Havoc is a complete disaster and doesn’t make any sense.
Why do players have to complete lower difficulty missions (Malice/Heresy) in the ENDGAME MODE? What’s the point of the first 20 Havoc Ranks if they are easier than Auric Maelstrom the completion of which is required to play Havoc?
Why does only the player who starts a mission get ranked up while others should wait for a week? What’s the point of this?
Crafting materials rewards are also weekly. What is this obsession with the weekly stuff? Like if players get rewards now they won’t play the mode anymore? People come to Havoc for the challenge because the base game is boring, not for materials. And it’s easier to play normal missions to farm resources instead of waiting for a week.
Lack of agency. Havoc is just another system that players have no control over. People were complaining about the RNG crafting system, people are still complaining about the map selection and once again Fatshark releases the feature which gives players 0 choice. You can’t choose maps, modifiers or play lower ranked missions. You could technically choose between 4 missions of each player in the party but sorry, you have to wait for a week to be ranked up.
People are forced to use Group Finder, a dead feature which was released in the previous major update, but it barely works.
Technical errors like 9999 prevent people from playing the mode.
Devs think that they know what players want better but nobody asked for the system such as Havoc. Havoc could be just custom lobbies where you can freely choose maps, combinations of modifiers and buff enemies if you want extra challenge. It would make sense especially when Havoc is exclusively for pre-made parties and has no quickplay. It would solve issues like the lack of map selection and provide challenge for experienced players.
First thing they should change is the accessibility. This karking mode should be accessible to all in quickplay; not only for premades with host and assists ( how idiotic is this?).
The very least they should is fix their idiotic useless party finder …
I crashed and couldn’t rejoin the mission but it also wouldn’t let me join a new one because the one I can’t rejoin is still in progress, why is that even a thing?
To prevent leaving/alt F4’ing to avoid deranking. It’s a sound thing in theory imo since people leaving anytime the run doesn’t go their way is tedious as hell for everyone else, but with the number of disconnects it’s not really working in practice atm.
Errors keeping people from playing, horrible system for getting a group, horrible system for resource rewards (This update dropped with weapons and I can’t get the rewards I need for the weapons until a long enough time has passed that I don’t need them. Amazing), horrible progression system that makes you wait even if you are capable of a certain level, doesn’t let you pick decent maps or fun modifiers, and to top it all off the gamemode that is locked behind level thirty AND an auric maelstrom (most maelstroms arent that hard but you know what I mean) starts out at fu*king malice. This might actually be it for me.
Gonna co-op the thread to write my own Feedback as well, so its all in one place.
Why is there no drop in and out of play? Why can’t i check a checkmark in Quickplay and be seeded into Havoc missions of my own rank and below?
Why can’t my Group join another group for Havoc Missions? We found a 2 player group last night and wanted to join them, and only the Strike Leader joined the other group. Has, whoever designed this, ever played video games?
How does design like this pass QA?
Why is my Havoc Rank not increasing, just because my buddy selects the missions? What BS is this? I have to wait a week? We did several missions together last night, and i am still at Havoc 1… like seriously… who designed this? You want premades to play together, but you do not give people the havoc rank of the difficulty they beat right away?! Why?!
Why is there no information what difficulty this is? “Havoc is its own difficulty setting”… well clearly it isn’t as the first mission we joined someone we had wounds much like playing Malice…
Why is everything weekly?! I am not going to log in just to get some plaststeel. And with no drop in and out option for this gamemode, how long do you think people will bother with this, given all the extra hoops you have to jump through? And for what? So you can have some resources next week?!
And then my rank decays as punishment for playing some other game for a week or two. I mean, i get the idea of someone coming back after 6 months being all rusty and don’t know how to play anymore. But me going over to play some Space Marine 2 with some friends for a week or two doesn’t cause me to “rust” so much that i should decay in rank.
Why would i even bother? Instead why not just let people select their Havoc rank, once they beat it. Meaning you are level 20 Havoc, but you can start a level 5 mission. At least then there is a chance this gamemode will survive.
I am not going to jump that many hoops to PUG… it’s the same reason i never bothered with the Karnak Twins event. Poor rewards and a PITA to group for.
You don’t have to complete an Auric Maelstrom to be allowed to play Havoc. You can complete a level 3 Maelstrom and start with Rank 1. Auric Maelstrom only boosts you to level 16.
I agree with most of this. Outside of the obvious stuff like fixing errors, I think we desperately need some changes here.
I think completing a rank that is equal or above your current rank should give 1 level-up regardless of if you’re the host or not. We can keep the weekly rank-up as well for chappies who ain’t about that grind, I don’t mind boostin’ my fellow rejects so they can have one of those “Life” things I hear so much about.
And I understand not being able to change the modifiers, but if you’re going to require group finding, then we should at least be able to pick which mission to play. My crew does NOT like Refinery Delta (boring af mid and end events, but that’s subjective), so being able to swap that out would be Emperor-sent. Unless you’re planning to introduce mission-specific modifiers (Something like “The floor is lava” for Smelter or sandstorms in the hourglass, stuff more map dependent than “Darkness” and “Fog”) I see no reason not to allow some level of agency here.
So give us choice, or give us quickplay, this half-measure helps no one.
(The only thing I disagree on is the Weekly reward, I thinks it’s fine but that’s because I grind so much Tony Hawk told me to save some railing for the rest of them, so getting more materials is soooo not a priority for me. Alongside some penance stuff the reward of Havoc should be the challenge. I am assuming FS expects the average player to only dip into havoc a few times a week, and to otherwise focus on grinding on Auric)
They can do something great with party finder. They change it to a mission selector.
When you team in party finder, you should be able to choose your mission and its modifier.
I am sure that this feature would please a lot of players, and more than havoc.
On top of all the blatant issues this mode has, the fact that not only party finder is utter flaming garbage but you can already see the start of full blast toxicity in the havoc groups, especially regarding getting into one or during the mission for any misplay is, if we ever needed another one, simply another confirmation this mode was broken from its conception.
The only things that makes me laugh even more is how shilled this mode is or how much copium was being huffed in the week prior the release here on the forum.
I mean, these are some of the things I had to read:
Why is it even called a " new game mode " when all it does is make matchmaking more complicated and adds a couple of recolored trash mobs? It took me 16 missions ( or " levels " ) to actually see a very small difference where you fight a stronger mini-boss in the middle of the mission ( the ones with yellow armor aura ) and that’s it. If this crap deserves a whole new area in the mourning star then so does Zola’s special assignment which was actually something new.
I suspect this is the game designers idea about player retention, and keeping them playing to boost playerbase numbers. From a quick glance at it, this game mode respects player time as much as the old itemisation / crafting.
We intend to give it a try few more times, but we usually don’t play in a full pre-made party, and currently finding other players to join you seems to be far from a streamlined experience.
Atm I personally find the whole Havoc system too convoluted to succeed with the general public, nor meeting the expectations of the “hardcore” Darktide playerbase.
Yeah, same here. I mean, we sometimes get the whole gang together to play with a full pre-made, but most of the time its 2-3 people and us picking up a Rando.
But the issues with this new gamemode is that we
A) Don’t want to sit around and find a person to play with
B) Can’t join another Party as a Team, because only the person using the group finder is being pulled over.
It’s absolutely not servicable for us, as far as i am concerned.
Don’t get me wrong, Group Finder is nice and all… but i don’t want to spend time curating the teammates when we just want to slay heretics. And the problem with finding even more people to play with is the same problem we always have, that at some point you are more people wanting to play than slots on the group…
Just let us opt into having PUGs from quickplay join… and people on Quickplay the option to opt into Havoc missions.
In defence of Havoc concerning difficulty:
Darktide is not as easy as many on these forums claim. Most of the people I know in real life who still play Darktide hold their own in malice and are challenged by heresy.
So creating a game mode that only caters to the most capable players would probably have been a bad business decision.
I think for the avarage player this system of a comfortable starting and gradually increasing the difficulty is probably an enjoyable experience.
The main problem I see is - once again - the lack of player agency because as it is designed now it basically excludes the most invested fans that may be a smaller group but still is propably the vital anchor point of the community. And that is a bad decision as well.
So please @FatsharkStrawHat relay our need for agency to the team! We want to be able to freely choose map, difficulty and modifier! After over a year of stubborn refusal they finally gave us agency in our equipment - and this change is beloved by the community. So please give us now agency in mission choice! It will also be beloved.
And if they fear for their server capabilities - consider the possibility of local hosted games (with progression). The solo mod already shows it is technically possible - all that is needed is progression.
As someone who finds regular maels a cakewalk i should say that Havoc is hard. I can see not that many people will be able to beat Havoc, wich is fine, the problem is in meta and how difficulty designed.
Just reached 26 lvl with randoms. Team composition and builds means a lot but meta is extremely narrow it seems. The saddest part is rush meta seems the most efficient way to play. Stats (HP and toughnes) decreases more and more it seems, it will be impossible to fight every blob so the best way to play is skipping fights. Skipping fights in the combat focused action game, bruh moment.
4 zealots with knife/ds + 4 relics and just push towards the end.
the funny part is that’s the same problem and feedback they received for cata (defeating all lords requirement) why they couldn’t check the ingame achievements is beyond me.
More importantly: the biggest havoc difference is provided by the map modifiers: why in the emperor’s name are they hidden?
They talked a lot about those, but we have no idea exactly which ones are active and how they are progressing. Why?
This is my biggest gripe with it atm (I guess it would be matchmaking, but thanks to versus I have a few fresh friends to play the mode with)