Pros and Cons of Ruthless (from #1 HC Slayer)

Well, I spent longer re-DLing the game than playing it. I can see why it'd appeal to people familiar with and tired of where PoE is otherwise but for someone who's been playing a lot of other games, ARPGs included, it's still just PoE. Slower, clunkier PoE. Call me a dirty casual if you like but stuff like no hotkey for portals? In this day and age? That's just a drag.

And if you're not already familiar with the systems, you will still get your shit wrecked quite early on with only a slight idea how.

In that light, I wouldn't recommend Ruthless to non-Exiles at all. Which is fine, because it's not made for them.

Sorry about the little white lie about keeping my opinion and feedback to myself, but in fairness I meant I wouldn't be making any of my trademark Great Walls O' Text. Which I shall not.

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

I'd disable the stash as a shared function so the player can't mule and make future runs easier or more manipulable.

This is the one thing (if I had to pick 1 thing) that would make this mode more "Ruthless".

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KZA wrote:

Con:
Creative builds aren't really makable due to the lack of links, supports and uniques.

Isn't this part of the allure to people who would play Ruthless? Grinding away until you finally get the pieces to unlock that build.

The stash issue is there because each league start has an empty stash. So players who enjoy that style of play get to play it. They can also just not use the stash for twinking. Go them.

All the ruthless quirks (no support gems, few skill gems, flask duration, mov skills, pantheons, rewards, item drops, crafting, atlas tree etc.) I like. I genuinely understand every single one of them I think.

If there was one thing out of those, maybe I would like Masters to show up a bit more often, rewards can still be decimated, and they are anyway, but it's more about variety of content that I probably would like. I mean say you like to do half of the different mechanics, you like delve but not legion and so on. Then I feel like you play like.. 10 maps before you actually hit one or get a mission from one. Either way this is more about fun than anything else.

The one big problem I've had is being incredibly gated behind low map drops. I have specced all the four big 10% chance for higher tier maps, mobs do more dmg/have more res nodes, and just about all the small nodes I can with increased map drops. Yet I've been stuck at white (t3-5) maps for days. I juice them best I can but it ends up jsut being a chore and I end up just steam rolling simplistic content whilst watching Counter Strike or Netflix on the other monitor. This is clearly not intended.

I'm with the person who wrote that ruthless is actually the easiest league they've ever played because you're stuck playing way too low lvl content which, for me, provides no sense of challenge, no sense of progress and no sense of fun. Gating content behind skill, gear, triggers (quests) etc. is a good and traditional way of going about things, gating them behind drops where the drop rate is too low feels terrible. I am not prevented from playing harder content because I am too bad or too poorly geared, I am prevented from it because it isn't accessible in the game. This is a terrible feeling.

tl:dr; all the mechanics are straight up the way to go <3, map drop rates probably needs tweaking.

In alpha, the way to progress to yellow maps and beyond was through delving. Delve cities drop, or at least dropped, a lot of maps for ruthless.

Thanks for the suggestion. I didn't know that (I didn't watch alpha streams, I like going in blind), but this was actually my initial plan. Then.. the first time I ran into Niko was at lvl 80. One great session, 1k sulphite etc. Haven't seen him since. No atlas missions, no random pop-in though I did invest one point in him having 100% higher spawn chance than other masters. But yeah this was my initial plan, abyssal cities for maps (also the exp down there is alright), maybe some crafting etc.

Talked to another couple of streamers who play SSF R, one suggested Alva as well, I have met her twice so far, once in a map, one atlas mission.

But yeah, might just be me being incredibly unlucky. I haven't really had map issues in any league that I can remember, playing SSF, it really usually is no issue for me. Oh well, imo the other aspects of the mode are fun, stay sane exiles!

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

but the few that we remember we really do remember: Fresh meat! Not Even Death Can Save You From Me! Those were the days...

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

to whom would you recommend Ruthless *assuming little to no PoE experience* and how would you go about it?

It was exciting for like 5 seconds to think about recommending this game to my friends who play D3 but won't do PoE. No need for a loot filter and no need to learn crafting are huge draws for that. But at the end of the day, you have to ask yourself what is a better game: this early unpolished version of PoE Ruthless? Or D3 now / LE in 3 months? If LE multiplayer were out right now it would be no contest - I would drag them in to LE over Retail PoE, Ruthless PoE, or D3. (D3 is out just because we played so much of it the first year of release and there's not much/enough 'new' there for us to experience)

Sounds like it's the same as in alpha.

A bit of background, I played alpha quite a bit, finished as #1 deadeye in SC, and what made me not play ruthless now is the content access.

That's fine until maps, but then the ruthless drop rate starts heavily multi-dipping.

On the example of legion, it has 75 % lower spawn rate.

Ok, great, but it also has the ruthless standard 90 % decreased drop rate, so it tends to drop 0 - 1 splinters.

But those aren't power, just access.

And when one finally puts together a symbol to enter 1-way legion, that one has again 90% lower drop rate.

And the league mechanics having 0.25 % total rewards of what they have in normal modes is not something I found entertaining.

Con: A lot of builds are only viable in core because of defensive auras and they are almost impossible to get. This is going to force metas for anyone hoping to progress beyond yellow maps.