be fixed:

“Chaos cloth” plugin should be disconnected from:
-Take recorder;
-Naming tokens. I don’t use them but chaos cloth requires them;
-Landmass;
-ChaosUserDataPT;
-Engine Assets Definition;
-Blueprints Material and Texture Nodes;
-Buoyancy;
-Water.

Dataflow (I just want to use chaos distruction but it requires dataflow and other plugins):
-Editor dataflowgraph;
-Tool presets;
-Teds editor data storage;
-Teds editor data storage features;
-Modelling tools editor mode (it wasn’t required back in 5.6);
-Stylus & Tablet Plugin;
-BaseCharacterFXEditor;

Interchange (I would love to disable it but it requires for packaging the game, it wasnt a problem back in 5.6):
-Interchange Editor;
-Interchange Framework;
-Interchange Framework Assets;
-Groom;
-Variant Manager;
-Variant Manager Content;
-Base material;

-Template Sequence. it’s required by useful plugin “Engine Cameras”, but I don’t want to use Template Sequence.

What Type of Bug are you experiencing?

Editor

Steps to Reproduce

1.Open Unreal Engine 5 editor;
2.Enable plugins chaos cloth and chaos editor;
3.Forced to have useless plugins.

Expected Result

1.Open Unreal Engine 5 editor;
2.Enable plugins chaos cloth and chaos editor;
3.No need to enable useless plugins.

Observed Result

Can’t avoid useless plugins that are connected to useful plugins

Affects Versions

5.8

Platform(s)

Windows

2

Having the same issue with plugin dependencies interfering with packaging a build in 5.8.1.

We can’t package our nearly finished project due to about a dozen errors regarding assets marked “NeverCook” in plugins:

LogCook: Error: Content is missing from cook. Source package referenced an object in target package but the target package was marked NeverCook or is not cookable for the target platform.

SourceInstigator: { StartupPackage } -> /Landmass/Landscape/BlueprintBrushes/Materials/Internal/BrushBounds
Referenced object: /Engine/EditorMaterials/TilingAALineIntegral.TilingAALineIntegral
Target package: /Engine/EditorMaterials/TilingAALineIntegral
Source package: /Landmass/Landscape/BlueprintBrushes/Materials/Internal/BrushBounds

However, since our project has no terrain we’d like to just disable Landmass, but when do we get the following chain of dependency issues.

title: Disable Dependencies, text: This plugin is required by ChaosClothAsset. Would you like to disable it as well?

title: Disable Dependencies, text: This plugin is required by ChaosCloth. Would you like to disable it as well?

title: Disable Dependencies, text: This plugin is required by ChaosClothAssetDataflowNodes. Would you like to disable it as well?

title: Disable Dependencies, text: This plugin is required by ChaosClothAssetEditorCore. Would you like to disable it as well?

title: Disable Dependencies, text: This plugin is required by ChaosOutfitAsset. Would you like to disable it as well?

title: Disable Dependencies, text: This plugin is required by Buoyancy. Would you like to disable it as well?

title: Disable Dependencies, text: This plugin is required by Water. Would you like to disable it as well?

title: Disable Dependencies, text: This plugin is required by MetaHumanCharacter. Would you like to disable it as well?

Our project is using MetahumanCharacter, so this is a big problem for the team.
VCam also has a very similar “NeverCook” error preventing packaging.

Any help in unwinding these dependencies would be greatly appreciated.

Alternately, some advice on how to deal with these plugins (VirtualCamera and Landmass) not being package-able due to cooking errors would also be appreciated.

NOTE: I would recommend anyone reading this try packaging their project, as I fear that this is a very common issue, but most developers haven’t realized yet…