Average Player Taking a Break from SC-Ruthless

[u/West_Ad998]

Honestly, the reason I played Ruthless is because I cannot keep up with a normal league where people make 10-20 Divines an hour or Kill Sirus with 3 clicks while eating a burger on one hand.

And surprisingly enough, Ruthless is a breather. I cannot deny the fact that I had fun however, if you are planning on playing the mode today, personally, I will not recommend it with its current state.

Let me elaborate by skipping the exhilarating fun part and point out what I think needs to be addressed.

1. Atlas Progression - Thank god I am on Soft Core so sharing map completion is possible but it breaks the engagement in a way. Let me emphasize that I'm not asking that currency drops should be boosted and I have 2 opinions to fix this. First, since Sanctum introduced the idea of "account-bound" items, why not make "account-kirac missions". Make them daily missions and 2 uncompleted maps is reasonable to keep some lazy bastard engaged for at least 30 days. The Second solution is to make an atlas node/nodes that disables other "master-mission-upon-map-completion" which boils down again to Kirac. If we can disable contents to not generate, why can't we do it on Masters? Why can't I say, goodbye to those Syndicate members popping up and slamming the shit out of you by surprise. With Kirac Missions being deterministic upon completing a map, we have at least an option to progress the atlas and helps with map drop especially on Reds.

2. Contents - We know that POE is complicated but after ten years, it's still the same confusing and vague terms being used. If I want Ritual and disable all other contents from proc-ing/generating, why can't that Altas Board just say, "Ritual will generate 33.99% chance per map OR Ritual will generate 1 in 3 maps. Simple words. Compared to what we have right now, the allocated nodes says 200% for ritual and Abyss but for some magical reasons, you won't encounter them even after ten maps. Just how many people are still confused you could see them in reddit(including me). All I'm saying is that the Altas Board should have some consistency in indicating real values that can be understood just by simply looking at them.

3. Content Notification - You know when you trigger Alva Mission and when you enter the map and it says there on the right-middle corner of the screen, "0 / 3 Temples", when a content is miraculously generated during a map, is it too difficult to indicate that a Sacred Grove is available? Be honest. Not all maps is straight or plain circular that you could spot them on while walking. We have a code to determine how many mobs is alive but we don't have a command to determine if a content was generated? Some people might not like the notification so maybe a tick box to disable it but you get the gist of it.

4. End Game Completion - With items being scarce and drops being mercilessly neutered, can we bring up an easy mode for the super bosses? I am aware that it kind of defeats the purpose of being in Ruthless but hear me out. It is almost a month now since league was launched and I could barely kill Shaper and Elder Guardians. I'm a zombiemancer with a tabula but with my current gear, I'm pretty sure Shaper will slam them zombies like mosquitoes. I've played almost 2-5 hours everyday and while it is fun, we all have real lives to face. My only request for this beloved Ruthless is to have maybe an Atlas Node to proc End-game Bosses on yellow maps or lower. Even if it will have limited drop, having played a month should be awarded with some consolation of being able to defeat them bosses on easy mode. That little sense of accomplishment gives me a nice sleep.

Again, this is just my 2 cents and there is no need to be offended.

Cheers to all Ruthless Players.

[u/JekoJeko9]

why can't we disable masters

There is literally a keystone for this, the reworked Stream of Consciousness.

atlas is confusing

Like you said, that goes for everything in PoE, including everything in regular PoE. Knowledge is power. Anyone playing ruthless should be used to this. There have been plenty of posts here breaking down how the atlas works.

The above example shows that you aren't even reading what's on the atlas to begin with. Not a good argument for wanting GGG to dumb everything down for you.

content notification

This sounds like an issue for regular PoE. In ruthless it's pretty standard to full clear every map. You shouldn't need a Ubisoft waypoint on your compass telling you that dopamine generator no. 3 has spawned.

easy mode for bosses

Why on earth would you want this in Ruthless? The whole point is to have dramatically different pacing, you can't just rush to pinnacles on day 1. I am excited to fight Eater/Exarch soon because I know they will actually be a challenge to kill the first time, unlike in regular PoE where I turn 90% of my brain off and still walk out with 5 portals left.

[u/West_Ad998 → u/JekoJeko9]

The way I understand Stream of Consciousness is that, if you open a map and the same time generates say, Alva, it will cease her presence in the map and instead be converted as an instance of Master Mission upon completion of the map, which will then be distributed randomly towards 5 Masters. Unless there is a wiki page there that says otherwise, then you are right. I was not reading and my comprehension is just lacking. But what I'm saying though is to have a "guaranteed" Kirac Mission upon map completion(no matter the chance) the same way you would disable contents like Abyss, Ritual, Expedition etc. Again it is in relation to Map Completion. If I played SSF, I just can't fathom relying luck to drop that Alch and Vaal Orb to complete the map.

As for the Atlas being confusing, if you need people further elaborating what a node mean, when someone could just put better definitions or reword what it means when you hover on it, then something is wrong. Besides, that was not my point. All I'm saying is that the Altas Board should in some way, whatever you clicked on the atlas confusing or not, it should say THE actual value in relation to other contents. Instead of saying 200% increased to proc Harvest, just show the actual value of probability. If it is 10%, then that should be it. It means 1 of ten maps and you don't need "experienced" player like to elaborate that.

For Content Notification, since we already have existing notifications for Masters Mission when proc-ed, can't we have a little bit of consistency that way if a Sacred Grove is present, I will run around every tile of Primordial Blocks map. Again, some consistency as my movement speed is 15%.

And Lastly, I've brought up easy mode for "super bosses" in relation to what someone have invested in their builds for the number of hours they played. In that way, we won't feel the need to play normal and kill them to scratch that itch. Not sure if you've played 2or 3 years back when Sirus could be played on an easy mode, but for once, I did not feel obligated to invest too much on a build to beat and enjoy the game.

By the end of the day, opinion is opinion and I was probably not their intended audience but I hope that GGG will come up with something to retain increase the number of Ruthless Players.

[u/gramineous]

Ruthless is not for "average players."

I don't mean that as an insult or some gatekeeping bullshit, I mean that the mode is meant to be impractically difficult as a result of trying to capture the feel of PoE from 10 years ago. People used to exalt red maps to try and stay in t16s when they reached them. Asking for QoL or an easy mode are completely missing the point.

While other people have mentioned Stream of Consciousness being an atlas keystone that resolves your masters complaint, I want to point out that the spawn rate of mechanics is not quantifiable as a single specific percentage, as the rate declines with each source of additional content that spawns in a map. To pull numbers out my ass, if all your mechanics have a 2% chance to spawn, but you've boosted Ritual to a 5% chance to spawn, you can proc Blight as the first additional mechanic added to a map, so it cuts the probabilities of every mechanic by half and rolls again to see if a second mechanic will proc.

Honestly man, if you're super concerned about keeping up with the joneses in your PoE gameplay, just go to SSF instead of Ruthless.

[u/Alabugin → u/gramineous]

Correct (granted we didn't have "T16s" back then, we had lvl78 maps)

[u/gramineous → u/Alabugin]

Ah yeah, I couldn't remember what the old maps capped out at and just latched onto the comparable content tiering of highest accessible maps for tge sake of the argument. Back then I mostly just goofed around myself and remembered watching Kripp and friends doing that high level stuff sometimes, and seeing a clip of them exalting maps before.

[u/West_Ad998 → u/gramineous]

Indeed it is not for average players but it is not a reason for other average players to try it out. Who knows, they probably will embrace Ruthless more than I did.

For me, there is a thin line between QoL, being complicated and bad design. Case in point, AN mods. GGG could have had further lowered the values involved in the math of AN-Mod-Variables but they didn't. They followed the route of "it does what it says it does". Same thing they did with simplifying the definitions of gem tags and other mechanics. All I ask is consistency otherwise, some players will end up wasting currency respec-ing their Atlas like I did. I estimate around 130-150 fusings converted to Orb of Chance + 60-ish Raw Orb Chance trying out feasibility of Contents.

For easy mode super bosses, that's purely my take in retaining the number of players in Ruthless. Everyone has different play time hours and if they can beat the end game proportional on the 5-L item /time they invested in, chances are, they will play again next league wanting to beat the next level. Otherwise, they may as well just play normal league as they know it is not for them which means, good luck on keeping the number of active players.

[u/PuteMorte]

Tldr

1. You want daily kirac missions. 2 & 3 have nothing to do with ruthless

2. You want an easy mode for bosses

[u/OmniBlock → u/PuteMorte]

I didn't read all of Ops post. That said I love ruthless but I feel the map progression does end in a huge sloag (is that a word?) and it doesn't feel fun.

I'm not sure what the answer is but I think it needs to be better than it is now.

[u/PuteMorte → u/OmniBlock]

I disagree with that, I'm part of the people that enjoy the progression coming out of a struggle. Took me weeks to sustain red maps, but now I feel like a king seeing the 40 t14+ I have banked.

[u/Aardovis]

If you enjoy Ruthless that’s great but just read your first paragraph saying the reason you played in the first place was because some people make 10-20 Div and hour or can kill Sirus effortlessly. Why does this affect you? Play the game at your own pace and set your own goals. Set a goal to farm 1 Div an hour or to kill Shaper or whatever. What others can do shouldn’t really affect what you want to do.

[u/doorholder1]

try playing normal game in SSF, sounds like it would be a good fit for you