I’ve heard arguments both ways.
I’ve heard that havoc should require specific classes with roles/weapons to support that role and part of the experience is the coordination required for success.
I’ve heard that there should be freedom of choice, and the frustration from people when it comes to their auric maelstrom capable specs just not feeling viable.
What should it be?
if every character / talent / loadout was on a level playing field having a say in the outcome of the match, i´d say yes since if it works in havoc it literally nukes everything in auric maelstrom and <.
the puss hardened something alone is an artificial enhancer that if countered effectively by a weapon it proves to be in the upper echelons of efficiency.
then again havoc itself is random with its modifiers, sometimes them tentacle heads are a debuff for the enemy if anything.
and here comes the BIG but :
right now its books and bubbles, there´s no “balance” around it.
can it be broken by a premade, sure it can.
but the game should be centered around the random experience for it´s the majority of times you get your team together.
even if i´d know 3 equally skilled people that agreed to play darktide together, right now having ONE scheduled wasn´t happening for 2 weeks.
so if one but not the other has time to spare and wants to hop into the game getting a few good matches, it´s usually randoms.
so final verdict : as long as only 2 talents are a hard counter for enemy attributes, no, havoc isnt “balanced”
can carry the best knife there is, everyone whippin his .44 and i know the outcome.
Hell no.
Artificial number inflation isn’t fun. I’ll take player nerfs across the board before I would want the new balance to be based on Havoc. Just finished a 39 last night, not my idea of fun.
The game doesn’t need to be sped up more than it already is either, which is what would happen if player power is increased further.
There was a boring min-max meta that sweatlords used for Auric, but you could safely ignore it and use 90% of the gear and do fine. What did Fatshark do? They took this stale meta and made it the base for 30+ Havoc. This was a deliberate choice, it’s not a simple mistake or incompetence.
Is there even a single person who thinks this is a good design approach?
Simple answer: no
No
No
And heeeeeeeeell no
Havoc is cool and all but i have no intention to keep playing it after i get the suit because Havoc’s challenge comes from the same map modifiers on every single mission and hp/ammo poverty.
No amount of weapon balance matters when your max hp is 80, you can only get 10 ammo from a crate, and puss hardened shooters are firing non-stop and taking reduced range damage. It’s fine.
it feels like it was their plan when playing it, but don’t think they care about balance anymore, they failed at it and swept it under the rug with the rest
You might as well ask, if all cars should be designed around offroad racing, when the majority of cars drives on paved roads.
It is very obviously a bad idea that can not reasonably be defended.
When you have different use cases that have vastly different demands regarding what is useful and what is not, designing everything around one specific fringe case is obvious insanity.
I hope not, Havoc balance is very specifically custom made to counter the current meta stuff and very constrained as a result. Hope they don’t balance around it. It’s ok as a challenge mode that can be played for a different gameplay feel but it’s not fine as a general balance concept.
As it is, Auric Damnation is a joke difficulty and the only way to remedy that is to bring every weapon and build in line with the non powercreeped stuff. However, if this was done, there would be endless whinge because peopel who have been clearing auric damnations courtesy of dueling sword, bolter and plasmagun will blow a fuse.
So I think the only solution for the current balance situation that they would realistically do for fear of bad PR is taking the scaling talents and some weapons down a little notch, and a new difficulty (a la cataclysm) being introduced so people can’t whinge about their loadouts no longer crutching them through auric damnation (since it still will). This would already be a net loss for the gameplay because I think powercreep has certain design limitations but it’s the reasonable middleground
I like this analogy. It seems like it’s the consensus, but now I wonder if maybe it should be the other way around, perhaps some weapons get brought more in line with others and havoc gets scaled back a bit? Allow some off-road vehicles to feel less pressured on the paved roads?
Imo, auric maelstrom should be the level of challenge around which our arsenal should be balanced around.
Auric malestrom is not exatly easy enough to where anybody can just join in and immediately succeed but it’s also not so far removed in terms of difficulty that you need to bring meta loudouts to win.
It strikes the right balance between providing a challenge but still being approchable enough to allow for “complete” freedom of builds.
Havoc is supposed to be a challenge for those that have mastered DT on a mechanical level. That’s why we have modifiers that don’t just up the intensity but also change the gameplay on a mechanical level such as “fading light”.
Such drastic changes favour certain tools and weaponry more than others.
Havoc is not so insanely hard and unapprochable that you have to bring the meta to win but you are making havoc unproportionally harder for yourself if you don’t bring havoc-meta loadouts.
Havoc has it’s own meta and shouldn’t be used as a baseline for balance. I don’t really see any good arguments for the opposite here.
to the point of not having the chance to approach in the first place as things stand now.
this should be a major adjustment for fatshark once the holidays are handled.
…next week™
Yes and “no, kinda”
Havoc seems to have been designed in a way of: “what are all the mechanics which make the game easier? Alright, havoc removes all of those, easy. Challenge mode created.”
Which is why certain tools are heavily favoured such as bubble and infinite cleave weaponry. Tools which counter the absense of those mechanics the best.
You can still win without partaking in that meta but you need to be so much better that it doesn’t apply to very many people. Not having bubble or chorus makes it so that a single bad push or a single second without cover could end your run.
So yeah, why would you make it that much harder for yourself?
Then again, it is supposed to be a challenge mode for the highest level. Those will always have a rather strict meta. It is what it is.
I would go so far as to say it probably applies to less than 5% of the playerbase.
Even if we assume my guess is too conservative/liberal/whatever, the mode itself isn’t really fun enough to want to try using sub-optimal choices.
Kinda feels how it felt to fight Radahn the second time around in Elden Ring. I still did it solo, but that was after I said screw it after trying 50 times and ran lance and shield for literally the first time ever and then it became a cakewalk. Not really fun.
Tying that back into what you said about strict meta, that just feels like a result of the overall design not catering to more than one playstyle (i.e. boosting numbers rather than programming better AI).
Whatever the actual number may be, you’re absolutely right. It applies to a very smal number of players.
The mode doesn’t exactly ensentivise you to try non-meta things out.
Whether that’s actually a problem is a different question.
I personally don’t see it as that big of a problem but that’s likely the less popular view.
Havoc would greatly benefit from having more than one set of modifiers that change the game as much as fading light + all the hidden modifiers.
I wouldn’t know what it would have to be to provide a similar but different challenge but it should exist 
weapons and abilities should be actually balanced and the rest of the game redesigned around them
i get the overall “play it safe” approach, yet personally, darktide IS ogryn.
no other character gives me the vibe i’m going for nor does the playstyle appeal to me overall.
got a vet fully kitted out, but lost interest in the long run.
zealot sits at around 16 or so, wasnt my cup of tea either.
could i make zealot work mechanically, sure why not.
but play something i dont really enjoy just to “play”, like saying i hate soccer but what the heck i need to play cause hockey isnt popular.
doesnt change the fact i dont enjoy the experience 
but yeah in the meantime it is what it is.
got limited game time, no premade… seems like havoc isnt gonna get me put another 1000k hours into it.
I do hope that they bring ogryn to relevance. There are plenty of people that enjoy ogryn the most and to have the new mode release to “ogryn doesn’t really help here” sucks.
the sheer scope of the gap between being able to clutch / carry auric maelstroms as a warmup on weekdays and being a benchwarmer for the new “hit sheet” is mindboggling to say the least.
kinda image this finnish sniper from ww2 racking up an impressive number of kills being dropped into modern warfare drone combat.
his skills didnt vanish over night, his tools just gotten obsolete 
it’s weird to think about, but isn’t there overlap?
people saying weapons shouldn’t be balanced around havoc, should archtypes???