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

I gave Ruthless a try, and the feeling of impactful drops was refreshing, early on, but then I started to accumulate gear, and that feeling slowly dissolved as my capacity to twink new characters grew. The rest of the format, i.e., the lack of movement skills and such, wasn't novel enough to keep me interested. ='[.]'=

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DarthSki44 wrote:

TLDR: Ruthless is an experiment amongst folks already invested in the experiment. It has zero broad appeal, and isn't marketable. Imo it's a gimmick at best. If they push Ruthless in PoE2 as a more core aspect, the results could be catastrophic. I'd personally even go as far as saying that a Ruthless focus in PoE would start a death spiral, not unlike what we saw with Marvel Heroes.

Zero broad appeal is just hyperbole based on your preference. Lots of RPG style games have slower combat and less dumpsters of loot raining on your head every zone, and some of those games have MUCH MUCH larger playerbases than POE does.

I think better quality loot but a LOT LESS of it is where they must go in POE2... So maybe Ruthless like AMOUNTS or tiems (less need for strict filters) but certainly not Ruthless like rolls on the gear when you id them.

Also I expect in a couple weeks they'll unveil "onslaught mode" I keep predicting, which hypothetically would keep the clear speed loot dumpsters gameplay of POE1 SC trade mode more or less intact. Its honestly the best thing to do for everyone. I am tried of playing a game balanced to keep CuteDog only finding 5 exalts per night while I find 5 per league (exaggerating but whatever).

POE2 needs Ruthless drop rates for ITEMS to avoid the current dumpster situation but it very much needs more QUALITY to the average rolls or POE2 will feel like the most stingy boring "all risk, no reward" game ever.

Because you can get 'clear speed" in ruthless and it will start mitigating (admittedly only somewhat) how thirsty and unrewarding it feels.

But POE2's got engaging combat, which (unless it fails and falls apart in end game) will require MANY MORE BUTTONS PER DROP causing a mode that could potentially be the worst feeling "risk vs reward" in the history of the hobby. POE1's already pretty close (IMO) if you're not a clear speed guy it just hides the stingy behind landfills of trash loot thats not worth looking at.

And thats not hyperbole... If you were to couple POE2's multi button/cool down/builder+spender/vulnerable application style engaging slower gameplay (which seems to be the case) with the current ruthless loot system; even Korean Grind MMO's Developers would blush at GGG's absolute sadism lol.

Nah.Already being through it in closed beta.
Ruthless is imo PoE Classic in regards of loot to some extent. But still easier than back then since we have now ascendancies which increases player power soo much (that they removed one lab to compensate) and a way bigger loot pool with more powerful items.

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alhazred70 wrote:

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DarthSki44 wrote:

TLDR: Ruthless is an experiment amongst folks already invested in the experiment. It has zero broad appeal, and isn't marketable. Imo it's a gimmick at best. If they push Ruthless in PoE2 as a more core aspect, the results could be catastrophic. I'd personally even go as far as saying that a Ruthless focus in PoE would start a death spiral, not unlike what we saw with Marvel Heroes.

Zero broad appeal is just hyperbole based on your preference.

I'm sorry but that's just not true. You can even check Ruthless leaderboards. The participation rate amongst existing PoE players is very small, let alone expanding that out to a more average / casual arpg gamer.

Thats why I called it an experiment for those already in an experiment. It's a tiny niche, within an already niche game. Nicheception if you will.

Come on man, its clearly hyperbole you're saying absolutely NO broad appeal to gamers. But then it has more than zero playerbase...

Souls-like games exist people like the idea of try hard stuff (and no i'm not saying ruthless = soulslike BTW hopfully we can avoid that discussion) So a non zero amount of gamers find harder modes appealing in general.

Painfully grindy Korean MMO's exist (So nopn-zero amounts of people like omega grindy RNG progression stuff).

Ruthless is absolutely a niche in current POE landscape, (but also for way more reasons than just the loot and speed of gameplay balance points) but you're saying broad appeal... so we're not talking only POE's invested pop. Ruthless is basically D2 loot, D2's loot is very similar (albeit the game is easier so less pressure to get better loot), D2 had broad appeal and still does part of that is the balance points of how the game felt to play.

I'd argue that POE basic mode raining dumpsters of junk on you is the exception in gaming and not the rule. Certainly at least not "the broadly appealing" balance point. I'd rekon POE's clear speed is as far off the mark in the opposite direction as ruthless is if we're talking wider appeal. Not to mention that Ruthless is in a poor state, with too many hatchet job changes that are about quality of the experience and not about the balance points.

I fully agree Ruthless has a tiny playerbase, I've been saying it here and elsewhere that they overshot the mark. Basically when Quin69 starts liking it, they've probably got a lot closer to a healthy balance point just to use a metric that might have some wider context people might relate to.

Ruthless is a great experiment, asking the question "how much of the game's content can you withhold from the players and still have them love you for it?"

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AcrylicHercules wrote:

Ruthless is a great experiment, asking the question "how much of the game's content can you withhold from the players and still have them love you for it?"

Thats a very outcome oriented way to view it but I get it. I've often felt POE in general is being too precious with its risk vs reward tuning. GGG trying to make it so Mathil1 only sees 1 Aul every 6 months, means some normal POE guys never fucking see him (I've only seen him on my delve board twice in what 3 or 4 years?). This is just content made for dozens of players instead of thousands of players and that IMO is kinda dumb and short sighted. Its hard to explain why I enjoy ruthless at all given that I don't think they have things balanced very well at all even in the main mode.

Basically it amounts to this: if you're journey focused and less outcome focused Ruthless fixes the core gameplay loop of killing monsters to look at their loot. In the base game you don't need to give a shit about the items that drop past a short lived point; unless they make a fuss in your filter because you'll be crafting on influenced rares with mega currency/brute forcing or buying that stuff off trade. Influenced rares broke POE's core loop a long time ago.

That core loop matters more to me than the outcome does. So I'm still looking at rares in month 3+ of Crucible league and cooking trees onto gear.

But that doesn't mean I think GGG has the balance nailed. Far from it in fact. Ruthless is seriously depraved balance... but my alternative is Clown Show core loop of basic mode and its still stupidly thirsty for my time, its just easier to bypass if I want the outcome (buying the outcome for example)...

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MaturinGuardianOfTheBeam wrote:

🤔

Edit: Going to re-write.

Well seems you have the time to really nail it down. :)

Best of luck, O turtle of enormous girth.

If it is an experiment, then the findings are how many players enjoyed it.

This thread is weird because it raises the issue that finding out how many people like playing that was is important (maybe it is?), while ignoring the finding of the experiment that people don't like Ruthless.

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DarthSki44 wrote:

Well this thread was interesting, and not because of the subject matter. It's likely that CW, and some Senior devs that cashed out, now find philosophy more important than palatability because they don't have to worry about the financials as much. PoE's already been successful.

Ruthless has its place I guess, but its a small one. It has questions it asks, but again, very few even care about those questions, let alone the answers it may, or may not, unearth.

Bottom line is this. Is Ruthless "fun"?. Pretty subjective, but the premise is already skewed towards a sadistic gamer, or one that's more of a glutton for punishment. Hell it's called Ruthless for a reason. There is nothing groundbreaking or pivotal happening with this game mode. If anything, it appeals to a small subset of players within an already niche arpg playerbase. Starving players in terms of loot & skills, and handicapping movement/ travel, doesn't revolutionize arpgs, nor does it even really change the core parts of PoE.

TLDR: Ruthless is an experiment amongst folks already invested in the experiment. It has zero broad appeal, and isn't marketable. Imo it's a gimmick at best. If they push Ruthless in PoE2 as a more core aspect, the results could be catastrophic. I'd personally even go as far as saying that a Ruthless focus in PoE would start a death spiral, not unlike what we saw with Marvel Heroes.

Cashed out implies they got their payday and ran. That didn't happen. Instead they accepted golden handcuffs -- and even if Ruthless rubs people the wrong way, it still represented an unfortunately rare event: visible loosening of said handcuffs.

For that alone I approve of it. I still don't think PoE has been the sort of game most GGG devs would ever play in their spare time nor did it ever become the ARPG the founding members would want to play over D2 (or rather, it never recaptured whatever lightning they found in Blizzard North's momentous bottle) but if Ruthless is a work of passion first and foremost, then it comes closer to "artistic achievement" than PoE has for years.

Do I wish they'd spent that time refining Descent? Sure. But that was my favourite PoE mode, and there's no telling who else may feel the same way. Ruthless could easily have been called Heartless, because it clearly gives no shits about what anyone else wants from the game. I like that as well. A return to when devs can just deliver a game with no real fear of whether or not players might throw cash at it on the reg wouldn't be a bad thing. Games have always been a commodity, a product, but f2p models where "the player is the boss" (Chris Wilson said these exact words as though they aren't inherently horrifying) skew far too close to necessary pandering for my likes. Players, like any human collective, are kinda dumb. We rely on visionary devs to give us what we never knew we wanted. Ruthless aint that, but it is a slouching towards it.