Havoc Season 4 Feedback

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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Reached Assignment 40 a few days ago but, I wanted to try some more 40s before sharing my opinion about it, and how it affects the normal game

The 2 new modifiers are a huge big step in how to design modifiers for Havoc

Corrupted Stims

This mutator introduces RNG into Havoc! And unlike as many would say, I really really like this
It’s not exactly the RNG that it brings, but the matter that all 4 effects are fun to fight, puts the enemy in a stunned state while they’re applying it, and that they’re very readable

It is a good amount of Chaos to bring into Havoc, forcing specific players to adapt into that situation instantly

The only issue with this mutator, is Tox Gas + An enemy that took a blue stim, they’re practically immortal

Rotten Armor

The best version so far of the “Give enemy Damage Resistance” modifier. This is the one, this is how you do that

It makes the seed be Scab only, and it buffs troops on death with a mechanic we already know in the game (Gas), while also applying a slight area denial for us Rejects (Again, Gas) that is not extremely oppresive (Like old Blight Spreads was), and it also changes how hordes spawn!

This is fresh, extremely fun, and unique, the perfect designed DR modifier

Old Modifiers

The Encroaching Garden was a pretty safe pick here, it’s a just good modifier to introduce players the need to adapt, and without other modifiers like Rampaging Enemies and The Final Toll, it defenitely feels a lot less oppresive and meta defining

Moebian 21st is just… still nothinburger of a modifier. It’s fun, just not making anything interesting happen

Changes to Classes and How they Affect Havoc

Veteran and Zealot defenitely got super Ws, while the best ways to play for Zealot barely got any change, his other ways got insanely better now, and the same for vet (except vet also got his better ways to play even better)

Psyker on the other hand, there’s 2 sides:

  • While the non meta ranged weapons got considerably better, I’m not so sure how good they are right now, because…
  • Inferno Staff got even more OP, Inferno Staff is currently BREAKING Havoc (It already did, but at the very least psykers were a little more frail back then, now they aren’t, while now dealing even more damage).

This weapon needs to be nerfed seriously, if that requires Psyker as a base to be buffed a little more, then be it, but Inferno Staff can’t stay like this seriously, every Havoc game, Psykers average between 2.5 million and 3 million damage, it’s just insane

Then there’s the other small issue, that it seems that melee stagger is currently either broken, or the buffs to the main classes weren’t considered into action, because a lot more melees can stagger stuff that they couldn’t before

… And this includes the Duelling Sword, which now can stagger every unit with a Heavy Stab (Before this update, it required the DS user to use the Stagger special to stagger enemy units) and this practically overrides nearly every nerf done

I’ll not get into the Parry, because that’s for a DS thread, but this stagger issue also affects some other weapons, which kinda makes Havoc a lot easier than what it should be

Plasma Gunners as a new enemy

It’s clear they’re underbaked, it’s clear they need more time in the oven for ACTUAL real audio and visual feedback to be added

However, I really like how threatening they are, most Havoc runs I lost were because of them! If only they could be made more fair, while keeping how deadly they are, they would be the ideal Havoc unit to have

But overall, Season 4, after a Season with no content at all (lol why did they even make Season 3 happen they added nothing then), has been a really good season so far, and I look forward into still playing it as my main gamemode for these 3 months that the Season will last

… Please fix the server and client crashes however that can’t be still a thing nowadays

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I still loathe the derank system & how we cannot choose what Havoc ranks or maps… It’s just very tiring to me & anti-fun in my mind. I did get 40 a few days ago too, but it just completely sucks & such a slogfest. I think the corrupted stims addition is somewhat cool, although it’s a bit buggy at times, with enemies taking literally 30-40 hits to kill in some situations & should be tweaked a bit. Plasma Gunners are a pretty cool addition as a concept. I do really like it, but yeah, as others have said, they need some kind of trigger warning sound before they enter, like some of the other specials/elites. I actually don’t even mind if they’re hard & negate gold toughness. Might be an unpopular take, but as long as there’s a bit of a warning, I’m good & I think that’s more than fair game.

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Rotten armour, stimms and Tox gas is very unfun when combined. You just have to get lucky and hope the director bugs out and doesn’t spawn much. ive tried it with many good teams and still not managed the h40. Not once did I feel it was our fault though. It’s just the absolute short straw with modifiers in this rotation. Clown cars of nearly immortal crushers from both directions after a gas cloud just begins on these really tight corridor maps like the torrent…is just a big wipe.

I thought there were supposed to be less crushers now they got buffed but doesn’t seem to be the case at all.

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Mostly agree with this take.

My 2 cents is that Rotten Armour + Healing is a terrible grind fest. The health pools become egregious and make the map a slog. I will avoid doing those missions since they are not fun for me and my crew.

And we still hate derank. It’s not a fun mechanic, it makes people avoid pubs, and with the unstable servers/code (DCs, mission aborted, and now crash to desktop) causing failures, it feels like a kick in the face. Get rid of it.

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Fatshark needs to get rid of these buffs stacking. Blue stimmed enemies become invincible in the gas, so there is no way to deal with them except for kiting out of gas, which is not possible in most cases.

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Encountering such an invincible elite team in a narrow terrain can lead to unavoidable defeat. If there is no room to retreat, you have no way to respond. The enemy is completely invincible, which is totally unreasonable.

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To be honest, you can hardly win a healing+rotten armour/stims havoc 40 without inferno staff. That’s the question of game design, nerfing those modifiers should be priority to inferno staff. After that, we can go discussing how to balance psyker’s staffs and melee weapons. It seems only one staff be worth at havoc 40.

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I have always despised purple as it can create true unwinnable fights because one purple guy is sitting behind a wall of armor and you can’t hit him without some form of aoe.

Rotten armor leads to all the maps feeling the same with constant melee armor waves. I’ve seen people actually be ecstatic when dregs finally show up.

I do not find stimms fun at all. I find it hard to tell if an enemy has a stimm or what stimm color they have. 2 out of 4 effects don’t feel all that impactful, yellow brings back getting vaporized by a single pajama shooter, and blue is awful. Maybe if they actually fix the bug with blue it wouldn’t be so bad, but having an invulnerable stagger immune dreg rager walk up to me blows. You can play around Final Toll giving ragers stagger immunity with burst damage and it was VERY clear that an enemy had Final Toll active.

Rotten armor stimms is tedium incarnate. Just a constant stream of tanky armor. I have not used the duelling sword since I did a Gloriana iiiveg true solo with it almost a year ago and now I feel compelled to bring it so that I’m not sitting here swinging away for eons. The damage reduction effects being the main issue.

Also stimms having so many random effects for each color means that I’m having trouble tracking them all. Like it was easy to tell that the red glowing dude had super powers and the orange glowing dude had damage reduction. Now I gotta look a dude dead in the eyes and hope that they aren’t glowing because of pox gas and then god knows what the effect is until I hit him and find out.

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If this is unpopular, then there is no hope for this game.
That’s basic game design: challenge with fair counter-play in the form of telegraphing the threat.

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I really do like that aspect that they negate gold toughness, seeing as it makes you invincible to most attacks. It’s just pretty interesting to me & keeps you on your toes more. It’s a nice trade-off to the combat system & makes it a bit more hazardous. They also nerfed the gold in a sense by having a longer cool down reduction, which I totally agree with, TBH. It was a bit too OP for sure to just spam Chorus/Shout a million times within the duration of a game. That’s really the only thing though, they just need a warning before they spawn, like a pack of 5 in or something, then we’re all good to go.

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Personally, I find the game has become unnecessarily hard and unfair. I think I’m a loyal player.
I thought the game was heading in the right direction, but the difficulty has really increased too much for nothing.
I managed to bring quite a few friends back to the game, but very few stayed after the Auric missions.
Havoc simply turned off a lot of players. For many, it remains the end game to reach.
Now reserved for a super elite.
Forcing you to play in a group, and I don’t know how to select players, but it’s very difficult to join a group after Havoc level 25. Even after reaching higher levels.
With this drastic increase in difficulty and the inability to find a reliable group, we’re already seeing a big drop in the number of players per day…
FS’s choice is focused on satisfying the 500 most hardcore players, leaving the others frustrated and unfun.

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Havoc was originally designed as a mode for top-tier, elite players. In that sense, it’s completely natural, and even necessary, for most players to find it extremely difficult. The reason many players now perceive Auric as “easy” isn’t because their skill has improved, but because features like Gold Toughness, dominant meta builds, and other OP elements have drastically reduced its difficulty.

That said, the current direction of Havoc’s difficulty is fundamentally misguided, even for high-level players. Combined with severe balance issues, this has left a very poor impression overall. The reason for the player decline is obvious. Truly rewarding and challenging gameplay should inspire and attract players, but this is no longer the case.

Even top players can’t freely use their favorite weapons or builds in HiHavoc. The gameplay pattern is almost always the same: spamming Chorus and VoC to spread Gold Toughness, while sitting inside a bubble and endlessly spamming DS. Every Havoc stream looks identical, The health bar is always yellow, the screen filled with Psyker’s blue flames and nothing else.

Players end up repeating the exact same formulaic gameplay over and over again. Who would want to keep playing a game like that? There’s no sense of challenge, no discovery, just a rigid routine dictated by the “correct” builds and patterns.

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I said it in another thread. The gold toughness issue needs to be addressed directly and there’s been plenty of good suggestions. Introducing an enemy which removes it no matter what isn’t the way to do that imo.

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