Probably a twit who thought the old Honor system in WoW was great. The “enjoy your Grand Marshal gear after grinding to the absolutely top of your servers PVP but remember you have to KEEP that rank if you want to use it”. Burn out? More like orbital reentry without a heat shield, parachute, or reverse thrusters. Bet it was pitched as a way to increase “player engagement” too.
And it did alright. Increased their engagement with the “nope, never coming back” button. Classic ObeseTuna move - make one small step towards improvement then immediately throw all progress & good will away in a massive fit of money-grabbing and ego.
It turned the game into a chore for me. I’d fire it up every day to play 1-2 hours. Now I don’t feel like doing the chore, but neither like playing normally until the chore is done.
Been busy this week with Xmas but had an hour spare today so hopped on to try and maintain my 40. Hosted 2 matches and we lost both so…that’s it. I can’t host any more matches. I can only try other people’s 40 matches.
It’s such an absurdly bad design decision that it makes me quite angry.
It’s forcing players to not play the game. Literally.
The simplest fix in the world would make a world of difference - just get rid of the 3 strike demotion and link demotion mechanic to the weekly reset. Play as many times as you like but you get demoted if you don’t complete a mission at your current or higher tier that week. Simples.
Also, players should only ever be promoted by 1 rank at a time. I think this should be a universal rule for havoc. So if a H30 player plays a H40 mission successfully then they rank up to H31 instead of H40. This rule would have made for a much bigger thirst for playing the havoc system.
Essentially playing any game higher than your tier will allow you to rank up 1 (but with bigger rewards for higher rank games completed). It’s such a no brainer as it would stop ability hopping and encourage people to play closer to their skill level and follow their rank structure more carefully. And loads more people would be playing and hosting because they wouldn’t have ranked to max in 1 day.
The more I think of it, I simply cannot fathom how they did not come to this conclusion at the whiteboard stage.
honestly, the way certain classes are “mandatory” right now, it´d have had me skipping havoc altogether.
imagine the pain of finding 39 lobbies with an ogryn, the only class i play and enjoy just to check off that part of having cleared the “hardest” difficulty ?
like the twins hardmode its a one off for me, prove i got what it takes and move on.
as soon as they convert havoc modifiers to auric maelstrom without the demotion crap and rejected shenanigans, i play those multiple times a day just for the kick of it.
but getting my time wasted by people only playing their cookie cutter team composition, nah thanks.
TBF I’ve really enjoyed the matches I’ve played as they’re genuinely challenging. I don’t mind it requiring a fairly strict meta scheme as the rest of the game with auric doesn’t need it. The havoc mode seems to work best with 1 of each archytpe which is actually quite cool. It’s nice when the whole gang is together lol
What I hate is the mission system because it’s designed to discourage play instead of encourage it. It’s so bizarre.
I really enjoy the game mode and the challenge…but I’m not allowed to keep playing it… after 2 attempts!! WHY!!!
“Here is this super challenging mode you all asked for, shame you can’t ever play it because of this naff 3 strike nonsense we implemented”.
My suggestion above would pretty much fix that particular issue over night though.
The artificial difficulty is a tough issue to resolve. I do have some ideas on it but its a whole new discussion
Havoc has been killing my drive for Darktide ever since I started working my way to 25 for that cosmetic. I can’t even imagine being insane enough to try going for 40. Literal misery.
as with twins hardmode the “best approach” is the band aid method, rip it off quick and it hurts less.
same downhill spiral and who can blame people losing interest.
literally 10 minutes ago we finished a match, havoc 34, where the dude in fear of demoting only invited lvl 40 achievers.
cant be mad at the dude, but this is in all its perverse glory the essence of havoc for randoms.
get rid of that damn demotion and people will play.
and its not that the match wasnt fun mind you, peeps did well enough, remarkably even for playing without voice.
but you could hear the weight lifted from the poor guy finally having made it to 35, with true survivors lvl 40…
i mean the “real” 40s sit in discord and their premade, how long can you be picky about a mode played less and less by randoms for reasons stated above?
cosmetics i care little for, a small token/goal was to have the same outfit as my mcfarlane ogryn figure standing vigil near my monitor.
got all i need, dont even use the aquila store cosmetics anymore, its just to cool having the “real” thing with 3d printed accessoires standing nearby.
I just demoted from havoc 22 to havoc 15 and I have no idea how to get back to 20+ unless someone lets me join a 23 or a 25 or something. I dont know how that works unless they can see that ive cleared a 22 even though the highest I ever got was 24. This system is even more ridiculous when you take into account that we have penances associated with assisting 100 players in havocs. So fatshark is telling me if I prioritize assisting players in low level havocs that im just doomed to low level havocs per weekly reset? Yeah I’m just not going to care about this mode beyond penance points until they change this mode to be more enjoyable. Get rid of the demotion mechanic and let me stay at the highest havoc ive cleeared irregardless of anything else im doing within the mode.
Anyone else having issue where complete a havoc. Then it doesn’t update to highest havoc completed for week on the terminal? Example finished a lvl 29 even got the lvl 25 penance but shows lvl 0 completed for the week.
honestly, I don’t even think there should be demotions… rank loss seems really silly imo. Havoc should have been more like some sort of a check box for passing through all the levels. that would have encouraged people to group more than the current system of “i don’t want to host, i don’t want to risk my rank” and “i don’t want to host, i am trying to finish penances for not hosting”
I do not care about demotions from failure at all. Going from 40 to 39 and back is not a big deal. Even while climbing losing only meant a chance for a different map and other modifiers. (The first 100 meters of Gloriana demoted me more than once.)
Getting demoted for not playing a week is dumb as hell. However many levels are too many.
I can also say that I just jumped from 36 to 40 and my highest completed lvl is still at 36. Also did a 38 after and no change. Not like it’s too bothersome but it’s obviously bugged. I feel bad for the chooms that did a sub 20 this week and it’s stuck there.
