Introduction to Havoc Q&A - Dev Blog

[FatsharkStrawHat]

Hey Everyone,

A couple of weeks ago, we released an Introduction to Havoc dev blog. Similar to when we released the Introduction to Itemization dev blog over the summer, we’ve received a lot of comments and questions.

For Itemization, we answered these in the form of a couple of Q&A posts, and we thought it would be a great format to use for discussing Havoc, as well.

We’ll compile the most common remaining questions after this post and we’ll answer them in the patch notes when it is released on 3 December.

Something that has changed since the last dev blog is the nomenclature used in this game mode. From now on we will be calling what was previously known as a Havoc Order a Havoc Assignment (aka the current mission a player is assigned), and what was previously known as your Havoc Rank will now be known as your Havoc Clearance Level (the highest Havoc Assignment you’ve cleared - whether it’s your own or through the party finder).

We’d also like to say these are the answers we have NOW. Our plan is to evaluate further after release and read player feedback to the game mode. From there, we can see if anything needs to be adjusted or changed by working with the community. We see this as the start of a long journey and will keep tweaking it just like any other system in the game.

Thank you for your passion for Darktide and we hope we can answer the most burning questions we’ve seen.

Question

Are FS concerned about people alt-F4ing this? For the Auric titles it was just the title but this is an entire game mode.

Answer

“Alt+F4:ing” to circumvent the system is something we’ve taken into account, there are two solutions to this issue, one which is bespoke to Havoc and the other a general solution. If a Havoc Assignment (Havoc Order) owner leaves mid-mission without reconnecting it will automatically count as a loss regardless of the result of the mission for that player. It will also mean that player receives no rewards for the attempt, and it will use up one of the three attempts for that specific Havoc Assignment level.

However, players who remain in the Mission will still be able to complete the mission; if they do, it will count as a win for the remaining players.

ALT+F4:ing to circumvent being “downed” to complete harder penances has been an issue with the Auric penance, and to this end, we’ve introduced more checks when players reconnect.** Players will now respawn back with the health count they had upon leaving, instead of being spawned with a minimal % of hp, and players who ALT+F4 to get around being downed will now spawn back hogtied.

**This is a game wide change coming with Grim Protocols, and it is not exclusive to Havoc.

Question

Do we select the 1-5 difficulty level when playing Havoc or are these missions working on a completely different system, where difficulty is fixed?

Answer

Havoc has its own difficulty structure that is loosely based on the normal difficulties. The way players can choose difficulty is by either starting their Havoc Assignment (Havoc Order) by gathering some friends or by starting a group through the party finder. Likewise if you fancy another mission configuration you can look through the party finder and join one there.

Question

If I complete my Havoc Assignment (Havoc Order) as soon as it’s available, do I have to wait a week before I’m given a new one?

Answer

You can complete as many Havoc Assignments in a row as you like. The only thing that is on a weekly cadence is the weekly reward which is based on the highest Havoc Assignment you were able to complete during the previous week.

Question

I’m confused about how the decay system works for Havoc.

Answer

Yes, let’s clarify the fluid ranking system using the new nomenclature written in the intro of this dev blog. It has changed a bit since the last dev blog after reading feedback.

A player’s Havoc Clearance Level will update on a weekly basis based on the highest Havoc Assignment they completed the previous week (whether it was their own Assignment or played through the Party Finder).

As long as a player is active within the Havoc system during any given week they will not automatically decay at the end of the week. We will however keep an eye on how this system plays out in reality and adjust the rules accordingly.

Question

Can you replay your completed Havoc Assignment levels? Like if I was at level 20 but wanted to bust down to 5, could I do that on my own? Or would I need to find someone with a level 5 Assignment to join?

Answer

You cannot replay depleted / completed missions since the missions are uniquely generated. If you’d like to take a break and play a lower-rank Assignment you can instead find a compatible team on the party finder with the Assignment you like. The same goes for the opposite: if you want to try your hands on an Assignment that is higher than the one you currently own, you can find a team that is playing a higher one and ask to join them.

Question

Is Havoc level character locked like Melk contracts (well trust level is, so…) so we’ll have to level our 4 characters at the same time each week?

Answer

Havoc is not locked to a specific character, “ergo” Havoc is account-wide. With Havoc our intent is for players to adapt to the Havoc Assignment at hand by selecting the correct character, talents, weapons, blessing and curios to best take on the challenge. However, your character still needs to be level 30 to be able to join a Havoc mission.

Question

Will new garb be also character locked then? (Level up operative to gain access to new Moebian cosmetics for that class).

Answer

The cosmetics from Havoc are account-wide. (The same as any other cosmetic in the game.)

Question

What determines the max difficulty that I can currently play?

Answer

As long as a player is level 30 and can find a group that is willing to take them along, a player could in theory play any Assignment level at any time.

Question

Do I get access to a difficulty, based on my current highest completed? Can I access all difficulties <= my current max, or only 1 diff at a time?

Answer

At all times you have access to your own Assignment. If you feel like playing a lower Assignment level the way to do so would be to find a party with a lower Assignment level in the party finder and vice versa if you are looking for a higher Assignment level than what you currently own.

Question

Does my max available mission difficulty get reset every week?

Answer

Your maximum available mission difficulty will move forward with you into the next week. Each week players will get a new Havoc Assignment based on the highest Assignment they completed the previous week.

Question

Do i need to play from diff 1-40 within a single week in order to get to rank 40, unless i just join someone else’s high diff mission?

Answer

No, you will continue the next week at the same level that you left off the previous week. The only thing that is weekly dependent is the weekly reward that is based on the highest-ranked mission you completed during the week.

Question

What happens when my rank drops? Do I lose access to the higher difficulty missions?

Answer

You will always be able to play any Assignment Level that you want to play and are able to find a group that will play with you. Your own Havoc Assignment only dictates which mission you can start yourself. But if you can find a group that is playing a higher-ranked mission that you can join you will be able to do so. Your weekly reward will be based on the highest-ranked mission you have completed. Next week, your Havoc Assignment will be set to the highest mission you have completed the previous week.

Question

To clarify, I’m pretty sure the modifiers at levels 1-40 are fixed for all players (possibly forever?). The only thing different for each player at the same level is the mission and mutators?

Answer

Havoc Assignment’s difficulty is composed of two components, one is the static negative modifiers we apply per Level basis and are additive so each Assignment will include everything from the previous one, the other part is generated per Assignment basis and includes the Mission, Theme, and mutators.

Over time we’ll continue adding more mutators into the pool, but more on that at a later time…

Question

I don’t understand how matchmaking is going to work with this. There is no quickplay, but you can just queue into it? What does that mean for matchmaking? will it try to find 3 other players who are close to your ‘level’?

Answer

Due to the vast amount of permutations in the mode, there will not be any matchmaking in this game mode. Also the difficulty is so significant that you will want to tailor the group more specifically than a matchmaking service could do effectively. This is one of the reasons we created the Group Finder, which we hope will see a significant increase in use with the release of this feature.

Question

Does this mean that it will take at least 40 weeks for the first players to reach Hacoc Clearence Level 40?

Assuming the answer to the previous question is no, (ie, that when you gain or lose an Assigment Level you can immediately attempt your new Assignment Level), if you are demoted from Clearance Level 20 to 19, but then beat Level 19 and move back up to Level 20, will your new Havoc Assignemnt 20 still be the same as it was the first time?

Answer

You will be able to reach Havoc Clearance Level 40 as fast as you and your team can complete the Assignments required to do so. There is no time gating happening when it comes to the number of assignments possible to complete in a given week. When you complete a Havoc Assignment, a new one will be designated to you by Darinda Dukane as soon as you report back to her. The new Assignment will not be the same as the previous one if you go up or down in Assignment level.

Question

I would like to ask what happens to a player’s Havoc rating if they quit before the match completes?

Answer

Leaving before a Havoc mission ends will result in a loss for the player. It will also lock you out of starting another Havoc (only Havoc mission) until the mission has ended. If you are the Assignment holder you will lose one of the attempts at the Havoc Assignment level.

Question

Does this mean your Havoc Clearance Level (“Rank”) will never go down, but that your access to Havoc Assignments will?

Answer

The Havoc “Rank” is in fact highest Clearance Level a player has completed and is not directly linked to the current level of that player’s Havoc Assignment. A player’s Havoc Clearance Level will be displayed.

Question

Will there be a way to see what the current havoc rank of a player is? With rewards on the line for mission completion, I just get the feeling that people not ready for the latter half of havoc ranks will just try and join as many high ranking parties they can, looking to get carried through it.

Answer

You will be able to see the Clearance Levels of all prospective applicants to your group to be able to make the best informed decision.

OK, that is our Q&A! Thank you to everyone who wrote questions on our previous dev blog. As mentioned above, we’ll compile any of the common remaining questions after this post and we’ll include them in the patch notes for Grim Protocols on 3 December.

Thank you for your passion and we look forward to everyone getting their hands on Havoc and the rest of the update.

– The Darktide Team

[Jonn]

@FatsharkStrawHat

If a Havoc Assignment (Havoc Order) owner leaves mid-mission without reconnecting it will automatically count as a loss regardless of the result of the mission for that player

Nice.

@FatsharkStrawHat

we’ve introduced more checks when players reconnect.** Players will now respawn back with the health count they had upon leaving, instead of being spawned with a minimal % of hp, and players who ALT+F4 to get around being downed will now spawn back hogtied.

This is big. Thank you for this change.

[jackjackson]

@FatsharkStrawHat

You can complete as many Havoc Assignments in a row as you like. The only thing that is on a weekly cadence is the weekly reward which is based on the highest Havoc Assignment you were able to complete during the previous week.

Trash time gate mechanic. We destiny 2 now.

@FatsharkStrawHat

As long as a player is active within the Havoc system during any given week they will not automatically decay at the end of the week. We will however keep an eye on how this system plays out in reality and adjust the rules accordingly.

Forcing me to play against my will. Great. Player agency as usual is peak.

@FatsharkStrawHat

If you’d like to take a break and play a lower-rank Assignment you can instead find a compatible team on the party finder with the Assignment you like. The same goes for the opposite: if you want to try your hands on an Assignment that is higher than the one you currently own, you can find a team that is playing a higher one and ask to join them.

Even less player agency. Being forced to find people with the mission I want to play.

[Heretical_Cactus]

@FatsharkStrawHat

and it will use up one of the three attempts for that specific Havoc Assignment level.

And how will it avoid impacting cases where the game crash or netcode fail on its own ?

@FatsharkStrawHat

players who ALT+F4 to get around being downed will now spawn back hogtied.

So is the game going to be able to discern when gamer do so or when not.

[FatsharkStrawHat]

@Heretical_Cactus

And how will it avoid impacting cases where the game crash or netcode fail on its own ?

Players will be able to reconnect back into the mission if the game crashes on its own.

[Flawless]

I am sad to see, that none of the glaring issues have been addressed.

• Having different modifiers per player, seems completely pointless. It serves no purpose, but causes unnecessary problems: it makes regular matchmaking impossible and creates an arbitrary need for premades/party finder.
• Dependency on premades/party finder will very likely make the gamemode less popular than it would be otherwise.
• System might not encourage players to keep playing it for anything outside of difficulty. People might not even bother to play the 1 mission per week that they need in order to prevent rank decay. (this could also be a good thing, because it might increase the ratio of decently skilled players who are there for the difficulty, not for the ressource rewards)
• “Rank hopping” is encouraged and removes the entire progression as soon as people start hosting diff ~40 lobbies (Immediately join hosted diff 40 missions until you get carried through one. You will have the same progress as someone who progressed through all 40 missions one by one.).
• Due to the ability to join lobbies of any mission difficulty, there is no built in learning curve and gatekeeping. This will result in low skilled players infesting high diff lobbies, unless players gatekeep their lobbies with “proof of skill” via penance cosmetics. Low rank players have nothing to lose anyway and they will drag down everyone else.
• If failing 3 times in a row reduces the player’s rank by 1, people would be encouraged to quit out of missions, unless quitting in any way is also counted as failing. (since this is the case, this leads to the next point:)
• If quitting out is counted as failing, those who are trying to progress properly without taking shortcuts, would be punished every time they match with bad players who are trying to jump up to high ranks immediately. It would be reasonable to expect players to be very picky, when it comes to choosing teammates to start the mission with.

[EggFever]

do the devs not care about player agency at all? there is so much randomness i can’t imagine this mode being played for more than a month

[QuintusCassius]

Decaying really looks bad, because it’s “demanding attention” from players. I want to play the game, I really like it, but I have other priorities too; and being “penalized” for not playing enough – is a definitively bad mark in my book.

Melk contracts were, at least, not punishing - you just missed rewards, and you could do just well without them. But when the game takes away something that I gained? It reduce a lot my willingness to gain something ever again.

[FatsharkStrawHat]

@Flawless

Due to the ability to join lobbies of any mission difficulty, there is no built in learning curve and gatekeeping. This will result in low skilled players infesting high diff lobbies, unless players gatekeep their lobbies with “proof of skill” via penance cosmetics.

Players cannot simply join any lobby. They’ll need to have their invite accepted. And players will be able to see their Havoc Clearance Level (e.g. their highest cleared level in Havoc). This means a Level 1 cannot simply join a Level 40 party unless specifically accepted into that party.

[FatsharkStrawHat]

@FatsharkStrawHat

We’d also like to say these are the answers we have NOW. Our plan is to evaluate further after release and read player feedback to the game mode. From there, we can see if anything needs to be adjusted or changed by working with the community. We see this as the start of a long journey and will keep tweaking it just like any other system in the game.

And I would like to highlight this again. We will be seeing how things go after the game mode launches and more people can get their hands on it.

[FatsharkStrawHat]

@Flawless

If failing 3 times in a row reduces the player’s rank by 1, people would be encouraged to quit out of missions, unless quitting in any way is also counted as failing.

Quitting will count as failing:

@FatsharkStrawHat

“Alt+F4:ing” to circumvent the system is something we’ve taken into account, there are two solutions to this issue, one which is bespoke to Havoc and the other a general solution. If a Havoc Assignment (Havoc Order) owner leaves mid-mission without reconnecting it will automatically count as a loss regardless of the result of the mission for that player. It will also mean that player receives no rewards for the attempt, and it will use up one of the three attempts for that specific Havoc Assignment level.

However, players who remain in the Mission will still be able to complete the mission; if they do, it will count as a win for the remaining players.

ALT+F4:ing to circumvent being “downed” to complete harder penances has been an issue with the Auric penance, and to this end, we’ve introduced more checks when players reconnect.** Players will now respawn back with the health count they had upon leaving, instead of being spawned with a minimal % of hp, and players who ALT+F4 to get around being downed will now spawn back hogtied.

**This is a game wide change coming with Grim Protocols, and it is not exclusive to Havoc.

[mustachedYETI52]

That Alt+F4 change is glorious, Ginormous Carcharodon you guys are legends thanks for finding a solution to that issue. I am insanely excited for the Havoc gamemode and new map.

Small side question - Is the Moebian 53rd Steelhead cosmetic for the vet going to be the uniform that our boy from Branx who died in the trailer was wearing? because if so, that would be amazing.

[jackjackson]

@FatsharkStrawHat

Players cannot simply join any lobby. They’ll need to have their invite accepted. And players will be able to see their Havoc Clearance Level (e.g. their highest cleared level in Havoc). This means a Level 1 cannot simply join a Level 40 party unless specifically accepted into that party.

This still means that people can get ferried to rank 40. It doesn’t answer the issue at all.

@FatsharkStrawHat

And I would like to highlight this again. We will be seeing how things go after the game mode launches and more people can get their hands on it.

Don’t take this the wrong way Strawhat but in general when FS is ‘seeing how things go’ it takes 6-12 months for something to happen. This is weaves all over again. I have zero faith.

[Flawless]

@FatsharkStrawHat

They’ll need to have their invite accepted. And players will be able to see their Havoc Clearance Level (e.g. their highest cleared level in Havoc). This means a Level 1 cannot simply join a Level 40 party unless specifically accepted into that party.

But if they are invited, they immediately jump to max havoc lvl upon completing the mission.
Thereby skipping the entire progression that the system is supposed to provide.

As soon as any player gets taxied to any high difficulty (and carried through the mission), their havoc clearance will be high and nobody will be able to tell, what the actual skill lvl of that player would be.

Now there is no telling, if the player actually played through all 40 difficulties, or if they got invited and carried once.

[Flawless]

@FatsharkStrawHat

@Flawless

If failing 3 times in a row reduces the player’s rank by 1, people would be encouraged to quit out of missions, unless quitting in any way is also counted as failing.

Quitting will count as failing:

Ok but

@Flawless

If quitting out is counted as failing, those who are trying to progress properly without taking shortcuts, would be punished every time they match with bad players who are trying to jump up to high ranks immediately. It would be reasonable to expect players to be very picky, when it comes to choosing teammates to start the mission with.

[EggFever]

@FatsharkStrawHat

Players cannot simply join any lobby. They’ll need to have their invite accepted. And players will be able to see their Havoc Clearance Level (e.g. their highest cleared level in Havoc). This means a Level 1 cannot simply join a Level 40 party unless specifically accepted into that party.

Can missions be joined in progress? if so a low skill player could join a high rank havoc mission near the end and get instantly carried to a high havoc clearance level, and people will think they’re better at the game than they are

[Geno]

Any update on the long ago promised solo play?
Seems like it’d be very useful for this mode especially, as there’s no matchmaking.

[Badwin]

This is great! All of my concerns were addressed, and the alt+F4 changes are great.

I’m looking forward to this. I don’t share any of the concerns about “time gating” or “player agency” because I can, if I want, skip straight to some sweaty boiz rank 40 match that someone has cranked out 2 days after Havoc drops. And being able to pick and choose between 4 different maps/modifiers in my player group, while still ascending ranks, sure sounds like as much (if not more) agency as/than we have right now.

Now…can we get a sneak peek on how the Havoc level will be shown for players? Hope I don’t have to redesign Hardtide because of it!

[Amelia]

@FatsharkStrawHat

Does this mean that it will take at least 40 weeks for the first players to reach Hacoc Clearence Level 40?

there is seems to be a minor mistake i believe here “hacoc” instead of “havoc clearence” but no worries.

by the way thank you for the Q&A! that’s good to read in advance for the new havoc mode.
also good to know about the alt f4 changes here as well, that’s healthy for the game and it was some serious exploit. glad it will be addressed.

[Vertraxxx]

@FatsharkStrawHat

Answer

Leaving before a Havoc mission ends will result in a loss for the player. It will also lock you out of starting another Havoc (only Havoc mission) until the mission has ended. If you are the Assignment holder you will lose one of the attempts at the Havoc Assignment level.

Great job! If possible, please consider implementing it not only in Havoc Mode but also in regular missions.
this would greatly reduce the number of players using Alt+F4 to quit.