I feel Ruthless is better for new players than regular game and here is why

I've been playing Ruthless since start of the league constantly 1-2 hours per day and here is what I've learned:

- it's harder, but also way slower so you will learn the monster / boss mechanic better. I've encountered bosses in regular play that I would kill in few seconds never letting them use any skill

- there is a lot of content missing (craft, pantheon, some orbs, etc.). Yes for regular players it can be painful not to be able to craft, getting some attributes is hard but I feel that new player don't care about crafting at all and it's hard to learn especially harvest and crafting after campaign

- drop only support gems and very limited active gem selling by npc. I actually love this because you are not overwhelmed by must have support gems from vendor the moment you turn lvl 8, 16, etc.. and it really helps with thinking about your build. Because you didn't have to think about much when you have +100% more dmg combined from support gems as it became mandatory in regular play

- very slow progression and farming in low lvls. Yes this is optional and many players don't do this since the more lvl you are the better items and more powerful gems you get. But when you are starting new player around 20 lvl and have that 4 lvl chest with 30 armor and want the 200 armor one you just slow down and farm for a bit (because transmutations are rare in low lvls) and it really help understanding the mechanic and defense system in poe

- you learn to dodge, learn to have a good placement and think about the monsters you are facing which imo is better than rely on movement skills in regular play. Yes movement skills are better but sometimes you run to pack of monsters and getting slowed / cursed / whatever still make the movement skill slow, out of charge or on cooldown and you can still end up dead if you rely on it

- the last but not least thing is I love coming back actually. Because every hour of gaming brings something new and something to play for. And I feel this will last until the end of the league for me. (Not mentioning the Sanctum league isn't the best)

Overall I think ruthless is better for new players even tho there are minimum items / rarity drops. But as a newcomer you still don't use trade and the item drops when you farm for a bit is quite okay in Ruthless

I play HC SSF Ruthless and I can't imagine switching to regular play because the progress is much more fun with more entertaining gameplay

What do you guys think? Would you recommend Ruthless to new player because of it's slowness or would you throw new player into the regular game with dozen and dozen of overwhelming things that are just too much to understand well?

The gamemode does not matter, most new players leave the game around character lvl 10 by the way.

PoE is just not a new player friendly game, by design. And the devs are ok with it.

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odds wrote:

The gamemode does not matter, most new players leave the game around character lvl 10 by the way.

PoE is just not a new player friendly game, by design. And the devs are ok with it.

Exactly that was what I was thinking all those years when I was playing regular game. Regular mode was boring af after few days of no brain walkthrough with so many overwhelming useless things. Ruthless has changed that for me. It feels like completely different game.

Thanks for posting your thoughts on this friend! I'm going to make a discussion video on this topic and give my thoughts via that format. I really appreciate how you've laid out your thoughts.

I agree with you on several points and my own experience in HC SSF R has been one of tremendous enjoyment. I'm genuinely having more fun playing POE now than I have in years.

It's a thought - but I feel that most new players won't benefit from Ruthless unless they're in a mindset for it anyway.

For most new players, I fear, Ruthless will be too hard to play long enough to learn anything. They'll probably quit very soon.
The absence of easy to acquire support gems (and active skill gems) on the other hand prevents them from learning an important aspect of the game.

I agree, though, that due to the slower pace that some things are easier to learn, like what damage types mobs do, what the different modifiers do on them, boss mechanics.

I'd absolutely recommend Ruthless to anyone trying out PoE with the addition that if they find it altogether too hard, that there are several easier modes to try. I think it's a better approach to adjust the difficulty down when you can't progress than the other way round. But that's my personal opinion.

Player may be slow and progression as well.

But monsters are not slow.

tbh i don't agree since new players will stop playing even sooner than normal gamemode because it's harder standard mode is already hard enough for new players i imagine. also because they don't learn everything cause a lot is not in it.

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satanttin wrote:

tbh i don't agree since new players will stop playing even sooner than normal gamemode because it's harder standard mode is already hard enough for new players i imagine. also because they don't learn everything cause a lot is not in it.

I would argue they learn MORE because a lot is not in it.

Seeing blight ten times does not teach you what blight is or how it works.
More to the point, seeing a Legion, Blight, Expidition and Map boss don't tell you how any one of them work, and VERY QUICKLY leads to information overload, which the typical response is dump all the information.

It takes 6~ hours for a player to actually internalize things, and disrupting that with new information often prevents players from actually reading into to things because they have new information to observe.

In normal path you're saddled with "This is how you move, this is how you attack, this is how potions work, this is how mana works and this is how drops, gems, and skills work."

That's a LOT to take on during the first 10 minutes. You're asked to understand links and supports at the half point of the FIRST zone, and Dash skills by quest 2 or so (Along with utility flasks!).

And all this is aside the fairly deep item system between sockets, colors, base types, resists and the mess of systems connected with that.

By gating a ton of that WAY deeper, so much of the pressure has been removed from new players.

Yes they won't learn everything, but they will ACTUALLY retain stuff, and not get buried in the ten thousand details path has. It returns some of the archeology to learning them game, you can walk on the ground before learning there's a ton of machinry down there you can tinker with.

Even if they're only getting through part one before going into standard to dive in the deep ends because they want to see the more complex and diverse systems more frequently, I 100% agree Ruthless is a better place to learn the utter fundamentals of the game.

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Northern_Ronin wrote:

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satanttin wrote:

tbh i don't agree since new players will stop playing even sooner than normal gamemode because it's harder standard mode is already hard enough for new players i imagine. also because they don't learn everything cause a lot is not in it.

I would argue they learn MORE because a lot is not in it.

Seeing blight ten times does not teach you what blight is or how it works.
More to the point, seeing a Legion, Blight, Expidition and Map boss don't tell you how any one of them work, and VERY QUICKLY leads to information overload, which the typical response is dump all the information.

It takes 6~ hours for a player to actually internalize things, and disrupting that with new information often prevents players from actually reading into to things because they have new information to observe.

In normal path you're saddled with "This is how you move, this is how you attack, this is how potions work, this is how mana works and this is how drops, gems, and skills work."

That's a LOT to take on during the first 10 minutes. You're asked to understand links and supports at the half point of the FIRST zone, and Dash skills by quest 2 or so (Along with utility flasks!).

And all this is aside the fairly deep item system between sockets, colors, base types, resists and the mess of systems connected with that.

By gating a ton of that WAY deeper, so much of the pressure has been removed from new players.

Yes they won't learn everything, but they will ACTUALLY retain stuff, and not get buried in the ten thousand details path has. It returns some of the archeology to learning them game, you can walk on the ground before learning there's a ton of machinry down there you can tinker with.

Even if they're only getting through part one before going into standard to dive in the deep ends because they want to see the more complex and diverse systems more frequently, I 100% agree Ruthless is a better place to learn the utter fundamentals of the game.

new players won't even see blight cause they already stopped playing 95% of the time lmao
it will tell how they work over time. if u do it a couple times u would know. as simple as that it doesn't take much to know the past league mechanics.

the first 10 minutes? the first 10 minutes of normie mode and ruthless is basically the same i mean what are you on about?

i would say there is a lot more pressure because u can't just buy a white item from the store or browse for a new gem which in normie mode they can just browse and learn all the gems they have in each act. in ruthless they will have to find them they could play ruthless for years and not know all gems there are lmao how's that learnin them tbh?

do think ruthless is for people who think normie mode is too easy or complain about the loot just so they can play till maps and come back to it to enjoy it even more. or people with a lot of time or who just enjoy it. but new players? nah they wouldn't stick for long enough.

Also, don't forget the Wiki, reddit (eyeroll) and these forums here. You can read up on that stuff, so I don't think it's such a big plus that in Ruthless information will come in more slowly.
I think there ARE aspects of the game that ruthless teaches you better, but not so many as to be preferable over normal... especially with the added difficulty that will deter many newbies.