I wish these were the official names 
I mean they could now go with Admonition and Traitor Guard
In the code they are cultists and renegades (with the misc stuff like plague ogryns and hounds being “chaos”)
Tons of people were saying they were too easy to kill. Instead of balancing them in any meaningful way, they just increased spawn rates and gave them more health. I don’t remember seeing anyone asking for that and it is not a fun or interesting challenge, just tedious.
Great post! Thanks for laying things out so clear.
This is a discussion about balance so I won’t get involved, I would like new maps.
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they decreased the spawn rate alongside the increased HP. which frankly, is exactly the direction I want and hope they continue to take them in. they should feel like unique threats which require proper target prioritization. unfortunately at present the spawns are still too large for them and stuff like no proper collision and purple modifier means you get blooming crusher flowers which can’t be dealt with in interesting ways. I still hope they keep moving them to a point where they feel like mini boss encounters that are balanced by slow, deliberate windups. with smaller numbers, they can also design more specific armor/weapon interactions that will allow for more viable builds. if they only keep making the spawns larger, it will be a neverending arms race for supremacy with infinite cleave weapons.
Some of us did say specifically that increasing enemy health is bad way to deal with powercreep
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I get the feeling the crew at the game right now is rather maintaining it through number dials than real deep dug restructuring or animating current enemies.
maybe the plasma gunner was already “done” at one point or another and waited for a go, but re-doing the crushers or any other for that matter would be in the ballpark of people no longer present.
just my gut here doing the rumblings
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Yeah credit where credit is due though I do think auric is better now than it was
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well for starters take out emprahs fading light, get rid of rank or any demotion 
like that and we got ourselves an auric maelstrom befitting the current personal character power anyone can do despite 3 failures in a team, hence no party finder or stress.
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This is kind of a needed evil tho
If players get the 90% damage reduction after toughness break in Havoc then they could survive a lot more situations
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aint talking about havoc, i want auric maelstrom somewhat where it was before: a challenging mode but you didn’t “need” your mates 
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Not to mention the huge number of people in the server who speak Japanese/Korean or the random expats like myself who are forced into the Hong Kong server but effectively can’t communicate. I was able to understand and adapt using translate, but was unable to actually respond through text myself. Kudos to the Chinese community for still accepting “foreign” players, but to be fair in most games there’s really no communication anyways.
This worked great for Auric. I’d argue Auric right now feels better than ever. I think the issue is that Rotten Armour force spawns packs of armoured enemies, the exact kind they were trying to reduce. Combined with stimms or pink, it created exactly the unkillable blobs the community was hoping to avoid. You get the rare game without Rotten Armour, and I actually don’t feel like Crusher numbers are too overwhelming right now.
there’s a german saying “was der Bauer nich kennt, das frisst er nicht”, basically “the peasant doesn’t eat unknown stuff”
now having done every iteration of havoc in 40 its not really “unknown”, so i didn’t have to play this here version to know its basically the “same” when it comes to the things I dislike about the mode.
but today I bit the bullet and got it done with and whether you believe it or not (well you can see that at the beginning of the match I don’t have any havoc rank at all yet) it was the first try with the first team.
granted, I had to browse the party finder for some time and it only reminded me why I hate “rejected, rejected, rejected”
so kudos for letting me “in”, I guess
before you happily glee in “you got carried”,
yes the zealot did an awesome clutch,
no I wasn’t the first to go down,
and I did exactly what i was saying I’d do, my own loadout full health ogryn.
is it effective in havoc?
well at least I got the most boss damage 
so that’s “something” I guess.
in the end it went about exactly as expected and with randoms/no voice, or any conversation for that matter, just going with each one’s gut feeling.
now the following isn’t meant for any “ill-wishes”, I mean this here’s just online trashtalk after all.
but before anyone runs his mouth about this, I “invite” to replicate the same conditions meaning daily medications in the process of chemo therapy that really fks up the body and feeling “tired” or drowsy is about the least of one’s concerns.
“the more you know” by pure coincidence I heard in a documentary that one of the stuff I get injected every week is a byproduct of mustard-gas, they found out by accident shortly after ww1 that it kills c4ncercells as well 
so honestly all this “you got carried…only use ogryn….don’t use…” get a tasty treat of all those goodies for 6+months nonstop and hop into the game 
heck even in traffic I started screaming “if I can do this with chemo-brain, whats your fkking excuse?” 
ironically, thanks for tickling my ego there, wouldn’t have put up with it otherwise.
next week my 4 week quarantine and stem cell replacement starts so at least I can “check that off” in case recovery takes longer than expected 
anyways, this here aint meant to make anyone feel bad or “sob story” just give a bit background under what condition this here ogryn currently whacks for the emprah 
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I think I met that zealot in a auric a not to long ago
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yeah ironically we had a race in chasm terminus where I was pissed when he skipped an area at the final part to “go snack”
in a twisted turn of events here he saved the day, who would have thought
doesn’t diminish the fact of him having very well played here, hence I uploaded
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I’m not going to act like I know Asian gaming communities in general or more specifically the Hong Kong Darktide scene like you do, but these sentiments feel very monolithic compared to my experience. I’m a competitive fighting game player and while its true there are many Asian players who just pick top tiers to cut out potential struggle in play in the pro scene, there are just as many character loyalists/specialists who would rather scrape and experiment and look for solutions with their lower-tier character because that’s what brings them joy and is the essence of playing and getting better at the game?
Like to you, what constitutes the level of “experimenting?” Anything that isn’t the meta builds you described? To me there’s a wide range of viable weapons and builds that can and do get H40 clears without most if not all teammates stuck to the meta builds. I also find it interesting your desire to increase the effectiveness of Veteran Shout considering it’s still absurdly powerful and centralizing? Both it and Chorus are so limiting in terms of builds because they make other choices seem way weaker by comparison. If you are dying so much with the Shout changes, that sounds like a problem with your own skill that I would hope you would want to improve before asking for the developer to come save you. I don’t even think I am a super hardcore DT player but if myself and others can clear H40s without abilities like that, what does that mean for the rest of the playerbase? Gold toughness being “mandatory” to succeed in Havoc is not good for the game if part of the game’s design is to have many viable and interesting builds (because otherwise, why offer different options?).
I understand part of this desire to clear H40 and just have it done happens because of DERANK, which I agree should be REMOVED (or at least greatly relaxed), but it’s interesting to me to hear such an aversion to trying things since, I’m sorry to say, the rewards for clearing H40 are kind of nothing? Like if clearing H40 didn’t have completion rewards, I would still want to play it because I have the desire to gain mastery and push myself further in increasingly harder content. The struggle (including failing a lot!) is the fun of the game! Just like any other complex game/sport/task. To me playing Havoc with random people is fun and satisfying even in failure and if I wanted to just sidestep that, there are easy ways to organize a PUG (pick up game) with people who are very focused on just succeeding and might use meta loadouts or whatever to trivialize content. Are there not those kind of private group options available to you?
All this to say, I think there are still major improvements FS can make to Havoc going forward, and I seriously hope they look more holistically at the modifiers interacting with each other to make each Havoc run feel novel and interesting. To me, that’s what every modifier should do: create unique situations that happen with different variables bouncing off each other so players have to make heads up decisions. Sometimes those variables are going to feel “cheap” and get you killed, but that’s what will keep the longevity of this game going.
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I think the main difference being, that they play alone. In the team game, especially H40 where there needs to be synergy, the Chinese community apparantly are so afraid of losing a run, they feel the need to have strict compositions.
Everything in Havoc brings out the toxicity in gamers: deranking, party finder where you have to apply to participate, incredibly punishing mechanics and a balancing where the meta may not be essential to some, but is required for most players. And then they tied cosmetic rewards to it.
I only have 12 more Havoc assists to go to have all Havoc penances done and when they’re done I don’t think I’ll touch it unless they do a big revamp.
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its that mistaken idea of coop game naturally entailing people going out of their ways to accommodate for others needs when, lets be honest, playing with 3 strangers its often “step aside and watch me do it” that tickles the ego and gives dopamine, “doing better”.
again, that doesn’t mean you dont help the other players it just means you don’t put your playstyle (and thus reason for playing at all really) behind the “need of the group”
and on a grander scale it really might be a “cultural thing” between being part of a group is seen as a good thing whereas elsewhere one does all he can to separate himself from the “herd of cattle” and wants to be the best by his own hands and actions.
“for noone, noone in this world you can trust,
not men
not women
not beasts…
THIS you can trust “
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and if you do not listen, then to hell with you!
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It’s incredible, how often Havoc is described more or less like a chore.