The conceptual difference is that when you put rewards on the line, even just titles and a shiny rank, it means people now think they must be able to do it to 100% the game.
If the difficulty is just there with nothing associated, nobody thinks he has to do it to 100% it. If you need it to 100% the game, it gvies the idea that the game must be balanced around gamerdads beating it more credence. If it’s just there, then well, you don’t have to play it. Nothing rewards you for doing so.
I concur that Cata mindsets were very different and people generally even kicked people who made the game too easy via cheesy strats and OP weapons, due to this exact difference of dynamic. For things like Havoc it’s the exact other way around, you won’t even get invited if you don’t abuse meta cheese for the most part.
EDIT: In fact, Cataclysm has more rewards locked behind actually-hard content than Havoc.
In Havoc, there are 3 rewards that require anything more than reaching H25 once: an insignia at 35, a title at 40, and another title for surviving an H35+ without anyone going down. Not even one frame. Every other Havoc reward can be unlocked by playing H1s.
In Cataclysm, there are 4 frames for completing the sets of levels for the various campaigns/DLCs. Gotta clear 13 levels on Cata to get the Helmgart frame, which is far and away the biggest set. Then there are 5 more frames for beating Chaos Wastes on Cata with each class.
lower than their own, sure. it doesn’t help much with ranking up however. ideally you have higher ranked players in your group, for example one of those helpful people who got to 40 already, and iirc you can gain up to 3 ranks now.
however, from what i’ve noticed, many players reject lower or equally ranked players for that reason: it doesn’t help them with going up.
for example @Index and i got from 40 and TS in old havoc to 30 in the new one, and when we set up a party we usually got plenty of much lower level applicants looking for a boost, but barely anyone who we could gain ranks from.
(as “Rank 40 players will not be able to lose a charge through gameplay means at all.”)
so we got into the weird situation of being together in discord with each of use playing his own game at a moment because trying to get into the same higher ranked party together would take even longer than the “job interview” up to that point.
i guess that for whatever fatshark tested in havoc went well because in a premade you have the party already and don’t hang around in the party finder trying to convince others that you’re john warhammer, and after a loss you’re often back to the drawing board.
from your experience i think it works well when one is just trying to assemble a party for fun, but the deranking takes the “play for fun” aspect out of it.
hence the point of the whole discussion: have a harder game where one can use the party finder, but doesn’t have to.
I may be confused, but it seems you are suggesting that if you list your own mission in the party finder that you will want to only accept players who are above your level because you will gain levels from them? Do you mean by convincing them to run their higher missions, rather than yours (which they saw in the PF and joined for)?
And just to be clear: I haven’t argued against a potential 6th difficulty in this thread. I don’t have any fears about “splitting up the player base” or whatever and don’t have any worries about another “normal” difficulty causing further balancing issues.
Barely even remember those cause it’s once and done. I guess the bigger differentiator is the nature of Havoc encouraging you to keep your rank for plasteel every week, so people feel suboptimal if they don’t have a 40 to turn in each week. Aswell as being rewarded for hitting 40 and not dying. Or something along that line, in either case I’ve never been bitched at for bringing off meta on cata and it was generally a far less tryhard environment. I want that back in DT
I think if they threw a price tag on it, like Cata, you’d probably possiblymaaaaybe see a marginal drop in players playing out of their depth for resources/rewards…but less/zero toxicity? I dunno, people are people.
Of course we’ll only ever have anecdotes, but I’d be surprised if anyone attracted to high Havoc is actually trying to get them yummy tubes.
I think the weekly reward does have an effect on peoples investment in playing Havoc, even if it’s not actually something they need. It’s like how a lot of people habitually do their melk weeklies despite not using melk coins for anything whatsoever. Not sure how impactful this dynamic actually is or if it is the pricetag but it does stand to reason they could at least reign in certain mentalities in a hypothetical 6th difficulty via considering deeply how the rewards for it will work
I’d rather have FS balance around Heresy. Damnation would be stacked against the player who is looking for a hardcore challenge. Winning those should not be a given.
Yes, with an asterisk: bake high-intensity modifiers into it and remove high-intensity altogether, and otherwise remain numerically identical to Damnation. A sixth “Auric” difficulty should have been the standard as soon as they introduced intensity modifiers, and there’s no reason to keep them.
I think that so long as they’re unwilling to nerf dueling sword, uncanny strike etc it could have higher HP values on enemies, maybe even should. I think no matter how you adjust density, it just makes dueling swords more valuable by turning it into a speed race to kill 500 crushers. Not sure they could get away with making a new difficulty that has damnation HP values and have it not face the same issue.
Havoc could be the new “quickplay” T6 difficulty. If it had quickplay.
Even if it did have quickplay match making you’ll just get people mass quitting the lobby after careful inspection of talents and weapons of team mates. That’s what derank contributes towards that thought process of ensuring optimum party.
Then won’t need a dedicated T6 for normal mission play.
But if they plan to keep Havoc derank or party - Then next best thing is T6 normal mission for those that do not wish to engage into Havoc ranking. Either way works for me.
I personally think havoc has too many bespoke modifiers and mutators to be a fun replacement for quickplay. It has less maps, less modifiers, worse modifiers (my opinion only) and the hidden modifiers are very brutal for some weapons and builds and restrict build variety as a result. A difficulty 6 concept doesn’t need any of these things to be harder than damnation imo.
If they rebalance Havoc completely to allow quickplay, get rid of deranks, and change these modifiers to only kick in towards the top, AND have all maps, then I would welcome it though. I just think that’s very unlikely. They won’t even get rid of deranks despite universally negative feedback. And they doubled down on not letting it have all maps.
I think Havoc has the same issue as weaves has which is that it’s just too different so it’s not the same appeal as quickplay. VT2 solved this by introducing cataclysm difficulty in the same DLC. Nobody suggested that Cata was superfluous because we have weaves. I’m inclined to think the same way about Havoc, it’s not actually a replacement for quickplay, it’s a new gamemode that’s approached way differently.