Will Ultimatum Become a Core Game Mechanic?

Good riddance. Ritual shouldn't have went core either. It's just as boring as Ultimatum, but at least you don't get swamped by rares that require insane amounts of dps to deal with. I'm still sad that you guys never implemented the memory nexus since it's just a more interesting version of Alva's temple which is so stale after so many years. I run like 2 temples a league when I'm desperate for a map pool and avoid it unless I want to juice delirium maps. You guys advertised last league as buffing/reinventing older league's content and you failed to be blunt although the syndicate changes were nice :)

So GGG doesn't think that Trial Master spawnrate / spawn mechanic was an issue? Nor do they think that Stone Circles and Survive need to be better (they are just worse than Protect Altar / Defeat Waves)? These were 2 main issues with Ultimatum (aside of Tether challenge for 40/40 people) and they are not getting adressed?

Also while you could just skip them, Inscribed Ultimatums were pretty bad - most of the time you don't have unique item or divination card to do them, survive/stone circles take insane ammount of time and reward most of them time is underwhelming (how about doubling yout 5 vaals? Huh? Already have 500+ and can't use them all nor bother to sell? Oh well...how about turning one vendor trash unique to another vendor trash unique? Not interested either?...come on!). But whatever I guess, because they served their purpose of providing big gambles for people on trade League like Mirroring item or upgrding item into Headhunter or just making money steadily with Ultimatums doubling Exalts, Nurse, etc. etc..

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GGG wrote:

We would also want to rebalance the rewards. The intent of Ultimatum's reward system was to make the Trialmaster's offers the main reward for the challenge. This currently isn't the case with far too many items spawning at the end of the trial. For Ultimatum to return, we would want to shift the balance back so that the Trialmaster's offers are the main reward for doing the encounter while also compensating for the item fountain being turned off.

That "fountain" was consisting of GGG's loot - i.e. white items, low currency, etc. etc. 99% useless stuff. So most decent filters would hide almoust all of it. "Fountain" was contributing like couple currency drops, 6S and that's it at better times. Ultimatum offers are more rewarding than random loot dropping from Ultimatum mobs - it's just quantity vs quality. But if it doesn't mean GGG just gonna nerf drops from monsters (which is what it sounds like), but also Ultimatum offers themselves will be better I am all for it.

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Also Ultimatum sounds like such an easy League mechanic to implement. Really surprised it won't go core, at least immediately. Hopefully they aren't going to nerf Hateforge / mechanics around it so we have another chase item.

In all honesty, Ultimatum was in overall a weak league and I couldn't get myself to play it. The mechanic itself is nothing really new, only the aspect of pushing further and further - which, again in all honesty, is something not every character is able to go to its max. But you have to go max to get to the trialmaster... and oh boy, don't get me startin' with the Trialmaster not spawning like.. ever.

And then the map mods + trial mods in that very same trialmaster arena. I get it was supposed to be so hard not everyone could do it - but then don't make it a league mechanic but a integral part of the game loop, like you did with Maven and her arena. She wasn't a league mechanic and it worked. When you give people the goal to defeat the trialmaster as it is the league mechanic why they start a new journey again, you pretty much outright denied it with RNG spawning toppled with aforementioned difficulty spikes that when you die, you can't even restart. And then there was even BS mechanic where people died right after Trialmaster was defeated, reaping them from their rewards... oh boy.

If Harvest was still functional and not nerfed, I could see Ultimatum being the only thing pushing people to use Harvest to its full potential for that, to eventually get there.

What about using the trial maps to deterministically craft a mod to an item? And if you fail, a mod is instead removed (Could be fun using it to annul, haha)

Overall I think this league backfired because new league and new league mechanic focus is the sole reason why returning players play. But the spawn rate was horrendous and the environment when it eventually happened was too overwhelming. The rewards overall reminded me more of Delirium map rewards - dropping random crap, but even without having categories like "currency", so even more random. And at the end it was like simulacrum fragments would never drop. Frustrating.

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Dr1MaR wrote:

League was bad. Nothing more but a bunch of monsters spawning, it's a mess

it's an issue with the entire game. I still chuckle about GGG saying they want to slow the game down and then they released delirium league like 2 weeks later. It just goes to show that those baeclast podcasts may seem genuine, but they are just fluff at the end of the day. GGG has backed themselves into a corner by catering so much to high dps, fast clearing playstyles. Ultimatum exacerbates this issue by throwing so many rares on your screen that you need to have at least 5-10 million dps that is almost screenwide if you don't want to get swamped and instakilled. I quit the league after rolling a tanky whispering ice scion that had 12K es and it just got folded like a chair in early red map ultimatums since the DPS wasn't insanely high and the ice storm has a delay making it basically unplayable for the league mechanic. That's just a shitty feeling. The meta is already so stale with the mana and slam stuff, but Ultimatum just further pigeon-holed you.

"...see the Trialmaster again..."

Yes, probably we will see him in a battle when you bring it back.

I'm going to miss him :( But I understand the reasoning, the battle was too hectic and the chance of meeting him too low for it to be truly rewarding gameplay.

Until next time, Trialmaster!

There are 2 problems with this league and all of them are on ggg. Problem 1 is that you never see the trial master fight. The loot explosion isnt a bad thing the lack or reason to fight ultimatums as an end game mechanic is. Problem number 2 is the biggest reason this league sucked ballz. Reason 2 is they nerfed fracture fossils into oblivion along with 2 or 3 other smaller end game content mechanics. The extreme lack or reason to play the game past red maps is why this league was utter garbage and not the ultimatum mechanic.

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Flatlandman wrote:

Reason 2 is they nerfed fracture fossils into oblivion along with 2 or 3 other smaller end game content mechanics. The extreme lack or reason to play the game past red maps is why this league was utter garbage and not the ultimatum mechanic.

no offense, but this stuff is for like the .001% of players. nerfing deep delving was more nonsensical than taking away the fractured memes I thought. I also think the 100% delirium map stuff is awful gameplay and makes GGG look bad when you turn on a stream and it's incoherent gameplay being carried by HH.

oh no, theyre taking away the boring run in circles and pray ur build is op minigame that maybe 1 in 10 times gives an ok rare, and 50/50 on a decent lump of currency. trialmaster? what trialmaster? t10+ only content, not even a weak version available in lower maps. bet if trialmaster had say, a white, yellow, and red map version w some diff mechanics, people would like league more. content you cannot engage with is NOT CONTENT. see: seeing 1-3 bosses in 3 months of delve+ synthesis, and more than likely UNDOABLE due to map mods.
just give ritual some tankt blue mobs w dmg reduction that move slow and have directional slams like the fire skulls in ultimatum, and make ultimatum a unique map or something.