Havoc40 gameplay intensity is great, but the Havoc difficulty modifiers exacerbate the balance issues...and lower playstyle variety

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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TL;DR - Havoc “ruined” Auric for me…but I’m sick and tired of seeing DS Mk IV, plasma bois, inferno bubble psykers and Rumbler Ogryns in pub Havoc games, and yes it is all Fatshark’s fault :grin:

Context:
“Emperor’s Fading Light” - lowers overall HP and toughness values, heavily favouring Ogryn as a result. Combined with how bad gunner spam can be (it is common to enter a new area / arena which is FULL of elite gunners, this turns the Tide gameplay into Corner-Peek-Tide. You end up camping corners in attempt to snipe off individual gunners, before you can go back to the actual game. If you don’t, you get shredded in 2 seconds, sliding or not. Enemy AI is also pretty basic, its pure wallhack at times. Enemy remains aware of your position even after you move behind cover and often attempts to shoot you through walls. This is one of the reasons why the Havoc stale “meta” is basically golden toughness and psyker dome spam, all enabled by broken ability cooldown reduction talents.

“The Final Toll” - enemies ignore stagger. This undermines one of the basic combat mechanics and makes weapons which depend on stagger for mixed horde control even worse. At the same time over-tuned high dps / armour pen weapons, often combo’ed with excessive mobility stats become even more desirable.

“Rampaging Enemies” - enemy gain extra damage resistance.
“Encroaching Garden” modifier introduces enemies that heal nearby allies.

“Rampaging Enemies” especially combined with the “Encroaching Garden” turns games into a slog, unless you run one of the high dps weapons, such as DS Mk IV or II and infinitive cleave, constant damage output Inferno staff. I play Havoc with Healthbar mod enabled on certain elites, and man, the way health regen on enemies work is just broken. The first time I was shocked to see how a Crusher I just damaged regenerated over way over 1000 of its HP IN-BETWEEN my weapon combo swings. “Rampaging Enemies” needs to be rework if it is to stay in the game. HP regen should be far smaller, and taking damage should prevent it from kicking in for a reasonable amount of time.

Even by itself “Rampaging Enemies” break damage breakpoints for a lot of weapons and blitzes. Bolt pistols, thrown knives and Brain Burst suffer here in my experience. This would be funny, if Brain Burst wasn’t the worst Blitz in the game even before Havoc.

Result:

The easiest way to clear Havoc40 at the moment is to play Darkide like a RPG, and that is fairly sad. For me Havoc40 exacerbates the game balance issues, whatever we are talking about how OP some class builds are, or specific weapons. This lowers the playstyle variety, and there is a clear expectation in pub games to run specific builds to compensate for cheesy difficulty modifiers.

Lessons Learnt:

  • after the rework Ogryn feels like story mode game difficulty atm, especially outside Havoc40. In H40, it is the only class with reasonable HP and toughness values
  • Emperor’s Fading Light remains the worst part of the Havoc experience. This results in the golden toughness / bubble dependency, and lowers build variety
  • rework of the zealot talent tree is required. It needs more valid build variety instead of the one “meta” build.
  • certain weapons, blessings and class talents require to be reined in.
  • ability cooldown reduction talents are broken across the board
  • don’t design an end game mode without first addressing glaring issues with certain weapons and class builds
  • don’t design an end game mode around the said broken weapons and class builds
  • don’t add difficulty modifiers (or blessings for that matter) which undermine the game core mechanics like stagger, armour or dodge counter reset (yes, that is stuff like The Final Toll , Uncanny Strike and Agile)
  • don’t mess with the character base stats like HP and toughness values as this affects playstyle variety
  • don’t mess with weapon damage breakpoints as this affects weapon variety

In before: “akhtually we clear Havoc40 regularly without the meta weapon / build options”. Well done, here is your cookie. So we do, even if this is very likely we mange to do it less frequently than some of the tweaked out players in the Tide community. This doesn’t change my observations listed above.

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I purposefully left out some comments about monstrosities and Captains from the main post, not to muddle the water. Chaos Spawn grab is easy to dodge in the Psy-lab, yet in-game it requires dodge sliding. This has been left out in this half broken state for years now.

Captains bug out and can hit you without animation. The sword captain cleave is way too wide and hits you even if you are behind. Ranged captain often ignores you are in melee range, and keeps on firing.

BoN remains the most frustrating boss to fight in tight spaces, and somehow the Psyker Dome bug become a feature with how to deal with it.

Demon Host in its current state which prevents you from being able to fight efficiently…the game would be simply better without it.

Ah yeah, the ritual modifier is extremely buggy, and needs a QA pass. Probably the first one. The Smelter map is especially bad, with “invisible” rituals, or the ritual which starts behind the locked door as you approach the first Corruptor event.

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Havoc’s design is terrible, but fatshark’s inability to cull the meta has made it much worse. Ds plasma/inferno/bolter/flamer would be in every lobby regardless of difficulty because havoc punishes you on the road to 40, and people will carry out whatever discipline they developed to get to that point. Those options need to be toned down in some way, as well as ogryn as a class needs to be severely nerfed

What bothers me the most is that havoc modifiers are largely band-aid solutions to the problem darktide has. Too much aoe stagger/damage? Encroaching garden and final toll. high single target dps or cleave weapons killing elites and horde too fast? Rampaging enemies. People running far ahead to hit triggers then run back through the level? Bulwark horde and rituals.

I rather they just look at why these are huge problems in the game rather than let it run rampant.

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I lean towards the camp who thinks that Havoc difficulty spike and modifiers were designed in response to the broken weapons and builds the playerbase naturally came up with, instead of adjusting the obvious broken outliers FIRST.

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I think Havoc 2.0 is a lot of fun, but I’d love to see more build variety among players who struggle to clear Havoc. A skilled group can run non-meta builds, but when you’re playing with strangers you’re kinda incentivised to bring the best build possible since you don’t know the skill level of your teammates. :face_holding_back_tears:

This topic is so big. You could make a thread for each weapon, ability, and build a class can come up with and discuss why it’s not being used. Here are some examples:

  • Take Ogryn, who’s got really solid weapons and talents, but you still barely see Gun Luggers with Point-Blank Barrage and Stubbers. Why? Here the issue is Darktide’s ammo economy.

  • On the flip-side, a Sharpshooter Veteran with Executioner’s Stance and Lasguns have lots of ammo, but they’re not being used. Why? Because the skill floor is too high and ranged builds in general just get locked into melee combat where they’re weak and can’t shoot. You can’t hide from melee enemies like you can hide from shooters.

  • Infiltrate, an ability that can revive teammates and complete objectives in peace. It’s just not needed for most of the mission. It’s a solution without a problem.

The list goes on.. :slight_smile:

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Yet, somehow, people still die. Havoc 40 people don’t realize that their skill at the game so inflated compared to other player base, that they see ogryn as immortal killing machine, while in fact it’s just got on the level where zealot was(still is) before rework.

True, only i would note that it is more regular trash shooters who are the problem(reapers too), they are the ones who shred. Players can put 30% x 3, gunner resistance on their curious, but it is not working against regular shooters, on top of that, heavy gunners at least visible and even if players have some reason why it is hard to see them, they can at least tag them, which also don’t work with regular trash shooters.

All classes need to have talent tree similar to the one ogryn has now, where all key stones viable, where trash talent’s can be avoided and there’s real variety of builds, where at least 2 out of 3 ultimates viable, but better if all obviosly, where all blitz abilities has a place in any game and can be chosen with any build, which btw currently invalidate some of the blitzes on other classes, because to take blitz, players need to take nodes they don’t want or which straight up useless/worse than alternative.

You complain about game being a slog in one of the modifiers, but you realize that with longer cooldown on ultimates, all games will be way longer, same goes about reinging in weapons. Right now havoc games already take more than 30 min, closer to hour.

They clearly didn’t think about how to balance havoc, used most primitive stuff like, more enemies(which is good for this game), more damage, more corruption, less damage to enemies.

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Not really. I’d argue that those over-tuned options we have available are the reason why Havoc difficulty modifiers have to be so oppressive in the first place. If those options are adjusted, then so should be the Havoc cheese.

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the only thing that makes correcting the mistakes of others that much harder, thus forcing everyone to play it “safe” lest he wants to be the fuggup, is emprahs fading farts.

large enough health/toughness pool lets you play at your own pace/style yet when you’re an artificial glass cannon it forces you to a turtle like approach where not the enemies themselves are the problem but not having conserved enough ressources till the next watering hole.

in normal mode its already a math game whether to let someone croak and pick up later or pay a toughness and health fee to go get him.

in havoc 40 moving forward as a trio or duo, with randoms no less, is a recipe for failure, period.

premades make it work, normal players logging in at random hours get the shaft cause its always a mixed bag.

so yeah, havoc “ruined” maelstrom for me, yet i still (and will) refuse to pick a premade or go through a job interview.
i hit play, spend my time and take my fill.

did so since playing the beta and i dont see no reason to spoil my freedom of choice for reliable content.

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Encroaching Garden is really the only one that is really bad imo. The other 3 all can be dealt with with any weapon, and any build with high enough skill. But Garden? It enforces either using 1 shot weapons (Relic Blade, Pick Axe) or weapons/ults that ignore hit mass (Ogryn Charge, Zealot Flamer, Psyker staffs). If you’re in a tight space fighting an armored group, and 1 Scab Rager in the back is pink you’re just screwed.

Or God forbid a pink captain and a Beast of Nurgle where you don’t have room to kite them away from each other.

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People randomly popping 100-0% within less than one second and typing in the chat, “wtf?” is so common I should make a compilation video at some point. My hypothesis is the trash shooters landing 100% of their burst shots causing this.

As soon as I’m done getting the achievements in this game mode I’m never looking back. And to be honest unless I somehow manage to find a premade I pretty much know I will not put myself through this frustration to get the orange titles.

I made a big mistake not trying for all of that in Havoc 1.0 (thinking all the crashes, bugs, and imbalanced modifiers would be fixed), 2.0 is about 10 times dumber and more frustrating than before. I’ve also never encountered much toxicity in players even going for A.S.S. compared to basically almost every other game in Havoc. I know the negatives always stick louder than the positive experiences but I have to cringe every time a havoc title joins a game now wondering if they’re going to be awful people who let their teammates stay netted on the floor while I have to charge across the room to save them instead.

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Getting deleted, especially by shooters, is likely the biggest issue. As a mostly psyker player its the main reason why bubble is pretty much expected and/or necessary.

I actually prefer to run an electrokinetic staff with venting shriek but it doesn’t have the safety or boss damage required. You get murdered by ranged enemies and don’t have the damage to handle 4 bosses at once, and thats not even that rare in high level havocs.

As other people may or may not have mentioned, getting mobbed by armoured enemies is also an issue. If your build isn’t excellent against armour then thats a big issue.

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i wish darktide had obituaries in its message feed. like quake in 1996 said “X chewed on Y’s boomstick”. darktide doesn’t have to be that creative, only tell one what exactly was the cause of the sudden demise in all the chaos.

as i said a few times, it’s this “job interview” part that’s just too much of a hassle for me, and then demotion as the icing on the cake. if you have a premade (which is what havoc is made for imo), or are happy playing low to mid havocs without caring about rank, then go for it. but since fatshark announced that the maps on rotation will be available at all difficulties, i hope that this will include havoc so it becomes more accessible, while the party finder is still the option for those who want hand picked teams.

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had quite a few of them 40s fold in auric maelstrom like the polish horse riding squad facing german tanks :man_shrugging:

it wasnt even close, nor funny in a way "guys i fugged up, was trying something something sorry "

no, sheer sheep eyed incompetence with no answer to the particular situation between their ears and certainly non the wiser.

most disconnected shortly after anyways and again the simpsons quote for benefiting of their “departure” applied.

now, like every ass-chaser before, most i’m certain picked their braindead carde blanche one trick pony and either bubbled or wololo’ed their way through with a 3 men that were just short of a second psyker or zealot and fed up waiting.

lucky for them, dudes knew their sheet and pulled through, aint much art in a bubble if the rest makes for smooth sailing.

what baffles me is people being “content” with that result, when i personally only take credit for at least equal or superior performance.

did mine with total strangers and full health ogryn to prove my build’s workin.
no bully3 light spam, still did the most boss damage and pulled them out of a pinch in a hairy situation.

of that i can say i “earned” my 40.

still i see no benefit in repeating it weekly, neither content wise nor in relation to time spend/results gotten.

still prefer my solo clutches/carries in auric maelstrom with the 3 stooges if need be, but in the end i can take 100%credit for the result.
not a book/bubble or mandatory one key talent of the flavor of the month.

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This is true. My only criticism is that some regions don’t have a large playerbase to pull from. It often takes a while to get even a random party finder groups going.

I am in a position where I want to do a lot of Havoc stuff, but because I missed the early rush its proving difficult because most people have finished it and moved on.

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I find Maelstrom to be unplayably boring and Havoc is still decent fun; but I am 100% serious in saying that Dreg Stalkers are the most dangerous enemy in the entire mode.

Also you can dodge spawn grab on ping by dodging right and they fixed the sword captain bug; but other than that your points are solid as stone.

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Its the only thing that punishes your mistakes. Take it away and its snooze mode difficulty again.

Nerf the outliers and the playerbase will be forced to git gud or get dead.

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Most of my Havoc runs that have ended prematurely, ended because of 2-3 simultaneous boss spawns. And this is often because of body block of captain shields and BoN in tight spaces.

I think this speaks volumes about power creep, if they need to throw that amount of enemies at us to get us to struggle.

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Sure keep that modifier but revert gunners/reapers/shooters to pre-havoc patch status. That would also make non-havoc less frustrating as well.

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No toughness grace period against ranged attacks is nonsense and the main reason why small shooters are the most dangerous enemies in Havoc. Also unlike elites/specials/bosses small shooters attacks have no sound cues and rely on barely noticeable visual cues so most of the time players lose all toughness + hp from one or a couple of stealthy shooters.

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Generic shooters being the most dangerous enemy type has always been ridiculous to me. We have elites, specials, bosses and somehow a random trooper is the top dog?

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