rank 3 ruthless gold player reaction to upcoming ruthless race

Hi. To set the stage for this post, please consider that this league I achieved the following:
in Ruthless with gold (RWG): rank 1 necro (rank 3 overall at lvl 94)
in Hardcore Ruthless (HCR): rank 1 inquisitor, rank 3 assassin, rank 1 gladiator, rank 1 guardian, rank 3 slayer, rank 3 chieftan. (all rank1 prior to RwG)

I thought about doing a stream interview with the other top RwG players, to get their reactions/opinions on the gold mechanic in general, but mainly the upcoming boss kill race event to kill uber exarch/eater in ssfhcr. Instead, while talking with some friends on discord just now, I decided to write this post.

While theory crafting a build that I could reasonably put together in around a month of nonstop playing, which I estimate as the "ben time to kill" for such an event, I kept running into builds I wanted to make where the only feasible way to make them would be in a trade league. For example, the new bow and double corrupted quivers will be HUGE! Some items like indigon might be INSANELY FUN with the new manaforged arrows support. While I did complete 2 uber elders in RwG in a month, and probably could do so again in an ssfhcr environment, you can't rely on dropping the items you want like this. In fact, you can't rely on dropping the auras you want. In RwG, I found 2 determs on day 1, 1 determ on day 3, (before lvl 85 or so) and despite farming to 94, did not see another. I was incredibly lucky with RNG early, and in a trade league, this lead me to get ahead of everyone because I could afford items like the covenant and aegis.

Poe is a skill game HEAVILY influenced by RNG, where player skill is surely a component, but in trade leagues, one of the skills that benefit you the most is knowing where the RNG gates are and how to invest the least for the largest potential payouts. Literally, POE servers are casinos and you need to learn to beat them! Every time you wisdom scroll a rare, you are gambling. You are spending time for a potential outcome. In RwG, this outcome was a guaranteed 500-1000 gold at the low end (about 1/20th of a fusing orb), and without gold, it was potentially an alchemy shard or two, or if very lucky, 3. Your primary source of alchemy orbs in normal ruthless is vendoring rares. In RwG, you could not buy alchs/scours/and other orbs from the vendor with gold or normal recipes, so you didn't have the luxury of deterministically acquiring these, outside of just running more content and dropping them directly.

I thought for sure with the determinism of gold into fusings, I would be 6linking a chest in RwG. No. Over many vorici research benches and re-gaining a 5link with fusings, and over 1000 fusings directly spent (which is insane. I was selling a lot of things for fusings to amass them). However, I did successfully vaal a 5L lightning coil with +2 to projectiles with spark colors and then tainted fusing it to 6L on the last day of the league to test that out. Because of this, I view beyond as required for ruthless in ssf to acquire a 6link, and planning on this and some other tricks to get access to power required to do ubers for the race. Discovering these tricks and "leveling up" your player skill is what makes POE an INCREDIBLY enjoyable game. Even after years of nonstop gaming, the top streamers still learn new things every day they play. The depth of 'player skill' in this direction is QUITE deep.

So that being said, the SSFHCR race should uncover (and potentially highlight) some of the most skillful tricks/deep player knowledge, if the people spectating it are astute enough to observe them when they occur... AND if skilled people actually play the event. However, I don't know many people looking forward to playing this league. The issue for me is that I want to play the normal league FIRST, and THEN play a race league like this. This race essentially pushes you to sacrifice a month of your life playing in a way that just isn't as fun on league start as playing in a trade league where you can experiment with new items/gems/etc. You will lose all that fun because you're forced to go down a path you know will work, instead of discovering new paths. But one thing is for sure in SSFHCR, it is a path of exile. I've binged almost every netflix and hulu show while playing in ruthless because the gameplay there is just so boring, on average. There are moments of absolute joy of course, being out of portals and killing chayula and obtaining a blessing and a cutlass as a reward for running around eeking out a single srs that dies 4 seconds later for 10 mins straight to get the first united in dream on the RwG event was definitely a high.

So my analogy for deciding on league-starting SSFHCR is like the feeling I once had throwing parties in my own home. You're constantly feeling stress about people ruining your stuff, you're buying food and drink, investing your time/energy/resources so other people can have the enjoyment, and you are the kind of person that derives enjoyment from other people's enjoyment, so this is ok. But - you could simply attend someone else's party instead of hosting one. I could have a blast playing hardcore trade and popping into someone's stream now and then who is playing SSFHCR, and not have to go through the ruthless pain myself, but instead just live it vicariously through them. If only I could clone myself and play both things at the same time, or if only GGG released this event 1 month after the normal league start! Figuring out new metas in a ruthless environment might be very entertaining if the competitors were all on mars without internet connection to the real world, but mostly, we will be watching everyone else doing things in normal league while endlessly farming supports to 3-1 vendor for ones we need, hoping for aura drops, and trying not to rip any we've already found, and then putting what we've learned by watching others to use. This is like going to a party in an abandoned warehouse where you're the only one there, but you have a screen that shows you everyone else partying at a different warehouse. Sure you can dance, you can play your own music. You can paint all the walls however you want, there is definitely enjoyment there. But when you see what is possible with people playing together, you feel lonely. And knowing you could have driven to the correct warehouse but chose to drive to this one is odd. You feel major fomo.

To those that decide to enjoy such feelings, perhaps it stems back to earlier childhood traumas - and creating such places for people that want them is great. But I don't know if going into them is healing for such people, potentially it only reinforces such trauma/psychological problems. I wonder if I'm traumatized after spending so much time playing these modes of POE, my brain changed to enjoy such self-inflicted pain.

Well articulated! Excellent (and relatable) final paragraph ;)