Space Marine 2’s New Difficulty Is A Ball-Ache, So The Devs Are Changing It

If you have been playing Space Marine 2 recently, you might be aware that the most recent update added a new difficulty mode called “Lethal”, and it’s been pretty controversial.

Well, it seems the devs are pretty clued in to what makes a game fun – because they agree, the modes signature gimmick is not getting adjusted or reworked: It’s being removed entirely.

We've heard your feedback on #SpaceMarine2's 4.0 patch, and 4.1 will implement it tomorrow.

It'll bring key balancing changes: enemy spawns and difficulty tweaks are rolled back, Bolt weapons get buffs and more.

📝 Read our Game Director's notes here: https://t.co/kNxvzmiRhv pic.twitter.com/6bBU1rNk29

— Focus Entertainment (@Focus_entmt) October 23, 2024

To paraphrase myself, the biggest quirk of the Lethal difficulty mode was a new mechanic – known as “Tight Formation” – which I described as:

When playing a mission on Lethal difficulty, a new indicator is shown on your HUD that displays your proximity to your other Space Marine pals – and if you stray too far away, you can no longer restore armour from dispatching beasties in spectacular fashion.

It was a system that seemed like a cool way to encourage a unique dynamic in teamplay – but it ended up making some classes borderline unplayable, and most team comps became an awkward huddle throughout a mission.

So, it is going bye-bye – meaning the challenge of the new difficulty will instead come from the terrifying numbers of beasties instead. According to Game Director Dmitriy Grigorenko:

Before anything else, let us clarify our reasoning for the introduction of this mechanic. As we worked on adding a new difficulty tier, we needed to make sure this new challenge was meaningful and interesting. With “Tight Formation”, our objective was to add a new layer of challenge for our most skilled players by adding horizontal progression rather than just vertical progression (i.e., dealing more damage to ever stronger enemies). This game is about the power fantasy, and enemies that take dozens of melee hits break it. Thus the challenge needed to come from other sources.
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This system was also designed as a first step towards the introduction of gameplay modifiers down the line, both negative and positive—something World War Z players will be familiar with—but your feedback showed that the proximity requirements felt too restrictive. Classes like Assault and Vanguard felt especially penalised as playing them effectively requires a certain freedom of movement.
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As a result, we’re removing the system entirely and will continue to work on modifiers until they’re ready. We will continue to monitor your feedback after the deployment of Patch 4.1 to make sure Lethal difficulty feels as challenging and rewarding as it should.

So sure, there was an intention here for the added difficulty mechanic to change the regular gameplay dynamic – but it fizzled. It’s great to see the open discussion on where it came from, and even more exciting to see the casual reveal of upcoming gameplay modifiers as a way to keep the game fresh. Neat.

There are other general fixes within the notes – including an overall buff to Bolter weapons in the game – so if you are interested, you should absolutely scoot on over to the Focus Community Forums to investigate the whole list.

For many, this now means that the Lethal difficulty is a great deal more agreeable to regular team compositions – and that is a good thing.

Did you dip your toe into Lethal before it was changed? How did you feel about standing so close to your mates? Let us know in the comments or on social media.