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

At best I'm an average player. By that I mean that I don't play every single league and I try to come up with my own builds, somewhat off the meta. It's rare for me to have a build that does over 4mil dps or hits CL 90+.

With that caveat, I've started playing ruthless with 2-3 buddies and we're all playing phys dmg builds. I've got maybe 7-8hrs on this char and am only in act5.

We're taking our time, playing the content, and really not trading much til we hit act 4. I was on a linkless lacerate and now have a 3link since trading.

What my friends and I like about ruthless is that every upgrade, whether a magic item or a rare, they feel really impactful to progression right now. We get excited to see rares and hearing a unique drop is even more exciting.

We need to actually play boss mechanics because we don't melt them in 5 seconds.

When we talk about slamming an item, it's not an exalt, it's a transmute or alch, lol.

Currency at this point is meaningful and impactful. It's more accessible too. Because of currency rarity, alchs, alts, etc. are all tangible and impactful currency for trading that you can use from the get-go if you want.

The lack of support gems even from quests is a bit frustrating but I get the direction they're going in and I like it. I also like that so few items drop that there isn't a need for a loot filter (yet). I don't even mind the lack of movement skills (but how we'll do pillars map I dunno).

It feels like a much better experience to me. It has a vibe reminicent of d2 in terms of leveling and mob interaction.

To the OP amd others points, I would love it if ruthless was harder for all builds in some way. I bet if we played cold or fire builds it would still be too easy and much faster, so I think this project can use some further refining but I like the direction this game mode is going and probably will never play vanilla ever again.

i agree, ruthless is below standard in difficulty.
since you have very hard access to redmaps you literaly completed the hardest part of the game after killing kitava.
you can map even with minus res, it does not matter.
in standard i can at least push content and this makes it hard. in ruthless im stuck with content thats so easy that i could play it while i sleep and i cant change it since its the only content available consistent.
when you ask me whats my easiest time in poe my answer would be: ruthless.

EDIT: as a small edit:
what did i expect from ruthless? i expected a slow progression but instead of very few rares i drop very few maps but rares are not rare. they are equal to standard. completely wrong aproach. maps should drop very frequent but rares should be rare.
i expected the middleground between hc and sc. i loved playing hc but the game got to dmg sided so i hoped ruthless would revive that old hc feeling of crawling through the game but it simply does not.
if ggg want to save ruthless: make content more common, rares more rare and add an extra map crafting currency that actualy drop often. like map alchs that cant be used on bases to roll items.
problem solved.