Warhammer 40000: Space Marine 2 rolls back difficulty changes that made fighting xenos "intense and stressful"

The developers of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 have released an update to the third-person shooter that reverts a lot of tough difficulty changes made in a previous patch. Turns out upping the spawn rate of the vicious Tyrannid baddies across all difficulty modes was not welcome among the meathead murder boys of the Imperium. And this change wasn't the only one that caused enough ructions to justify hasty recalibrations from Saber Interactive.

Last week, patch 4.0 for the action game introduced a "lethal" difficulty mode alongside a new Operations map (the shooter's replayable co-op multiplayer jaunts). It also created a modifier that forced players to stay close to one another, or face swift annihilation. By universally increasing the number of spawning enemies to bump up the hardcore difficulty settings, they also made all lower difficulties tougher. The new difficulty setting was meant to be punishing, but even at the time Saber were unsure about the changes they were implementing.

"Overall these changes are going to make Operations mode harder, but it is difficult to measure by how much," they said in the previous patch notes. "We will continue to monitor those changes and will continue to adjust the balance of Operations mode. This is not the last change."

They were not wrong to be wary. Following the patch, some players were annoyed enough to leave the gamer equivalent of dog poo in a bag on a doorstep, with over 2700 stinky Steam reviews piling up within a week of the patch hitting the game (compared to approximately 340 negative reviews the week before the patch). The general feeling was that Operations had become more frustrating, even on easier difficulties.

Today, the devs have rejigged things. In the notes for Patch 4.1, the developer sets out their reasoning for the previous changes and give details on the roll back. Mainly, that enemy spawn rate has been reduced. But armour has also been increased in "ruthless" difficulty, damage has been increased for bolt guns, and AI soldier buds will now do a lot more damage to bosses. On top of all that, the "tight formation" modifier that made it hard for players to wander far from co-op pals for solo sniping, has been entirely removed. A significant bug that made your roll distance shorter has also been squashed.

"Your feedback made it clear that the game had become more intense and stressful on lower difficulties, and this was never our intention," said game director Dmitriy Grigorenko in a message to players. "As I’ve personally emphasised in interviews, Space Marine 2 is all about the power fantasy, and Patch 4.0 negatively impacted it for many of you. This is why we’re rolling back these changes.

"The key takeaway for me, personally, is that I forgot that once the game comes out, it's no longer a dev's game. It's yours first and foremost."

When I wrote our Space Marine 2 review, my biggest gripe on normal difficulty wasn't the number of enemies per se (although it did sometimes get overwhelming). I just hated the Zoanthropes. These floating ranged attackers buff all other enemies around them and force you to fire into the sky ignoring the busy crowds at ground level. They are insect asshats. But would you believe it, even these are getting addressed in the latest patch.

"Fighting Zoanthropes is often reported as a source of frustration," said Grigorenko. "Alongside the changes to the AI Director, we’re taking away some of their shields’ effectiveness to alleviate some of that frustration."