And furthermore, if/when I skip a few weeks, I’m not going to try to jump into someone’s level 40. I’m going to play all the missions I skipped because I enjoy the spice of the modifiers and will relish completing an increasingly-difficult series of missions that I can’t get on the regular board.
(…unless it’s not fun!)
Is what the other post said, and this one doesn’t seem to clarify further. It makes no mention of that changing on a per week basis, only your own actual assignment does. Meaning that for all the info we’re given now, they did not confirm any way to tell if someone hasn’t played Havoc in weeks. The decay is just for the personal progression, just so you lose personal progress and have to feel bad about not playing weekly, unless it works in a way not explained in this whole info jungle.
Hrm yea, that does suggest that once you’re a 40, you’re always a 40. Kinda makes the rank mean even less. Not sure that really reinforces the idea that the rank decay is meant to make people feel bad…no one will ever know! Just queue up for another 40! Or help some newbies steamroll a 1. Or just don’t get the reward for the week or whatever.
Me, after a couple of weeks off, I’ll be happy to have a couple of extra top-tier missions I can start on my own. That means getting to choose my team, if playing through the Party Finder, or having more choice over the maps/modifiers if playing with my friends.
Well it’s hyperbole but as I said, I see no other design intent here other than “play weekly, or else”. If the “or else” doesn’t bite on you that’s good, probably won’t bite on me either, but I find the design itself questionable and backwards and especially reeking of live service retention tactics, which so far have all panned out to be bad for the game itself.
Dude, no matter how you phrase it you’re okaying the dopamine hit of miniature ‘rewards/successes’ that they’re preying on.
You’re just phrasing the manipulation in a nicer way because you don’t care about it. That doesn’t make it not manipulative. It’s great you’re one of the people that they are glad to have around for it, but it doesn’t really change what it is.
Weeklies/dailies are one of the most basic forms of player retention methods there are.
The game costs nothing to play after purchase, and all updates are free. I never said that building systems that reward regular play wasn’t about “retention.” I just happen to think it’s a positive thing to have small bits of progression to work towards, even after hundreds of hours of play.
And truly, making a great core loop is the most insidious “player retention mechanic” ever devised.
Nice Havoc rank you’ve got here, would be a shame if something happened to it
Havoc is intended to be significantly more fun and challenging than the normal mission board for bored endgame players, so if everything goes according to plan they won’t have a reason to go back to Maelstroms.
The weekly reward chest could be to get everyone else interested in trying it, but I can’t speak for Fatshark.
That’s disingenuous at best.
I guess we’re going to pretend like the predatory FOMO MTX shop doesn’t exist, right? Yes, it’s optional but acting like they’re continuing to support the game for free is… Blech. Just intellectually dishonest.
And it’s just ignoring a huge aspect of said design intents if you don’t recognize that part of the retention is keeping players around to populate games for the people who do spend in the first place. Part of player retention is indirectly keeping other players around to see the money the whales and dolphins spend.
Minus the part where it regresses and ultimately isn’t any form of progression if you achieve rank 40. It’s just a time sink preying on people not wanting to ‘lose’ that rank/reward and to do a match to maintain the weekly rewards. That’s absurdly sugar coated.
Getting snarky because I stopped dancing around the truth of the matter is just fishing. You’re close to the truth of the matter though, ultimately yes, your mode should be able to stand on its own without smacking people down if they don’t play every week. I play Chaos Wastes because it’s fun for example, not because of any reward. I’m sitting on hundreds of piles of chests in VT2.
Already addressed that in my earlier post. And I mean, it’s really obvious if you just stop to think about it for but a moment. There’s a reason all rank-equivalent modes in every game have some form of decay, whether weekly or seasonal or whatever. Even MMO’s achieve the same end result by adding dungeon & item tier levels, or staggered content.
So once more:
Anyway.
Considering how blatantly obvious all of the above is, there’s no need for this pretense & misdirection when your desires here are so transparent: You want an easy & permanent access to the content for your own sake, and care nothing for the cost to the community. That’s fine, some people are like that, sadly. So don’t dance around with words, just say it as it is.
In a 40-tiered rank system, a decay of 1 rank per inactive week is EXTREMELY lenient. Even a full month away would only reduce your rank by 3.
Hey, all! I’m jumping in to say we’re getting a bit too argumentative in the thread. I don’t want to close a thread for discussion on such a big topic, so please try to keep it civil and don’t make it personal. Thank you!!
To be completely honest, I’ve just been buying up RNG Weapon drops from Melk. I either convert them into Weapon Mastery or Crafting Resources, depending on whether I’ve already Mastered that Weapon’s Family or not.
Copy, Wilco. Sorry.
So about the Havoc, can you confirm that as for today:
We start at lvl1 assignment (all of us) which have to be completed by the end of a week (min. requirement for progress).
Some folks who’ll do more Havoc’s missions can reach lvl 40 within a day, weekly progress is just for additional rewards.
I believe I’ve saw something about having 3 attempts per week and it bothers me… Is it just malignant influence of warp on my brain or was there something with “3” in one of the previous commlinks?
ERRATUM:
Thanks @Gideon404
Fail a mission 3 times and you have to do a mission below it
Yes, correct. You can go as far as you’re able to in a week, from Lvl. 1-40 if you have the time and ability. At the end of the week, you’ll get a cache based on your weekly progress.
As Gideon said below, you have 3 attempts at each Havoc Assignment to pass. If you fail 3x at the Havoc Assignment Level, you go down (1) level. And then you have 3 attempts to pass that level, etc.
If I were to beat the level 40 assignment, is the weekly reward locked in and then I can lose as much as I want, or do i risk the tip top loot if I’m masochistic (and chatismatic 
) enough to drag 3 others down a rank or two or three.
the only thing for me, is that havoc may forces certain modifiers that people may not like, e.g. lights out. where in the mission board you can somewhat decide/skip. unless havoc game mode you may also decide what modifier/map to play, which would be cool, beside the mutators of havoc itself.
If the game mode it is still fun as in challenging yea, but the fact havoc is only available through party finder, people will less be interested over time, especially once everyone will have got all frame/title/cosmetic from that game mode, they will rather go in auric board cause where most the people will be.
but I guess as devs said, when they will put new mutators etc, there be may another reason to to go in havoc again, especially if they would expand frames/cosmetics adding more havoc levels e.g. like in VT2 til Havoc 160 with new cosmetics/frames
and maybe new dedicated maps specific for havoc
will bots exist in havoc? i cant imagine them living more than 30 seconds on max difficulty.
if there are no bots how will the health of players who join mid mission be decided? can we actually join mid havoc mission?
Exactly! Help! I’m being retained in the game I love to play by getting a new mode and rewards for playing it!
No, it’s true that the game costs nothing to play after purchase. And, aside from some issues I have with the shop (I wish the most expensive things were 10-20% cheaper so they’d be in line with the thrice-yearly paid cosmetics dropped in VT2 and I wish the shop didn’t rotate), I actually think a cosmetic-only shop is an ethically excellent way to monetize the development and servers for a game that’s meant to grow for years.
