As more and more havoc modifiers get added, more and more of them seem to just be adding more damage resist, more carapace, more stagger resist, and more healing to enemies. This is not a great direction to be pushing modifiers as it forces so much of the game out of viability as weapons that don’t have a certain level of damage output and carapace penetration borderline can’t be used. In turn pushing people to use only the pre-discovered meta builds, which then makes fatshark have to add even tankier enemy modifiers, add more stagger resistance, add more carapace, to avoid the players just vaporizing everything on screen.
A big part of this issue is in how havoc is inherently designed. So many modifiers impact one specific aspect of the game in a way where there is one specific way a players build has to be made to counter it. Heres some examples:
- Emperors fading light increases enemy hit mass, reduces enemy stagger, reduces player toughness and health, and reduces ammo pickups. This singlehandedly makes most weapons whose identities are focused on cleaving and crowd control be much more impacted than weapons focused on single target damage and mobility. Similarly, staves and a survivalist vet become almost mandatory because of how limited ammo becomes (not to mention how two of the staves can ignore the cleave downside of this modifier as well).
- Encroaching garden yet again makes weapons that focus on cleaving multiple targets pointless, as unless you first pick off the pink enemies, they will almost always outheal your spread out damage. But again, single target precision weapons not only have an easier time picking out the pink enemies, but often can just one shot targets through the healing.
- Rotten armor spawns waves of carapace, make weapons with no significant access to rending and low carapace modifiers be much more impacted than weapons with uncanny and/or high armor damage modifiers.
Those are just a few examples, but we continue to see this trend of havoc modifiers continuing to push sets of weapons and builds completely out of viability until we are left with nothing but the long used meta. When will we see more modifiers like heinous rituals? That was a modifier that could be very threatening if left unchecked, but could be managed with almost any team comp. The key thing here is it changed how you play, not what you play. It will always be more fun to make the players change their approach to an encounter than it will be to just force them to pick specific builds and play every game the exact same.
Anyways, I know this is a fairly popular opinion of havoc already but the more people saying it the better. All I have left to say is simply: Fatshark, please put more thought into your modifiers. If you’re worried about lowering the tankiness of enemies, then please go nerf those outlying weapons and builds as well. Balancing havoc around the few things that are performing the best is not good for the health of havoc or the rest of the game. Havoc (nor the rest of the game for that matter) should not be designed in a way where it directly counters the identity of so much of the weapon and talent roster of the game. Again, we dont want modifiers that change what we play, we want modifiers that change how we play and how we have to change and adapt to different situations. Picking builds and team comps should be something we can do to make those situations easier to handle, not something you HAVE to do to even start playing havoc in the first place.