This is my first post on these forums. Since Havoc was released it became my favorite game mode, the challenge of H40 was enjoyable and the feeling of banking that weekly 40 felt good, typically you then went on to help others with their assignments or even better help people with True Survivor runs, even if you failed there was great fun to be had.
The gameplay changes with new Havoc have been enjoyable, however the glaring problem I see in almost every lobby, is people are miserable with the derank changes and removal of the weekly bump to Havoc rank. We had barely gotten used to the forced feeling of the party finder and ranking in a PVE game however the new derank changes have made a very toxic and unfun atmosphere. Since 2.0 dropped I’ve cleared multiple 39s and attempted a few 40s my verdict? I don’t think I found a single person in those lobbies who was actually enjoying themselves the games started very tense and ended with the whole team angry even if we’d played well and failed, and why? because everyone lost access to their Havoc rank. In the previous system people would hop back in reclimb the ladder or try out fun builds after they’d banked their 40, now the gatekeeping that had started to settle down in 1.0 has been exacerbated and all the fun that was introduced with the gameplay changes has been whitewashed by the misery of the derank system. Fatshark please listen to your community on this no body likes this feature you won’t find a single person on any internet forum praising the derank mechanic every review of Havoc features a little (caveat explaining Havoc would be really fun if not for the demotion mechanic, after well over a thousand hours, unlocking all the games penances and playing darktide almost exclusively for months I’ve uninstalled the game today I don’t want to take part in this system designed to waste my time and draw out engagement. If you can’t deduce from a superficial look at internet forums on how Havoc 2.0 is being received and that demotion mechanic is universally hated well. God help you I don’t know what to say…all this from a company that said adding scoreboards would be toxic, what an absolute mess you’ve made of this.
What game have you been playing? Because I cannot say I agree with anything of what you are saying. Those people you meet who do not enjoy themselves in Havoc sure to The God Emperor did not enjoy themselves in Havoc 1.0 either. Things have changed, but nothing has changed. You are in the 1% who actually enjoys Havoc, maybe sub 1%, sorry to break it to you.
They should defenitely remove deranking from losing if you’re playing on lower assignments than your current one yes
I’m not so against deranking “being a thing”, but the current way it’s done is so toxic and doodoo because with the first iteration of Havoc, FS intentionally wanted high rank players to help lower players (because getting 100 wins on havoc 40s is very tedious)
But now they’re being DISCOURAGED from doing that because THEY KNOW that low ranks being bad means higher chances of losing even in lower ranks
On another note: Remove the 4th optional mutator that could happen (Lights out, Hunting Grounds, Pox Gas), this would allow 30s to actuall escape hell
I know what you’re saying, Havoc wasn’t a very popular game mode even at the start and let’s be honest the game doesn’t have the largest player base to begin with I wouldn’t be surprised if the people who actually play Havoc are in the hundreds which makes it all the more weird the FS aren’t even listening to the very basic feedback they’re getting on this gamemode, it’s note like they’re having to sort through 50k players all with differing points of view. There’s no place for any kind of rank in a PVE game one of the things which put the other 99% of is the terrible gatekeeping that happens from other players due to rankings.
Agreed deranking makes the whole thing toxic and divisive.
You said it well, there are too many undesirable side-effects.
I think the worst is being punished on your own rank for helping lower rank players. This won’t help to grow the playerbase for Havoc, and goes against building a sense of community.
That being said, I really love the new difficulty, the squad of Bulwarks, the twins showing up uninvited on top of the 2 bosses, horde and specialists you’re already fighting… it’s crazy, it’s very challenging, it’s fun!
Just let us retry the difficulty we reached, let us experiment, let us enjoy the amazing game you built without the pressure and fear of derank.
Problem with havoc is its even more restrictive than the base mission board already is. It has less maps and you have even less say or agency in what you play. In havoc Youre forced to play horrible visual modifiers like lights out or fog or tox gas all terrible modifiers but atleast on the auric board I dont ever have to play those things. Im all for challenge and I do like havoc but I hate how easy it is to get screwed when it comes to map seed and spawns. Ahh yes ive got a beast behind me, a chaos spawn spawning in, a captain that just walked past me, specialists and elites, were also split up cuz our teammate didnt follow us and all hell is breaking loose. To too it all off my teammate just bum rushed cultists after reviving our teammate causing the meter to fill up faster and now the daemon host spawned and were screwed. There are too many variables in havoc that can end a run and the demotion mechanic makes it all ten thousand times worse. Its bad enough we have people gate keeping builds and flaming you when you lose but the previous things I mentioned just make havoc the biggest pain in the ass. You also cant find matches anywhere near your rank and anyone who tries to join my game is low havoc so I stopped even trying.
I wholeheartedly disagree.
In my observation the total number of games hosted drastically increased.
On top of that there is a bigger variance, not just the one lvl 40 and a sub 20 that resided the last month of havoc 1.0.
So the overall playability drastically increased.
To me it sounds like the problem is not to be able to cheese a constant lvl40. Try playing for fun a bit, drop if you drop and rank back up … You will settle at a place fitting for you. And I assure you it will not be boring, because if it would be then you would rank up.
The goal is not to have a certain number tacked to your char but enjoy the gameplay loop. Which is now actually doable - there are enough missions hosted
i really think they should just swap out the matchmaking systems of havoc and trials.
40 levels of trials and 4 levels of havoc WITH quickplay seems a lot better imo
How is this even remotely true? Anytime I post my mission to the board the only people who try to join are low clearance havoc players who havent cleared higher than a ten if that. Also anytime I try and join a havoc near mine on any of my characters I dont get accepted. It is also beyond disingenuous to say that there are all these havoc games to play because 95% of them are havoc 1-20 and rarely ever do you see havoc games 30-40. Also as I previously stated even if you do find a mission thats near your havoc rank they will reject you. If i cant find players of equal skill or havoc clearance and noone will accept me into their havoc mission even though im havoc forged then I wont play havoc and its really that simple. From my experience even putting together a 4 man team is basically
Impossible unless you want to sit in the party finder for an hour just waiting to play the game. Its also horrible that even if you do get into a game the moment you lose psrties disband so there is zero way to build chemistry. This mode is very obviously designed for premades and trying to play with randoms could not be anymore miserable. This game mode is designed for players with the amount of hours that I have in this game but its simultaneously the game mode designed for you to never play. Im stuck at havoc 29 and the other day we got half way through a havoc 37 mission and lost and the party disbanded before I even made it back to the mourning star. I am very obviously capable of holding my own in high level havoc missions but trying to climb feels virtually impossible and i have zero clue how anyone is even playing because I cant play no matter how much time I waste trying to engage with havoc. I try every day to engage with havoc and when I do I may see 4-6 havoc games on the board and maybe half of them are near my rank so I try to join them and dont get accepted. I post my game and get havoc 4-8 clearance players trying to join. I then close the party finder and go play high shock missions because havoc is impossible to play.
havoc has a much smaller audience than the regular game anyway.
havoc 2.0 is imo better than 1.0 with its turtling up meta (maybe with some tweaking needed on boss spawns and rituals). and then it makes just getting into a game worse.
if you want a challenge, you can experiment in maelstrom with less powerful weapons, talents, less players etc. you hop into any game at any time, no party finder, no keeping whatever rank, no limit on retries.
perhaps the havoc board gets simply added as skill 6-7 to the standard board when it becomes empty.
