So just a few short days ago, Space Marine 2 players were shown a Post-Launch trailer filled with new and exciting goodies that were on the way, and it seems that people barely had a chance to ask when before that update came a-knocking, because BAM it was already on the way.
#SpaceMarine2's free update just dropped! 🔥
— Focus Entertainment (@Focus_entmt) October 17, 2024
You've been assigned a new PvE mission: Termination. Arm against Kadaku's biggest threat so far and face the Hierophant Bio-Titan. ⚔️
Play now: https://t.co/1RgkjEfvDo pic.twitter.com/3Ul7JMuPDh
Players found their game updating yesterday, with the promise of a big scary new boss to fight and a brand new difficulty – but what they didn’t expect in the patch was some nerfs and balances to the game.
Now, we have all seen what happens when a co-operative shooting experience decides to tweak the formula – Helldivers 2 did a great job showing the scorn of players – and the reaction to Space Marine 2’s news was no different, with a visceral reaction to a small subsection of notes that changed how existing difficulties worked.
Then people discovered the main quirk of the new difficulty.
Ah, and who can forget the traditional review bombing spree:
So what is the beef? What caused this backlash? Well, it is best to start with the patch notes for the update.
To paraphrase the content, these are the main outliers for player dissatisfaction:
Added Lethal difficulty for Operations
- Ammo Crates have limited refills per player.
- Majoris enemies can become enraged and will be more deadly and harder to kill.
- Armour restores from finishers only if you stay close to your battle-brothers.
GAMEPLAY AND BALANCING TWEAKS
- Melee Archetypes: Fencing weapons’ perfect parry window will now have the same duration as balanced weapons but it will start from the first frame of parry animation.
- Melee Perks: Chainsword, Power Fist, Combat Knife charged attacks perks get significant damage increase.
- Basic Auspex Scan: bonus damage on bosses is reduced by 30%.
- Melta Charge: damage to bosses is reduced by 70%.
Enemy Spawn Director PvE:
- Tweaked idle spawns.
- Enemy variety within waves is now less random while enemy variety between waves is bigger.
- Extremis enemies can now spawn with additional enemies.
Difficulty:
- Ruthless: Ammo crates have limited refills per player.
- Ruthless: Player’s armour reduced by 20%.
- Substantial: Player’s armour reduced by 10%
Now, the immediate reactions (and I mean immediate, some of the outcry absolutely happened while the game was still updating) are of course targeting the fact that things got nerfed. Nobody wants to read that their armour has been reduced on higher difficulties, nobody is excited at the thought of having your ammo limited – and players definitely don’t want to hear that the giant mega-grenade now does 70% less damage to bosses. It isn’t a good look.
But in practice, many of these changes have been found to be mostly inconsequential when actually observed in game. In most cases, the changes seem to be targeting the ability to ‘cheese’ some encounters within the game and trivialise a very small subset of content.
To speak from experience, when I read that “Ammo crates have limited refills per player“, my blood chilled a bit. I imagined that the once limitless coffers of bullets would have some silly set of ‘charges’ that meant that three refills would see it exhausted. So my pals suited up and set out to kill a Bio-titan – and discovered that the ammo caches actually have a ton of ammo in them. It isn’t a charge system – the giant ammo boxes legit have a massive reserve that diminishes as your grab from them. Can you extinguish their supply? Sure – but it’s quite generous. Rather than an outright nerf per se, it is more like a mechanical shift to add some stake to using the boxes.
Then we remembered that they reduced player’s armour by 20%. When did we realise this? After we successfully finished a mission and found ourselves wracking our brain for an example of when that nerf felt like a real threat to our fun. Similarly we found that the changes to parrying actually seemed to be rewarding quick reaction speed, rather than making it harder to play the game.
Beyond this, I also took on board the fact that one of my favourite class abilities had been adjusted – the Tactical scan that adds a boost to incoming damage on a target. Specifically, they mentioned that bonus damage on bosses is reduced by 30% – and my position is that this was warranted. The Tactical’s ability to boost damage isn’t good, it is downright silly. I will admit, I wouldn’t want to see it changed any further – and Saber is now in a position where the studio needs to tow the line with what changes they do make.
In fact, there are more and more players coming out over time and making far more rational responses to the changes – and most importantly, differentiating the shift from the Helldivers-esque fiasco people are equating it to:
But, this is where my careful response to the changes ends. Because there is a justifiable problem within the update – and it is the main gimmick of the new difficulty.
So one of the flagship features within this update is the addition of Lethal Difficulty. Allow me to repost the details:
Added Lethal difficulty for Operations
- Ammo Crates have limited refills per player.
- Majoris enemies can become enraged and will be more deadly and harder to kill.
- Armour restores from finishers only if you stay close to your battle-brothers.
The problem is that last point. 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. In concept, this doesn’t sound all that bad – Warhammer 40,000: Darktide has a similar mechanic that encourages people to stay close by.
But in execution, it is causing a ton of friction. The actual radius is laughably small – rather than seemingly encouraging players to remain generously nearby to address threats, it instead wants people to stay huddled awkwardly close. The curiously small radius ends up feeling antithetical to some class designs – For example, a Sniper can no longer stand back to snipe – and actually harms group make ups in favour of fostering meta-group makeups that are wholly designed to deal with this oddity.
The other changes to the difficulty? Awesome. Enraged enemies are a new mechanic to keep an eye out for, being accosted by multiple mini bosses feels epic and encourages strategy.
But constantly invading your brothers personal space to make it through a mission doesn’t feel great, and it is a mechanic in sore need of addressing.
That sure is a lot of words to essentially say ‘Space Marine 2 has a lot of hyperbole going on right now, but here is something that is worth being angry about’ – but I am nothing if not thorough. Really my hope is that the folks at Saber Interactive can cut through the signal to noise ratio and gather intel on the parts of the update that need addressing – because realistically the situation is far less severe than online discourse would have you believe.
The wheels have not fallen off the Space Marine 2 wagon. But one of them is definitely a tad wobbly.
What about you? How have you found the first massive update to the game? Tell us all about it in the comments or on social media.
Known throughout the interwebs simply as M0D3Rn, Ash is bad at video games. An old guard gamer who suffers from being generally opinionated, it comes as no surprise that he is both brutally loyal and yet, fiercely whimsical about all things electronic. On occasion will make a youtube video that actually gets views. Follow him on YouTube @Bad at Video Games
