The Auric Playerbase has received its recognition of grievances, no more cheesing Auric Storm Survivor, and Havoc is hard coded to abate this as well
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Group finder and vetting your team will be a big part of this. This feels tailored for all of the die hardcore players as asked for by Auric Maelstrom enjoyers. Its positive in direction, something most players may aspire to. Interested in playing as well, I have played many Auric Maelstroms with success (not necessarily without dying once after a few missions) lol (win much, lose some). Must admit, sometimes feel like a Saint of the Imperium, sometimes feel like the Steelhead with loaded diaper 
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Strawhat is a dev confirmed.
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Balancing changes would be ideal. It sounds like we are only going to be further inventivized into gold toughness shout spam and other cheese tactics
Also, forcing players into premades and forcing the group finder sounds like an awful experience that might kill the mode
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My guess here is that they’re going to try to please both sides by using the negative modifiers to reign in OP stuff in Havoc mode while letting them mostly slide outside of Havoc mode to “not ruin peoples’ fun”.
Like I wouldn’t be surprised to see massively increased ability cooldown timers as a Havoc modifier, reduced crit chance, increased enemy hitmass etc.
Not commenting on whether this is a good or bad approach but that’s the vibes I’m getting here. I do worry slightly that it gives them an out to not balance the main game, especially if Havoc ends up having little staying power.
Edit: guess this is kind of a reply to @Zoralink as well
2nd edit: The mention of curio perks makes me think they’ll probably leverage curse as a negative modifier too so curse resist stonks go up.
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If that’s the route they take, the mode can kindly die so we can get a Chaos Wastes equivalent instead.
I’m pretty much already mentally checked out of it with the garbage weekly rank decay system and whatnot, if they rely on trying to achieve balance with the stacking negative modifiers (which is also a system I despise) then it’s likely just going to result in making meta even more important by damaging any off meta build. EG: In that crit example that just forces you into the crit heavy weapons even harder if you’re running a crit zealot or what have you. Or just ruins the build’s viability in general.
To be blunt, I do not trust them to handle balancing 40 levels of negative modifiers well at all when the game’s balance is already screwy and has been for a long time.
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TBC neither do I. Just wanted to float the theory really, I’ll be curious to see how its handled.
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Unless there are new objectives that force the group to split up, and which require every single player to perform a crazy individual skillcheck, how is that gonna happen?
I guess you would have to disable invis abilities and the most mobile weapons as well.
And of course, it would be impossible to beat for any console player.
I have a question, and I hope that the answer will be “Yes”.
If someone leave while being dead / down / hogtied, will the bot be hogtied also?
And what happen if someone dead (so hogtied) leave and that someone join the party? I hope he won’t reappear with minimal HP.
Can you share some of the modifiers?
Cuz if there are ones that buff ranged enemies - either spawn, or dmg or resistance - or all of these.
Then I am not touching havoc even if you paid me. Thats not difficulty, thats a chore and meta build forcing.
Yes we are strong, but the difference between top 2 weapons per class - and the rest is is easily 60% dmg on the end screen
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That’s my fear. This mode will encourage OP weapons/builds, and nerfing them won’t be possible because the Havoc players will always oppose it.
As a result, for a game mode designed for 1% of the players, the entire player base will have to endure the choices made to maintain a mode that only a few people might play (let’s see how it turns out…).
As I said in another thread, if Havoc at least allows regular games to be free of rushers and players who think the game is too easy and only use OP weapons, then this mode could at least make my missions more enjoyable.
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The more info I get about this mode, the more I have a feeling this mode will get abandoned much like weaves did, especially since there’s no quickplay option.
I think FS should of made Chaos Wastes for DT, that would be a lot better, everyone loves Chaos Wastes in VT2, and almost everyone hated weaves.
Anyway, I guess we’ll see how Havoc mode turns out in live.
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Not really.
Randomness…
Disgusting!
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i agree that without any balance adjustments, the higher levels of havoc would obviously be filled with OP weapons and meta builds. what’s the point of a party where everyone only uses DS and boltguns? what’s fun about zealots spamming chorus all the time?
right now, the performance gap between op and other weapons is too wide, and even if you match with random players through the party finder, players aiming for the highest levels of havoc might end up forcing others to use OP gear or disband the party if they don’t.
at the very least, they should adjust OP weapons and certain skills (like abilities that can be spammed) and give some buffs to weapons that are barely used.
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My main concern is the rewards this mode is bringing. It should encourage only those want the challenge vs those seeking material rewards otherwise it may cause some problems.
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I’m trying not to think about Havoc too much until I see it…
But I can’t help but make comparison to Weaves in terms of what it’s trying to do, and I can’t help but feel like it’s effort that could’ve been spent elsewhere on the design.
Weaves was DESIGNED around a “challenge ladder” with public rankings, presumably under the notion that a ladder and leaderboard would drive more player retention and in particular attract more competitively minded players that would want to regularly put in a lot of hours to get on top of the ladder.
Weaves FAILED for a number of reasons, including being paywalled behind DLC, being part of a DLC that wasn’t well-received overall, it didn’t allow for bots (solo’ing got real rough/impossible pretty quick), had a clunky progression system, and silo’d item progression. On top of that, the competitive angle of weaves didn’t create a very cooperative vibe. So it was a mod relegated mostly to small numbers of pre-made groups.
Havoc mode appears designed around the same principles to drive engagement - public rankings, climbing the ladder, need to keep playing to keep your ranking up, etc. I’m not sure the changes proposed to Havoc mode address many of the reasons it failed other than the fact that it’s a free update.
Even more so, I worry that the structure of Havoc mode and having penances/rewards tied to that benefit your account overall is going to ramp up the competitive vibe beyond even what the the mode would otherwise do without external rewards. Seems like a bad combination of factors that might lead to a similar “failed” outcome.
And I cant help but think this: No where is the community asking for this type of competitive ladder system. We’ve asked for more difficulty options/choices, we’ve asked to be able to define mission parameters to fine-tune difficulty better, and if given the choice between a weaves-like system or a chaos waste-like system, I’d bet that nearly 100% of VT2 vets would ask for Chaos Wastes.
So this whole new game mode is just a bit baffling in its inception.
@FatsharkStrawHat - You’re relatively new to the FS world, but this sort of thing is exactly what riles up the fans of the series. To elaborate…
…Havoc mode feels like it was dreamed up by someone who thought it was a good idea but did no consultation or engagement with the community at large to understand what they really want. So they start implementing the idea and then when the idea is finally first shared for “feedback” with the community, the reality is that the idea is already way too far developed for any amount of community feedback to inform the design of the system. So then you’re left having to either rework or abandon something 6-12 months later when it doesn’t gain traction.
Havoc mode was announced on Nov 5, and comes out a mere month later on Dec 3. This last month is surely spent entirely bug testing and stress testing the mode and the opportunity for any meaningful design changes or feedback was already long past by the Nov 5 announcement.
Kindly share this with management 
Thanks!
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I’ve grabbed all the feedback from this thread and a few others up to this point now!
Including what you just added, @Mezmorki !
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Thanks!
I of course will try out Havoc mode, and I’d be happy to be proven wrong.
I still have nightmares around the toxicity of Overwatch ranked play and the finger-pointing that ensures when you’re own progress up a ladder is tied to the performance of others. I worry about that in Havoc.
If I can get a group of people I know together to play and rank up, I imagine the experience will be pretty solid, but I don’t see it being a very sustainable game mode.
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I don’t really get this; Havoc doesn’t read like a competitive ladder system to me. It seems to just be a challenge mode with 40 levels of compounding difficulty. As far as we know, there’s no leaderboard and no scoring system. If you finish an H40, your level is H40. There’s no competing in or between teams.
I’m not super familiar with Weaves because I bounced off of them hard. My friend group wasn’t interested in the entry price (I was usually the one to buy the map packs for us all to enjoy), a complete reset of power, nor the difficulty. And I wasn’t interested in joining randoms, because my experience with randos in VT2 was mostly negative (poor connections and rage quitters), to play weird timed kill fests.
But since Havoc was announced, I’ve dabbled a bit in Weaves and I’ve been reading up on them. And the more I see of Weaves, the less I see of Weaves in Havoc. Here’s a thread with a few different views from seasoned players.
In Weaves, progression is essentially reset. In Havoc, we can take in our own characters and kit.
In Weaves, we play a timed kill-a-thon in a small piece of a level. In Havoc, we play a normal mission. The Weave experience feels so different from a normal VT2 match, and the timer just has the totally wrong vibe imo.
In Weaves, presumably because it’s meant to be an arcadey score-attack leaderboard-driven experience, each level is static…spawns are static. Havoc has dynamic spawns on top of the randomized mission/modifier setup.
In Weaves Quickplay, you choose a difficulty level. Sounds like Havoc won’t have difficulty levels.
I guess we’ll see when Havoc drops in a week or so. But it just doesn’t seem like the swing-and-a-miss that I still feel Weaves is (because of all of the quirks listed above).
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