After a stupendous start,Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2endured a rocky first major update as developer Saber Interactive made sweeping meta changes in a way it wasn’t prepared for. The studio showed its naivety when it comes to balancing a live-service game, and fans immediately revolted.
The gamereceived negative reviews on Steam, vicious criticism online, and rightly so. Its paid cosmetics launched without a flaw – as always seems to be the case with these things – but the other updates were nearly all dramatic flops.
Ivocalised this disappointed sentimentlast week, and suggested a few tweaks Saber could make to get fans back on board. It first needed to roll back the changes like other live-service games do, and second, it needed to offer some kind of compensation. Not necessarily the expensive Dark Angels skins, but aMk VI ‘Beaky’ helmetwould have gone a long way to cheering fans up. People are willing to forgive a lot when they’re given free stuff.
Space Marine 2 Patch 4.1 Has Made Positive Changes
I got a lot of stick for my article detailing the issues with Space Marine 2 – par for the course with this job – because it was written and published before Saber made changes, but many people read it after Saber made changes. This could have been avoided by simply reading the publication date, but that requires too much common sense.
That said, Saber has made good changes, and it’s worth highlighting that. Zoanthropes have immediately been nerfed to oblivion, turningone of the game’s most infuriating enemies(especially if you played a combat class) into a more satisfying challenge. In fact, spawn rates for all Extremis enemies have been reverted to pre-patch 4.0 levels.
The dodge, which felt like it had lost i-frames, was confirmed to have been bugged and has been fixed. You can read thefull patch notesfor every change, but the steps Saber is taking are positive, and the game feels much better as a result. Now it just needs to keep building momentum from here.
What Does This Mean For Space Marine 2 Going Forward?
Space Marine 2 game director Dmitriy Grigorenko explained his reasoning for the changes in the patch notes for Patch 4.1. I’ve quoted him here in full so you can understand all the context to his decision-making process.
“Here was our reasoning before Patch 4.0: When the game came out in September, the Ruthless difficulty win rate hovered around 60%. Weeks later, and with the changes introduced by Patch 3.0, we saw that the same win rate had jumped to over 80%, and we received a lot of feedback stating that the game had become too easy—even at its maximum difficulty (at the time).
“With Patch 4.0, our aim was to tweak enemy spawns to increase the overall number of enemies rather than reverting to buffing their Health. Unfortunately, this had an impact on the easier difficulty levels as well.”
Saber took a big swing in Patch 3.0, and missed the mark. The game got too easy. Saber reverted and overcompensated for those changes in Patch 4.0. The game got too difficult. It’s not the best way of balancing a live-service game, but you’re able to see where the ideas and intentions come from.
The hope for the future is that Saber takes a more delicate touch when balancing the game. Instead of taking big swings and making Zoanthropes into enemies that a Warhound Titan would struggle to take down, it will hopefully balance things more slowly and with more consideration. The developer has made one promise that makes me hopeful in this regard.
What Is The Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2 Test Server?
TheWarhammer 40K: Space Marine 2 test serveris an environment for hardcore players to trial new changes to the game. Saber will test out ideas here before implementing them into the game proper, before you can earn achievements, cosmetics, or ranked points with broken kit.
Lots of live-service games utilise this to great effect, League of Legends probably being the most successful. It’s a good way to test the waters on major changes that could be a little risky in a live environment. Not that the test server won’t be live. It’ll just be slightly less live than the really live one. Like trying out a formation in the League Cup instead of the Champion’s League. I’ve got no comparison for you Americans, sorry.
Hopefully, Saber can get all of its most spicy patches out of its system in the test server, a place where we can simply stop playing and revert to the old patch by playing the actual game when it all gets too much. Saber will note our feedback, like a gargantuan batch of playtesters, and hopefully improve the patch before full release.
This could fix Space Marine 2’s biggest problem. Itscosmetics are great, the IP has never been hotter, and thegameplay is a throwback to years gone by. Saber Interactive needs to keep fans onside by balancing Space Marine 2’s live-service elements perfectly. With a test server at its disposal, it could do just that.
