Ruthless: My new favorite mode and why I am quitting it anyway. (Hint: It's vaal orbs)

Hi,

After playing ruthless for a few weeks, I've absolutely fallen in and then out of love with it. The slower progression, more meaningful fights/builds, and more influential atlas upgrades provided by ruthless have absolutely destroyed the base game for me as ruthless at its best feels A-M-A-Z-I-N-G -- however, it is with a heavy heart that I have decided to quit ruthless at level 85 after more time than I've ever invested in a path of exile character. The most frustrating part is that it's only a couple small problems that can easily be fixed but I also fear their design is intentionally frustrating.

The problems:

1. Vaal Orbs: Please just give us vaal side areas back. To complete the atlas we need 31 vaal orbs minimum assuming we don't fail a single insanely juiced corrupted map. The only way to get vaal orbs at all is through the most difficult and rare methods: Extremely rare delve temples, tier 3 alva boxes, and corrupted Kirac missions. I have played hours of delve and not even seen one of these temples. I have no idea how you even get a tier 3 room in the temple reliably (and running 15 incursions plus an entire temple for a single orb is ridiculous), and to date I have run tons of white and yellow maps and even with Kirac's upgraded mission chance I have only ever received two missions. We need 31 vaal orbs for our atlas, all unique jewels are now vaal orb only, mages and summoners need corrupted level 21 skill gems, and there's still corrupting equipment on top of that. They are just spread far too thin and this has become the main reason I'm quitting.

2. Forced Atlas Points: What is the purpose of providing us with an entire 300+ point atlas if there's mandatory upgrades to progress? It is absolutely impossible to sustain maps without dropping 31 points MINIMUM into making maps harder with a <50% chance to have any map drops be actually usable. Not only does it force us to path to the dead center of the tree, it takes a 20% mandatory tax off our atlas. Please just consider improving map quantity -- no quality/rarity changes needed, just quantity.

i think they designed ruthless so its hard just to finish campaign and reach maps. Things like completing bonus objectives on red maps, high tier map sustain and atlas completion are much loftier goals.

Just my 2 cents on the matter. I don't play ruthless but I do enjoy SSF

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stalkingjackal wrote:

i think they designed ruthless so its hard just to finish campaign and reach maps. Things like completing bonus objectives on red maps, high tier map sustain and atlas completion are much loftier goals.

Just my 2 cents on the matter. I don't play ruthless but I do enjoy SSF

Hard to complete is fine, but requiring 25 maps minimum for one kirac mission when you have all kirac upgrades for a 20% chance for a single vaal orb to get one atlas point is not hard, it's a full time job. You don't get daily missions in Ruthless either and there's no other way to corrupt maps.

Ruthless shouldn't just be a harder version of the normal league, it should be hard, not just a slightly more challenging. Just accept you are limited on what you can do. I think ruthless isn't hard enough if someone like me, who hasn't even killed Sirus can reach maps.

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AbilityPoints wrote:

Ruthless shouldn't just be a harder version of the normal league, it should be hard, not just a slightly more challenging. Just accept you are limited on what you can do. I think ruthless isn't hard enough if someone like me, who hasn't even killed Sirus can reach maps.

You're completely ignoring any of OP's points by stating your opinion that no one asked for.

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eheideman wrote:

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AbilityPoints wrote:

Ruthless shouldn't just be a harder version of the normal league, it should be hard, not just a slightly more challenging. Just accept you are limited on what you can do. I think ruthless isn't hard enough if someone like me, who hasn't even killed Sirus can reach maps.

You're completely ignoring any of OP's points by stating your opinion that no one asked for.

Oh, sorry.

I don't think Vaal Orbs should be easy to get in a hard mode. Mapping is meant to be a luxury in Ruthless, spending your Atlas points to help sustain maps should be a requirement.

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AbilityPoints wrote:

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eheideman wrote:

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AbilityPoints wrote:

Ruthless shouldn't just be a harder version of the normal league, it should be hard, not just a slightly more challenging. Just accept you are limited on what you can do. I think ruthless isn't hard enough if someone like me, who hasn't even killed Sirus can reach maps.

You're completely ignoring any of OP's points by stating your opinion that no one asked for.

Oh, sorry.

I don't think Vaal Orbs should be easy to get in a hard mode. Mapping is meant to be a luxury in Ruthless, spending your Atlas points to help sustain maps should be a requirement.

?

Mapping isn't "a luxury". You can easily endlessly sustain your maps as soon as you beat act 10. I've never once had to go back to acts to farm.

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DebuggerBear wrote:

Mapping isn't "a luxury". You can easily endlessly sustain your maps as soon as you beat act 10. I've never once had to go back to acts to farm.

While I also didn't have to go back to the acts (always had at least white maps), actually progressing up the atlas is a nightmare in ruthless. It's not difficult, but it requires a crazy time investment.

The first major problem is getting "established" in yellow tier with a non-functioning atlas tree (lack of points). It requires an endless grind and several streaks of good luck with adjacent map drops and rare appearances of Kirac missions.

Red maps are even more terrible. I have grinded long enough to get lvl 20 gems, always running the highest tiers I could afford, atlas tree all map sustain and Kirac, and I am still not sitting safe in reds, I could drop back to yellows in 1-2 bad streaks.

The lack of vaal orbs means you cannot complete your rare red maps for atlas points, you can only enable them to drop, and then again brute force it with a crazy time investment, until Kirac is friendly enough to show up a couple times again AND has corrupted maps you didn't complete.

Edit: just saw you're playing nonSSF. Trade makes it a bit easier, I guess.

I think you guys are missing the point. This is the mode GGG doesn't want people to be able to complete. That has not been a secret. It would make no sense for them to implement changes that help people complete it.

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I think you guys are missing the point. This is the mode GGG doesn't want people to be able to complete. That has not been a secret. It would make no sense for them to implement changes that help people complete it.

That doesn't make much sense to me, what's the point then? To laugh at peoples struggles? At this point for any semi casual, it should just be impossible mode. Or rename it "No-job-grind-20-hours-a-day-mode".

The problem is that the "Challenge" lies in RNG, 100%. That is NOT fun in any game. And I'm talking running literally 100+ white maps a day and never getting past T6. That's where I'm at now after weeks of grinding as much as I possibly could, thinking I could brute force it, but it didn't happen. Meanwhile some lucky dude gets established in yellows in a day or two.

This needs tuning.