Upcoming Filter+FilterBlade improvements + Timeline

Hey guys, 

roguelike and ruthless POE is upon us and we've been busy at work preparing for the current update for the filter + filterblade.

Ruthless Filter:

 I've played Ruthless on alpha and really liked it! I still won't leaguestart it since it has no challenges as of now, but it certainly is a different type of gameplay and I'll definitely check it out later on, maybe go for a SSF?

Now here's the problem. Ideally it needs a full dedicated filter. Converting my filter for ruthless is absolutely possible, but it comes with downsides. 

I don't mind building a dedicated ruthless filter, but it's not something I can do short-term, without actually having enough ruthless experience. A 'NeverSink style' filter including styles, strictnesses, filterblade customization etc. is a ton of work and it also doubles on maintenance. Additionally we don't know if Ruthless is going to be popular or successful. 

That being said, we wanted to give you guys the ability to have a solid Ruthless starter filter to customise from and also expand FilterBlade to have ruthless support, so here's what's coming practically:

• FilterBlade will feature a new base filter "NeverSink's Ruthless". Internally this is a 'normal' NeverSink Filter with 1000++ changes done by me to adjust it for the requirements of Ruthless. There's tiering changes, leveling adjustments, dedicated sounds and highlights for rare jewellery and gems etc. This relies on heavily the preset system. This also allows me to update the ruthless preset in near real-time. 
• As of now the Ruthless filter comes without strictness or style support. This is a whole other massive and complicated topic and it depends on how well the mode is received by the community.
• Filters on FilterBlade can be marked as 'Ruthless' or 'Normal'. Ruthless saves will be exported in the right format and will convert all 'Hide' rules into 'Minimal' rules (as Hide doesn't work on Ruthless). This means you can 'Ruthlessify' any filter. Definitely doesn't mean you should. But you can.
• This will allow users to convert any previous filter to the ruthless format and use all existing filterblade features to build a ruthless filter.

We can also use the system in the future to potentially host/feature other filters in a better way and maybe host filters for events this way!

UI improvements on FilterBlade:

We're also introducing a whole bunch of UI improvements on FilterBlade!

Socket-Based filtering!

This was requested for massively and was an equal massive PITA to implement, but yes it's finally here: you can now filter by total socket availability. For instance this allows only looking for items:

• At least 3 sockets and at least 2 of them are red
• any 4link with at least 2 blue, 1 green socket.

You can also have multiple conditions and there are some validation checks to prevent users from doing stupid things.

The feature is already live for testing on filterblade.xyz !

Improved class based UI

The class UI on FilterBlade has received a major overhaul. It no longer blocks half the screen and is super chaotic. On the screen above you see it's compact form. It only shows you the selected classes!

Upon clicking it expands into a larger, but well structured screen. I think you'll agree that it's much easier to use. It also has support for rightclicking!

Other UI improvements

We're actively working on simplifying and merging and reordering UI elements! 

For instance we're recently deployed the following minor changes:

• Many UIs have now auto-sorted contents. The order in which certain elements are drawn is now static, making for much cleaner, visual pleasing UIs
• Multiple tooltips and hoverboxes have been added explaining some indepth features
• Not a UI improvement, but we're publishing a video explaining how presets work, to help users graps the fairly complex system
• Quite a few small changes to descriptions, alignments etc

Forbidden Sanctum and 3.20 Filter changes

Of course, there's much more work to do here.

The filter needs updating itself. I've been playtesting Forbidden Sanctum already (on the Alpha) and while I'm not allowed to talk about it, I'm making sure that no relic goes through your fingers.

Just... update the filter. I'm not 100% sure if the 3.19 filter works in 3.20, but you won't see any relics, if you don't update. Yes this doesn't let me sleep at night.

So Sanctum Changes aside here are some of the things coming to 3.20 in filter form:

• Strictness rebalancing, now that Arch-Nemesis has been removed
• Divination card tiering has been further improved, I've spent a lot of time looking at data and testing models and I think the new model is quite good!
• Unique tiering improvements! 

I could write pages about each of those, but there's more programming to be done, so I'd rather get back to it and show you the changelog later :)

Timeline

The final filter will be released on Stream on Friday as usual! I might do a small stream in between and work on a new style if there's enough time!

Until then we'll use the time to improve, finetune, retier, develop and test the filter as much as possible!

I hope you're just as excited for the league!

Thanks for reading and your support!

NeverSink