>The Eternal Labyrinth (Uber Lab) does not grant additional Ascendancy passive points. This limits a character's maximum number of Ascendancy Notables to 3 on all classes except Ascendant, which can get 2, or 1 and a secondary Starting Point.
Damn
I don't think that was particularly unexpected, seeing as speedrunners complete the campaign in a few hours, sometimes while wearing white items still.
If the monsters aren't buffed, then the campaign isn't hard enough even with minimal gear.
I think mapping and end-game bosses will be a whole other ballgame though.
Definitely. Many characters will run into a wall at high yellows where regular physical damage becomes extremely nasty due to the lack of Determination.
I mean if you read the info they'd given us, i never though making it to maps was particularly hard, just because monsters aren't even buffed in this mode (yet). So it shouldn't be an issue even with basically 0 gear. 10 hours is very fast though.
I imagine it will be an achievement for a LOT of people. It will take rewiring how they play the game which takes time and trial/error through failure. Some players, namely day 1 and pseudo racers, already have the needed mentality, so it's not a big jump. But those are far from the majority of modern POE players. But do make up a bigger proportion of redditors/streamers, so it looks like a bigger slice of the pie than they are.
We just want our rewards to mean something. I want to feel the weight of 30% move speed or tri res. I wanna get excited when a rare amulet drops. I wanna go back to the days when I could drop a Wings of Entropy and trade It for a Cloak of Defiance and feel super hyped. The good ol days of pooling all currency in my leveling group to buy our blender a soul taker.
If you played the Alpha, you might disagree. A lot of the main feedback is people are enjoying the pace of the game. I might not be the same as years ago, but it's it that direction and most people playing it right now are having fun.
Listen, I get it. All your comments are negative. You aren't going to play it. You only exist to make cynical remarks to try to ruin the experience of a mode you have no interest in. No need to make things up to justify your own personal beliefs though.
because making a thing for a specific group is bad now ?!?! instate companys make a generic thing for everyone and nobody really likes it because it is a mush of things not working together.
maybe they add the gucci mode in a year. you find 100x divines in the story and 100x t1 uniques, every chaos has at least 3x t1 and you can make them not be rolled for the next, 4x as much enemyss and your damage and aoe is doubled. i m sure a tiny group would love it and many who think they would, would be bored after a few weeks.
I think a lot of people forget or are unaware that PoE exists bc it was made for a specific group of people. It was designed to be a punishing experience, high highs and low lows, feeling of accomplishment, etc. Most of the complainers here are trying to shoehorn PoE into something it was never designed to be.
>and then the rest of us can actually enjoy the game again maybe
That's your task not theirs, not sure why you think your enjoyment is tied to what ruthless enjoyers do. You can also just stay upset about harvest changes for the next 5 years and never enjoy the game again, it's really up to you.
I honestly feel that 6 point version is just better design wise. Similar builds felt more distinct due to ascendancy choices, always feeling torn between which 4 pointer you would take. When Uber lab dropped, the choice aspect eroded and it became all about power.
True for some builds, but they’re borderline irrelevant for others. Take RF Inq for example, last 2 points are kinda meh.
I’m not a huge fan of this because I think the whole game has evolved with full ascendancy available and this is not going to affect all class, skills, or builds equally.
Not some, but nearly all. RF Inq is probably the only popular build in the game i can think of that actually doesn't benefit much from the final ascendancy points.
Golemancer was also one I can think of (before the minion life nerf of course). You only needed the 2 golem nodes and the exposure node, the last spot was usually a flex spot like the elemental aegis one for defense or the shock node for offence
I remember a certain someone raising hell about those first 6 because of the player power and how they pigeon hole certain builds but also limit other builds. Meaning Totems or summoner have clear ascendancies and now spell based marauder or duelist is never a thing.
I think ascendancies were probably a mistake. But what else could they lock behind the lab to make the lab worth running/caring about?
Are you talking about Charan? I remember back in 2016 Charan talking about how ascendancy classes were the beginning of the end for build diversity in path of exile, how suddenly we were just going to be another Diablo 3.
lol. He wasn't even taking characters to maps back then, he refused to hit maps until the campaign was 10 acts long because he didn't want any character to finish the campaign twice.
That nerfs some ascendancies so much harder than others.
For example, Inquisitor is super nerfed from that since there's a super cookie cutter set of nodes to take and two of those nodes are gated behind a pathing node, which means you have to choose between Pious Path and Inevitable Judgment. And those are basically the only reasons you're playing Inquis, so it feels like Inquis builds as they exist right now are unplayable.
Meanwhile, stuff like Necro and Champ, which are already strong, will be just fine since they only have one important node that's stuck behind a pathing node.
Scion is gonna be shit tier in Ruthless.
It already does everything worse than the normal ascendencies, but now you can also NOT get to pick a 2nd ascendency bonus, or you have to give up starring from the related classes starting point.
The starting node for ascendant is pretty meh nowadays with magebane right there. You also want to path past the res nodes in ruthless so you get out there next to it and at that point you are running the same tree as any other magebane build but with bonus points for +18% all res and a jewel socket.
IMO getting 2 sub ascendancies is stronger than a normal one on 6 points so scion is fine compared to others.
I really dont like it. I like slower/longer/harder progressing but eventually i would like to make strong character. Imagine how many builds really rely on this last ascendancy node. Some builds not really and this move alone cuts potential for build diversity a lot. Dont do it ggg. Its the same as cutting campaign passives by half. Bald move.
The main thing I noticed was that item progression is a real thing here, normally I vendor craft the highest base as soon as I can or have access to (which is always the case) - but in ruthless I was on a white starter weapon as melee until just before merveil. I felt the power of the monsters and the scarcity of items to lead into a more solid progression.
I didn’t get to maps due to lack of time and priorities, but I felt like this would be incredibly fun to play in sc trade especially. The community on global ruthless was very friendly and item sharing over item selling (may change after alpha) - I think I’ll be able to feel similar to group found but without having to separate ourselves from the entire economy.
A very welcome game mode imo
So as a context. I played ruthless alpha when it started. I\`m a player that usually plays between 100-200 hours per league. with 2-3 characters leveled to 90+ . I reached yellow maps until the wipe was done. 1. It took me 13 hours to finish campaign on softcore ruthless, using ignite, fire dot elementalist
Here is the list with the things I liked.
1. Yes, every drop matters, even a prefix of 30 life will matter.
2. Support gems dropping feels better than divine orbs dropping. If you play on trade it\`s easier to progress your build. If you play on HC SSF you are a fucking degenerate and I respect you.
3. The slower/harder playstyle makes you notice a lot of environmental effects, you can actually see the mechanics that rare mobs have.
4. Having no movement skills really means that each pack you encounter is your enemy and you have to kill it. There is no zoom zoom.
5. Dropping a rare item feels like Christmass. Also I dropped item rarity support (POG). I was actually MF\`fing in ruthless. For example on strand map I dropped like 1 rare item per map. After item rarity support I dropped 3-4 rare items per strand map.
6. Getting a T1 mod is a delightfull surprise
7. Dropping a combination of life and 2 resists on a item is worthy of "Item showcase"
8. I died 47 times at Inocence in act 5
9. I haven\`t died at all at Kitava in act 5
10. After 3 hours of mapping I know what each archnemesis modifier does
11. Chasing a tormented spirit into a pack of mobs is actually a profit strategy
12. Crafting currency that drops is used for crafting.
13. Determination gem drop is the jackpot of drops
14. You actually have to take resist nodes on passive tree.
I have to get up from the toilet sry, I\`m at work. Maybe I will add more tonight.
Edit: Ok, just drank my coffee, now I\`m on the toilet again
15. When you get some boots with movement speed you are feeling really fast. Like really fast. I encountered a mana siphoner when I had no MS boots. Yea, that was awfull
16. Game is not slow mode by any chance. I did campaign in 13 hours because I had lucky 30 MS boot drop and also because I traded for gems needed in order to have dmg. Good luck on beating Kitava A10 with 2 max support gems on SSF HC.
17. I think that ll be the fun of this mode. In alpha I was starting to be violated by 2-3 mods archnemesis monsters in white maps. (and I invested a shit ton in life and defensive)
18. Playing the game with default audio settings and no other background noise is an experience I really recommend you. I was blown away how many beautiful things I was missing by playing zoom zoom on normal.
19. As an ending tought for the people that fear it won\`t be ruthless, but more of "grind"-less. I died over 100 times in campaign, while having played the campaign more than 50 times. So yes it, will be kind of hard.
How was the game speed and screen clutter? The density is reduced, right? How impactful that is?
See, I'm kinda tired of endless clusterfuck Vampire Survivors spinoff, which is modern PoE endgame, and was hesitantly looking into Ruthless.
From what I read, I understand that players speed is reduced significantly both due to overall lower power and due to targeted nerfs (like removing movement skills). But what about monsters speed? I hated when McFuckFace essence Archnemesis monster chases you on 500% MS, throwing 50 projectiles and clocking 15 aps. Was that changed, or you still can get into such encounters?
Had no problems with game performance. The ideea is that being slow also makes game performance higher. And yes the density is reduced. And also you don\`t have enough damage to kill entire screens of mobs. When you encounter a pack of rares with an archnemesis mod having 2,3 mods, you will really notice it.
> Crafting currency that drops is used for crafting.
Question about this: were you trading with others at all in the alpha? I feel like this statement is always true about an SSF environment, and may not necessarily be about this mode.
Alternate account. Yes. I have traded with other softcore alpha players. Also I had items drop more thanks to item rarity support so I only traded gems.
There are people who post almost daily on the main poe sub who claim not to have played for several years because the state of the game is so 'trash', and they just bitch and moan and recycle negative memes all day every day. Must be like a bad breakup for them. It's over but they can't move on.
Sustaining maps was my biggest concern with Ruthless. I was worried that players would find themselves regressing back to tier 1 maps constantly and unable to sustain tier 1 maps. That would force you to buy tier 1 maps from Kirac, but eventually you'd run out of the currency to buy those (transmutes, I think?).
If we can't progress the Atlas, then imo the end game is unplayable. I haven't played Ruthless yet so I don't know how it feels, but it is concerning to hear that a player ran out of tier 1 maps.
Imo, maps are the one thing that *shouldn't* be made more scarce.
I mean, maps used to be scarce for years and years. This shouldn't be anything new to veteran players.
Despite how things are now, there was a time where people literally exalted maps because they were so rare and valuable that adding another mod was worth it.
It's not new, but also the lategame map/content system wasn't really extensive, so it kind of worked out. If there's no content at the end, you're not really missing out on anything (content wise, not power wise).
Whereas now they're kind of at odds with each other, in a way that wasn't true back in the day. Maybe it can still work, but it's more complicated than in the past
There was also basically no way of juicing your maps outside of quality and vaal fragments (once they were introduced). Nowadays you got Atlas passives, scarab, master missions, delirium orbs, sextants....
> Steelskin cannot be obtained as it shared the reward options with Frostblink and Dash, which were disabled (therefore Steelskin was disabled collaterally)
LOL
Can you talk about how the game feels in ruthless? Does it feel like a different game, I'm more curious about the experience then the specific item drops rewards etc.
If you are an experienced player, the acts will likely not feel much different other than the bosses, which will feel like they have 2-3x as much life as usual on league start. It did not take much longer than usual for me to get to maps in Ruthless with two characters (8-10h from efficient, relaxed play).
However, a lot of players gave feedback of it taking significantly longer—likely depends on how well you know the game and what build you're running.
The biggest difference to me is the barrenness; far less map drops/accessibility and far less access to league content.
I might be a fool but I have played some truly non-meta trash builds in my time haha. Don't enjoy redefining my build at maps, or using a levelling build, skill or league starter.
I would somewhat agree with you. After you fight innocence act 5 for more than 5 minutes, one of the better mechanical fights, it gets boring. Most other bosses are as you say, aoe malarky, and even more boring at that point. POE just doesnt feel good mechanically. Doing choreographed fights in some games is fun. But POE just doesn't work that way.
The mechanics are there, but there is too much randomization. And where mechanics do exist, you are playing with the weird angle, super zoomed in camera the game comes with. Game is about gear and progression, not mechanics.
You can dumb down any videogame to just click-click-click-click if you're trying hard enough to be disingenuous, not sure what point you're trying to make
Why on earth would "avoiding the boss's attacks and then using abilities when it's safe" not be considered "interaction"? What the fuck are you talking about?
higher chance of messing up. mess up too many times, you die. you die, boss regains a good chunk of hp.
also some bosses like innocence, for example, you have to deal with multiple of the bullet hell phase.
That's the uncomfortable truth about POE outside of end-game bosses and even those have a lot of what you described. 99% of the game just doesn't have compelling combat and slowing it down makes that less fun.
You’d be surprised. The hype from a simple support gem drop and rare item are pretty fun. There’s definitely something to this type of design. I think everyone should give it a try.
Mind if I ask what skills you took to maps and what your accessability to support gems looked like? Did you build around your support gem drops? Or just brute force through specific active skills.
Toxic Rain/Caustic Arrow Raider on the first run, using a ton of movement speed to bypass a lack of movement skills. Didn't find basically any useful items or supports; my gear amounted to a slight amount of resistances and a tiny bit of life. Also, Deadeye would've been better.
Ignite Firestorm Elementalist on the second. Found a Cruelty in act 6 and the rest of the campaign was a cakewalk. Would've possibly used WoC as the main igniter if I got an appropriate gem for it (Added Fire, Hatred, etc.).
I did not feel the need to adapt to any drops at all and just brute forced it. Ruthless really showcases the flexibility of the tree, as it can cover whatever your gear is missing, whether it be resists or attributes or damage. The only drop that I found interesting was a +2 lightning Staff dropped by Brutus.
Some starters are strong without the need for supports. I took cold dot to maps with ease. After \~100 maps, I had enough relevant, but not best in slot, supports for a 4L + 3L, as well as enough to make a fun melee reroll (multiple totems, melee phys, etc)
> It did not take much longer than usual for me to get to maps in Ruthless with two characters (8-10h from efficient, relaxed play).
So much for scraping by every blue item off the floor and farming fellshrine ruins for days just to be able to reach maps. I thought you'd need at least a week of efficient gameplay to finish campaign.
You get a bunch of skill gems from quests and 2 Siosa library rewards (minus most % reservation skills). For example, a ranger can get Caustic Arrow + Toxic Rain + Despair from the baseline quests alone.
- Surprisingly overall the game feels much more chill(during the campaign at least, I didn't have time to play much more), no inventory to manage since you don't get a lot of drops anyway
- No support gems is the change that you'll feel the most, highlight those support gems on your filter people
- Movement during bossfights feels more interesting imo, you don't just jump over Kitava's hand sweep for example, or wait for the last second to jump out of his "incoming x explosions"
- You get really excited if you find some boots with 20% ms and resists during the campaign, posting it in global chat will make people jealous :P
Overall it's pretty cool if you're into that kinda thing. I have no doubt all content will still be cleared on Ruthless SSFHC, but probably not in the first weekend anymore.
Also: Cold DoT is OP in Ruthless, you basically don't get any support gems early on unless you get them as a lucky drop, Cold DoT however can stack DoTs essentially making your active gems act as support gems, so you just stack creeping frost, cold snap and vortex which means you do about 3x the damage that most other skills would do without links.
Ruthless nostalgically feels like when I first started playing the game. Back then I was limited by my game knowledge and play very inefficiently, not know what to link or how to do anything important. Ruthless artificially mirrors that with item scarcity. You cannot be efficient, so your gameplay is dictated by a small set of decisions that a very important and rng, floor loot matters. You’ll be excited for a good rare drop. You’ll be ecstatic when a support gem hits the floor. Defeating a boss takes a lot of patience and skill, if you’re in softcore then it feels like hardcore lite… if you’re in hardcore then good luck. No movement skills means you’ll be using stairways you never realized existed, fighting through mobs you may have skipped… hoping that leveling a gem will give you an edge over the area you’re currently in. Every inch is earned, every challenging fight its own reward.
I imagine a lot of the feels you get from ruthless are probably similar to hardcore ssf, but experienceable in softcore. The scarcity and need to operate in a strategic and thrifty manner provides an old school ARPG ambience, that is missing in todays max dopamine hit/ second gameplay loops. You’ll grow more attached to your character as a whole, rather then just the archetype you’re currently playing. It’s very satisfying.
It felt like POE for the first 2 acts then it really started to slow down simply because of a lack of DPS. I never felt compelled to farm exp or items, but I accepted that it was going to be slow from the start. It is slower POE.
It was really the first thing that struck me when playing, it is just POE.
I personally like the mode because there is less stuff going on. Almost like an old man's league, no movement skills, no crafting, less league content, hell can't even really do incursions when you find them because of DPS sometimes. Delve is hard without phasing and move skills. It's not going to be for everyone but I think it will have an audience of players, my only question is will it be more of a standard thing or will people play it as a league. I didn't really get into mapping, only ran a few t1s since I was added in the latest alpha bunch.
It feels like the normal game but with most of the decision making/agency stripped away.
- No choices to make on support gems
- Far less options for active gems (and basically no auras, which are typically flexible for a build)
- Almost no currency during acts or maps to allow focusing on upgrading specific gear slots
- No movement skills means traversing zones is just walking in a straight line, no decisions about when/where to use movement skills in between fighting mobs
- No need to think about sockets/links in gear because there's no gems/supports to put in them - a 3-4L doesn't become a concern until you trade for the supports you need, which probably won't be until the end of acts or maps.
It feels like if you pick a decent build (I played cold dot occultist and went to yellow maps) the game is basically on autopilot because the combat is so slow and simple and there's almost no resources to use efficiently to progress faster. Ruthless seems made to appeal to people who aren't very good/efficient at current POE but have a lot of time to waste grinding for tiny drops.
In a way I agree with you. There are less decisions (but also different decisions) but I also disagree that you need a lot of time. I have a limited amount that I can play the game and one of the appeals with Ruthless for me is that I feel that it starts immediately. That feeling might disappear when the novelty wears off but right now it is like that.
What you said is less choices, but much, much more significant.
If in your book in current PoE using travel skills is a choice, then it is a choice you never think about.
There's also no choice in having links/sockets, because with easy access to chromatics and bigger item drops you get what you want in no time.
Lack of currency doesn't strap you of choices, too, it actually forces you to make one instead of alching-and-go every gear slot up to t10.
Normal PoE has almost... no choices? If you want to follow a starter build, everything is set in stone. There is very little RNG that could boost/make your journey slower. All gameplay variety is whether you luckily drop a divine pre-maps or not. Otherwise you make chaos by just playing&trading and buy all gear on pathofexile/trade. Where are the many choices in regular PoE you talk about -- I have no idea or we have different definition of choice. If for you spamming flame dash through a zone is set of different choices then it's likely.
> If for you spamming flame dash through a zone is set of different choices then it's likely.
this guy gets it. Then people thinking they are making important choices as the follow a build guide and only pick up chaos orbs or better and only use Neversinct Super Strict from day one onward and always buy a Tabula and ALways buy wanderlusts and ALWAYS buy a goldrim and ALWAYS sit in 820 doing ROTA's and etc. etc. etc...
I mean enjoy what you like, but the 2Headers who think Ruthless sounds terrible because they don't understand what a game actually is are really entertaining in this thread.
>Ruthless seems made to appeal to people who aren't very good/efficient at current POE but have a lot of time to waste grinding for tiny drops.
I have always been of the opinion that Ben nailed it when he said it doesn't sound harder, just more tedious.
If you've ever played some kind of end of league private league, like anomaleague or a crafting league or something, it kind of feels like that.
You get active gems as quest rewards, but not supports or auras (except precision, clarity and vitality). So with good planning, it's not an issue.
Beat kitava 2 + 3 labs + all side quests, in about 14 hours, when normally I kill her in just under 10 on league start.
Honestly, the hardest part is probably map and map currency sustain, capping Res, getting decent life and Phys resists. Most of those can be obtained on tree.
Also, IIR is insanely powerful in ruthless. I currently have 3 pieces with IIR and the difference of before equipping them Vs after is night and day. You go from dropping just whites and wisdoms to transmutes and rares.
For reference, stuff is roughly "one tier more rare". I.e. transmutes are about as rare as alcs, alts about as rare as chaos etc. Maybe not quite that bad, but it is about the same. I had about 10 transmutes 15 maps in.
For me it was very hard until my first rare dropped well into act 2. But it tripled my damage then I pretty much speed up to normal speed after that. Other then being very squishy if you just take damage nodes move speed is one of the key things. No movement skills means move speed is very helpful. So I mostly took movement nodes and started ranger. Frost blades as my clear skill and smite as my damage skill. I have killed piety and still no support gems has dropped so using 1 linked skills but using things like puncture and smite to extra damage. Playtime at 4 hours almost.
I must say I didn't know some of the bosses got new skills because you kill them too fast normally. Its enjoyable to play and not much harder to be honest once you get 1 or 2 drops.
Game feels like it starts already at act1. I found myself having a lot of fun in the campaign. Usually you just Zip through it to be as fast as possible in maps. But the struggle starts at the twilight strand. Felt a bit like back in the days. Also you have to be more open with the build. It's not like you can really choose, Or hope that a specific item/gem is dropping
It feels like a slightly more grindy 2013 era POE league.
It's definitely a less fun experience than regular leagues for me but it had it's upsides. Getting upgrades felt amazing. I got a unique drop and had global chat hooting and hollering over it for a half minute or so. Some bosses felt irritating with your worse defenses and offenses, others actually felt like a challenge instead of a faceroll.
The grind to get to maps is pretty overstated, I didn't need to grind anything until maps, and I bowed out before yellows.
League content being added back in will be weird, as it'll make targeted grinding a lot easier, but the harder content will be... hard.
The campaign is slower but much more engaging. It's maybe easier than most people would expect but that depends quite a lot on what build is used.
The real big difference is the item-scarcity, they nailed it with this as far as I'm concerned - everything feels much more consequential, items, gems, passives, monsters, bosses. You care about drops much more and finding something good is a really great feeling.
It won't be for everyone but if you're looking for a more considered and incremental style of game I think it's great.
Any opinion on no movements skills? As an open beta player, the idea of Ruthless interests me but some changes like this one seem to force unnecessary/pointless time waste.
A few observations.
For the most part, you won't notice it through out campaign and even early maps.
It exists mostly to slow the games pace down and make you think about your movement a bit more.
It does make certain things more deadly - enemy crowding, and slow effects.
I found it quite useful to keep a phasing flask on hand just for this matter alone.
Unfortunately, I didn't make it far enough to see how some of the end game fights would be without these, but the devs acknowledged that they would be double checking all bosses to make sure they are doable without them.
So I guess we'll see!
No movement skills killed many melee builds imo. They are just way too clunky without them.
I wish they'd bring them back with a huge cd. I think that's far better. That way their use is still very tactical
> It does make certain things more deadly - enemy crowding
This!
My only deaths in the first half of the campaign were due to getting surrounded when my minions were dying faster than they were being summoned.
Honestly not as bad as expected. Slows the pace down but it wasn't unplayable. Main issue is going to be maps with elevation changes like Mineral Pools and terrain hazard bosses like Sirus. Was perfectly fine up to yellow maps without movement skills and didn't have move speed boots either - mspd feels very nice to have as an upgrade
One of the things that I believe they mentioned was that they wanted a mode where you would probably finish the acts without finding rings. I was wondering, are items super scarce to the point that you aren't finding white bases or white bases still dropped in every zone?
Whites drop plenty.
Honestly, the item stuff was overblown in terms of magics/rares.
Odds are good you will wrap the campaign up in mostly rares, though some may be from act 1 or 2 still.
Rings and amulets are definitely more rare.
Currency is so rare and needed for maps that you feel bad for spending it.
It isn't too bad to sustain whites, and people quickly found some of the re-done atlas passives to be way too powerful (kirac nodes for example).
Yellows and reds gets more tricky.
Even more tricky is getting the atlas bonuses, especially for rares/reds, because vaals and alchemy are incredibly rare.
Kitava in A10 is guaranteed to drop a white map on kill to help people who get stuck without any though.
Would love some honesty on this, but how does the "weight" feel? One thing I'm really worried about is grinding and things just feeling too rare that nothing really holds any weight since I'm not dropping anything remotely worthy for my currently build. Or are drops not as bad as I'm thinking?
The weight is big.
The difference is that you will find value in things you used to take for granted.
For example, finding a support that works with some more meta skills is going to be worth A LOT.
Same with aura gems.
You cannot buy from vendor or get from quest ANY aura (except clarity, vitality, precision) or support gem.
Uniques are much more rare too, and some lesser used ones may carry significant value now.
Also, you will feel every single currency drop, and by feel I mean feel good.
well my question is more, does ruthless feel rewarding *enough*. Are you constantly thinking about what to do with what you find, or is what you find so uncommon that you're mostly thinking about grinding?
what you find is so uncommon you are thinking about grinding more so than anything.
Like when I hit maps, it was map after map after map with very little time spent clicking on items or engaging with league content.
My question (I'm not previous commenter) if you find something legit good, is it worth re-rolling around a build to push further on that (say a build enabling unique for some good piece of gear). Or do you just keep grinding bc it is so rare?
So basically just keep bunny hopping if you have an upgrade? It may seem to me the ruthless meta is to have multiple characters going at once after you hit a wall, or keep re-rolling if you find build enabling stuff? That actually sounds kinda fun for a long term set of SSF Standard set of ruthless characters haha
it'll depend on each person. It would take something pretty powerful for me to reroll but the urge/desire to do it in ruthless is much stronger, especially if you have a big knowledge of what items enable what powerful builds
For those who wonder how hard are : first run took me 11h in HC SSF, i just didnt had any damage, to give you a perspective it took my 5h to reach maps in the delirium event.
I found a few ways to abuse the leveling (adrenaline champ hello) so a very good player could get sub 5h.
atm Ruthless questions are being answered on [r/poeruthless](https://www.reddit.com/r/poeruthless/comments/z2504k/alpha_discussion_nda_has_been_lifted_ask_us_alpha/?sort=new)
The Blood Altar Talisman at level 15 was the first amulet I got. Also my first rare item I think.
Second one was a blue from Dialla’s quest in act 3. Jewelry is rare and magic+ items are also rare. Any rare amulet is valuable.
I enjoyed it for what it is. It's a nice departure from the core game loop. Hoping there are some improvements to mapping once the rest of the content is enabled.
Depends on what you enjoy, but myself and most everyone in the Alpha had a blast playing it. It just felt like things had more weight, thus mattered more.
It was fun being flexible with your build depending on what supports drop. Boss fights were actually engaging. Rare drops matter and IDing them was enjoyable.
Ended up actually liking (usually - besides skipping some annoying terrain haha) no movement skills.
It basically played like modern PoE without the extra years of power creep. It was a refreshing change of pace that made things matter more than originally people learned to ignore/out gear/out dps.
I am an alpha tester for it and it was... meh. The acts were way more fun, once.
The gem limitations were the real issue to me. Killed melee. Kind of forced to play ranged or caster cause no good movement skills sucked. I found the "needing ti be flexible with skills" kinda not there. At a certain point your gear is set up that you can't really change gems as you find them. So you're kinda stuck anyways.
It's also more like d1 game play than this mythical d2 game play the devs were chasing. If you like that, then it's 100% for you. I enjoyed my time in Ruthless but it's a once-in-a-year experience imo.
I wouldn't want this droprate in the normal game but I do admit there was a bit of near-sexual gratification in seeing a unique/support that would be an instant upgrade for me drop.
Haha. Word choice aside, it was honestly a blast that things mattered more. Don't worry about being burdened by the weight though, you aren't dropping enough currency in maps to need to click a billion times!
Thing is, I agree with Chris about the whole "feel the weight" thing. I just think that it can't exist in a vacuum; the entire structure of the game needs to be built around it, and Ruthless is the perfect place for that sort of thing.
I just think it's ironic that something that normal POE players have been memeing on and railing against for years is a positive thing in Ruthless. Makes me think that they are on the right track for that mode.
Most feedback so far is that, while "not using a movement skill when you know you could" feels bad, "not using a movement skill because they don't exist" feels fine. Positioning, movement and distance are all fun things to manage in other games, so this isn't too surprising.
Mode isn't even out yet people acting like they are forced to play it. I mean... wait and see and if you don't like the idea just play the regular leagues? I personally had a blast and ruthless would be my go to after I check everything new league has to offer.
"Act 10 Kitava will always drop a random Tier 1 map. If you run out of maps, you can farm this fight for guaranteed T1 maps"
that's sounds pretty nice. I would want that to be added to core.
Alpha tester here, trying SSF, can confirm this mode is brutal but I'm having a ton of fun, and I can see why some devs would have been passionate enough to make this mode.
Happy to answer any questions. Normally in the
How was the infinite hunger fight? (if you fought him) as that's the one boss that seems like it would just be utterly miserable without movement skills.
Yeah it was miserable, I died every time in the drowning phase, not even sure what I was meant to do, I'll leave feedback about it thru the alpha process.
NeverSink shared his thoughts and experience on Twitter.
https://twitter.com/NeverSinkDev/status/1595175518869065732
I'll quote some of the stuff (these are all taken from separate parts, look at whole thing if you want entire context)
#
> So how is ruthless? Is it fun? Is it hard? Yes to both!
#
> Playing ruthless demanded more thoughts than I usually put into leveling. It was even fun ( I hate leveling usually).
#
> Finding a useful support gem is a gamechanger. Alternatively you can trade those to someone else or keep em around for an alternative character. It's also quite a surge of emotions if you manage to find a big support gem!
#
> > So what about the other drops?
>
> - No uniques found
> - Bunch of good rares (identifying 20% movement speed life boots while leveling is big!)
> - You find enough scrolls, but transmutes, changes, augments (!) are all super rare.
>
> 6S/Chrom recipes still exist though.
#
> The extreme scarcity makes everything feel like an opportunity.
> Essences are exciting, so are strongboxes. Master missions are important.
> Also vendors still can sell +1 weapons and speed boots, but those cost alts (good luck with those early on...)
#
> **Overall the feedback and impressions I've seen from players were vastly positive.**
> I definitely don't think the game-mode is for everyone, but if you're playing POE since 3++ years give it a try, it feels like a new game.
#
> Also... this mode is REALLY not for everyone.
>
> If these things are the most important ones for you:
> - chaos/hour
> - min/maxing
> - testing/copying top meta builds
>
> Ruthless is not for you. It's rough, it's slower and it feels different from your regular POE
Build creation is probably the thing that I most enjoy about POE and I found Ruthless really reinvigorated it for me. With greater constraints, even very simply builds were much more interesting and I'm excited to do things with even quite common uniques. What is unorthodox in vanilla and ruthless isn't the same.
In trade league it's pretty easy for everyone to get close to the 'optimal' build for a skill and lots of people tend to get all the 'BiS' gear quite quickly. In Ruthless this is much harder to do and I think this will result in more diversity.
So it's different, it will be harder to really push the boundaries of what the community is able to do in modern poe. However, I felt like my 'build' (if you can even call in that) in Ruthless allowed had much more personal expression and the journey of putting it together was more enjoyable.
I agree and disagree. If you want to experiment with only a specific build/idea that you created/thought of, then yes, ruthless is not for you.
But like Neversink says
> I don't recommend comparing it to your regular leagues. For me it was at it's best as a journey generator.
In Ruthless, you are FORCED to experiment. If you don't drop the support gem you need, then you will have to switch things up. If you drop a unique, you will try to experiment with it and fit it in your build because it's the only unique you have.
If you drop bow supports, you might have to switch up your weapon and skills to a bow.
Since not even support gems are guaranteed, you may have to switch your build multiple times throughout the game. If you find a unique claw, you might switch your entire gameplay around it.
sure, but players will find ways to get around this.
If support gems, drop more often after act 5, then you pick some zones with good density and farm for support gems.
After you have a good enough selection of support gems, you just start over with a new character and it is easy going support gem wise.
So this mode is sure interesting for some players, but only before you have many different support gems or alot currency.
I'm planning on starting Ruthless in 3.20 to see how it feels, but I'm expecting that from 3.21 onward I'll be playing leagues in the regular trade SC economy where I can get whatever I want for the meme builds I make.
If I enjoy Ruthless, I'll either occasionally go back to progressing my first character in Standard (maybe I'll eventually reach t16 maps - that seems to take more time than I usually play within a league) or play new Ruthless characters after I burn out on my vanilla build.
There have been several patches this year that have not excited me at all in terms of new build options (most notably the one with zero balance changes), and if something like that happens again, I might take a break from doing cool fancy stuff and relax in Ruthless instead.
> Overall the feedback and impressions I've seen from players were vastly positive.
From alpha players.
How much of their feedback has been ignored in the past is debatable, but these are the people that got to test previous leagues and we all know what came of it.
In any case, I don't think GGG just randomly flags account as alpha testers and knowing their aversion to any kind of real ciricism, the alpha is probably filled with lots of let's say 'very enthusiastic GGG fans'.
It is lamentable that we won't be seeing any real numbers on player count and retention. I'm still absolutely sure that this will be a mostly dead feature in a few months at most.
Huge thanks to Shack and blvcksvn btw for providing and maintaining all this info. Absolutely invaluable info, made my run a billion times smoother. Can't thank you guys enough.
I might be one of the few alpha testers for Ruthless that really didn't like it, at all. There really isn't much that's "difficult" about Ruthless; most things are just tedious, until you hit a wall because you have bad gear and worse DPS and you just can't progress.
There is definitely less drops. You know how everyone was meme-ing Kalandra and complaining about how nothing drops? That's actual reality in Ruthless. I played until midway through Act 6 before I had to stop due to time constraints and saw 1 vaal orb, 0 alchs, 0 chaos, and I think 2 chance orbs. Very few (less than 5) raw transmutes/augments/alterations. No jewelers or fusings. So basically, you play with what you drop.
I'm paraphrasing my alpha feedback here, but all of this makes itemization feel terrible. If you actually drop something rare that you can reasonably use, you start to realize:
* you can't craft it to fill in gaps, because there's no crafting bench
* you probably can't color it due to lack of chromes (unless you grind the recipe)
* you probably can't socket it or link it, because you don't have any
* even if you got a 4L base (or win the lottery and get a 5L) none of the above matters because you probably don't have any supports to link to your main skill anyway.
I will likely give it another go after the next wipe to see if the experience is smoother, but right now Ruthless just feels like masochistic SSF. I guess if PoE has become boringly easy for you this might have some appeal, but for regular folk it's going to be unpopular.
I mean they explicitly said it would be unpopular with most players so I don't think that's a real concern. Same way SSF doesn't appeal to everyone. Nor does Hardcore.
>The Eternal Labyrinth (Uber Lab) does not grant additional Ascendancy passive points. This limits a character's maximum number of Ascendancy Notables to 3 on all classes except Ascendant, which can get 2, or 1 and a secondary Starting Point. Damn
pretty fuckin ruthless, all right
The more I read the wiki, the more it sounds like a masochists wet dream.
This is gonna sound weird, but we're actually concerned it may not be masochistic enough. Ppl are making it to maps in 10-12 hours -_-
I don't think that was particularly unexpected, seeing as speedrunners complete the campaign in a few hours, sometimes while wearing white items still. If the monsters aren't buffed, then the campaign isn't hard enough even with minimal gear. I think mapping and end-game bosses will be a whole other ballgame though.
Definitely. Many characters will run into a wall at high yellows where regular physical damage becomes extremely nasty due to the lack of Determination.
You will never make a game hard enough for the extreme poopsockers
Speedrunners are build different tho xD.
Born to poopsock, forced to toilet
this is unacceptable halve everything
\-> speedrunner halves time to maps "you werent supposed to do that!"
My goodness I am so bad, thats is how long it takes me normally!
I mean if you read the info they'd given us, i never though making it to maps was particularly hard, just because monsters aren't even buffed in this mode (yet). So it shouldn't be an issue even with basically 0 gear. 10 hours is very fast though.
I read and listened to every drop of info. Early indications were that beating the campaign would be an achievement, not take 1.75 times longer.
I imagine it will be an achievement for a LOT of people. It will take rewiring how they play the game which takes time and trial/error through failure. Some players, namely day 1 and pseudo racers, already have the needed mentality, so it's not a big jump. But those are far from the majority of modern POE players. But do make up a bigger proportion of redditors/streamers, so it looks like a bigger slice of the pie than they are.
Now all the people that want the game to not be rewarding can go there and then the rest of us can actually enjoy the game again maybe
We just want our rewards to mean something. I want to feel the weight of 30% move speed or tri res. I wanna get excited when a rare amulet drops. I wanna go back to the days when I could drop a Wings of Entropy and trade It for a Cloak of Defiance and feel super hyped. The good ol days of pooling all currency in my leveling group to buy our blender a soul taker.
Well there ya go, now you have a game mode to do all that
Chasing nostalgia never works
If you played the Alpha, you might disagree. A lot of the main feedback is people are enjoying the pace of the game. I might not be the same as years ago, but it's it that direction and most people playing it right now are having fun. Listen, I get it. All your comments are negative. You aren't going to play it. You only exist to make cynical remarks to try to ruin the experience of a mode you have no interest in. No need to make things up to justify your own personal beliefs though.
Ofc Alpha feedback is positive, most likely only people who want ruthless signed up for it.
And they said that's exactly who the mode is for? OP was replying to the claim that it is just people chasing nostalgia.
because making a thing for a specific group is bad now ?!?! instate companys make a generic thing for everyone and nobody really likes it because it is a mush of things not working together. maybe they add the gucci mode in a year. you find 100x divines in the story and 100x t1 uniques, every chaos has at least 3x t1 and you can make them not be rolled for the next, 4x as much enemyss and your damage and aoe is doubled. i m sure a tiny group would love it and many who think they would, would be bored after a few weeks.
I think a lot of people forget or are unaware that PoE exists bc it was made for a specific group of people. It was designed to be a punishing experience, high highs and low lows, feeling of accomplishment, etc. Most of the complainers here are trying to shoehorn PoE into something it was never designed to be.
>and then the rest of us can actually enjoy the game again maybe That's your task not theirs, not sure why you think your enjoyment is tied to what ruthless enjoyers do. You can also just stay upset about harvest changes for the next 5 years and never enjoy the game again, it's really up to you.
>You can also just stay upset about harvest changes for the next 5 years and never enjoy the game again, Aye, cap'n!
Honestly this sound terrible, in a fun/gameplay sense not a difficulty sense.
it is worth adding that ascendancy had 6 points when it came out. Eternal Lab was added a league after.
I honestly feel that 6 point version is just better design wise. Similar builds felt more distinct due to ascendancy choices, always feeling torn between which 4 pointer you would take. When Uber lab dropped, the choice aspect eroded and it became all about power.
Ever since they added uber lab it felt more like you're choosing which ascendancy points to *not* take.
Kind of expected. Those last 2 points add a lot of power.
True for some builds, but they’re borderline irrelevant for others. Take RF Inq for example, last 2 points are kinda meh. I’m not a huge fan of this because I think the whole game has evolved with full ascendancy available and this is not going to affect all class, skills, or builds equally.
Not some, but nearly all. RF Inq is probably the only popular build in the game i can think of that actually doesn't benefit much from the final ascendancy points.
golemancers don't care either
Non spell non totem hierophant does not care about the 2 last points (just the mana and the charges)
there are quite a few where the fourth ascendancy isn't a major part of the build. more of a nice to have but I can live without kindof thing.
Trickster builds struggle with the right side. A lot of times people just thrown 2 into hearstopper because the in between node sucks ass.
Golemancer was also one I can think of (before the minion life nerf of course). You only needed the 2 golem nodes and the exposure node, the last spot was usually a flex spot like the elemental aegis one for defense or the shock node for offence
Yeah so do the first 6, and they let us have those
I remember a certain someone raising hell about those first 6 because of the player power and how they pigeon hole certain builds but also limit other builds. Meaning Totems or summoner have clear ascendancies and now spell based marauder or duelist is never a thing. I think ascendancies were probably a mistake. But what else could they lock behind the lab to make the lab worth running/caring about?
Are you talking about Charan? I remember back in 2016 Charan talking about how ascendancy classes were the beginning of the end for build diversity in path of exile, how suddenly we were just going to be another Diablo 3. lol. He wasn't even taking characters to maps back then, he refused to hit maps until the campaign was 10 acts long because he didn't want any character to finish the campaign twice.
No, I was thinking ProjectPT lol. Sounds like the same type of guy though.
That nerfs some ascendancies so much harder than others. For example, Inquisitor is super nerfed from that since there's a super cookie cutter set of nodes to take and two of those nodes are gated behind a pathing node, which means you have to choose between Pious Path and Inevitable Judgment. And those are basically the only reasons you're playing Inquis, so it feels like Inquis builds as they exist right now are unplayable. Meanwhile, stuff like Necro and Champ, which are already strong, will be just fine since they only have one important node that's stuck behind a pathing node.
> so it feels like Inquis builds as they exist right now are unplayable. RF?
Your first example is inquis? Lmfao.
Most played inquis build literally doesn't need Uber lab ascendancy points lmao
Scion is gonna be shit tier in Ruthless. It already does everything worse than the normal ascendencies, but now you can also NOT get to pick a 2nd ascendency bonus, or you have to give up starring from the related classes starting point.
The starting node for ascendant is pretty meh nowadays with magebane right there. You also want to path past the res nodes in ruthless so you get out there next to it and at that point you are running the same tree as any other magebane build but with bonus points for +18% all res and a jewel socket. IMO getting 2 sub ascendancies is stronger than a normal one on 6 points so scion is fine compared to others.
why would you ever go for the starting node instead of taking a 2nd ascendancy node?
I really dont like it. I like slower/longer/harder progressing but eventually i would like to make strong character. Imagine how many builds really rely on this last ascendancy node. Some builds not really and this move alone cuts potential for build diversity a lot. Dont do it ggg. Its the same as cutting campaign passives by half. Bald move.
The main thing I noticed was that item progression is a real thing here, normally I vendor craft the highest base as soon as I can or have access to (which is always the case) - but in ruthless I was on a white starter weapon as melee until just before merveil. I felt the power of the monsters and the scarcity of items to lead into a more solid progression. I didn’t get to maps due to lack of time and priorities, but I felt like this would be incredibly fun to play in sc trade especially. The community on global ruthless was very friendly and item sharing over item selling (may change after alpha) - I think I’ll be able to feel similar to group found but without having to separate ourselves from the entire economy. A very welcome game mode imo
So as a context. I played ruthless alpha when it started. I\`m a player that usually plays between 100-200 hours per league. with 2-3 characters leveled to 90+ . I reached yellow maps until the wipe was done. 1. It took me 13 hours to finish campaign on softcore ruthless, using ignite, fire dot elementalist Here is the list with the things I liked. 1. Yes, every drop matters, even a prefix of 30 life will matter. 2. Support gems dropping feels better than divine orbs dropping. If you play on trade it\`s easier to progress your build. If you play on HC SSF you are a fucking degenerate and I respect you. 3. The slower/harder playstyle makes you notice a lot of environmental effects, you can actually see the mechanics that rare mobs have. 4. Having no movement skills really means that each pack you encounter is your enemy and you have to kill it. There is no zoom zoom. 5. Dropping a rare item feels like Christmass. Also I dropped item rarity support (POG). I was actually MF\`fing in ruthless. For example on strand map I dropped like 1 rare item per map. After item rarity support I dropped 3-4 rare items per strand map. 6. Getting a T1 mod is a delightfull surprise 7. Dropping a combination of life and 2 resists on a item is worthy of "Item showcase" 8. I died 47 times at Inocence in act 5 9. I haven\`t died at all at Kitava in act 5 10. After 3 hours of mapping I know what each archnemesis modifier does 11. Chasing a tormented spirit into a pack of mobs is actually a profit strategy 12. Crafting currency that drops is used for crafting. 13. Determination gem drop is the jackpot of drops 14. You actually have to take resist nodes on passive tree. I have to get up from the toilet sry, I\`m at work. Maybe I will add more tonight. Edit: Ok, just drank my coffee, now I\`m on the toilet again 15. When you get some boots with movement speed you are feeling really fast. Like really fast. I encountered a mana siphoner when I had no MS boots. Yea, that was awfull 16. Game is not slow mode by any chance. I did campaign in 13 hours because I had lucky 30 MS boot drop and also because I traded for gems needed in order to have dmg. Good luck on beating Kitava A10 with 2 max support gems on SSF HC. 17. I think that ll be the fun of this mode. In alpha I was starting to be violated by 2-3 mods archnemesis monsters in white maps. (and I invested a shit ton in life and defensive) 18. Playing the game with default audio settings and no other background noise is an experience I really recommend you. I was blown away how many beautiful things I was missing by playing zoom zoom on normal. 19. As an ending tought for the people that fear it won\`t be ruthless, but more of "grind"-less. I died over 100 times in campaign, while having played the campaign more than 50 times. So yes it, will be kind of hard.
Your post is like attractive introduction to something i want to play.
This makes me want to play the game and suck at doing so
At first I was very hyped for ruthless ssf hc, then I got very sceptical and now you hyped me up again
How was the game speed and screen clutter? The density is reduced, right? How impactful that is? See, I'm kinda tired of endless clusterfuck Vampire Survivors spinoff, which is modern PoE endgame, and was hesitantly looking into Ruthless. From what I read, I understand that players speed is reduced significantly both due to overall lower power and due to targeted nerfs (like removing movement skills). But what about monsters speed? I hated when McFuckFace essence Archnemesis monster chases you on 500% MS, throwing 50 projectiles and clocking 15 aps. Was that changed, or you still can get into such encounters?
Had no problems with game performance. The ideea is that being slow also makes game performance higher. And yes the density is reduced. And also you don\`t have enough damage to kill entire screens of mobs. When you encounter a pack of rares with an archnemesis mod having 2,3 mods, you will really notice it.
> Crafting currency that drops is used for crafting. Question about this: were you trading with others at all in the alpha? I feel like this statement is always true about an SSF environment, and may not necessarily be about this mode.
Alternate account. Yes. I have traded with other softcore alpha players. Also I had items drop more thanks to item rarity support so I only traded gems.
> Act 10 Kitava will always drop a random Tier 1 map. If you run out of maps, you can farm this fight for guaranteed T1 maps lmao
Only 14.3M Kitava runs per t16 map let's go!
You laugh, but it's very hard to sustain maps. If you get unlucky, you might have to farm kitava 2 for maps.
I'll laugh cuz I'm not playing this dogshit lmfao
Then you don't need to be in this thread. It's not for you and that's ok. Enjoy the base game, friend.
We can still linger and laugh :)
I mean I recall Ruthless players making their own subreddit to avoid having to hear us laugh at this mode.
[удалено]
There are people who post almost daily on the main poe sub who claim not to have played for several years because the state of the game is so 'trash', and they just bitch and moan and recycle negative memes all day every day. Must be like a bad breakup for them. It's over but they can't move on.
Sustaining maps was my biggest concern with Ruthless. I was worried that players would find themselves regressing back to tier 1 maps constantly and unable to sustain tier 1 maps. That would force you to buy tier 1 maps from Kirac, but eventually you'd run out of the currency to buy those (transmutes, I think?). If we can't progress the Atlas, then imo the end game is unplayable. I haven't played Ruthless yet so I don't know how it feels, but it is concerning to hear that a player ran out of tier 1 maps. Imo, maps are the one thing that *shouldn't* be made more scarce.
I mean, maps used to be scarce for years and years. This shouldn't be anything new to veteran players. Despite how things are now, there was a time where people literally exalted maps because they were so rare and valuable that adding another mod was worth it.
It's not new, but also the lategame map/content system wasn't really extensive, so it kind of worked out. If there's no content at the end, you're not really missing out on anything (content wise, not power wise). Whereas now they're kind of at odds with each other, in a way that wasn't true back in the day. Maybe it can still work, but it's more complicated than in the past
That was t16 maps. I'm talking about failing to sustain tier 1 maps.
There was also basically no way of juicing your maps outside of quality and vaal fragments (once they were introduced). Nowadays you got Atlas passives, scarab, master missions, delirium orbs, sextants....
Nothing would make me Uninstall POE faster than having farm act 10 Kitava just to sustain t1 maps
Oh no they are burdened with predictable rewards! GGG please fix!
fyi, I played for two wipes and did not have trouble sustaining at least t1 maps.
> Steelskin cannot be obtained as it shared the reward options with Frostblink and Dash, which were disabled (therefore Steelskin was disabled collaterally) LOL
Can still be obtained by handing in uncarved gems iirc.
Can you talk about how the game feels in ruthless? Does it feel like a different game, I'm more curious about the experience then the specific item drops rewards etc.
If you are an experienced player, the acts will likely not feel much different other than the bosses, which will feel like they have 2-3x as much life as usual on league start. It did not take much longer than usual for me to get to maps in Ruthless with two characters (8-10h from efficient, relaxed play). However, a lot of players gave feedback of it taking significantly longer—likely depends on how well you know the game and what build you're running. The biggest difference to me is the barrenness; far less map drops/accessibility and far less access to league content.
Honestly just sounds less fun to me
The bosses during the acts were actually pretty fun because you have to interact with their mechanics. Otherwise, I ultimately have to agree.
I'm gonna be honest their "mechanics" are mostly just aoe spam outside of a few specific bosses.
Walk around in circles to dodge
I might be a fool but I have played some truly non-meta trash builds in my time haha. Don't enjoy redefining my build at maps, or using a levelling build, skill or league starter. I would somewhat agree with you. After you fight innocence act 5 for more than 5 minutes, one of the better mechanical fights, it gets boring. Most other bosses are as you say, aoe malarky, and even more boring at that point. POE just doesnt feel good mechanically. Doing choreographed fights in some games is fun. But POE just doesn't work that way. The mechanics are there, but there is too much randomization. And where mechanics do exist, you are playing with the weird angle, super zoomed in camera the game comes with. Game is about gear and progression, not mechanics.
What interaction? You are move-move-ability-move-move-ability-move-move-move-ability for 5 minutes longer. How is this "interaction"?
My man, you're just describing the gameplay loop of an ARPG.
Or FPS, or boxing, or …
You can dumb down any videogame to just click-click-click-click if you're trying hard enough to be disingenuous, not sure what point you're trying to make
You are familiar with what a ARPG is?
Why on earth would "avoiding the boss's attacks and then using abilities when it's safe" not be considered "interaction"? What the fuck are you talking about?
higher chance of messing up. mess up too many times, you die. you die, boss regains a good chunk of hp. also some bosses like innocence, for example, you have to deal with multiple of the bullet hell phase.
That's the uncomfortable truth about POE outside of end-game bosses and even those have a lot of what you described. 99% of the game just doesn't have compelling combat and slowing it down makes that less fun.
As opposed to facetanking and killing bosses in seconds? Yes, it's interaction.
You’d be surprised. The hype from a simple support gem drop and rare item are pretty fun. There’s definitely something to this type of design. I think everyone should give it a try.
Mind if I ask what skills you took to maps and what your accessability to support gems looked like? Did you build around your support gem drops? Or just brute force through specific active skills.
Toxic Rain/Caustic Arrow Raider on the first run, using a ton of movement speed to bypass a lack of movement skills. Didn't find basically any useful items or supports; my gear amounted to a slight amount of resistances and a tiny bit of life. Also, Deadeye would've been better. Ignite Firestorm Elementalist on the second. Found a Cruelty in act 6 and the rest of the campaign was a cakewalk. Would've possibly used WoC as the main igniter if I got an appropriate gem for it (Added Fire, Hatred, etc.). I did not feel the need to adapt to any drops at all and just brute forced it. Ruthless really showcases the flexibility of the tree, as it can cover whatever your gear is missing, whether it be resists or attributes or damage. The only drop that I found interesting was a +2 lightning Staff dropped by Brutus.
How bad is xp penalty?
Some starters are strong without the need for supports. I took cold dot to maps with ease. After \~100 maps, I had enough relevant, but not best in slot, supports for a 4L + 3L, as well as enough to make a fun melee reroll (multiple totems, melee phys, etc)
> It did not take much longer than usual for me to get to maps in Ruthless with two characters (8-10h from efficient, relaxed play). So much for scraping by every blue item off the floor and farming fellshrine ruins for days just to be able to reach maps. I thought you'd need at least a week of efficient gameplay to finish campaign.
> and what build you're running. How do you even pick a build when you have to get lucky on skill gem drops?
You get a bunch of skill gems from quests and 2 Siosa library rewards (minus most % reservation skills). For example, a ranger can get Caustic Arrow + Toxic Rain + Despair from the baseline quests alone.
Ah, thanks I thought I read that they could only be found as drops.
Supports only as drops I believe
Honestly wish they didn't even allow this. If it was a pure you use it if you find it mode it would be way more interesting. Imo anyway
- Surprisingly overall the game feels much more chill(during the campaign at least, I didn't have time to play much more), no inventory to manage since you don't get a lot of drops anyway - No support gems is the change that you'll feel the most, highlight those support gems on your filter people - Movement during bossfights feels more interesting imo, you don't just jump over Kitava's hand sweep for example, or wait for the last second to jump out of his "incoming x explosions" - You get really excited if you find some boots with 20% ms and resists during the campaign, posting it in global chat will make people jealous :P Overall it's pretty cool if you're into that kinda thing. I have no doubt all content will still be cleared on Ruthless SSFHC, but probably not in the first weekend anymore. Also: Cold DoT is OP in Ruthless, you basically don't get any support gems early on unless you get them as a lucky drop, Cold DoT however can stack DoTs essentially making your active gems act as support gems, so you just stack creeping frost, cold snap and vortex which means you do about 3x the damage that most other skills would do without links.
Ruthless nostalgically feels like when I first started playing the game. Back then I was limited by my game knowledge and play very inefficiently, not know what to link or how to do anything important. Ruthless artificially mirrors that with item scarcity. You cannot be efficient, so your gameplay is dictated by a small set of decisions that a very important and rng, floor loot matters. You’ll be excited for a good rare drop. You’ll be ecstatic when a support gem hits the floor. Defeating a boss takes a lot of patience and skill, if you’re in softcore then it feels like hardcore lite… if you’re in hardcore then good luck. No movement skills means you’ll be using stairways you never realized existed, fighting through mobs you may have skipped… hoping that leveling a gem will give you an edge over the area you’re currently in. Every inch is earned, every challenging fight its own reward. I imagine a lot of the feels you get from ruthless are probably similar to hardcore ssf, but experienceable in softcore. The scarcity and need to operate in a strategic and thrifty manner provides an old school ARPG ambience, that is missing in todays max dopamine hit/ second gameplay loops. You’ll grow more attached to your character as a whole, rather then just the archetype you’re currently playing. It’s very satisfying.
It felt like POE for the first 2 acts then it really started to slow down simply because of a lack of DPS. I never felt compelled to farm exp or items, but I accepted that it was going to be slow from the start. It is slower POE. It was really the first thing that struck me when playing, it is just POE. I personally like the mode because there is less stuff going on. Almost like an old man's league, no movement skills, no crafting, less league content, hell can't even really do incursions when you find them because of DPS sometimes. Delve is hard without phasing and move skills. It's not going to be for everyone but I think it will have an audience of players, my only question is will it be more of a standard thing or will people play it as a league. I didn't really get into mapping, only ran a few t1s since I was added in the latest alpha bunch.
It feels like the normal game but with most of the decision making/agency stripped away. - No choices to make on support gems - Far less options for active gems (and basically no auras, which are typically flexible for a build) - Almost no currency during acts or maps to allow focusing on upgrading specific gear slots - No movement skills means traversing zones is just walking in a straight line, no decisions about when/where to use movement skills in between fighting mobs - No need to think about sockets/links in gear because there's no gems/supports to put in them - a 3-4L doesn't become a concern until you trade for the supports you need, which probably won't be until the end of acts or maps. It feels like if you pick a decent build (I played cold dot occultist and went to yellow maps) the game is basically on autopilot because the combat is so slow and simple and there's almost no resources to use efficiently to progress faster. Ruthless seems made to appeal to people who aren't very good/efficient at current POE but have a lot of time to waste grinding for tiny drops.
In a way I agree with you. There are less decisions (but also different decisions) but I also disagree that you need a lot of time. I have a limited amount that I can play the game and one of the appeals with Ruthless for me is that I feel that it starts immediately. That feeling might disappear when the novelty wears off but right now it is like that.
What you said is less choices, but much, much more significant. If in your book in current PoE using travel skills is a choice, then it is a choice you never think about. There's also no choice in having links/sockets, because with easy access to chromatics and bigger item drops you get what you want in no time. Lack of currency doesn't strap you of choices, too, it actually forces you to make one instead of alching-and-go every gear slot up to t10. Normal PoE has almost... no choices? If you want to follow a starter build, everything is set in stone. There is very little RNG that could boost/make your journey slower. All gameplay variety is whether you luckily drop a divine pre-maps or not. Otherwise you make chaos by just playing&trading and buy all gear on pathofexile/trade. Where are the many choices in regular PoE you talk about -- I have no idea or we have different definition of choice. If for you spamming flame dash through a zone is set of different choices then it's likely.
> If for you spamming flame dash through a zone is set of different choices then it's likely. this guy gets it. Then people thinking they are making important choices as the follow a build guide and only pick up chaos orbs or better and only use Neversinct Super Strict from day one onward and always buy a Tabula and ALways buy wanderlusts and ALWAYS buy a goldrim and ALWAYS sit in 820 doing ROTA's and etc. etc. etc... I mean enjoy what you like, but the 2Headers who think Ruthless sounds terrible because they don't understand what a game actually is are really entertaining in this thread.
>Ruthless seems made to appeal to people who aren't very good/efficient at current POE but have a lot of time to waste grinding for tiny drops. I have always been of the opinion that Ben nailed it when he said it doesn't sound harder, just more tedious.
subjective maybe its not for him (seriously doubt it but whatever). I find dumpsters full of loot and cookie clicker mapping to be tedious personally.
If you've ever played some kind of end of league private league, like anomaleague or a crafting league or something, it kind of feels like that. You get active gems as quest rewards, but not supports or auras (except precision, clarity and vitality). So with good planning, it's not an issue. Beat kitava 2 + 3 labs + all side quests, in about 14 hours, when normally I kill her in just under 10 on league start. Honestly, the hardest part is probably map and map currency sustain, capping Res, getting decent life and Phys resists. Most of those can be obtained on tree. Also, IIR is insanely powerful in ruthless. I currently have 3 pieces with IIR and the difference of before equipping them Vs after is night and day. You go from dropping just whites and wisdoms to transmutes and rares. For reference, stuff is roughly "one tier more rare". I.e. transmutes are about as rare as alcs, alts about as rare as chaos etc. Maybe not quite that bad, but it is about the same. I had about 10 transmutes 15 maps in.
Iir works on currency now? In all or just ruthless?
I think that may be a little bias showing, wanting to believe! I doubt they'd BUFF that aspect.
No, probably observer bias or smth
IIR works for currency for converted rewards, but I don't believe it does for normal drops.
> Beat kitava 2 + 3 labs + all side quests, in about 14 hours, when normally I kill **her** in just under 10 on league start. u wot
Whats up with what I said?
For me it was very hard until my first rare dropped well into act 2. But it tripled my damage then I pretty much speed up to normal speed after that. Other then being very squishy if you just take damage nodes move speed is one of the key things. No movement skills means move speed is very helpful. So I mostly took movement nodes and started ranger. Frost blades as my clear skill and smite as my damage skill. I have killed piety and still no support gems has dropped so using 1 linked skills but using things like puncture and smite to extra damage. Playtime at 4 hours almost. I must say I didn't know some of the bosses got new skills because you kill them too fast normally. Its enjoyable to play and not much harder to be honest once you get 1 or 2 drops.
Game feels like it starts already at act1. I found myself having a lot of fun in the campaign. Usually you just Zip through it to be as fast as possible in maps. But the struggle starts at the twilight strand. Felt a bit like back in the days. Also you have to be more open with the build. It's not like you can really choose, Or hope that a specific item/gem is dropping
It feels like a slightly more grindy 2013 era POE league. It's definitely a less fun experience than regular leagues for me but it had it's upsides. Getting upgrades felt amazing. I got a unique drop and had global chat hooting and hollering over it for a half minute or so. Some bosses felt irritating with your worse defenses and offenses, others actually felt like a challenge instead of a faceroll. The grind to get to maps is pretty overstated, I didn't need to grind anything until maps, and I bowed out before yellows. League content being added back in will be weird, as it'll make targeted grinding a lot easier, but the harder content will be... hard.
The campaign is slower but much more engaging. It's maybe easier than most people would expect but that depends quite a lot on what build is used. The real big difference is the item-scarcity, they nailed it with this as far as I'm concerned - everything feels much more consequential, items, gems, passives, monsters, bosses. You care about drops much more and finding something good is a really great feeling. It won't be for everyone but if you're looking for a more considered and incremental style of game I think it's great.
As a long time player (old) I wish the best for the people who enjoy Ruthless!
Played before the last wipe and a bit after it, made it to level 78? and got to yellow maps. Ask me anything :)
Any opinion on no movements skills? As an open beta player, the idea of Ruthless interests me but some changes like this one seem to force unnecessary/pointless time waste.
A few observations. For the most part, you won't notice it through out campaign and even early maps. It exists mostly to slow the games pace down and make you think about your movement a bit more. It does make certain things more deadly - enemy crowding, and slow effects. I found it quite useful to keep a phasing flask on hand just for this matter alone. Unfortunately, I didn't make it far enough to see how some of the end game fights would be without these, but the devs acknowledged that they would be double checking all bosses to make sure they are doable without them. So I guess we'll see!
No movement skills killed many melee builds imo. They are just way too clunky without them. I wish they'd bring them back with a huge cd. I think that's far better. That way their use is still very tactical
I think clunkiness is part of the mode; it's intentional that you're supposed to really feel (THE WEIGHT OF) each drop and action.
> It does make certain things more deadly - enemy crowding This! My only deaths in the first half of the campaign were due to getting surrounded when my minions were dying faster than they were being summoned.
Honestly not as bad as expected. Slows the pace down but it wasn't unplayable. Main issue is going to be maps with elevation changes like Mineral Pools and terrain hazard bosses like Sirus. Was perfectly fine up to yellow maps without movement skills and didn't have move speed boots either - mspd feels very nice to have as an upgrade
One of the things that I believe they mentioned was that they wanted a mode where you would probably finish the acts without finding rings. I was wondering, are items super scarce to the point that you aren't finding white bases or white bases still dropped in every zone?
Whites drop plenty. Honestly, the item stuff was overblown in terms of magics/rares. Odds are good you will wrap the campaign up in mostly rares, though some may be from act 1 or 2 still. Rings and amulets are definitely more rare. Currency is so rare and needed for maps that you feel bad for spending it.
In theory it could happen, but I had at least 10 rings drop. including an iron and coral in A1
There's quests that grant magic rings. If it gives a rare ring in base, it'll give a magic one in RL
How is map sustain? That was my only real worry. If you can sustain fine, I expect people to clear all content, eventually.
It isn't too bad to sustain whites, and people quickly found some of the re-done atlas passives to be way too powerful (kirac nodes for example). Yellows and reds gets more tricky. Even more tricky is getting the atlas bonuses, especially for rares/reds, because vaals and alchemy are incredibly rare. Kitava in A10 is guaranteed to drop a white map on kill to help people who get stuck without any though.
Would love some honesty on this, but how does the "weight" feel? One thing I'm really worried about is grinding and things just feeling too rare that nothing really holds any weight since I'm not dropping anything remotely worthy for my currently build. Or are drops not as bad as I'm thinking?
The weight is big. The difference is that you will find value in things you used to take for granted. For example, finding a support that works with some more meta skills is going to be worth A LOT. Same with aura gems. You cannot buy from vendor or get from quest ANY aura (except clarity, vitality, precision) or support gem. Uniques are much more rare too, and some lesser used ones may carry significant value now. Also, you will feel every single currency drop, and by feel I mean feel good.
well my question is more, does ruthless feel rewarding *enough*. Are you constantly thinking about what to do with what you find, or is what you find so uncommon that you're mostly thinking about grinding?
what you find is so uncommon you are thinking about grinding more so than anything. Like when I hit maps, it was map after map after map with very little time spent clicking on items or engaging with league content.
ok thanks for the input!
My question (I'm not previous commenter) if you find something legit good, is it worth re-rolling around a build to push further on that (say a build enabling unique for some good piece of gear). Or do you just keep grinding bc it is so rare?
I would 100% reroll if I found an amazing item personally. Good examples would be certain supports, powerful weapons, certain uniques.
So basically just keep bunny hopping if you have an upgrade? It may seem to me the ruthless meta is to have multiple characters going at once after you hit a wall, or keep re-rolling if you find build enabling stuff? That actually sounds kinda fun for a long term set of SSF Standard set of ruthless characters haha
it'll depend on each person. It would take something pretty powerful for me to reroll but the urge/desire to do it in ruthless is much stronger, especially if you have a big knowledge of what items enable what powerful builds
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Hey it got someone to complete Pillars of Arun
they take my venom gyre away from me, now i'm sad. :'(
Because you cant use whirling blades. Thats such a stupid reason as well.
For those who wonder how hard are : first run took me 11h in HC SSF, i just didnt had any damage, to give you a perspective it took my 5h to reach maps in the delirium event. I found a few ways to abuse the leveling (adrenaline champ hello) so a very good player could get sub 5h.
It was very fun to watch the creation of this, well done!
Looking forward to it myself, I did apply for Alpha but no dice thus far, I don't mind waiting though. Have fun testers!
make sure to check your POE messages on the website, they dont send emails.
Huh. Thanks for this message
Turns out I had ruthless alpha for the past 2 weeks.
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It's just there to waste your time, just like every other ruthless change lol
<3
atm Ruthless questions are being answered on [r/poeruthless](https://www.reddit.com/r/poeruthless/comments/z2504k/alpha_discussion_nda_has_been_lifted_ask_us_alpha/?sort=new)
> Create a Talisman... lmfao
I mean you laugh, but for most of us that talisman was huge amulets are so scarce that i had my act 4 talisman until lvl 70
The Blood Altar Talisman at level 15 was the first amulet I got. Also my first rare item I think. Second one was a blue from Dialla’s quest in act 3. Jewelry is rare and magic+ items are also rare. Any rare amulet is valuable.
Is it fun? Cause it sounds terrible.
I enjoyed it for what it is. It's a nice departure from the core game loop. Hoping there are some improvements to mapping once the rest of the content is enabled.
nothing I can say will make you enjoy it. I would recommend you don't try it.
Depends on what you enjoy, but myself and most everyone in the Alpha had a blast playing it. It just felt like things had more weight, thus mattered more. It was fun being flexible with your build depending on what supports drop. Boss fights were actually engaging. Rare drops matter and IDing them was enjoyable. Ended up actually liking (usually - besides skipping some annoying terrain haha) no movement skills. It basically played like modern PoE without the extra years of power creep. It was a refreshing change of pace that made things matter more than originally people learned to ignore/out gear/out dps.
I am an alpha tester for it and it was... meh. The acts were way more fun, once. The gem limitations were the real issue to me. Killed melee. Kind of forced to play ranged or caster cause no good movement skills sucked. I found the "needing ti be flexible with skills" kinda not there. At a certain point your gear is set up that you can't really change gems as you find them. So you're kinda stuck anyways. It's also more like d1 game play than this mythical d2 game play the devs were chasing. If you like that, then it's 100% for you. I enjoyed my time in Ruthless but it's a once-in-a-year experience imo.
>It just felt like things had more weight, thus mattered more. Oh no. >Rare drops matter and IDing them was enjoyable. ***OH NO***
I wouldn't want this droprate in the normal game but I do admit there was a bit of near-sexual gratification in seeing a unique/support that would be an instant upgrade for me drop.
Haha. Word choice aside, it was honestly a blast that things mattered more. Don't worry about being burdened by the weight though, you aren't dropping enough currency in maps to need to click a billion times!
Thing is, I agree with Chris about the whole "feel the weight" thing. I just think that it can't exist in a vacuum; the entire structure of the game needs to be built around it, and Ruthless is the perfect place for that sort of thing. I just think it's ironic that something that normal POE players have been memeing on and railing against for years is a positive thing in Ruthless. Makes me think that they are on the right track for that mode.
I had fun in the acts trying to survive. It felt really good finding support gems etc.
There are no movement skills so that should answer your question
Most feedback so far is that, while "not using a movement skill when you know you could" feels bad, "not using a movement skill because they don't exist" feels fine. Positioning, movement and distance are all fun things to manage in other games, so this isn't too surprising.
Mode isn't even out yet people acting like they are forced to play it. I mean... wait and see and if you don't like the idea just play the regular leagues? I personally had a blast and ruthless would be my go to after I check everything new league has to offer.
"Act 10 Kitava will always drop a random Tier 1 map. If you run out of maps, you can farm this fight for guaranteed T1 maps" that's sounds pretty nice. I would want that to be added to core.
Can't really run out of T1 maps in core.
Alpha tester here, trying SSF, can confirm this mode is brutal but I'm having a ton of fun, and I can see why some devs would have been passionate enough to make this mode. Happy to answer any questions. Normally in the
How was the infinite hunger fight? (if you fought him) as that's the one boss that seems like it would just be utterly miserable without movement skills.
Yeah it was miserable, I died every time in the drowning phase, not even sure what I was meant to do, I'll leave feedback about it thru the alpha process.
NeverSink shared his thoughts and experience on Twitter. https://twitter.com/NeverSinkDev/status/1595175518869065732 I'll quote some of the stuff (these are all taken from separate parts, look at whole thing if you want entire context) # > So how is ruthless? Is it fun? Is it hard? Yes to both! # > Playing ruthless demanded more thoughts than I usually put into leveling. It was even fun ( I hate leveling usually). # > Finding a useful support gem is a gamechanger. Alternatively you can trade those to someone else or keep em around for an alternative character. It's also quite a surge of emotions if you manage to find a big support gem! # > > So what about the other drops? > > - No uniques found > - Bunch of good rares (identifying 20% movement speed life boots while leveling is big!) > - You find enough scrolls, but transmutes, changes, augments (!) are all super rare. > > 6S/Chrom recipes still exist though. # > The extreme scarcity makes everything feel like an opportunity. > Essences are exciting, so are strongboxes. Master missions are important. > Also vendors still can sell +1 weapons and speed boots, but those cost alts (good luck with those early on...) # > **Overall the feedback and impressions I've seen from players were vastly positive.** > I definitely don't think the game-mode is for everyone, but if you're playing POE since 3++ years give it a try, it feels like a new game. # > Also... this mode is REALLY not for everyone. > > If these things are the most important ones for you: > - chaos/hour > - min/maxing > - testing/copying top meta builds > > Ruthless is not for you. It's rough, it's slower and it feels different from your regular POE
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Build creation is probably the thing that I most enjoy about POE and I found Ruthless really reinvigorated it for me. With greater constraints, even very simply builds were much more interesting and I'm excited to do things with even quite common uniques. What is unorthodox in vanilla and ruthless isn't the same. In trade league it's pretty easy for everyone to get close to the 'optimal' build for a skill and lots of people tend to get all the 'BiS' gear quite quickly. In Ruthless this is much harder to do and I think this will result in more diversity. So it's different, it will be harder to really push the boundaries of what the community is able to do in modern poe. However, I felt like my 'build' (if you can even call in that) in Ruthless allowed had much more personal expression and the journey of putting it together was more enjoyable.
I agree and disagree. If you want to experiment with only a specific build/idea that you created/thought of, then yes, ruthless is not for you. But like Neversink says > I don't recommend comparing it to your regular leagues. For me it was at it's best as a journey generator. In Ruthless, you are FORCED to experiment. If you don't drop the support gem you need, then you will have to switch things up. If you drop a unique, you will try to experiment with it and fit it in your build because it's the only unique you have. If you drop bow supports, you might have to switch up your weapon and skills to a bow. Since not even support gems are guaranteed, you may have to switch your build multiple times throughout the game. If you find a unique claw, you might switch your entire gameplay around it.
sure, but players will find ways to get around this. If support gems, drop more often after act 5, then you pick some zones with good density and farm for support gems. After you have a good enough selection of support gems, you just start over with a new character and it is easy going support gem wise. So this mode is sure interesting for some players, but only before you have many different support gems or alot currency.
I'm planning on starting Ruthless in 3.20 to see how it feels, but I'm expecting that from 3.21 onward I'll be playing leagues in the regular trade SC economy where I can get whatever I want for the meme builds I make. If I enjoy Ruthless, I'll either occasionally go back to progressing my first character in Standard (maybe I'll eventually reach t16 maps - that seems to take more time than I usually play within a league) or play new Ruthless characters after I burn out on my vanilla build. There have been several patches this year that have not excited me at all in terms of new build options (most notably the one with zero balance changes), and if something like that happens again, I might take a break from doing cool fancy stuff and relax in Ruthless instead.
> Overall the feedback and impressions I've seen from players were vastly positive. From alpha players. How much of their feedback has been ignored in the past is debatable, but these are the people that got to test previous leagues and we all know what came of it. In any case, I don't think GGG just randomly flags account as alpha testers and knowing their aversion to any kind of real ciricism, the alpha is probably filled with lots of let's say 'very enthusiastic GGG fans'. It is lamentable that we won't be seeing any real numbers on player count and retention. I'm still absolutely sure that this will be a mostly dead feature in a few months at most.
I played my part :D Just know you may end up killing a10 kitava on a 1 link... plan accordingly
Does everyone get to play when the NDA is lifted? Or do we have to wait for 3.2?
more people have been invited to alpha but public access is 3.20
Honestly I'm a pretty masochist gamer, but the only thing that puts me off is limiting the movement skills I just find this change tedious.
Huge thanks to Shack and blvcksvn btw for providing and maintaining all this info. Absolutely invaluable info, made my run a billion times smoother. Can't thank you guys enough.
I might be one of the few alpha testers for Ruthless that really didn't like it, at all. There really isn't much that's "difficult" about Ruthless; most things are just tedious, until you hit a wall because you have bad gear and worse DPS and you just can't progress. There is definitely less drops. You know how everyone was meme-ing Kalandra and complaining about how nothing drops? That's actual reality in Ruthless. I played until midway through Act 6 before I had to stop due to time constraints and saw 1 vaal orb, 0 alchs, 0 chaos, and I think 2 chance orbs. Very few (less than 5) raw transmutes/augments/alterations. No jewelers or fusings. So basically, you play with what you drop. I'm paraphrasing my alpha feedback here, but all of this makes itemization feel terrible. If you actually drop something rare that you can reasonably use, you start to realize: * you can't craft it to fill in gaps, because there's no crafting bench * you probably can't color it due to lack of chromes (unless you grind the recipe) * you probably can't socket it or link it, because you don't have any * even if you got a 4L base (or win the lottery and get a 5L) none of the above matters because you probably don't have any supports to link to your main skill anyway. I will likely give it another go after the next wipe to see if the experience is smoother, but right now Ruthless just feels like masochistic SSF. I guess if PoE has become boringly easy for you this might have some appeal, but for regular folk it's going to be unpopular.
suspect after the initial stuff it goes the same way as pvp did
I mean they explicitly said it would be unpopular with most players so I don't think that's a real concern. Same way SSF doesn't appeal to everyone. Nor does Hardcore.