STRAWPOLL TIME! Will you go Ruthless or not for 3.20?

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Andrius319 wrote:

Trading might ruin it thou, might.

It is crazy how different hc/ssf/trade will feel from each other when Ruthless is flagged 'on'. I don't know how different you think they feel now, but multiply it by 10.

SSF vs trade: When the items are this scarce, the ability to plan to play a fire elementalist and have your only support gem found in 5 acts be faster attacks...it's a world of difference between being able to barter trade that 1-to-1 for a burning damage support as opposed to having to decide if you want to reroll 6 hours into the game just so you can leverage the faster attacks support and be on a 2 link main skill.

For the HC tag the big differences are no movement skills, scarce support gems and no crafting bench.

HC+SSF+Ruthless will be a brutal roguelike experience.

SSF+Ruthless will be an unbelievably grindy roguelike experience.

And I'm having a hard time predicting what Trade Ruthless will be like since trade site is not enabled, but if I had to guess I would guess that it will be a ... it's too hard to tell. It will be slower, less bloated, and less mob-dense mode...but it will still feel like a trade league. And even though your content and pace are different, you'll still be grinding away trying to make stacks of whatever it is that the ruling class want and need to fuel their playstyle. The ruling class being the elite hideout warrior flippers and crafters as well as the full tank of grease 7 man party players (featuring a dedicated trader of course).

The best hope for the mode might be to disable the trade site and hope that those who love playing the economy for 16 hours a day stick to the main game. Leave the 'weirdos' with their barter economy and (gasp) using trade chat for its intended purpose.

To get back to the part I quoted, if you think even for a second that trade might ruin Ruthless for you - it will. Play it SSF.

I hold no illusions here: I bet certain GGG employees are *frothing at the mouth in excitement* to see how trade in Ruthless turns out.

I'll give ruthless a try. If ruthless is not balanced I will play league instead. By balanced I mean if there is the nonsense amount of unavoidable stuff on death and on ground effects in ruthless and the fact that you will have no movements skill at all then it's nonsense to play Ruthless.
If and only If Ruthless will feels like the old poe I would absolutely smash it. I loved the old game farming of fellshrine, ledge, dock runs for hours just to get a decent magic / rare items. But it might be just an old gamer's dream.

Voting yay.

Ruthless SSF here.

Interesting to see the people who raved about all the nerfs of Expedition (and then never played Expedition) raving about Ruthless mode. I hope it makes you all happy and you can stop calling for nerfs in the core game.

I'm in.

This gonna be like Homer eating his pet lobster, Pinchy.

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

I hold no illusions here: I bet certain GGG employees are *frothing at the mouth in excitement* to see how trade in Ruthless turns out.

It will be interesting. I suspect, in HC trade, there might actually be a case that item for item trade might be worth considering (ala D2 Shako for Mara). Although can you even list that on the trade site?

Also I was watching Ziz earlier play Alpha, and the global chat he was simply asking for items that people found. He got a decent rolled rime gaze for nothing. I hope, for some league integrity, that doesnt carry over into league play. But who knows. SSFHC Ruthless will be the real test for the more elite players (Steelmage was doing fine in early maps already)

In general, Ruthless just isnt a great idea no matter which way you look at it. It creates concern from a multitude of directions. Will balance carryover? Is this the actual version of PoE Senior Leaders prefers at GGG? Why split the community further? Why waste resources (whatever the amount)? Why, when competition is coming very soon, would you come out with a version of PoE that is even further player hostile than the core game? I know they "addressed" some of these points in the faq post, I just dont believe anything they said, whether its subconscious or not.

It's too late now though. Ruthless is coming no matter what. I don't see the upside, except for a tiny fraction of players, and many downsides potentially for the vast majority of core PoE players.

Again. I personally dont believe that this is purely a vanity project, and the lack of humility is simply astounding. Like would they ever consider a "More rewarding" version of the game, opposite of Ruthless? I mean what would the harm be if it truly has no impacts beyond a pet project? Let's see GGG actually test the theory that people wouldnt play a more rewarding version of the game (apparently we get bored if drops are good, which lol, what is that even based on?)

Anyways I wont be playing this legaue or Ruthless. I don't know how many others will do the same, but I do get the feeling the "charm" of PoE is wearing thin, and folks are hungry for something else. Whether that is WoW or D4 Beta coming soon (up to launch), it will be an interesting half a year that's for sure.

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DarthSki44 wrote:

Again. I personally dont believe that this is purely a vanity project, and the lack of humility is simply astounding. Like would they ever consider a "More rewarding" version of the game, opposite of Ruthless? I mean what would the harm be if it truly has no impacts beyond a pet project? Let's see GGG actually test the theory that people wouldnt play a more rewarding version of the game (apparently we get bored if drops are good, which lol, what is that even based on?)

Here's the problem with your proposal as I see it: as with any mode or modifier, Ruthless can and will change the perception of the game of those who play it -- and to a degree, those who don't. So 'it's a separate mode, what harm can it do?' is a fair query in absolute terms, but from the perspective of that mode's ability to shift expectations, it can do...quite a lot of harm. As I said in another thread, you can't unspoil a child, only never spoil them in the first place. So following that sentiment, a completely separate 'spoils the child' Toothless mode (feast to Ruthless's famine) would raise the bar too high in terms of loot expectation and 'non-Toothless' would forever more feel inadequate ASSUMING the player gets a taste for the goods. And chances are most would.

With Ruthless, and I believe every private league modifier, the difficulty is only increased from the base game and so at worst all it'll do is give players new appreciation for the 'generosity' of the base game. My father used to have a saying when I was a kid (and remember, this was the 80s): 'give 'em nothing, take 'em nowhere'. I am sure you could google it for a heap of hits; he didn't exactly invent the notion. And while it was completely tongue in cheek (he spoiled her [and sometimes his kids] stupid, frankly), it acknowledges the idea that the easiest way to keep someone happy is to not show them how much happier they could be. Keep that bar low and they'll appreciate even the slightest kindness. This is, of course, the rhetoric of abuse when taken to its extreme, and I have absolutely accused GGG of being psychological abusive to their gamers more than once in this regard. But they decided very early, probably as early as beta, that the game would never, ever be 'easier' than the core mode. Leagues might fiddle with the highs and the lows, but on average standard is as easy as it gets, especially with a market lacking any sort of commodity degradation.

So they don't need to test that theory because they've already made up their minds and know the risk isn't worth it. If they were, I reckon they'd have opened the game up to player modding long ago. Regulating difficulty is really the only reason not to, at least from a game design stance. In terms of F2P/GAAS, well, that sort of speaks for itself. Virtually no GAAS is open to modding...hard to monetise the S part when your players can probably do a better job than you.

I agree that it's not a 'vanity' project but I don't think it was a huge resource drain. Also as I said elsewhere, it's the PoE equivalent of a player-made extra difficulty mod. Players churn those out for other games so I can't imagine it was too hard for an actual dev team to do in their spare time.

I have been ruminating on it honestly, whether I'd play it or not, this Ruthless deal. Watched a few vids, engaged some testers for their take. And I realised the deal breaker for me is the campaign itself. It's just so stale now, so pedestrian, that no league gimmick or difficulty mod can invigorate it. If they were to implement Ruthless in a simpler setting, like say an Endless ledge type deal, I'd give it a shot. But when one actually loathes the location, or rather how the location is used, there's no point even thinking about different ways of traversing it. Kind of ironic really: they want to 'make the entire game feel like endgame' when honestly, all many of us ever wanted was the endgame mode made into a version of the entire game, i.e. mapping from level 1. And they know the ten act campaign is really unpleasant for a lot of players (I wince when they call it 'tutorial', but that's on GGG for making Atlas the focus for so long), else they wouldn't be banking on a new 7 act one. So Ruthless' 'making the campaign feel as hard as endgame' is, to me, a weird, belated doubling-down on one of the worst aspects of the game.

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

Here's the problem with your proposal as I see it: as with any mode or modifier, Ruthless can and will change the perception of the game of those who play it -- and to a degree, those who don't

Yes, but here is the thing. The hypocrisy inherent in "spoiling" the players via a mode that in the same breath of design, is as meaningless as "punishment" in Ruthless, isnt lost on me. I wont try to play armchair psychologist here, but this is some Matrix level thought games at play here that you are describing. That punishment or abuse or player hostile design teaches us the "right things". That if things are "too good" players will leave. That we need to be punished, convinced, or manipulated to stay. That's super fucked up, but not shocking given how some studios are employing psychology to maximize profits. I dont have to like it.

It's a based on a false equivalence, in terms of mental gymnastics. Rewards = Bad, and Starvation = ... idk here? Psuedo game skill? Achievement? Ego? What exactly I'm not sure.

I'm also not sure I follow the actual harm created in a more rewarding version (hypothetically because I agree it's not happening), with no harm or potential downside, in a "Ruthless" version. Especially on the scale they are expecting player wise with Ruthless. I dont buy it personally. It's a sham if that's truly what they think, and where I was going with the utter lack of humility involved here.

The theory that players cannot be trusted with how they choose to enjoy Path of Exile. Its truly a mockery, as it appears in actual development. I'm sure it drives the OG Team nuts that this current version of PoE, and metas, has been as sucessful as it is. I think, it was this general malaise with the current scope that spawned a more D2-ish version they are trying here. Thinly veiled if you ask me.

I've (and likely a few others here) experienced this a few times before, and I see all the markings. Most recently with Marvel Heroes. That the Developers, who took something many players enjoyed, and determined it wasnt the direction "they" saw with the game. Rewards nerfed, skills nerfed, movement and travel nerfed, under the guise of more meaningful encounters and impactful looting. Sound familiar? The reality? It just wasnt fun, which for fucks sake is the entire point. It was then a death spiral from there. Less players and less revenue directly lead to less content, and updates. This continued, and not even for that long, before Disney literally shut them down. Unfortunate, but players TRIED to tell them how to avoid this.

Death by Hubris. Ominous warnings.

Edit: Added some context