Ruthless and League Mechanic Spawn Rate

Hi everybody, I am a ruthless main but yesterday I got so fed up with the lack of league mechanic spawns that I'm switching back to standard (Affliction trade league) for now. It's not even about the loot - it's purely about the gameplay. I recently ran 100 maps testing to see if they had changed the spawn rate and they haven't. It got so bad that I just don't want to play ruthless because it's such a painful grind.

In case you don't know, the 10 league mechanics all compete with one another in ruthless. Each time you open a map in ruthless you have a 35% chance to get a single league mechanic, 5% chance to get two, 1% chance to get 3, and 59% chance to get NONE. I don't want to self-promo but check my latest vid on youtube for my data. In my final 30 maps of testing, TWENTY SEVEN of them had zero league mechanic spawns.

Instead of limiting the spawn rate of the mechanics so severely, I would suggest the following set of changes:

1. Reduce the loot reward quantity from blight, incursion, and heist encounters by approximately 50% (I say this as a blight/incursion enjoyer)

2. Significantly increase the rarity of getting cluster jewel rewards from Delirium encounters

3. Decouple Master Missions from the 10 league mechanics (Give an independent 3-8% chance per map completion for a random master mission instead)

4. Reduce the base number of Incursions per encounter to 2 (from 3)

5. Increase the spawn rates from 35/5/1% to: 60% base chance for one mechanic at tier 1, gaining an additional 20% for two mechanics by tier 10 maps, and gaining an additional 5% chance for three mechanics by tier 16. (note: this is approximately a 3x for the total spawn rate of league mechanics) [35/5/1 -> 60/20/5]

5b. Increase the added chance to get three mechanics given by Bold Untertakings to +30%

6. Approximately double the added spawn rate of base game mechanics (essence, harbinger, etc) given by the Atlas

Endgame in Ruthless is painful because the majority of your maps will be empty. It's so bad that the game most is too frustrating to play at endgame. I've already had people responding to my video saying that they quit ruthless because of this. PLEASE significantly buff the spawn rate of the league mechanics in ruthless so that us ruthless players can enjoy the endgame league mechanics.

Item scarcity is good. It makes good drops meaningful and worth celebrating, and slows down the endgame push in general. Mechanic scarcity is not good; it's a direct nerf to fun.

Last league we had an out of map league mechanic, this league we have the forest which is at least 100% more extra content in maps per league than last league. The current mechanic can also juice the rewards from other mechanics so you're getting a much better deal than before. The in-map 'gameplay' this league is objectively way more developed than it was during TotA.

Mechanic spawn rate climbs with map tier. Having seen your channel I don't think you ever get to the point where you're sustaining t14s+ and it feels pretty alright up there. If you want to do testing you should maybe try to get to that point and see how it feels by comparison.

Nerfing rewards from other mechanics doesn't make sense, they're already very tight as it is. Just because you don't get dopamine from mapping unless you see extra map icons doesn't mean that everyone else should have less loot every time they appear, that would nerf them to the point where they aren't exciting to engage with.

You had some bad luck with a small sample size and you're forgetting that in ruthless you have to grind to earn everything, including regular league mechanic spawns. The rank 1 ssf guy last league was permasustaining Delirium at one point via simulacrums and their deli orb drops.

You could listen to the devs behind ruthless like Hrishi to get a better idea of why it's designed the way it is. Mechanics spawning for the sake of mechanics spawning isn't fun, it just makes those spawns less worth celebrating, and the accomplishment of grinding to the point where they're more common likewise.

40% chance of a league mechanic feels right for ruthless, a small buff would be nice but i wouldn't want any drastic changes.

Separating the masters from the blockable league mechanics might be a good idea though.

I see the problem differently.

This league I tried a slightly different strategy for map sustain. I didn't spec into pure +% map drop chance and higher level of maps, but I also specced into alva missions and a bit of delve (like 3 passive points). I also took Stream of Consciousness, so I could control the map tier with my alva missions. Overall, I had like 50% for map sustain and 50% for master missions.

I was able to construct 2 alva temples in a way that I could fully clear it including the boss, both temples had a map room (T3 and T2) and also gems (T3 and T2) and other rooms were also selected for map sustain, if possible. I ran all my alva missions on the highest map tier I had (T3s and T4s). Well, long story short, after 3 days of grind I was hard stuck in white maps with no hope to even touch any yellow map.

So I invested all my orbs of chance and respecced my atlas to full map sustain. Surprise, surprise, within one day of grind I'm in red maps.

I think the main problem with ruthless is not amount of missions you get, but the impossibility to enjoy it. Until you get your first two void stones, you must follow a rigid atlas strategy to sustain maps. If you ever touch anything for master missions or the secondary missions, you will be stuck in low tier maps.

So the culprit here is map sustain, which causes inability to use atlas for your favorite content and boost it. Therefore you run empty maps, because you don't have any master missions, and when you get something, it unrewarding, because you can't spec into it.

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shmee51 wrote:

I recently ran 100 maps testing to see if they had changed the spawn rate and they haven't.

Which tier did you test? Forgive me if you already knew this, but in 3.22 the rates were changed to scale by map tier: extra content is apparently more common in higher-tier maps. I have no idea by how much, but I assumed they were less common in whites, more common in reds, with yellows having about the same amount of extra content as before.

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troomar wrote:

I think the main problem with ruthless is not amount of missions you get, but the impossibility to enjoy it. [...] you don't have any master missions, and when you get something, it unrewarding, because you can't spec into it.

Some master notables are nerfed (e.g. Test of Loyalty) and some are left exactly as on the standard tree (Effective Leadership). It's like GGG is telling us to not try to spec into them too much, because only the unnerfed nodes are still worth the points.

It's weird because crafting is so much part of the base game, and you need gear to be able to clear reds, yet the need for map sustain penalizes your progress if you spec into any form of it. It's like GGG thought lack of player agency = difficulty.

I wonder if it would make more sense to just have the shaping nodes be built into the mode: i.e. everything after the campaign does 15% all ele damage and we get a base 35% chance for maps to upgrade their tier. Better to just let us spend the points on something else if the extra rippyness is mandatory anyway.

Currently, being able to spec back out of the shaping nodes means Ruthless actually gets easier after you've gotten your void stones. Not sure what the goal was there.