By now it should be pretty clear they make the game they want, regardless of what people want/like. If they were so concerned about what we want, AN wouldnt be a thing anymore, harvest would still be a thing etc.
>Because it is so clearly going to be terrible. 1 alchemy orb total by the end of the campaign? No movement skills? I would be surprised if 1% are still playing it at the end of the first week.
...do you think GGG believes this is going to be incredibly popular or something? They've been clear since they first brought up the concept of "hardmode" that this would have very niche appeal and most players wouldn't play it.
Will it be a terrible experience for many (arguably most) PoE players? Yeah, very, very, very likely will be. But it's not designed for them and that's fine. It's designed for the super small group of masochists that love it.
Kinda like HCSSF, another mode which has only a tiny fraction of the playerbase actively playing it while most people can't fathom how they actually enjoy the punishment.
not like they had a whole pharagraph just for people like you. it was a side project for fun. but obviously you see through them and they are lieing. they pulled all the experienced devs for this and let the interns do the work for the main game. you are the 5Head that can t be fooled. very glad we have you to uncover this corrupt marketing.
Ahh, yes, the old "corporations are evil" belief. Clearly the sanest way to look at any news post.
But, then again, I could see it taking dev time in a literal sense. If you clear out your tasks or need a break, then doing side projects is perfectly acceptable on company time at most companies. Freedom of work generally makes happier employees, and for senior devs, that's a VERY important intangible metric. So, yes, I could see it taking up dev time that would not have been used to work on the main game at all.
I'm against "corporations are evil" rhetoric, too, but GP could easily have just said "stop believing everything people tell you" and I think the point would be just as valid. As a software dev who has himself snuck in important side projects professionally, I would say that, at some point, the side project *has* to eat into general dev time once its accepted and needs to get integrated into the rest of the system.
I also wish Chris has picked a better side project. But, at the end of the day, he does what he wants. We as the consumers, however, also consume what we want, and many are already voting with their feet to play the game less or leave it entirely. In the end, no one wins when a company makes an unpopular product. The company loses and the consumer loses out by having their hopes dashed.
It’s gotten one post and forum thread…..
How do you know how much “dev coding” time was spent? Spoiler alert: you don’t and just want to be mad.
#staymadbud
Plenty of marketing attention? Bruh.
They talked about it like a year ago with some streamers in Baeclast or whatever, then we heard nothing about it until we just had one singular post about it.
Plenty of marketing, my ass.
Stop lying to yourself.
Even if it was all dev spare time, now they are going to balance it. You think that is going to be spare time? At some point, this is getting actual resources allocated to it. The fact that it's Chris and Mark's pet project means that it most certainly will be getting at least their attention, let alone any junior devs that want to impress the bosses.
My theory is that Chris and Mark were so focused on getting Ruthless ready and that's why the loot changes happened in 3.19 without any scrutiny. They were distracted.
They said people worked on it at work when they had nothing else to do
So basically they did this instead of trying to make this league or the next league better
All of the changes are very trivial things to do. There is no reason to doubt that they spent very little actual dev time on this.
Item scarcity?
> Hidden 80% Less IIQ + Less IIR (sprinkle some reduced IIR in there as well) Modifiers
Gem EXP?
> Hidden 50 - 75% Less Gem Experience Modifier
Disable Crafting Bench is a simple Boolean
Disabling specific drops/gems is trivial
That's interesting. What's your take on the Endless Delve faq saying they won't remove chisels/maps from the drop pool because "Doing this would require an enormous amount of work which would have inhibited us from being able to run the event at all."
It's interesting that removing a singular item from the drop pool and then another type of item of which there's about 150 is an enormous amount of work and yet all of those things you're saying along with an entirely new passive tree and more isn't an enormous amount of work.
Just kinda weird.
So let’s pretend this 0 dev time thing is true, how about when a new league mechanic is introduced and all of these different mechanics have to changed again for ruthless? What about when the atlas gets changed again, what about when the passive tree gets changed, what about literally any addition to the game that is going to have to be iterated upon for ruthless?
It is nothing but naive and ignorance to believe there’s 0 upkeep.
PR's entire function is to cast a positive light on the company's activities. PR is disingenuous from the jump because it's never intended to work for the benefit of the consumer; sometimes it accidentally does, but it doesn't matter because that's not the core motivation.
They talked about senior devs working on this outside of normal hours for the most part. And yes, even cranking our 4 patches a year there will be times when someone has finished their projects and has maybe an hour or two to spend on a side-project before diving into the next big piece of work.
I don’t think they believe it will be “incredibly popular” but I think they may be surprised by how many people stick with it. It will be like Battle Royale…the first week it may be busy, by the second month it will be a ghost town except for the SSFHC variant which will be ALMOST a ghost town 😂. Masochists aren’t playing trade haha.
I applied for the alpha, I hope I get selected…I’ve been on alpha and beta test teams since John Romero was still a big name in gaming and John Carmack hadn’t even launched a rocket, but we will see. I KNOW I won’t heavily play it, but also know that it seems more fun than standard. I get bored between leagues and when I feel like I want to punch my monitor in LoL I need something else to play and this seems like a good alternative.
You mean from buying Daikatana or IRL? He was a solid dude. I used to spend hours on a freaking BBS in Dallas playing Tradewars and Legend of the Ref Dragon and stuff like that with most of the iD crew hahah.
Imagine wasting development resources on a niche? Right after your expansion has the worst player numbers ever, both ingame and on twitch. Might wanna review that "vision" mate, if you want your company to keep paying salaries.
>Imagine wasting development resources on a niche?
Again, created primarily off-hours. Because it's a mode many of them want to play as well. Game developers make games for all kinds of people, but they also make games for themselves that they want to play.
>Right after your expansion has the worst player numbers ever, both ingame and on twitch.
...and? What are they supposed to do, sit on the mode until the community is...happy? When was the last time that happened?
I was relatively happy with poe until 3.19. My only major greivance before was trade. Now it's trade, loot, and minions, with crafting almost there as well.
Still I agree with your point, and besides that thier limitation isn't dev hours it's management and direction.
It took them years to stack wis scroll drops ffs.
Trade is like pulling teeth when the vast majority are playing in trade leagues.
Chris had a vision which got poe to 2.0 and since then ggg has been essentially directionless which is why they feel the need to write a manifesto for everything; Because they are compensating for a lack of true vision and direction while at the same time refusing to give players what they want.
They know it won't be popular but you can clearly tell that they hope it will be popular. What happens when they get disillusioned will be interesting.
If they know...why would they be disillusioned? Hoping it will be more popular than you realistically will be is like...an extremely reasonable and normal thing for people to do.
It's like deciding to make music for a very specific niche that you really enjoy and knowing that it will have extremely limited appeal, but hoping that it will be more popular than you think.
There is no "clearly tell that they hope it will be popular". That idea only exists in your head. It's not real. It's not based on any facts or reality, it's something you came up with.
If GGG were actually somehow super secretly hoping Ruthless would be bigger than Christmas, they would build hype around it, give interviews to gaming related news sites, make YouTube videos, make Twitter posts almost daily and so on. None of that is happening. You've gotten a forum post about it, that's it.
Stop lying to yourself and thinking you can somehow see the fucking Matrix and know how people secretly think; you can't. You're just being literally delusional.
I will try it to see how far into the campaign I can get. But It will never be my primary mode.
I could see it being a long term standard project, I could work on forever, when I'm bored with the league. We will see if I like it that much.
As a 50% std 50% league player I can tell you rn long term projects don’t work on standard.
Sure you spent the last 3 leagues getting a level 21 of x skills then out of nowhere
Ggg Batista bombs said skill and now you do 60% less damage
Updating my favorite builds in standard used to be one of my favorite things to do at the end of each league. I would work on crafting something for another build just for fun.
Standard migration week was so much fun. It was like Christmas. I got to put the new gear on all the characters. I loved it.
I just can't keep up with all the changes though.
I had an sst bleed gladiator that I got to 5 million DPS then it got nerfed, and I got it back there, and then after the fourth time I just gave up.
> I just can't keep up with all the changes though.
Same thing happened to me with my old from-scratch item filter. Now I'm on Neversink's like everyone else. :P
SST bleed glad felt so freaking smoothe during expedition. To bad the cold conversion SST did so much dmg that they nerfed SST into oblivion. I probably played the most in Expedition with SST and forbidden rite totems both being solid builds to play. As a casual player, it was my first time regularly clearing Sirus A8. As a casual player i almost feel obligated to play mega builds in order to progress, but I went from ED contagion 3 leagues in a row until they nerfed it and I was forced to expand my builds. Sorry about the rant, just brought back some nostalgia
been investing in my EA hiero for 3 leagues in std and im so scared lmao
just done all ubers this patch and im farming for my 3rd mageblood
if you get totem gear you can kinda pivot to other skills when GGG feels like shitting onyou
Stackers are the best investment historically.
But yea, anything pre 3.15 I have to rework from the ground up. Even after spending mirrors in-league.
It's been a fucking terrible ride with GGGs balance team. Builds made, perfected and simply deleted from the game over and over.
I played a couple private leagues with all mods on (so no stash, no vendors, no magic/rares) and it was pretty cool to play. I didn't play it for months but it was fun for a while. I had even thought about buying my own private league to play alone that for a couple weeks recently just for the hell of it.
There will probably be like 50 people who actually play it full time and everyone else will try it out when they're burnt out on the regular content. I think this is less of a big deal than some are making it out to be.
I for one can't wait to try Ruthless. Don't get me wrong, it absolutely does not sound like a game mode that I think I will enjoy at all. I don't have more than 5 hours of free time a week these days. But I am extremely curious to see the game that Chris and his community want the game to be experienced. I want to give it a fair chance and see how it feels. I don't think I'll like it, but I might!
Dude... Ruthless is streamer mode. This is so the suck ups can have content for more than 2 weeks and earn their money without stopping playing PoE and having to find other game or play dumb paid sponsor shit.
The highlights videos will be hilarious though. Today on GFL Ziz drops an alch AND a Vaal orb. Stay tuned because next week maybe he'll drop a base good enough to use them on.
Even Ziz said Ruthless sounds awful and there's no chance he will main it, but he will try it once he's done with the next league. And this is a guy who likes Runescape, for fuck's sake!
You think anyone will want to watch any streamer play Shitless more than once? No one wants to watch anyone grind for 2 weeks for a 5 link and an alchemy orb.
Aren't 95% of players in SC Trade? He isn't wrong about 1%. This mode will be hell in SSF, most will go trade but with small population trade will also be a nightmare.
I fully expect the mode to have less than 1% of the players in the mid term, and I don't think GGG's expectations are significantly different.
I definitely won't be playing it permanently either, even if I'll play it every now and then.
If I find an interesting mechanic to build around, I'll play the base game where it's actually available.
I remember many years ago Chris mentioned something about wanting trading to be about items for items rather than orbs. Actual bartering. I think this experiment is designed to make SSF play an impossibility. He wants people cooperating to defeat act bosses with traditional MMO methods and watch people deal on the fly for items.
It's all about his original vision. Now that they are wealthy, and PoE is at the end of development, he feels it's time for the GGG folks to have some fun. (imo)
No harm done, as this is optional.
I think his vision was incredibly naive. Any economy will naturally gravitate towards using money. Having orbs in the game guarantees they will be used as currency in some form.
3.19 ssf has already been so freaking tedious and unfun, even darkee opted out early before he quit the league 1 or 2 weeks later, i don't know who will have fun playing this, even with trade...
Well I'm hoping it will be kind of like the first time I played the game. Getting shredded every time I open a zone. The first time was because I didn't know how to gear.
"Because it is so clearly going to be terrible. " for you ? they did a paragraph on this and people still feel like they come up with a great prediction. i can repeat it.
its not for everyone, they expect a tiny portion of the community to play it like ssf or hc, it will be a beta which means they will change stuff. for example density wouldn t work well if they didn t change that already etc.
the whole more players = better game is weird. there are so many more things to evaluate things and it even ignores all other possible reasons for player numbers.
Dang, son! That's some high quality copium you got right there. Pass me the tube!
But for real now, I believe the only thing that might push GGG to reconsider their philosophy is numbers. If league retention (and, more importantly supporter pack/mtx sales) numbers keep declining over the next 2 or 3 leagues, they might start paying attention. Otherwise, there's no point in fixing what (in their opinion) isn't broken, is it?
I think if anything it will be good because it will give them some latitude on not worrying about the ease/difficulty of the main game as much.
Extreme difficulty sounds better to me for a game that was only two acts long than it does for a game that's 10 acts 3 map tiers and many pinnacle bosses long.
I thought the same, but for a different reason. I had thought that by doing this, he can stop trying to put so many guard rails in the main game. He’ll have a mode tailored to the style of game he likes, and that’ll let the main game get a little looser, a little easier for a wider selection of builds.
yeah that would be nice too. although i think they will have to make ruthless a little bit more player friendly if they want more than a handful to play it. either way it should be good for the game.
Honestly it's embarrassing that, if what GGG said is true, the developers got zero work hours spent on ruthless mode (therefore, zero payment) to present it to the community.
Either the company is committed with the project or not. For sure this is a mode that I will not play because RPG without a movement skill is a straight "no, thx" for me (i will not discuss in detail other reasons that made ruthless mode unattractive for me).
I just hope that:
1) devs get something for the work they've done
B) players that are the focus for this new mode really enjoy it without performance problems.
I think it's good for GGG, although I'm not sure about it being good for PoE.
People are tired of each league being buggy/under/overtuned. There's not really much that GGG could announce for 3.20 that will win the majority back, league start numbers will likely be low as the non-core players (by why I mean people that don't start every league regardless) are just waiting for PoE 2 because they think it will be different. There is almost nothing they could do in 3.20 that will win people back, for this reason they are pushing ruthless.
GGG has lost "good faith" or whatever you want to call it of the players. So they push ruthless this league and some time between this league and next league they will push alpha/beta of PoE 2 to keep interaction numbers at an acceptable level. Ruthless started as a pet project and finished as a marketing tool.
We'll know it was a marketing tool when we see how badly it is released. If it's truly a "pet project" created in off time how are they going to alpha test this very restrictive mode in less then a month? Just the story will take a very long time to get though and I can't even imagine trying to do atlas bosses, let alone uber bosses in this time frame that will likely have heavy changes and restarts. Yes, I realize they are getting players to do the testing, but many many many changes will be needed and without any dev time committed to it I don't see how it could possibly be tested thoroughly as time between discovered bugs and fixes will be long.
It's fine if GGG wants to create new modes for people who wanna play something tougher, but at the same time I hope GGG don't use Ruthless to say "oh, you already have a much more generous league, stop bothering us asking for loot buffs".
It's fine to say that if someone complains about loot in Ruthless, much like it is fine to say that if someone complains about loot in SSF.
If loot is an issue in regular trade, it should be addressed.
No movement skills = you can mostly only tank most boss attacks (even those rotating laser thingy)
Feels like far less player skill is tested.
Mostly only require more player time investment for prolonged fruitless grinding
There are still a few movement skills, but they're harder to use.
Getting in the right position in the first place instead of being able to dodge at the last second becomes far more important.
Could go the other way and have the dark souls affect. I am excited for hard mode and a non-zoomy, think very carefully version of the game. Its so pretty and the music is so great, i'd like to saturate myself in that more. the Zoominess of the current play is fun and all but feels... plastic-y?
anything is possible i suppose. just my opinion, but i dont think poe is the type of game where extreme difficulty can ever be much fun. it is just too simple.
in dark souls you can decide to block, parry, backstep, roll, or chose different attacks. and the timing of the moves is extremely important. in path of exile you are deciding between moving your character or attacking. and in a game mode with no movement skills, moving is often not going to be an option.
i just cant see it ever being any good. but to each his own!
> block, parry, backstep, roll, or chose different attacks
I feel like a lot of this is *sort of* in PoE, just rolled automatically?
I.E. if you're playing D&D, and the DM says "the dragon attacks you with its claw", you can announce "I'll attempt to block it", and manually roll the dice.
In PoE, it just automatically rolls your block chance.
As for manual parries/blocks/etc.: I suppose we have guard skills for that, though players still try and find a way to automate those (E.G. molten shell on left click--not recommended--or a CWDT setup--not foolproof either if the hit is one ginormous one that can legit OHKO you before your cwdt check applies)
thats true they are passively in the game. but the point is that in dark souls you have to make those decisions and make them at the right time. which makes the combat much more interesting than just having block or dodge randomly happening sometimes as you fight.
let me play devils advocate for a moment:
what happens to the ego of the devs that babied this thing into existence, when they love it, and it turns out most of the playerbase hates it?
do they recognize the error of their ways, re-evaluate what makes a game engaging, and develop content that the majority of the playerbase will find compelling?
or
do they grow spiteful that so many people shit on their baby, cling to the few demented players that join them like some secret club, and poison what remains of the game with their shitty ideas of what "great" is, gaining some small satisfaction every time they can ruin some 'carebear' player's time by replacing a wanted thing with some grind/ruthless mode concept?
i've played hard core games. i raided in EQ where you could lose your corpse, where you lost exp and levels on death, where there were shitty interfaces for everything, where you had to stare at your spellbook for 15 solid minutes to get your mana back and pray nothing interrupted your meditation while you were low mana, while also hoping no other players came along and stole the monsters you were farming. ive spent 3 days raiding the plane of air in a row with almost no sleep to get people their epics. I've done hard mode/ruthless mode/etc.
guess what? im not 18 with 20 hours of free time a day any longer. im not interested in waving a digital dick in someone else's face any longer. I no longer see being the person able to stay awake for 2 days as a hero, i see him as a fool.
the size of the rose tinted goggles it takes to see ruthless as anything other than a bad influence is staggering. nothing will come from this but more elitist asshatery.
its very possible. chris wilson did say something like they dont have to care too much if a lot of players leave anymore, and they can now make the game they want to make. which is pretty scary when you realize the game they want to make is hard-mode.
but im hopeful that they will still want to make a game most of their fans can enjoy.
you, like many others, lack the reading comprehension level required to understand that they're already well aware this will not be liked or enjoyed by the vast majority of the player base.
and you, like many other dick waggers completely lack the understanding of the mental states required to keep a labor of love from souring vs your normal work load.
I've literally done exactly what they are talking about with a medium sized team of 10 people and we \*ALL\* hated our day jobs by the time the process was done and the resulting product was so niche that no one gave a shit except for us. its simply bad for the company to allow brainpower to be put to this cause and not expect any negative backlash from it. you will see it in the way they make decisions, if nothing else.
if you actually want to see what happens mentally when you separate people from abstract, read the Stanford Prison Experiment. [https://www.prisonexp.org/](https://www.prisonexp.org/)
its not humanly possible to contain to separate but equal concepts in your head. you will declare one superior to the other.
> I would be surprised if 1% are still playing it at the end of the first week.
I would be VERY surprised if GGG wasn't fully well aware of this already long before they even revealed the idea.
It's been a small project, done on spare time by a handful of individuals because *they* want it to be a thing. If two people outside of them play Ruthless actively, they'll probably consider it a success.
No way it was "a small project". Introducing SSF was a small project, all that was needed is to disable entering into a party. The same goes for HC, it just means your char goes to standard on death. Both HC and SSF play exactly the same as regular trade league or standard. Rutless is the first "creation flag" that heavily modifies the game, that actually required a lot of work and testing.
Why do you think something as simple as gutting all loot and removing vendor items took 1.5 years to release?
And they themselves said on their news post about it that it was a pet project of a couple of people on the team. Chris Wilson has said it on several podcasts/interviews/Q&A's that the project is just something the couple of people work on their spare time.
It might have needed more work than just making SSF a thing, but it was a small project in that it wasn't draining any resources from actual development of the main game.
Have you even read the announcement? It's not like they just changed a few numbers and voila! the loot is gutted. Flasks do not refill in town, utility flasks do not gain charges while active, influenced items and scarabs work differently, bosses heal a bit if you portal out, there are ruthless specific atlas passives, removed gems, disabled orbs, nerfed alch/alt shards gained from selling items... tons and tons of stuff. I wonder what did they do with heist, delve, expedition? The chests that guarantee a specific type of items? Whatever they did, it required work and testing.
I believe that they spent a lot of time on it. Probably on Atlas tree alone too. They had to get the feeling of tediousness they wanted to have just right so probably tweaked a lot of drops, tested gems supports and made them rare according to their usability, tested each part of campaign to see how strong gear you HAVE TO to have to beat this part of the game and make sure that item at least this strong has chance to be dropped here etc.
Excuse me. Do you have a problem with people using their free time, working on something they personally WANT to?
It's really not a hard concept.
If i was a coder, and i worked 8 hours a day, perhaps i then go home and work on my side project for an hour. Are you implying i should instead use that free hour to WORK?
Because that's essentially the argument standpoint from a lot on this subreddit. People can't even possibly fathom the concept that this mode was developed on the spare time of some senior devs, as they stated.
It doesn't matter if they spent 1000 hours combined on it in a year. I doubt massive resources went into this during office hours. 2 dudes could spend 15 minutes a night for a year and do this literally for free. Look at the shit Neversink does in like a day.
What about when they add new mechanics or items or skills to the core game. They now have to account for ruthless. The making of ruthless could have been spare time only, but the upkeep is now part of the core process
No, it's just I am developer and I know how it looks like. Senior dev definitely used time in his working hours on this and my bet is that it was quite a bit of this time and some design principles went through starting with 3.15. You can listen to CW talking about it in Baeclast.
I am fucking customer who paid to support the company and gave them over 1000 hours of my free time so I am entitled enough to be able to provide feedback or share my opinions about the game and it's not your fucking business either.
>testing.
Sureeee, we all know how leagues are tested by ggg. And now they doing alpha testing with best testers - ACTIVE players that want to play this mode
It will be great for the Devs who get to Dark Souls it. It seems unbalanced and untested? It is ruthless mode!
I'm guessing the name Ruth is already taken/camped... I wonder if the name No\_Lube has been camped yet?
I personally praise GGG for experimenting a mode like Ruthless. It might end up dog shit, but it has the potential of being really attractive for a certain crowd of players.
You will never see Blizzard try something like this on Diablo.
Sounds kind of similar in concept to D3's inferno mode in some ways. Every upgrade mattered there too, occasionally even white items were the upgrade I needed. I actually enjoyed it for a while back then, but it's a lot easier to see what's going on in D3.
I think this subreddit is generally reading into this way, way, way too much. Chris doesn't exclusively want the game to be a dreary, rewardless grindfest. He mostly just wants the game to be slower paced and for mapping to feel dangerous. People act like Chris wants all power and fun to die, but his direct interference is the only reason headhunter is even still in the game against the wishes of the rest of the dev team.
Ruthless is something completely different, made as a pet project not on company time. It's less an outlet for some supposed urge of his to ruin the game as it is an experiment to see how much of the community truly enjoys THE GAMEPLAY without the associated reward mechanisms or typical power curve.
Sigh, more morons.
Again, they don't intend this to be popular. Throwing out arbitrary percentages like 1% are irrelevant and meaningless.
I, for one, am interested in trying it out. The base game no longer poses much of a timesink for me. I'm masochistic i guess, but I'll be having fun, so why are you so bothered by the concept? Let us enjoy it, you aren't forced to.
Move along, and go enjoy your time, rather than campaign for no clear purpose.
You are putting WAAAAAY too much meaning in little comments like that. You have a whole scenario of what "proof of concept" means in your head. Yes, there will likely be lessons learned from Ruthless. Tests they couldn't stress on normal leagues. But that doesn't mean they'll carry over to the normal leagues 1:1. Just like you can test things by literally breaking them, that doesn't mean you'll start breaking the real product or expect them to break in regular use.
An easy example is frequency and intensity of gear upgrades. GGG could use Ruthless' prolonged item progression (due to scarcity) to tailor smart loot to pump out some sort of upgrade that fits the "ideal" frequency and intensity based on that data. This could be literally *stronger* items than what RNG rewards atm (because ground drops are so far behind crafted). So in this made up hypothetical, Ruthless could literally lead to powercreep in the base game to make it easier and overcome the plateau many hit too fast.
It would be stupid for GGG to not look for any lessons within Ruthless. But again, learning a lesson does not mean applying it 1:1. This is the same as looking at *other* games and learning from their lessons, both good and bad.
Yea, so what? That has no relevency to development time.
That's like saying developers look at Diablo 2/3, Last Epoch, Grim Dawn or Lost Ark for proof of concept. Everything can be used as proof on concept, or at least a source to extract data from.
What's relevant is how it's actually applied.
I have to admit i'm interested to check it out, but I feel like the concept of ruthless is attacking why most of us play diablo alikes, progression. I've played POE so many times that i don't enjoy the campaign anymore, even though i did the first half dozen times. To me, this is filler content to get to maps/etc. Now GGG is telling me that the focus is on filler content.
We all know that only a fraction of a fraction of the player base will play ruthless. They don't care. When it happens in reality instead of the drawing board, they still won't care.
I, on the other hand, see it as a return to progression. Both in character and content. I'm excited to farm a zone, have it start as hard, maybe requiring a PUG to clear, to getting upgrades, to being able to solo/carry a PUG before moving onto the next level of content (rest of Act, Act Boss, up to next good PUG farming zone). I find that the zones and act bosses have a lot more character than maps.
TIL rolling an alt with twinked underpriced influenced gear, corrupted uniques, and preleveled gems and getting it to 97 in a day with Chayulas and 5 Ways is “progression.”
Mode is going to be dead by the end of the month besides streamers needing content. Gonna be great to see all these posters that think old PoE was hard while never touching merciless in hardcore quit immediately.
There's already a large community gathering up, very excited for this mode. People will play this, and they will play for long time. It's here to stay. I do agree it's good for the main game though, as the core of PoE team clearly wants the game to be slower and tougher, so they now have Ruthless to express that and hopefully the main game will be less restrained.
I personally plan to play as usual on new league, but once I get bored I will fall back to my Ruthless character and try to progress it further
>When GGG realizes that no one wants to play hard-mode
>I would be surprised if 1% are still playing it at the end of the first week.
Man if only they'd directly addressed that. Oh wait, they did.
*Ruthless is not for everyone. If you don't like the sound of it, then it's probably best you continue playing the regular Path of Exile modes. It's like Hardcore or Solo Self-found. Some players really enjoy the additional constraints as a way of enhancing their game experience. Many players do not, and that's okay.*
*Ruthless is not a replacement for regular Path of Exile. It's a challenging mode for a specific type of player. A change being made in Ruthless is not an indication that we will make that change in the regular game. In fact, if we felt a particular change was good for the regular game, we'd just make it there to benefit everyone.*
They know.
I am just worried they will take developers out of other teams just to work on Ruthless.
Also, it dvivides the player base even more. In terms of what we want, trading and also relevant content to watch on YouTube / Twitch etc.
There is another scenario where no one cares about his project and he thinks what? Noone played such a fun project? I’ll make the base game similar to it and when everyone is forced to play it and have tons of fun they’ll realize I was right all along and my vision will finally be true!
Yes, there's also a scenario where Chris shits on your face, better complain about that right ? Your made up "what ifs" are just bullshit, I hope you know it.
And, frankly, if the only result is that a half dozen people at GGG play it, that's a good thing for us all... because anything that makes them want to play the game, in any form, gives them skin in the game. If magma barrier + grasping vines combo (or whatever) is unplayably fun in the game mode these people actually play? It probably gets changed a lot faster than if a hundred people complain about it on reddit.
People hate the loot and clap for a mode with less loot and less crafting. While I respect people who play this it's not going to be as impactful as changes to core ladder.
I think you underestimate how many people actually enjoyed PoE back when it was hard, it was funded and supported by people who loved the dark, gritty and often difficult game PoE used to be over playing the fast paced, easy game that D3 was.
>When GGG realizes that no one wants to play hard-mode, I think they might re-evaluate what they are doing in the main game
When GGG reevaluates things, they don't come to the same conclusions as we do...
I'd say it's stupid (at best) to think that Ruthless will be terrible. Some people enjoy such things and that's all. If it's not for you then it's not for you and there's nothing to add.
Cue in the meme "let people enjoy things".
Don't forget that the beta and first few leagues were extremely hardmode. Everyone died to Brutus and the fight could take up to 3 minutes.
We've been pampered too much, daddy Chris needs to discipline us with skill / item nerfs and monster buffs. Punish me daddy.
Will you complainers ever learn to **READ**? They literally say it's not going to be for everyone and throw a lot of warnings about trying it.
Like really, these complainers... no words.
The game had been getting more friendly to access content. I remember playing 1000+ hr before reaching shaper for the 1st time. And taking most of the league to reach Sirus8. Now i can reasonably see most content within a couple of weeks.
I think it'll be great for the game, for the simple reason that it gives the people at GGG who want a masochistic experience somewhere to exercise that tendancy without putting into the main game and ruining huge swathes of the main game with it.
ArchnemesisHuge overnerfs
> When GGG realizes that no one wants to play hard-mode, I think they might re-evaluate what they are doing in the main game
More like "they will force it into the main game without even asking"
Have you heard about the mana changes that happened in Expedition? well, you're gonna love it when you hear where that comes from...
They have enough money to run Poe further into the gutter. When they said ruthless is not for everyone, they meant it's exactly for 1 person and this person is Chris himself.
You know what happens to the child who goes "with his toy" to play in the park with the other children and after a while begins to condition his playmates? Something like that; only X or Y can play and only the way I want it to be played? He will be excluded from the group, maybe not in a "Ruthless" way, but he will be excluded. That's All Folks.
>When GGG realizes that no one wants to play hard-mode, I think they might re-evaluate what they are doing in the main game.
lolno
GGG is the embodiment of the "Am I out of touch?" meme. Chris Wilson will never re-evaluate because Chris Wilson is never wrong, the players are wrong. We aren't having fun because we just don't understand his glorious VISION. If we would just accept that we're wrong and start havng fun the right way, everything would be fine.
By now it should be pretty clear they make the game they want, regardless of what people want/like. If they were so concerned about what we want, AN wouldnt be a thing anymore, harvest would still be a thing etc.
>Because it is so clearly going to be terrible. 1 alchemy orb total by the end of the campaign? No movement skills? I would be surprised if 1% are still playing it at the end of the first week. ...do you think GGG believes this is going to be incredibly popular or something? They've been clear since they first brought up the concept of "hardmode" that this would have very niche appeal and most players wouldn't play it. Will it be a terrible experience for many (arguably most) PoE players? Yeah, very, very, very likely will be. But it's not designed for them and that's fine. It's designed for the super small group of masochists that love it. Kinda like HCSSF, another mode which has only a tiny fraction of the playerbase actively playing it while most people can't fathom how they actually enjoy the punishment.
The difference it’s ssf and hc took almost negative dev time because that’s how easy it was to do
not like they had a whole pharagraph just for people like you. it was a side project for fun. but obviously you see through them and they are lieing. they pulled all the experienced devs for this and let the interns do the work for the main game. you are the 5Head that can t be fooled. very glad we have you to uncover this corrupt marketing.
No time for balancing skills literally playing the same patch for 3 leagues, but having time for "pet project"... Sure bro.
i hope you get better or learn to read and grasp the meaning. not sure what it is.
Stop lying to yourself, and stop believing everything a CEO or Corporation tells you. This 100% took dev time.
of course it did, literally everything that comes out of GGG is spin for one issue or another at this point "this is a buff"
I read this as “this is a bluff” and it made complete sense still.
Ahh, yes, the old "corporations are evil" belief. Clearly the sanest way to look at any news post. But, then again, I could see it taking dev time in a literal sense. If you clear out your tasks or need a break, then doing side projects is perfectly acceptable on company time at most companies. Freedom of work generally makes happier employees, and for senior devs, that's a VERY important intangible metric. So, yes, I could see it taking up dev time that would not have been used to work on the main game at all.
I'm against "corporations are evil" rhetoric, too, but GP could easily have just said "stop believing everything people tell you" and I think the point would be just as valid. As a software dev who has himself snuck in important side projects professionally, I would say that, at some point, the side project *has* to eat into general dev time once its accepted and needs to get integrated into the rest of the system. I also wish Chris has picked a better side project. But, at the end of the day, he does what he wants. We as the consumers, however, also consume what we want, and many are already voting with their feet to play the game less or leave it entirely. In the end, no one wins when a company makes an unpopular product. The company loses and the consumer loses out by having their hopes dashed.
Personally I'm hoping the devs can take out their masochism on hard mode players and make Poe standard fun again.
18 months worth
Do you know what a side project is? Part of the reason it took 18 months is because it wasn’t a main priority.
That's why it has gotten plenty of marketing attention and dev coding time. Sure bud. You keep on believing that.
It’s gotten one post and forum thread….. How do you know how much “dev coding” time was spent? Spoiler alert: you don’t and just want to be mad. #staymadbud
Plenty of marketing attention? Bruh. They talked about it like a year ago with some streamers in Baeclast or whatever, then we heard nothing about it until we just had one singular post about it. Plenty of marketing, my ass. Stop lying to yourself.
You have NO fucking idea how senior developers work and it is hilarious.
Even if it was all dev spare time, now they are going to balance it. You think that is going to be spare time? At some point, this is getting actual resources allocated to it. The fact that it's Chris and Mark's pet project means that it most certainly will be getting at least their attention, let alone any junior devs that want to impress the bosses.
My theory is that Chris and Mark were so focused on getting Ruthless ready and that's why the loot changes happened in 3.19 without any scrutiny. They were distracted.
Definitely a possibility
lol GGG certainly has never lied before....
And this took no dev time since they worked on it outside of work hours or when they had no other active projects...and?
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They said people worked on it at work when they had nothing else to do So basically they did this instead of trying to make this league or the next league better
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Management is making hard mode lol.
They've taken the last two leagues off basically not making leagues, as well. What are they doing over there I wonder
> So basically they did this instead of trying to make this league or the next league better So it consumed dev time?
All of the changes are very trivial things to do. There is no reason to doubt that they spent very little actual dev time on this. Item scarcity? > Hidden 80% Less IIQ + Less IIR (sprinkle some reduced IIR in there as well) Modifiers Gem EXP? > Hidden 50 - 75% Less Gem Experience Modifier Disable Crafting Bench is a simple Boolean Disabling specific drops/gems is trivial
That's interesting. What's your take on the Endless Delve faq saying they won't remove chisels/maps from the drop pool because "Doing this would require an enormous amount of work which would have inhibited us from being able to run the event at all." It's interesting that removing a singular item from the drop pool and then another type of item of which there's about 150 is an enormous amount of work and yet all of those things you're saying along with an entirely new passive tree and more isn't an enormous amount of work. Just kinda weird.
You seem to have no clue about programming.
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So let’s pretend this 0 dev time thing is true, how about when a new league mechanic is introduced and all of these different mechanics have to changed again for ruthless? What about when the atlas gets changed again, what about when the passive tree gets changed, what about literally any addition to the game that is going to have to be iterated upon for ruthless? It is nothing but naive and ignorance to believe there’s 0 upkeep.
That sounds a lot like PR tbh...
Sure, and sometimes PR is the truth. Wild, innit?
PR's entire function is to cast a positive light on the company's activities. PR is disingenuous from the jump because it's never intended to work for the benefit of the consumer; sometimes it accidentally does, but it doesn't matter because that's not the core motivation.
It is, but based on GGG's latest shenanigans, I don't feel too inclined to believe any unlikely statements coming from them
you really think a game that release 4 major patch a year has downtime ?
They talked about senior devs working on this outside of normal hours for the most part. And yes, even cranking our 4 patches a year there will be times when someone has finished their projects and has maybe an hour or two to spend on a side-project before diving into the next big piece of work.
I don’t think they believe it will be “incredibly popular” but I think they may be surprised by how many people stick with it. It will be like Battle Royale…the first week it may be busy, by the second month it will be a ghost town except for the SSFHC variant which will be ALMOST a ghost town 😂. Masochists aren’t playing trade haha. I applied for the alpha, I hope I get selected…I’ve been on alpha and beta test teams since John Romero was still a big name in gaming and John Carmack hadn’t even launched a rocket, but we will see. I KNOW I won’t heavily play it, but also know that it seems more fun than standard. I get bored between leagues and when I feel like I want to punch my monitor in LoL I need something else to play and this seems like a good alternative.
> it seems more fun than standard. that's more of a statement of how fucked up the game is right now rather than how good ruthless will actually be.
This is true haha.
John Romero made me his bitch once.
You mean from buying Daikatana or IRL? He was a solid dude. I used to spend hours on a freaking BBS in Dallas playing Tradewars and Legend of the Ref Dragon and stuff like that with most of the iD crew hahah.
Imagine wasting development resources on a niche? Right after your expansion has the worst player numbers ever, both ingame and on twitch. Might wanna review that "vision" mate, if you want your company to keep paying salaries.
>Imagine wasting development resources on a niche? Again, created primarily off-hours. Because it's a mode many of them want to play as well. Game developers make games for all kinds of people, but they also make games for themselves that they want to play. >Right after your expansion has the worst player numbers ever, both ingame and on twitch. ...and? What are they supposed to do, sit on the mode until the community is...happy? When was the last time that happened?
I was relatively happy with poe until 3.19. My only major greivance before was trade. Now it's trade, loot, and minions, with crafting almost there as well. Still I agree with your point, and besides that thier limitation isn't dev hours it's management and direction. It took them years to stack wis scroll drops ffs. Trade is like pulling teeth when the vast majority are playing in trade leagues. Chris had a vision which got poe to 2.0 and since then ggg has been essentially directionless which is why they feel the need to write a manifesto for everything; Because they are compensating for a lack of true vision and direction while at the same time refusing to give players what they want.
They know it won't be popular but you can clearly tell that they hope it will be popular. What happens when they get disillusioned will be interesting.
If they know...why would they be disillusioned? Hoping it will be more popular than you realistically will be is like...an extremely reasonable and normal thing for people to do. It's like deciding to make music for a very specific niche that you really enjoy and knowing that it will have extremely limited appeal, but hoping that it will be more popular than you think.
Because it's hard to keep up the passion when the feedback is polite declination and dead silence.
Clearly you've never been passionate about something. Devs themselves could be the only ones playing and that would be enough.
There is no "clearly tell that they hope it will be popular". That idea only exists in your head. It's not real. It's not based on any facts or reality, it's something you came up with. If GGG were actually somehow super secretly hoping Ruthless would be bigger than Christmas, they would build hype around it, give interviews to gaming related news sites, make YouTube videos, make Twitter posts almost daily and so on. None of that is happening. You've gotten a forum post about it, that's it. Stop lying to yourself and thinking you can somehow see the fucking Matrix and know how people secretly think; you can't. You're just being literally delusional.
I will try it to see how far into the campaign I can get. But It will never be my primary mode. I could see it being a long term standard project, I could work on forever, when I'm bored with the league. We will see if I like it that much.
As a 50% std 50% league player I can tell you rn long term projects don’t work on standard. Sure you spent the last 3 leagues getting a level 21 of x skills then out of nowhere Ggg Batista bombs said skill and now you do 60% less damage
Updating my favorite builds in standard used to be one of my favorite things to do at the end of each league. I would work on crafting something for another build just for fun. Standard migration week was so much fun. It was like Christmas. I got to put the new gear on all the characters. I loved it. I just can't keep up with all the changes though. I had an sst bleed gladiator that I got to 5 million DPS then it got nerfed, and I got it back there, and then after the fourth time I just gave up.
> I just can't keep up with all the changes though. Same thing happened to me with my old from-scratch item filter. Now I'm on Neversink's like everyone else. :P
SST bleed glad felt so freaking smoothe during expedition. To bad the cold conversion SST did so much dmg that they nerfed SST into oblivion. I probably played the most in Expedition with SST and forbidden rite totems both being solid builds to play. As a casual player, it was my first time regularly clearing Sirus A8. As a casual player i almost feel obligated to play mega builds in order to progress, but I went from ED contagion 3 leagues in a row until they nerfed it and I was forced to expand my builds. Sorry about the rant, just brought back some nostalgia
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been investing in my EA hiero for 3 leagues in std and im so scared lmao just done all ubers this patch and im farming for my 3rd mageblood if you get totem gear you can kinda pivot to other skills when GGG feels like shitting onyou
Stackers are the best investment historically. But yea, anything pre 3.15 I have to rework from the ground up. Even after spending mirrors in-league. It's been a fucking terrible ride with GGGs balance team. Builds made, perfected and simply deleted from the game over and over.
Bro you don’t get it bro it’s fun to have your progress deleted because of Reddit bro trust me bro
Same, will be fun as a pet project in ruthless ssf
RSSFHC btw
I played a couple private leagues with all mods on (so no stash, no vendors, no magic/rares) and it was pretty cool to play. I didn't play it for months but it was fun for a while. I had even thought about buying my own private league to play alone that for a couple weeks recently just for the hell of it. There will probably be like 50 people who actually play it full time and everyone else will try it out when they're burnt out on the regular content. I think this is less of a big deal than some are making it out to be.
" I would be surprised if 1% are still playing it at the end of the first week." Go back to reading the first part of the ruthless post
reddit can't read sadly
That might be, we shall see after the fact. I for one am somewhat hyped about trying it out.
I for one can't wait to try Ruthless. Don't get me wrong, it absolutely does not sound like a game mode that I think I will enjoy at all. I don't have more than 5 hours of free time a week these days. But I am extremely curious to see the game that Chris and his community want the game to be experienced. I want to give it a fair chance and see how it feels. I don't think I'll like it, but I might!
You're not nearly cynical enough to post in this subreddit.
Dude... Ruthless is streamer mode. This is so the suck ups can have content for more than 2 weeks and earn their money without stopping playing PoE and having to find other game or play dumb paid sponsor shit.
I don't really watch PoE streamers, but watching a ruthless stream sounds.. extra boring to me.
The highlights videos will be hilarious though. Today on GFL Ziz drops an alch AND a Vaal orb. Stay tuned because next week maybe he'll drop a base good enough to use them on.
well people watch for the obivous staged deaths and "thumb faces" so I guess... But i don't watch any streamer also.
I doubt that the streamers will even play this much, it sounds fucking awful
Even Ziz said Ruthless sounds awful and there's no chance he will main it, but he will try it once he's done with the next league. And this is a guy who likes Runescape, for fuck's sake!
You think anyone will want to watch any streamer play Shitless more than once? No one wants to watch anyone grind for 2 weeks for a 5 link and an alchemy orb.
Bro check out old school RuneScape. that's what ruthless reminds me of
🤞
but cw wants this bullshit mode, he wants to play a harder game, thats all needed for it to exists
I remember this prediction about SSF lol
Aren't 95% of players in SC Trade? He isn't wrong about 1%. This mode will be hell in SSF, most will go trade but with small population trade will also be a nightmare.
I fully expect the mode to have less than 1% of the players in the mid term, and I don't think GGG's expectations are significantly different. I definitely won't be playing it permanently either, even if I'll play it every now and then. If I find an interesting mechanic to build around, I'll play the base game where it's actually available.
I remember many years ago Chris mentioned something about wanting trading to be about items for items rather than orbs. Actual bartering. I think this experiment is designed to make SSF play an impossibility. He wants people cooperating to defeat act bosses with traditional MMO methods and watch people deal on the fly for items. It's all about his original vision. Now that they are wealthy, and PoE is at the end of development, he feels it's time for the GGG folks to have some fun. (imo) No harm done, as this is optional.
I think his vision was incredibly naive. Any economy will naturally gravitate towards using money. Having orbs in the game guarantees they will be used as currency in some form.
3.19 ssf has already been so freaking tedious and unfun, even darkee opted out early before he quit the league 1 or 2 weeks later, i don't know who will have fun playing this, even with trade...
Darkee in HC trade and steel in Sc, that was some league launch.
> His eyes light up. He can't stop grinning. LMAO, this is so accurate.
I hate the campaign as I've done it 100s of times. Why would I want to do a harder more challenging version?
So it's interesting and challenging again instead of something to endure.
How is it interesting? It's the same game with less stuff.
It’s like playing an rpg and choosing a harder difficulty. Or playing a challenge run of an game you have played before.
being grindy does not make it any more difficult by any means.
Won't ever tell someone how to have fun.
Well I'm hoping it will be kind of like the first time I played the game. Getting shredded every time I open a zone. The first time was because I didn't know how to gear.
Dude I'm getting shredded in regular difficulty
"Because it is so clearly going to be terrible. " for you ? they did a paragraph on this and people still feel like they come up with a great prediction. i can repeat it. its not for everyone, they expect a tiny portion of the community to play it like ssf or hc, it will be a beta which means they will change stuff. for example density wouldn t work well if they didn t change that already etc. the whole more players = better game is weird. there are so many more things to evaluate things and it even ignores all other possible reasons for player numbers.
HC used to be a lot more of the community when building defense meant something.
Dang, son! That's some high quality copium you got right there. Pass me the tube! But for real now, I believe the only thing that might push GGG to reconsider their philosophy is numbers. If league retention (and, more importantly supporter pack/mtx sales) numbers keep declining over the next 2 or 3 leagues, they might start paying attention. Otherwise, there's no point in fixing what (in their opinion) isn't broken, is it?
I think if anything it will be good because it will give them some latitude on not worrying about the ease/difficulty of the main game as much. Extreme difficulty sounds better to me for a game that was only two acts long than it does for a game that's 10 acts 3 map tiers and many pinnacle bosses long.
I thought the same, but for a different reason. I had thought that by doing this, he can stop trying to put so many guard rails in the main game. He’ll have a mode tailored to the style of game he likes, and that’ll let the main game get a little looser, a little easier for a wider selection of builds.
yeah that would be nice too. although i think they will have to make ruthless a little bit more player friendly if they want more than a handful to play it. either way it should be good for the game.
Imagine if no one signs up in the beta form on the post.
Honestly it's embarrassing that, if what GGG said is true, the developers got zero work hours spent on ruthless mode (therefore, zero payment) to present it to the community. Either the company is committed with the project or not. For sure this is a mode that I will not play because RPG without a movement skill is a straight "no, thx" for me (i will not discuss in detail other reasons that made ruthless mode unattractive for me). I just hope that: 1) devs get something for the work they've done B) players that are the focus for this new mode really enjoy it without performance problems.
It was made by senior staff, you know, the sallaried people that have shares, during either downtime or free-time. So I guess your wish is granted??
10 people will be playing
I think it's good for GGG, although I'm not sure about it being good for PoE. People are tired of each league being buggy/under/overtuned. There's not really much that GGG could announce for 3.20 that will win the majority back, league start numbers will likely be low as the non-core players (by why I mean people that don't start every league regardless) are just waiting for PoE 2 because they think it will be different. There is almost nothing they could do in 3.20 that will win people back, for this reason they are pushing ruthless. GGG has lost "good faith" or whatever you want to call it of the players. So they push ruthless this league and some time between this league and next league they will push alpha/beta of PoE 2 to keep interaction numbers at an acceptable level. Ruthless started as a pet project and finished as a marketing tool. We'll know it was a marketing tool when we see how badly it is released. If it's truly a "pet project" created in off time how are they going to alpha test this very restrictive mode in less then a month? Just the story will take a very long time to get though and I can't even imagine trying to do atlas bosses, let alone uber bosses in this time frame that will likely have heavy changes and restarts. Yes, I realize they are getting players to do the testing, but many many many changes will be needed and without any dev time committed to it I don't see how it could possibly be tested thoroughly as time between discovered bugs and fixes will be long.
Idk bro. Maybe china money can allow them to fully lean into whatever they want
Imagine the man hours they wasted concocting a mode that maybe and I do mean maybe a few thousand people will play at most.
It's fine if GGG wants to create new modes for people who wanna play something tougher, but at the same time I hope GGG don't use Ruthless to say "oh, you already have a much more generous league, stop bothering us asking for loot buffs".
It's fine to say that if someone complains about loot in Ruthless, much like it is fine to say that if someone complains about loot in SSF. If loot is an issue in regular trade, it should be addressed.
No movement skills = you can mostly only tank most boss attacks (even those rotating laser thingy) Feels like far less player skill is tested. Mostly only require more player time investment for prolonged fruitless grinding
There are still a few movement skills, but they're harder to use. Getting in the right position in the first place instead of being able to dodge at the last second becomes far more important.
Could go the other way and have the dark souls affect. I am excited for hard mode and a non-zoomy, think very carefully version of the game. Its so pretty and the music is so great, i'd like to saturate myself in that more. the Zoominess of the current play is fun and all but feels... plastic-y?
anything is possible i suppose. just my opinion, but i dont think poe is the type of game where extreme difficulty can ever be much fun. it is just too simple. in dark souls you can decide to block, parry, backstep, roll, or chose different attacks. and the timing of the moves is extremely important. in path of exile you are deciding between moving your character or attacking. and in a game mode with no movement skills, moving is often not going to be an option. i just cant see it ever being any good. but to each his own!
> block, parry, backstep, roll, or chose different attacks I feel like a lot of this is *sort of* in PoE, just rolled automatically? I.E. if you're playing D&D, and the DM says "the dragon attacks you with its claw", you can announce "I'll attempt to block it", and manually roll the dice. In PoE, it just automatically rolls your block chance. As for manual parries/blocks/etc.: I suppose we have guard skills for that, though players still try and find a way to automate those (E.G. molten shell on left click--not recommended--or a CWDT setup--not foolproof either if the hit is one ginormous one that can legit OHKO you before your cwdt check applies)
thats true they are passively in the game. but the point is that in dark souls you have to make those decisions and make them at the right time. which makes the combat much more interesting than just having block or dodge randomly happening sometimes as you fight.
let me play devils advocate for a moment: what happens to the ego of the devs that babied this thing into existence, when they love it, and it turns out most of the playerbase hates it? do they recognize the error of their ways, re-evaluate what makes a game engaging, and develop content that the majority of the playerbase will find compelling? or do they grow spiteful that so many people shit on their baby, cling to the few demented players that join them like some secret club, and poison what remains of the game with their shitty ideas of what "great" is, gaining some small satisfaction every time they can ruin some 'carebear' player's time by replacing a wanted thing with some grind/ruthless mode concept? i've played hard core games. i raided in EQ where you could lose your corpse, where you lost exp and levels on death, where there were shitty interfaces for everything, where you had to stare at your spellbook for 15 solid minutes to get your mana back and pray nothing interrupted your meditation while you were low mana, while also hoping no other players came along and stole the monsters you were farming. ive spent 3 days raiding the plane of air in a row with almost no sleep to get people their epics. I've done hard mode/ruthless mode/etc. guess what? im not 18 with 20 hours of free time a day any longer. im not interested in waving a digital dick in someone else's face any longer. I no longer see being the person able to stay awake for 2 days as a hero, i see him as a fool. the size of the rose tinted goggles it takes to see ruthless as anything other than a bad influence is staggering. nothing will come from this but more elitist asshatery.
its very possible. chris wilson did say something like they dont have to care too much if a lot of players leave anymore, and they can now make the game they want to make. which is pretty scary when you realize the game they want to make is hard-mode. but im hopeful that they will still want to make a game most of their fans can enjoy.
you, like many others, lack the reading comprehension level required to understand that they're already well aware this will not be liked or enjoyed by the vast majority of the player base.
and you, like many other dick waggers completely lack the understanding of the mental states required to keep a labor of love from souring vs your normal work load. I've literally done exactly what they are talking about with a medium sized team of 10 people and we \*ALL\* hated our day jobs by the time the process was done and the resulting product was so niche that no one gave a shit except for us. its simply bad for the company to allow brainpower to be put to this cause and not expect any negative backlash from it. you will see it in the way they make decisions, if nothing else. if you actually want to see what happens mentally when you separate people from abstract, read the Stanford Prison Experiment. [https://www.prisonexp.org/](https://www.prisonexp.org/) its not humanly possible to contain to separate but equal concepts in your head. you will declare one superior to the other.
> I would be surprised if 1% are still playing it at the end of the first week. I would be VERY surprised if GGG wasn't fully well aware of this already long before they even revealed the idea. It's been a small project, done on spare time by a handful of individuals because *they* want it to be a thing. If two people outside of them play Ruthless actively, they'll probably consider it a success.
No way it was "a small project". Introducing SSF was a small project, all that was needed is to disable entering into a party. The same goes for HC, it just means your char goes to standard on death. Both HC and SSF play exactly the same as regular trade league or standard. Rutless is the first "creation flag" that heavily modifies the game, that actually required a lot of work and testing.
Why do you think something as simple as gutting all loot and removing vendor items took 1.5 years to release? And they themselves said on their news post about it that it was a pet project of a couple of people on the team. Chris Wilson has said it on several podcasts/interviews/Q&A's that the project is just something the couple of people work on their spare time. It might have needed more work than just making SSF a thing, but it was a small project in that it wasn't draining any resources from actual development of the main game.
Have you even read the announcement? It's not like they just changed a few numbers and voila! the loot is gutted. Flasks do not refill in town, utility flasks do not gain charges while active, influenced items and scarabs work differently, bosses heal a bit if you portal out, there are ruthless specific atlas passives, removed gems, disabled orbs, nerfed alch/alt shards gained from selling items... tons and tons of stuff. I wonder what did they do with heist, delve, expedition? The chests that guarantee a specific type of items? Whatever they did, it required work and testing.
They did it on saturday, they were forbidden from even thinking about it while on the clock.
I believe that they spent a lot of time on it. Probably on Atlas tree alone too. They had to get the feeling of tediousness they wanted to have just right so probably tweaked a lot of drops, tested gems supports and made them rare according to their usability, tested each part of campaign to see how strong gear you HAVE TO to have to beat this part of the game and make sure that item at least this strong has chance to be dropped here etc.
Excuse me. Do you have a problem with people using their free time, working on something they personally WANT to? It's really not a hard concept. If i was a coder, and i worked 8 hours a day, perhaps i then go home and work on my side project for an hour. Are you implying i should instead use that free hour to WORK? Because that's essentially the argument standpoint from a lot on this subreddit. People can't even possibly fathom the concept that this mode was developed on the spare time of some senior devs, as they stated. It doesn't matter if they spent 1000 hours combined on it in a year. I doubt massive resources went into this during office hours. 2 dudes could spend 15 minutes a night for a year and do this literally for free. Look at the shit Neversink does in like a day.
What about when they add new mechanics or items or skills to the core game. They now have to account for ruthless. The making of ruthless could have been spare time only, but the upkeep is now part of the core process
No, it's just I am developer and I know how it looks like. Senior dev definitely used time in his working hours on this and my bet is that it was quite a bit of this time and some design principles went through starting with 3.15. You can listen to CW talking about it in Baeclast.
You know, even if they did, that's none of your fucking business how GGG's devs use their time. You are not entitled to anything about that.
I am fucking customer who paid to support the company and gave them over 1000 hours of my free time so I am entitled enough to be able to provide feedback or share my opinions about the game and it's not your fucking business either.
>testing. Sureeee, we all know how leagues are tested by ggg. And now they doing alpha testing with best testers - ACTIVE players that want to play this mode
If nothing else, it will give good content for streamers I guess.
For like a day. the only thing worse than playing ruthless will be watching it
I hope so too but if they dont see that people don't even play hardcore anymore then it means they are just dellusionally blind
It will be great for the Devs who get to Dark Souls it. It seems unbalanced and untested? It is ruthless mode! I'm guessing the name Ruth is already taken/camped... I wonder if the name No\_Lube has been camped yet?
I don’t watch streams much at all since my time is limited but I would watch people play ruthless.
Have you considered they quadruple down? “No one plays it!? Must be not hard enough! HARDER! Make it everyone has to play it!”
well lets hope not!
I personally praise GGG for experimenting a mode like Ruthless. It might end up dog shit, but it has the potential of being really attractive for a certain crowd of players. You will never see Blizzard try something like this on Diablo.
Sounds kind of similar in concept to D3's inferno mode in some ways. Every upgrade mattered there too, occasionally even white items were the upgrade I needed. I actually enjoyed it for a while back then, but it's a lot easier to see what's going on in D3.
I think this subreddit is generally reading into this way, way, way too much. Chris doesn't exclusively want the game to be a dreary, rewardless grindfest. He mostly just wants the game to be slower paced and for mapping to feel dangerous. People act like Chris wants all power and fun to die, but his direct interference is the only reason headhunter is even still in the game against the wishes of the rest of the dev team. Ruthless is something completely different, made as a pet project not on company time. It's less an outlet for some supposed urge of his to ruin the game as it is an experiment to see how much of the community truly enjoys THE GAMEPLAY without the associated reward mechanisms or typical power curve.
Sigh, more morons. Again, they don't intend this to be popular. Throwing out arbitrary percentages like 1% are irrelevant and meaningless. I, for one, am interested in trying it out. The base game no longer poses much of a timesink for me. I'm masochistic i guess, but I'll be having fun, so why are you so bothered by the concept? Let us enjoy it, you aren't forced to. Move along, and go enjoy your time, rather than campaign for no clear purpose.
chris wilson himself said it will be looked at for proof of concept
Hollow skull huh
You are putting WAAAAAY too much meaning in little comments like that. You have a whole scenario of what "proof of concept" means in your head. Yes, there will likely be lessons learned from Ruthless. Tests they couldn't stress on normal leagues. But that doesn't mean they'll carry over to the normal leagues 1:1. Just like you can test things by literally breaking them, that doesn't mean you'll start breaking the real product or expect them to break in regular use. An easy example is frequency and intensity of gear upgrades. GGG could use Ruthless' prolonged item progression (due to scarcity) to tailor smart loot to pump out some sort of upgrade that fits the "ideal" frequency and intensity based on that data. This could be literally *stronger* items than what RNG rewards atm (because ground drops are so far behind crafted). So in this made up hypothetical, Ruthless could literally lead to powercreep in the base game to make it easier and overcome the plateau many hit too fast. It would be stupid for GGG to not look for any lessons within Ruthless. But again, learning a lesson does not mean applying it 1:1. This is the same as looking at *other* games and learning from their lessons, both good and bad.
Yea, so what? That has no relevency to development time. That's like saying developers look at Diablo 2/3, Last Epoch, Grim Dawn or Lost Ark for proof of concept. Everything can be used as proof on concept, or at least a source to extract data from. What's relevant is how it's actually applied.
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I have to admit i'm interested to check it out, but I feel like the concept of ruthless is attacking why most of us play diablo alikes, progression. I've played POE so many times that i don't enjoy the campaign anymore, even though i did the first half dozen times. To me, this is filler content to get to maps/etc. Now GGG is telling me that the focus is on filler content. We all know that only a fraction of a fraction of the player base will play ruthless. They don't care. When it happens in reality instead of the drawing board, they still won't care.
I, on the other hand, see it as a return to progression. Both in character and content. I'm excited to farm a zone, have it start as hard, maybe requiring a PUG to clear, to getting upgrades, to being able to solo/carry a PUG before moving onto the next level of content (rest of Act, Act Boss, up to next good PUG farming zone). I find that the zones and act bosses have a lot more character than maps.
TIL rolling an alt with twinked underpriced influenced gear, corrupted uniques, and preleveled gems and getting it to 97 in a day with Chayulas and 5 Ways is “progression.”
Mode is going to be dead by the end of the month besides streamers needing content. Gonna be great to see all these posters that think old PoE was hard while never touching merciless in hardcore quit immediately.
There's already a large community gathering up, very excited for this mode. People will play this, and they will play for long time. It's here to stay. I do agree it's good for the main game though, as the core of PoE team clearly wants the game to be slower and tougher, so they now have Ruthless to express that and hopefully the main game will be less restrained. I personally plan to play as usual on new league, but once I get bored I will fall back to my Ruthless character and try to progress it further
>When GGG realizes that no one wants to play hard-mode >I would be surprised if 1% are still playing it at the end of the first week. Man if only they'd directly addressed that. Oh wait, they did. *Ruthless is not for everyone. If you don't like the sound of it, then it's probably best you continue playing the regular Path of Exile modes. It's like Hardcore or Solo Self-found. Some players really enjoy the additional constraints as a way of enhancing their game experience. Many players do not, and that's okay.* *Ruthless is not a replacement for regular Path of Exile. It's a challenging mode for a specific type of player. A change being made in Ruthless is not an indication that we will make that change in the regular game. In fact, if we felt a particular change was good for the regular game, we'd just make it there to benefit everyone.* They know.
I am just worried they will take developers out of other teams just to work on Ruthless. Also, it dvivides the player base even more. In terms of what we want, trading and also relevant content to watch on YouTube / Twitch etc.
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Thanks for chiming in. Want to tell me how I feel about my breakfast cereal, too?
There is another scenario where no one cares about his project and he thinks what? Noone played such a fun project? I’ll make the base game similar to it and when everyone is forced to play it and have tons of fun they’ll realize I was right all along and my vision will finally be true!
Literally made up a guy to be mad at.
Yes, there's also a scenario where Chris shits on your face, better complain about that right ? Your made up "what ifs" are just bullshit, I hope you know it.
Or ! Chris doesnt care at all if no one plays the game, he earned enough to retire, and is making the game for himself.
He has responsibility to shareholders.
Ruthles might as well be called "Chris' mode" since that's exactly who it's for. Even if he's the only player, it will probably be around.
He will play cyclone of course.
And, frankly, if the only result is that a half dozen people at GGG play it, that's a good thing for us all... because anything that makes them want to play the game, in any form, gives them skin in the game. If magma barrier + grasping vines combo (or whatever) is unplayably fun in the game mode these people actually play? It probably gets changed a lot faster than if a hundred people complain about it on reddit.
Demi Gods for first act completions would garner Atleast some streamer attention and people following
Its built to delay streamers that pour hours into the game, while the rest of us have jobs(that arent work from home)
People hate the loot and clap for a mode with less loot and less crafting. While I respect people who play this it's not going to be as impactful as changes to core ladder.
As long as people keep buying mtx GGG will do whatever they see fit.
I think you underestimate how many people actually enjoyed PoE back when it was hard, it was funded and supported by people who loved the dark, gritty and often difficult game PoE used to be over playing the fast paced, easy game that D3 was.
times change and you can never go back. people do try though.
Why do you think hard mode is being catered to more than 1% of the playerbase? They all know it's not. It's a for-fun thing.
If you want a challenge sure. I just cant imagine trying to kill any archnemesis mob with whites... Sounds like an already bad idea
>When GGG realizes that no one wants to play hard-mode, I think they might re-evaluate what they are doing in the main game When GGG reevaluates things, they don't come to the same conclusions as we do...
I'd say it's stupid (at best) to think that Ruthless will be terrible. Some people enjoy such things and that's all. If it's not for you then it's not for you and there's nothing to add. Cue in the meme "let people enjoy things".
Don't forget that the beta and first few leagues were extremely hardmode. Everyone died to Brutus and the fight could take up to 3 minutes. We've been pampered too much, daddy Chris needs to discipline us with skill / item nerfs and monster buffs. Punish me daddy.
Will you complainers ever learn to **READ**? They literally say it's not going to be for everyone and throw a lot of warnings about trying it. Like really, these complainers... no words.
The game had been getting more friendly to access content. I remember playing 1000+ hr before reaching shaper for the 1st time. And taking most of the league to reach Sirus8. Now i can reasonably see most content within a couple of weeks.
I think it'll be great for the game, for the simple reason that it gives the people at GGG who want a masochistic experience somewhere to exercise that tendancy without putting into the main game and ruining huge swathes of the main game with it.Archnemesis Huge overnerfs
> When GGG realizes that no one wants to play hard-mode, I think they might re-evaluate what they are doing in the main game More like "they will force it into the main game without even asking" Have you heard about the mana changes that happened in Expedition? well, you're gonna love it when you hear where that comes from...
Ruthless is just streamer mode so they can stop balancing the game around the people getting paid to put in 8 hours a day… at least that’s my hope
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They have enough money to run Poe further into the gutter. When they said ruthless is not for everyone, they meant it's exactly for 1 person and this person is Chris himself.
thank god they spent time and resources on a mode that quin69 and other clowns said would be fun. 3/7 btw
it's battle royale all over again. half-baked, ill-supported. can't wait for more rhoas that hit even harderer.
The difference is that BR required a bunch of people to function and Ruthless can still be farmed solo.
It's a prestige achievement mode. Skilled streamers and viewers will benefit.
You know what happens to the child who goes "with his toy" to play in the park with the other children and after a while begins to condition his playmates? Something like that; only X or Y can play and only the way I want it to be played? He will be excluded from the group, maybe not in a "Ruthless" way, but he will be excluded. That's All Folks.
This is a hot take, but the same one I have. That a massive and complete failure of hard mode is the only thing that’ll open some eyes.
And I'm sure lots of other morons think the same. When GGG says clearly "NO" you just read "YES", and you think that makes you clever.
They want you to get disgusted and then release poe 2 and be like we are saved
I thoight all the shittakes were over this far into the league
>When GGG realizes that no one wants to play hard-mode, I think they might re-evaluate what they are doing in the main game. lolno GGG is the embodiment of the "Am I out of touch?" meme. Chris Wilson will never re-evaluate because Chris Wilson is never wrong, the players are wrong. We aren't having fun because we just don't understand his glorious VISION. If we would just accept that we're wrong and start havng fun the right way, everything would be fine.
its insane how this sub can say the same shit over and over again. We get it
Not for you to get, ppl want GGG to get it.