Hello. I post here only rarely, and indeed haven’t been playing dark tide much in the last 3 months or so, but I have been a player since the second round of beta. Reading some of the discussion around the recent (and sorely needed) balance update, a particular dynamic crystallised in my mind. Something like this:
The intent for high Havoc is ostensibly “Absurd difficulty for the most rarefied of players”. That is to say by extension, not the difficulty the game should be balanced around.
An astonishing number of players feel that high Havoc is where they belong. I’m not going to say that they don’t, but perhaps they shouldn’t expect to win so often as they do, but for certain weapon/build power outliers.
Auric/maelstrom is presumably intended to be the peak for difficulty for average players, otherwise why separate the player pool into different buckets?
So what exactly am I claiming to have realised? Havoc is responsible for part of our long-lived balance woes that are likely to remain entrenched until either
Havoc is nerfed to the point of losing it’s identity
Fatshark make an explicit commitment to not balance the game around Havoc
Havoc goes away
Now I can tell you which of those most likely. As for which one I’d want? Option 2 seems ideal for the largest number of people, although I’d bet there’s a substantial demographic that would be perfectly happy with number 1. Other more nuanced possibilities are also likely to exist, but that’s almost another whole discussion.
Havoc exists. The negative review brigade feel entitled to play on the highest provided difficulty. In some ways FS may struggle to unscrew that pooch.
option 4)
instead of wasting the meager manpower left right and center popping new modes a dime a dozen, put an “under construction” sign at the havoc table, burn it down and rebuild it from scratch.
new enemies, new map behavior patters
(vehicle bombardment to be flanked, aerial assault to be evaded into a tunnel or bunker passageway, floors collapsing at random dropping you into ever worse area conditions like fog,acid,gas,whatever)
same weapon damage as in auric maelstrom
same health for players and enemies
same toughness so no need for wololo and pee on my ankle every few steps.
enemy movement and speed amped up quite a bit, weakspots needs to be hit.
force players to prove their
movement
aim
endurance (dunno if it’d take good players longer than 30-60 min though)
map knowledge
ability to adapt to ever changing obstacles
no “conditions” on a big neon sign up front and fixed but modular generated based on the ease this very 4 players struggle or breeze through.
after that, someone uploads a video of clearing “everything” under x minutes… he’s the
immortalized in darktide godhood
Just to be clear, #2 is already the case, I’m pretty sure. I don’t have time to look it up, so maybe I’m Mandella’ing myself, but I remember FatShark saying right out of the gate when havoc was released that it was the tryhard mode for sweatlords and was not a meaningful factor for balance or design decisions.
I once reached rank 35+ something, earned a black armor set, and I don’t play it anymore. Yes, I’m lazy and don’t want to bother with the party finder, because overall, it wastes plenty of time time than the quickplay button. You can’t take anything “non-standard” at high ranks, as it increases the risk of losing, and that’s deranking, part of the group’s responsibility. But the problem is that Auric is often too easy - maybe the current first step towards balance will shift things in better direction. But Havoc is inconvenient, map-limited, and for the sake of exclusivity, it “holds hostage” a set of modifiers not available in regular play. So it’s not for me (who don’t play this) to judge, but I agree on one thing: 40 should be something almost unrealistic/unfair. Like beating Dark Souls only with your right pinky toe and eyes closed. Deranks should either disappear or be everywhere. Now, a separate society of “Havoc 40” players has formed, who only play this level, risk nothing, and the developers have to take their opinions into account to keep them “happy” and to beat Havoc-40 99% of the time, otherwise they’ll get upset about game balance.
I believe terms like “balance”, “meta” and “skill expression” are part of the vocabulary of people playing Havoc. The same people who care deeply about scoreboards and treat “low-performers” with disdain and insults.
I’m glad there is a Havoc mode to separate them from us.
Since they are the ones complaining about balance, why not balance against Havoc and keep them happy and segregated from the general population?
If you think Fatshark makes ANY balance decisions around Havoc, you are sorely mistaken. Fatshark despises their endgame community. Tryhards and players with high hour counts don’t spend any more money so their current model is just constantly poop out “new” content to bait new purchases of the game and try to get those newer player to buy cosmetics. The “balance” and “gameplay” is at the bottom of their list of priorities.
there’s the added angle that i want to quickplay because the entire game is built around quickplay, but the highest quickplay difficulty is getting powercreeped because of the issues OP outlined, and at this point it’s way too easy for almost anyone with over 20 hours in the game
it really would benefit everyone if they cleared up the balance concepts for havoc and regular and made regular auric sit at “highest difficulty you can beat unless you are a neet and spend 20 hours a day on the game in which case you will play havoc and love it”
The game only begins in havoc, aurics and below are so overbalanced that any mechanic or skill check is just completely ignored with how op every class is right now.
Havoc 40 difficulty is from the front liner holding the wave in the worst spots, or a bad rng. Other than that havoc 40 is pretty easy.
The funny thing about those claiming that Havoc is the root cause of the balance problems is that most of the problems already existed prior to Havoc being in the game.
P13 was a step in power creep, but the patch havoc was introduced into the game was the patch they gigabuffed ogryn, clearly balancing this class around h40.
Every other release and rebalance after this was matching this incredibly high dps and easy toughness, multiple damage resist theme. Fatshark was clearly balancing the game for h40.
Edit: a lot of causal players complained about ogryn prior to this patch because the skill tree only allowed builds based on heavy attacks, there were also some content creators affecting public opinion negatively. Devs misinterpreted this as weakness and buffed both damage and survivability.
They overbuffed this class and every other rework - because other classes got reworked later too - was also matching this power crept level.
I think the buffs that came to the Ogryn was more so dictated from the Ogryn at the time being percieved as much weaker than the other classes. And FS fearing nerfs, buffed the class to “equality”
if anything fatshark should use the momentum, after all the sissies can only review bomb once, and dial it all back to the days of C I VI and I II V E G as the be all, end all.
ogryns issue at this point isnt being unbalanced, his issue is having like 5 weapons total and some of them dont even have marks
the class is the least played probably and i understand why. every time i think it’d be fun to play ogryn some more i realize i already played every weapon ad nauseum and i just close the game
havoc is the reason for the problems persisting, not for them existing. they added havoc to compensate for player power. turns out it’s a bad balance concept because now if you try balancing the game, people who can beat havoc with the op loadouts but not without will be unhappy.
it is the root cause for the balance problems in that way currently, but not the origin of them. or if you want it more aptly put, it stands in the way of addressing the root issue which makes it part of the root issue in my view
