Trivializing content/bosses is a huge problem and you're playing it down, Mark.

"

Skutz123#5377 wrote:

Good analysis. To take it further, invert that 75% ele resist with Rakiatas and now you're doing 700% more relative damage.

Oh man. I'm not a fan of that one at all.

Penetration and Exposure already scale in value naturally. That mechanic just turns an NPC's defense into weakness and to make it worse. No investment fee. No synergy, nothing.

They really need to think about design mechanics globally instead of Player Vs NPC. If they introduced an NPS that inverted player DR without warning. Player would rightfully flip out.

You know you have a good system when both Players and NPCs use it without exceptions.

"

Xzorn#7046 wrote:

This is where I tend to get into design problems where GGG just likes big numbers too much.

For instance a single stat able to reach 90% DR is simply way too high. That's 10% more damage intake if you simply have 89% instead. You use smaller numbers and extra mechanical layers to help control the overall outcome. If the Armor where 25-55% we would not need Big Hit Vs Little Hit.

The stat would no longer be a lie. In addition say for example I added 100% Block Chance at 50% DR. This is another stat entirely and still doesn't reach 90% stacked onto 55% Armor DR.

Similar interactions happen with offense. Against 80% Fire Resists and Exposure for -20% deals 100% more damage. If you apply that to 50% Fire Resistance it becomes 40% more damage.

There's a difference between being strong and being a god that has to be deliberately countered.

This is where GGG has consistently failed in design. You don't create singular stats that reach such high values because once you add any extra layer, it turns into a balance nightmare.

Spot on.

Talking of big numbers, I'd also like to point out how the efficiency numbers look between the 3 boss kill times Mark has specified.

The player that kills in 8 seconds versus the average of 2 minutes has an increased efficiency of up to 1400% (that's 15x times faster)

The player that kills in 8 seconds versus the lowest time of 4 minutes has an efficiency increase of up to 2900% (that's 30x times faster)

Just let that sink in.

And what did it cost? Just knowing a few basic things about how scaling works. That's all. No real time investment, no real cost.

What do we get rewarded with? Our experience cheapened significantly.

I know I'm repeating myself a lot but I just want to drive this home as much and as clearly as possible.

I just finished playing Diablo 4. Every boss kill was sub 4 seconds. Ubers included. It was utterly boring. I don't feel POE2 is there yet thank goodness, but I am hoping we do nto move too far in that direction. Sprinting past mobs and a 4 second boss fight is not my idea of fun.

"

Ragestorm26#0930 wrote:

I just finished playing Diablo 4. Every boss kill was sub 4 seconds. Ubers included. It was utterly boring. I don't feel POE2 is there yet thank goodness, but I am hoping we do nto move too far in that direction. Sprinting past mobs and a 4 second boss fight is not my idea of fun.

What build did you go with?

Played lots of builds, all were very viable (Druid Rabies, Druid Stone, Warlock Apotheosis, Warlock Armageddon, to name a few).

I play hardcore, so I have to invest more in defences.

I only cleared Pit 95, so no huge accomplishments there, and the game was actually getting hard and enjoyable at that point. But all the way up until 90+, the game is brain-dead: instantly killing everything.

It’s fun for the first few hours, then becomes incredibly boring.

Diablo showers you with so much loot, so fast, that you get all the items for your build very quickly. The game becomes more about grinding for optimisation than actually gearing up.

Thankfully, Path of Exile 2 is nowhere near that state, at least in SSHC, but the constant power creep still worries me.

But why is it automatically a problem when the highest-level players with the best gear kill bosses in seconds compared to everyone else?

Top players killing bosses faster is not the issue by itself. The issue is that there is no clean, accessible way for those players to scale boss difficulty upward without relying on overly expensive or annoying map juicing.

You can make a comparison to MMORPGs, where the best players and mid-range players often take a similar amount of time to kill a boss. The difference is usually that mid-range players die more, can't tank mistakes as well, and can't keep DPS uptime as consistently.

In PoE2, the difference is much more extreme. A better-geared player doesn't just perform better; they can remove the fight almost entirely.

I think the current system is kind of okay in principle, but the scaling options at the top end are lacking. Even with "150" items like splinters and similar boss access costs, those bosses often feel too weak once your character is properly set up.

Sure, extremely juiced T16 maps exist, and I can't handle those yet. But those also take too much time and resources to set up, so I simply don't play them. That doesn't really solve the boss problem.

What the game needs is a better difficulty scaler that the player can modify directly. Let people push bosses harder if they want to, without needing a small accounting department and three trade tabs just to set up one meaningful fight.

Personally I strongly believe that adding Ruthless to PoE2 at this stage of development (aproaching 1.0) will not only be a mistake but also VERY BAD sign for the whole game.

If the game needs ruthless mode around 1.0 version then the game is a mess in terms of balance. No other way around that. Same as adding ubers: this should not be a case for the game at this stage.

Ruthless in PoE1 was introduced in 3.20 (2022): we can argue that it could or even should be in game much earlier, but PoE1 in terms of balance was and still is in much better place.

Adding this kind of band aid to PoE2 will only work shor-term, but in long term will cause IMO more problems like, for example, serving as an easy excuse for balanace mess when players or Devs could just say "if you dont like state of the game, go play Ruthless".
Its a lazy and lame solution at this stage and I would be very dissapointed by GGG if they choose that as a fix for their balance problem.

"

DenimBoy#1964 wrote:

Personally I strongly believe that adding Ruthless to PoE2 at this stage of development (aproaching 1.0) will not only be a mistake but also VERY BAD sign for the whole game.

If the game needs ruthless mode around 1.0 version then the game is a mess in terms of balance. No other way around that. Same as adding ubers: this should not be a case for the game at this stage.

Ruthless in PoE1 was introduced in 3.20 (2022): we can argue that it could or even should be in game much earlier, but PoE1 in terms of balance was and still is in much better place.

Adding this kind of band aid to PoE2 will only work shor-term, but in long term will cause IMO more problems like, for example, serving as an easy excuse for balanace mess when players or Devs could just say "if you dont like state of the game, go play Ruthless".
Its a lazy and lame solution at this stage and I would be very dissapointed by GGG if they choose that as a fix for their balance problem.

Adding a Ruthless mode to PoE2 isn't a sign that the 1.0 balance is a mess. It is just a sign that GGG still respects their playerbase, the exact audience they targeted from day one who wants a slow, punishing, old-school ARPG experience. In fact, many of us bought into early access for that exact reason.

You seem completely confused about how this works. Ruthless would just be an optional modifier to make the campaign difficult again, and it would literally run inside the exact same trade league. It is simply a choice for players who want a punishing challenge instead of casual slop, and it completely preserves the shared economy. Since its existence doesn't change the base game at all, calling it a bad sign for 1.0 makes zero sense. More choices and optional difficulty layers are always a healthy sign for a game.

Besides, you are ignoring the fact that the core campaign has already been nerfed and simplified just to cater to crying streamers and casual accessibility. Because GGG had to soften the base game for the wider audience, reintroducing a Ruthless flag is the only way to give the original core community the uncompromised, methodical challenge they were promised.

The foundational systems of PoE2 were designed from the ground up to be hard, relying on WASD mechanical execution, precise active combos, and build synergies instead of automated one-button screen clearing. GGG always intended for this game to challenge the player's mechanical skill. Giving us a Ruthless campaign option perfectly aligns with that core philosophy and fixes the watered-down difficulty.

"

You seem completely confused about how this works. Ruthless would just be an optional modifier to make the campaign difficult again, and it would literally run inside the exact same trade league.

No, I'm not confused. I know what ruthless is, but more important thing is I know and understand WHY ruthless begin to exist in the first place.

It took many years before we even started to talk about something like ruthless and another years to introduce it to the game. PoE1 powercreep was a fact but it was much slower powercreep than this we got in PoE2, a game which is not even out yet (1.0).

Ruthless was GGG's answer to the state of PoE1: state which went out of control in terms of powercreep, state which was not in minds of Devs when they've started the game, but at the same time the community embraced it and loved powercreep. Chagning that (GIGANTIC nerfs) would destroy the game itself (expedition patch as a example).

Birth of ruthless was founded on the similar reasons as birth of PoE2.
It took PoE1 countless patches to get to that point, and if we're having that same conversation about PoE2 after 3 patches (0.2, 0.3, 0.4!!!!!) then the game is on a bad course.

Again, to be perfectly clear, I'm one of these players who enjoyed 0.1 very much, who like challenge and wish to have more of that feeling in coming months and years in PoE2.
But I dont accept a solution in form of Ruthless mode.

Its not a sign of respect to the players: on a contrary.
Avoiding the proper balance, some middle ground between current state and 0.1, in favour of putting separate mod is not only a lack of resepct for players, but also lack of respect for their own words and work.
I cant imagine a developer who would be proud of situation when the game before 1.0 needs additional mod to deliver one of the main seeling point of the game itself.
In my eyes its a failure on so many levels that I cant even image that GGG would be ok with that.

Ruthless is a topic that should be on the table like 3-5 years after 1.0.
Its the same thing like adding life on the tree they've talked about: first fix defences, then, if that fails, consider adding life on the passive tree. Not other way around.
Fix your balance, fix player power, fix power-curve of obtaining that power. Period.

Problem is I doubt GGG would even prioritize adding a ruthless mode. Look at what they spend their time on. 160 more runes, each with a bonded aspect for a single ascendancy. When we already have so many runes that are just trash anyway. They spent how long working on another layer of more trash runes, crafting, and gambling? They chose to spend that time that way instead of working on the missing classes, ascendancies, weapon types, the basic ability to switch between controller and kb+m that virtually every other game including indie games has.