Ruthless is the easiest game mode, even more so than standard.

I love this game mode, it's the most fun I've had in years in this game and the only reason I even came back before PoE 2 launches.

I read that a handful of people worked on it over 18 months, but did they even play test it? I'm not trying to be mean here but ruthless endgame is shaping up to be running transmuted yellow maps and occasionally breaking into reds, using the very few alchemy orbs you do get to actually do atlas completion.

Yes I realize I'm playing SSF and its going to be even more fucked than trade league, but that still means only the top echelon of players in trade are going to be able to afford to sustain red maps.

Why this makes ruthless a complete joke should be obvious to anyone that has more than a few hundred hours in the game. Im currently blasting through yellow maps on a ZERO link spectre (according to every that plays the regular game dps spectres are dogshit) and 2 link zombies. Turns out you can run complete shit builds and clear blue yellow and red maps who would have thought? I'm just never going to get to any challenging content anymore. Im stuck endlessly running joke maps that have virtually no challenge while also getting stronger every day making it more and more easy.

I enjoy this game mode a lot, but if the map drops aren't addressed this gamemode is literally factually easier than just playing standard. And I don't see myself or many other coming back for the next one.

This was their ideal design from the addition of maps. You had to pay for the privilege of getting to even play a map. It's always been stupid.

It's gotten better over the years, I have almost no problem with sustaining in regular SSF even.

If ruthless is just going to be wallowing around in easy roll yellows and low reds forever this game mode is made for more casual slow placed players than those actually looking for a challenge. And that's fine if that's the case although the title "Ruthless" is ironic if so.

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Terzian wrote:

This was their ideal design from the addition of maps. You had to pay for the privilege of getting to even play a map. It's always been stupid.

Coming back to 3.19, the map sustain was actually fine. I've never been able to sustain t16 just by alching, in 3.19 (and in standard before the league dropped) I had no problem doing that.

So just running maps was pretty good, no idea when they made this so good. Definitely wasn't like this a few years ago.

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Frostride wrote:

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Terzian wrote:

This was their ideal design from the addition of maps. You had to pay for the privilege of getting to even play a map. It's always been stupid.

Coming back to 3.19, the map sustain was actually fine. I've never been able to sustain t16 just by alching, in 3.19 (and in standard before the league dropped) I had no problem doing that.

So just running maps was pretty good, no idea when they made this so good. Definitely wasn't like this a few years ago.

Compounding systems that added up over time, and the whole atlas tree etc.

There's a difference between difficulty because you character isn't strong enough, and difficulty that exists because of lack of access to content and they realized the latter kills the game, but forgot about that again with ruthless.

Unless the entire point of ruthless is to make casuals who just muck around in regular maps feel accomplished I don't get the point in nerfing map drops in ruthless. If you talk to any of the SSF players there a good chunk will tell you they made it to yellows, then lost all their maps and have to grind act 10 kitava just to build a pool of t1 maps to try and climb out again so they can snooze through them at lvl 80 with insane gear for the content.

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BossOfThisGym wrote:

If you talk to any of the SSF players there a good chunk will tell you they made it to yellows, then lost all their maps and have to grind act 10 kitava just to build a pool of t1 maps to try and climb out again so they can snooze through them at lvl 80 with insane gear for the content.

While I constantly drop out of yellow maps back into t3/t4, I don't think I could completely run out of maps.

(have all 4 "10% chance for +1 map level" notables allocated though)

I don't think Ruthless was playtested that much, they intended this mode to be something you play as off-activity, to do once and forget. Set yourself a goal for this mode which could be

-complete acts on ruthless
-complete all regular maps on ruthless
-beat Exarch / Eater with alch'ed invitation

and that's it, once you clear the goal it's time to move on and play regular POE.

If somebody expects juicing 100% deli 4x winged scarab 4x sextant-mod 140% quant conqueror maps then sorry, this is not the mode for that.

Ruthless-mode is primarily there to make content that's normally a joke in regular POE (acts, low tier maps that aren't even alched) somewhat challenging because you have to run this on a 2 or 3 link with gear that has some random assortion of affixes.

Friend, it seems you didn't read any of the above posts. No one expects to run gigajuiced maps, read OP's post. There is no challenge in running 2-3 links. Because we are stuck running low level content. Because higher level content isn't gated behind difficulty or gear or ability checks, but drop rates that are too low.

I cannot be challenged because I do not have access to challenging content. Days and days of grinding low level maps while I watch CS on second monitor. That is the issue. This likely contradicts the purpose of ruthless mode. The rest of the ruthless-exclusive mods are between good and great for me, this is the one thing that ruins it all once you're a couple of days in. I also believe this isn't a particularly taxing thing to fix.

honestly i think what it shows is how much the item system is being destroyed by the mapping system.


what i mean by that, item rolls have to be generally terrible and rares not worth picking up because you have to have 1000 trans, augs, alts, alchs and chaos on hand at all times just to casually map, to play endgame. and that means you have the ability to generate rares at will, 100s of them because you need to roll and reroll maps 100s of times a day every day and never not be able to do that.


the fact we have to craft every 3 minutes of gameplay using the same materials we craft gear with necessitates gear being kind of worthless/meaningless item by item when you math it all out and think it through.



what are we really getting for this system of crafting maps? Im gonna argue not a lot, im gonna argue that the map mods dont really impact much, its a bit like the old rare mob mods where theres a lot of mods and they do fuck all. when they did something it was reflect and it was bullshit that shouldnt have been in the game, same with map mods, they do nothing essentially unless theyre reflect in which case theyre bullshit that shouldnt exist. its basically mobs do a bit more damage and are a bit more tanky, thats the 2 mods that exist in real terms and theyre kind of meaningless with the pace of the game.

theres other mods, theres "your game now looks like shit because of X ground effect everywhere" the mod, which comes in a couple of different colour options, and theres "this mod means you have to use a chaos orb" the mod, which just further means you need to be like

yeah i got this bro which just means a rare item dropping for you will never have any meaning because you could force spawn 500 of them at any point and not even give a shit.



what does it really bring to the game being able to roll maps? i mean other than making some rmt websites super rich back in 2013 what does it mean now going into 2023 as a gameplay system?



im gonna argue its just bloat that comes at a heavy cost, it costs us time rolling maps, it costs the gameplay flow breakdown of having to do that, it costs the crafting and hence magic/rare item game being a shitshow, what does it give us? sometimes mobs do some more damage and take more damage?

cant you just turn up the damage and life numbers by default and youve essentially replicated the entire map mod system in real terms, in its actual gameplay impact when you are in a map playing the actual game not standing at your stash being bored as fuck of all this bloated busy work?






lets be real here, i know some on the dev team and in the community have a love affair with this map rolling bullshit. im here to bring your fantasies back down to reality people, im sry, i know it hurts. just let it in, let the cleansing light of common sense back into your hearts and wash away all that nonsense youve been telling yourself. we can do better than this, theres a better system that can be made, 2013 is calling and all theyre saying is 'were really sorry we were wrong, we dont even want it back'.

Agreed with OP and it is frankly why I wasn't really interested in Ruthless. Excessive grind isn't "hard", it's just tedious. NOW if they also included what they did during the Mayhem league event and include random modifiers in every area (which I sort of thought they would do....), then that would be ruthless indeed.