Ruthless really is a design failure -signed a Ruthless player

Alpha, Sanctum, Crucible and TOTA I think I have some perspective here, I've probably already offered this feedback, but you don't have to look hard to see evidence that this mode has missed the mark. So don't take my word for it. For example when super ultra time wealthy Try hard players like Alkeizerx (recently quit Ruthless a second time after a couple streams of trying to like it) and Quin69 wont play the hardest mode your game offers well... then. Pretty clearly:

Something(s) fell short with the design. And should the game feature an entire mode that only appeals to a couple hundred players? Look at the leaderboards, there's TENS OF PLAYERS I TELL YAH (thats a meme I'm sure there's at least a couple hundred)

Especially when it feels like those types of players (and myself FWIW) would love a more challenging less off the rails but uhm... maybe not this tedious/ridiculous mode of the game?

Yea, I said it, Ruthless is too thirsty for players time, and too drab, sterile and missing too many of the elements that make the base game fun (but off the rails balance wise). Put the movement skills back in with CD's and checks and balances for starters. I heckin' miss Whirling blades.

One of the clear problems is there seems to be a basic inability to offer feedback (such as happened constantly on the discord) without someone pulling out the "git gud" card. As if players like Ben, Alk and Quin (the try hardest of the try hards) aren't good enough. They wont even play the mode and when they have they quit in short order... That strongly suggests the mode needs to be tweaked and yes; made a little less tedious.

I love some things about the mode (no bench, loot being scares) but:

I hate map sustain to the point where I quickly find any excuse to do anything but map. Playing in progression appropriate/character power appropriate content really should not be the struggle, the struggle should be the CONTENT, not getting it to drop. Shitting on trivial content that you can't afford to alc 300 times a night hoping for slightly less trivial content to drop is a game design failure. Period.

Using ALL your atlas points on +map % travel nodes really clearly shows the design mistakes... literally EVERY PLAYER SPECS FULL TRAVEL POINTS for map sustain. Its not even a passive tree any more, its just obligatory map sustain prerequisites spread sheet.

There's honestly not enough currency for a mode that has no crafting bench, Blue items are made permanently worthless because Regals are insanely rare. THE ONE MODE where regaling a 2 mod blue item could make you excited to pick up blue items, doesn't drop enough regals to make this viable. Exalt slams should be a thing you do to gear in Ruthless... but that 1 ex you drop the whole league (or in my sweaty-casual case every OTHER league) ... well you're not going to waste it on anything less than a near GG lottery drop. So... you never use the one exalt you drop, because "what if I drop a crazy rare later". At the very least all the Betrayal benches should be Regal, Div or Exalt slams. 90 out of 100 slam outcomes are going to be irrelevant to your character... why be SO precious with them?

Div cards... Okay controversial topic: in Alpha, and Sanctum I was happy no Div cards existed... But I've slowly changed my mind; The problem sets in: Div cards are one of the FEW things in the game that give Maps or Tilesets any meaning, I actually developed a fondness for CELLS (no seriously) because of years of Chains the Bind card hunting in SSF, Div cards give Maps the ability to be "oh cool its that map that has this card, maybe something exciting will happen". This potential or "what could happen" is largely missing from ruthless as a whole.

Excitement is missing from ruthless. Possibility is missing from Ruthless. Most of the personality and flavor of the base game Atlas is missing from Ruthless. But my Choices are severely limited: play dumpsters of loot dropped on my head mode, or play "someone made a mod where they replaced every whole number with a decimal and .0001 in every field" mode.

Failing that how about making a version of the BASE GAME with Ruthless loot and no bench?

"

alhazred70 wrote:

I hate map sustain to the point where I quickly find any excuse to do anything but map. Playing in progression appropriate/character power appropriate content really should not be the struggle, the struggle should be the CONTENT, not getting it to drop. Shitting on trivial content that you can't afford to alc 300 times a night hoping for slightly less trivial content to drop is a game design failure. Period.

Using ALL your atlas points on +map % travel nodes really clearly shows the design mistakes... literally EVERY PLAYER SPECS FULL TRAVEL POINTS for map sustain. Its not even a passive tree any more, its just obligatory map sustain prerequisites spread sheet.

Agree with most of your post, and especially the quoted bit. I offered feedback as well after playing a league in Ruthless. It was very fun and challenging through the campaign, and I loved the scarce loot drops. But soon after the campaign was over, it became clear map sustain was impossible. And like everybody else in Ruthless, I too invested practically every single point into map sustain. It wasn't enough. When I once again got bumped down to T2-3 maps, I gave up. Just getting into yellows was nigh on impossible.

That is what made me give up and quit. The content should be the challenge, not access to it. Not basic content like the Atlas at least.

Unless they make serious changes, I won't try it out again.

Agreed. Map sustain is awful in Ruthless.

I kept my ruthless characters to dabble with when bored. I haven't logged in with them for a while.

empty

Currently rank 1 ruthless hardcore.
I don't think map sustain is as large an issue as you make it out, although I agree that atlas passives are boring af when we have to take them all to sustain. why even have an atlas tree??? well, because you don't have to sustain high tier maps for atlas to be worth. If you want to farm bosses, sure, you do. But if you want to farm alva, white tier is fine. If you want to farm ritual, breach, etc, etc, white tier map rushing is fine, and kinda fun.
I currently have 67chaos 134 alchs, 7regals, 2 exalts, 1 div.

I do think ruthless would be more fun with div cards, even if they are 1/100 as rare as normal leagues. Essentially, things being slowed down and drops being more meaningful is great. But removing content entirely is sad. I get they are testing what content to bring to poe2, and how to make the game exciting without the huge power creep people have in poe1 where hardcore uber races are completed within a few days. Ruthless is kind of a weird beta testing mode, where bugs don't exist, but progression and content and all that is being put on the scales in terms of the nerfed rates they tried with archnemesis that most of the community hated.

Having 'the vision' be optional, and only a few hundred people in it is fine. It is sad though that you are correct that of these few hundred they are split between ssf, hardcore ssf, trade, and hardcore trade. so the number of players is divided by 4 and we have essentially 4 private leagues with 10-25 friends in each, and a BUNCH of fresh poe players that come in thinking 'this is the hardest mode, I want to try the game there', but that isn't correct at all. It's a different mode, not the hardest mode. It's the LONGEST mode. It's a mode where 90% of the game is removed entirely. It's a different game, it's not a game mode. New players don't get that.

I can tell you that I partially agree

however, I noticed that tier 14-16 maps started dropping more when I get 2 voidstones

now I'm focusing on metamorpha and it's going quite well

in the previous league I focused on delirium for a while, I could farm splinters for simulacrum

but there weren't many people interested in buying it

For me, the worst thing is getting fragments for bosses like shaper, elder and especially uber elder, it takes forever...

And because of this, I start to get bored at some point

empty

I agree with the OP, especially the map sustain point. This is supposed to be a game where we kill monsters and pick up loot. If you don't have maps then you can't kill monsters and pick up loot! DUH!