[Ruthless] Ruthless is the most important experiment that ever happened in ARPG history

I honestly think Ruthless is the most important experiment that ever happened--and is currently happening--in ARPG history.
It's a mode that is asking all the right questions: do ARPGs really need so much loot to drop? Is deterministic crafting something good? If so, how much determinism is the right amount? How far behind the power curve should players be? How much power to overcome said challenge should come from items, and how much from a "passive" source like a skill tree? What happens to trade in a scarcity environment? Should level 100 be an easily achievable feat? And so on.

ARPGs historically were games where you'd kill monsters in challenging situations, and get better items from them that'd let you overcome even tougher challenges (and so on).
PoE, and many other modern ARPGs sadly, are currently games where you delete monsters in split seconds almost off-screen, and ignore everything that drops except for crafting currency that allows you to edit items into godly parodies of what comes off the ground (that let you trivialize content even further).

I currently replayed D2 Resurrected and, save for the potion management aspect (which eventually becomes manageable), I had an absolute blast.
I just went at it blind on HC and really felt that old-school, punishing difficulty games used to have. On Hell I was constantly sh*tting myself. It was awesome.
When I was finally able to overcome Hell, it felt incredibly satisfying; but also disappointing at the same time, because there's not much aspirational content left to do save for Ubers, which I found a bit lame. I do really think that for games of this nature having a couple of pies in the sky that are miles too high--and perennially out of players's reach--is amazing design.
As of now, though, this feeling almost never happens in PoE because you're always ahead of the power curve. The most challenge you get nowadays is when you enter a map tier you're not really ready for (and this you have to wonder if it ever happened due to map drops being too high in the first place).
I mean, aren't we at a point it's been little over a year and people are already deleting Ubers in a matter of seconds? It's a bit ridiculous, actually.

Back to Ruthless, I am 100% sure the more senior devs at GGG have at some point replayed D2 (and I might say even D1) because they're really trying to re-capture that old spirit back, partly with Archnemesis mobs, and now also with loot drops and culling player power.
Even though they're duplicating some things almost verbatim, at least I give them props for only copying the good stuff: charms suck because they clutter your inventory which should focus on carrying juicy loot (and PoE solves passive bonuses via the passive tree); runewords suck, too (the only good thing about them is hunting for good bases).
Set items are an interesting omission but I do think they tend to (quite literally) color-code item slotting way too much, which is lame. That, and in a trade-intensive game like PoE the satisfaction of completing a set is much lower; they're definitely more attractive in SSF.
I found the Teleport meta to suck a lot in D2, since it removes a lot of interesting mechanics such as mobs blocking you from reaching necromancer-type monsters, or having meaningful encounters inside rooms with physical obstacles, and just plain good ol' pathing through a map. Leap, however, did feel more balanced for the Barbarian since he's melee-only.
In retrospect, I'm starting to think it to be a pity that blink-type abilities ever made it into Path of Exile, at least in their current form, because a lot of the nuance in combat encounters tends to get lost.
Even the dash they recently made for Ruthless feels a bit too powerful: you can really tell the difference because facing Mud Flat rhoas is easier on Ruthless than on the regular game. I ultimately think GGG felt the need to add the dash because the later boss fights were designed with movement skills in mind. That said, it does make combat more engaging, and one has to wonder how and if there's a place for those abilities in more traditional ARPGs.

TL;DR Ruthless is awesome, a much needed back-to-the-roots look at the game. It will be the key to PoE2 being successful and challenging, and to the game's overall long-term health. It's now only a matter of defusing the speedfarming meta that is so entrenched in players's minds--though that'll be far from an easy task.

PS: a cool side effect of lowering item drops is that it may solve some of the botting issues; partly because judging a rare item's value is much harder than raw currency, partly because RMTing'd become more expensive (as would the value of player's time too, interestingly enough).

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1eyedking wrote:

I just went at it blind on HC and really felt that old-school, punishing difficulty games used to have.

How can u go in blind if u been in there already?
hc or not doesn't make it a different game.

The title is pretty hyperbolic - Diablo 1, Diablo 2, and PoE 1.0 were all very important experiments in ARPG history - all more important than Ruthless mode. You're certainly allowed to love Ruthless though! Not that you need my permission.

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satanttin wrote:

How can u go in blind if u been in there already?
hc or not doesn't make it a different game.

I hadn't played D2 for almost 10 years: I'd forgotten all the runewords, all the best/fastest ways to level up characters, boss movement abilities, Larzuk socketing, etc., so it was practically a blind run, or semi-blind if you will. Even worse I hadn't played since they introduced synergies, so I made some very stupid mistakes starting out. All I knew were the basics such as capping resists, power shopping, a couple of recipes, and some scary mobs/mod combos.
My first character was nowhere near as good as the second, which was nowhere near as good as the third. I almost had a heart-attack the first time against Diablo because I was only expecting fire damage and then he almost one-shot me with his lightning-channeling attack.
First serious character died on Nightmare, second died on Hell, third made it all the way through into Ubers.
I was scared sh*tless of most mobs during the whole time I played.
It was absolutely awesome.
I'll be replaying it soon probably--that game still holds up amazingly well challenge-wise.

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innervation wrote:

The title is pretty hyperbolic - Diablo 1, Diablo 2, and PoE 1.0 were all very important experiments in ARPG history - all more important than Ruthless mode. You're certainly allowed to love Ruthless though! Not that you need my permission.

There's no other ARPG currently exploring the territory Ruthless is.
Most other ARPGs out there assume printing out tons of rares and uniques is the way to go, and consider early and mid-gearing to be an afterthought and almost a nuisance towards the end-endgame "where the real fun is at", when ARPGs have always been about the journey and not the destination.
I feel like only GGG are way, way ahead of the curve, trying to rediscover the essence of what makes ARPGs tick; kind of like Renaissance artists rediscovering Greek and Roman classics. (A bit of a hyperbole again, I know, but a cool one nonetheless.)
Ruthless may or may not be the end result, but the very fact it's happening is important in itself.

I find the Ruthless fetishism a bit weird because the mode is touted as "true old school challenge" while stubbornly retaining trade. If you're equating challenge and item scarcity then trade is the biggest short circuit to game challenge you can get.

this is a rather good post that engages with arpig fundamentals seemingly lost to the genre these days only mildly hampered by its overwrought title but would I have clicked on a less provocative one probably not so hey well done clap clap clap and all that

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ladish wrote:

I find the Ruthless fetishism a bit weird because the mode is touted as "true old school challenge" while stubbornly retaining trade. If you're equating challenge and item scarcity then trade is the biggest short circuit to game challenge you can get.

Trade only has problems when it reaches a massive scale. Softcore Trade currently has almost 1k Magebloods up for sale, and 17k equipped on characters (!), without counting the ones that poofed. It's an absolutely ridiculous number for a T0 endgame chase unique, completely trivialized due to A) Softcore not having a natural item sink via characters dying, and B) Softcore players being able to do the hardest--and thus most rewarding--content without risk of their characters dying. Multiply those two factors by the fact players actively engage in trade constantly, bulk trade happening via third-party apps, group play, premium stash tabs automatically linking items, the official trading website's insanely powerful search function, and yeah it quickly gets completely out of whack.
It's mind-boggling, really, especially when compared to HC where there's 3 for sale, and about only 80 equipped (at least at some point); that's three to four orders of magnitude lower (!!), and a much healthier number in my opinion that actually makes having the item more mystifying--and rewarding.

Trading on a massive scale can only be culled by making it bothersome, time-consuming and requiring you to actively engage in it to get one going (eg., having to spam the chat due to lack of faster platforms).
As long as there's a very heavy cost of opportunity to trading similar in value to actually playing in-game and getting a similar item value yourself, trading will be in a good spot.
Of course, this isn't currently the case. But... Ruthless is definitely a step in the right direction towards this happening due to how currency, drops and vendors work there.

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鬼殺し wrote:

this is a rather good post that engages with arpig fundamentals seemingly lost to the genre these days only mildly hampered by its overwrought title but would I have clicked on a less provocative one probably not so hey well done clap clap clap and all that

Lol yeah, I'd say it's the equivalent of cheap click-bait YouTube thumbnails. Not my proudest post title, but fight fire with fire and all that.

ruthless guys live in another dimension with their explody totem...

Ruthless an important experiment? maybe.

Look, some folks might enjoy it and given how long POE has been out I understand some players wanting to show off their understanding and skill in the game. Ruthless is a cheap way for GGG to throw challenge at those people without changing the rest of the game (eg: making monsters more difficult).

Although I like being in trade league, and I like being able to deck out a character in what I consider is a reasonable amount of time - I'm fine with Ruthless even though I can't imagine me ever doing it.

As far as I am concerned the genius Atlas Passive Tree is far closer to "the most important experiment".....that one saved POE as far as I am concerned for us veterans who thought the game was getting stale.