Combat design failures - not true to the lore mechanics, tries to copy-paste from other games too much

[Rastlaff]

As a lvl 21 Assault I can tell you that the game’s combat design is not well thought-out. Mainly because developers, as always, decided it's a good idea to mix in mechanics from other games to obtain that perfect food recipe ! Bah ... sadly no. And Mr Julian Gherity with Star Wars Outlaws is probably still asking why his game is having such a bad design. So let's go back to Space Marines 2 because it's not good either with its difficulty, though, in the very opposite way. They are using Vermintide mechanics mixed with Doom (latest iteration) ones. When you've got a mechanic which is supposed to fill up your ARMOR by using "Doom Glory Kill" then you need to be sure the speed and the flow of the combat are good enough to give your players the ability to maintain that constant ARMOR REGEN.

And it's not working because I think the way we move is bad ... we are marines in heavy armor and to be honest when doing Inferno difficulty levels seeing our marines rolling & rolling & rolling as an evade move feels ridiculous and is a proof of a bad combat design and I will say it again here : GO AWAY FROM THAT STUPID ROLLING ANIMATION IN 2024 !

Do you think “electrically-motivated fiber bundles made of adamantium & plasteel plates, encased in a ceramite ablative layer” armor is set to let you roll like you are in a thief suit ? Are those devs even serious when they do things like that ? Shouldn’t it be something more like in Death Stranding or Calisto Protocol evades ? Something to let you feel that “tank armor” style evade.
https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Power_Armour

So basically few are the people to get the purple data from Inferno missions. And the troubles are not ending here. For keyboard and mouse it's a nightmare starting with the necessity to skip the movies with RETURN while we have the way to skip the starting screen with SPACE !!! Devs please wake up ??? Maybe.

Sticking so close to console controller design is not good for KB&M because of TAP & LONG PRESS actions which are set for consoles and because sharing the same key for different actions, once more, for the keyboard is wrong and proves these devs never QA playtested their game with those inputs (Assault dash/jump pack, Bulwark parry/shield). I've got a Tartarus V2 Pro and few are the games allowing me to use it to its full potential.

Look at Aliens vs. Predator and Warhammer 40k: Space Marine (the first one) how they handle jumping ability:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dn5u9FuQwD4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVqH_t3IeS0

In many games before when a similar jump ability was given to the players they could activate it with a specific key and then choose with the mouse the range of the jump / the location of the landing zone. As simple as that. Anyway, it’s my personal choice not to use controllers outside of the platform games mainly because I don’t want to have an Y axis being stuck like I’m in a tank turret, I also want to be able to target freely what is under my reticle not having a stupid aim-assist to do it for me.

So once more, devs using a license from a well-known universe are not able to translate its lore and mechanics into their game.

[NeonBone$$]

Bro assault is garbage this is the answer

[wasteland_ghost]

Originally posted by NeonBone$$:

Bro assault is garbage this is the answer

Then Bulwark is garbage and everything is garbage.

Don't just parrot youtubers, the fact that some classes are more survivable than the others because they can spam melta or whatever is said to be "the absolute best weapon" is not justifying the failures of the system.

Vermintide is hard for the right reasons. Space Marines 2 is hard for the wrong reasons. In fact it's not hard, it's clunky. And randoms are not helping - it's sometimes easier to go with bots than trying to deal with waves brought by someone running forward and failing to stop the call.

Wait a bit for more people leveling up and trying harder difficulties and you will see more complaints, because right now it's not that many which is visible by how long it takes to fill higher level lobbies.

Could we ask the devs to stream a mission using KB&M on PC with randoms and on Substantial or higher? For the full fun of the experience...

[Frosty]

In pvp it is always fun to see an assault fly up to smash you, but gets blown out of the sky... Assault is the weakest class in the game.

[Grim@FU_BARRACUDA]

"And it's not working because I think the way we move is bad ... we are marines in heavy armor and to be honest when doing Inferno difficulty levels seeing our marines rolling & rolling & rolling as an evade move feels ridiculous and is a proof of a bad combat design and I will say it again here : GO AWAY FROM THAT STUPID ROLLING ANIMATION IN 2024 !"

That is so on point, i also do not understand why they still have this crouching animation in steath games xD


"So basically few are the people to get the purple data from Inferno missions. And the troubles are not ending here. For keyboard and mouse it's a nightmare starting with the necessity to skip the movies with RETURN while we have the way to skip the starting screen with SPACE !!! Devs please wake up ??? Maybe."

So true, the developers of 2024 have still not learned the QoL hacks for PC games and that PC players need the freedom to put everything on separat key or have ing the double key binds they want themselfs by being able to remap anything to their likeing :-/


"So once more, devs using a license from a well-known universe are not able to translate its lore and mechanics into their game."

I have to say, that i got more 40K lore in this game then i hoped for visual wise. But the bolt weapons and their weakness alone already destroy it again :-/

[Grim@FU_BARRACUDA]

Originally posted by FromChaosTheory:

Originally posted by grimmsche:

"And it's not working because I think the way we move is bad ... we are marines in heavy armor and to be honest when doing Inferno difficulty levels seeing our marines rolling & rolling & rolling as an evade move feels ridiculous and is a proof of a bad combat design and I will say it again here : GO AWAY FROM THAT STUPID ROLLING ANIMATION IN 2024 !"

That is so on point, i also do not understand why they still have this crouching animation in steath games xD


"So basically few are the people to get the purple data from Inferno missions. And the troubles are not ending here. For keyboard and mouse it's a nightmare starting with the necessity to skip the movies with RETURN while we have the way to skip the starting screen with SPACE !!! Devs please wake up ??? Maybe."

So true, the developers of 2024 have still not learned the QoL hacks for PC games and that PC players need the freedom to put everything on separat key or have ing the double key binds they want themselfs by being able to remap anything to their likeing :-/


"So once more, devs using a license from a well-known universe are not able to translate its lore and mechanics into their game."

I have to say, that i got more 40K lore in this game then i hoped for visual wise. But the bolt weapons and their weakness alone already destroy it again :-/

Your armor isn't heavy to Astartes. They have implants that move the armor like it's their skin. Otherwise they couldn't wear it.
Not to mention you could roll in the first game and that came out in 2011. What are you on about?

I think you have no clue who you talking to xD

I dont know a rule in the 40K tabletop that alows Astartes to roll infinitely away from, an infinite amount of enemys without taking damage xD

Also, we speak about how to make SM2 better ;-)

[FromChaosTheory]

Originally posted by grimmsche:

Originally posted by FromChaosTheory:

Your armor isn't heavy to Astartes. They have implants that move the armor like it's their skin. Otherwise they couldn't wear it.
Not to mention you could roll in the first game and that came out in 2011. What are you on about?

I think you have no clue who you talking to xD

I dont know a rule in the 40K tabletop that alows Astartes to roll infinitely away from, an infinite amount of enemys without taking damage xD

Also, we speak about how to make SM2 better ;-)

This isn't a table top game. Why would you expect table top rules? That's not a very sound rebuttal. There are lots of things that could make it better. But lore accurate is not the way. There wouldn't be much of a game if we did that. Alternatively you can try 40k Gladuis or Dawn of war. I think that's more what you might be looking for. A 3rd person horde fighter is not going to represent table top rules in any fashion. Thinking otherwise is wishful and not very thought out. You could also try table top simulator. You can actually play table top on that.

It's the year 2024. We have had months to view this game before release. Everything is on youtube. So I'm confused as to how this can be an issue now? And dodge roll is not infinite invincibility at all. Higher difficulty require you to be in the thick of it to utilize the mechanics and/or reposition to deal with threats. Every time I take on a horde I feel like I'm on the pages of my favorite 40k book, while trying not to one of the ones that fell on the battle field.

[Rastlaff]

Originally posted by FromChaosTheory:

Originally posted by grimmsche:

I think you have no clue who you talking to xD

I dont know a rule in the 40K tabletop that alows Astartes to roll infinitely away from, an infinite amount of enemys without taking damage xD

Also, we speak about how to make SM2 better ;-)

This isn't a table top game. Why would you expect table top rules? That's not a very sound rebuttal. There are lots of things that could make it better. But lore accurate is not the way. There wouldn't be much of a game if we did that. Alternatively you can try 40k Gladuis or Dawn of war. I think that's more what you might be looking for. A 3rd person horde fighter is not going to represent table top rules in any fashion. Thinking otherwise is wishful and not very thought out. You could also try table top simulator. You can actually play table top on that.

It's the year 2024. We have had months to view this game before release. Everything is on youtube. So I'm confused as to how this can be an issue now? And dodge roll is not infinite invincibility at all. Higher difficulty require you to be in the thick of it to utilize the mechanics and/or reposition to deal with threats. Every time I take on a horde I feel like I'm on the pages of my favorite 40k book, while trying not to one of the ones that fell on the battle field.

It's up to the creative director or whoever is in charge nowadays (those fancy names that lead to nothing) to translate as much as possible and as best as possible into a game.

Now the perfect example these days is Julian Gerighty who is still puzzled by the flop of Star Wars Outlaws. He does not understand that it's not about the difficulty which is yet sadly missing from any Ubisoft game since a while (they stick with their very small ultra casual playerbase). He was incapable of translating Star Wars mechanics into his game. You play as an outlaw (aka Han Solo) but the trade system, the factions, the tools you've got are totally disconnected from the challenge you can expect being an outlaw and constantly having factions & Empire on your tail because you are smuggling goods in a secret compartment of your spaceship ....

Here, in Space Marines 2, they just messed up the only thing they had to tweak at its finest : the combat system. It's not a bad one at all from melee point of view but some animations or mechanics are just hilarious and make no sense in SM2.Look at another game that makes the same mistake - Blight: Survival. Nice visuals but it's just ridiculous to see a man in a full plate armor crouching, crawling and vaulting ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3VxGTH8ReY

And, please, stop saying youtube videos are the perfect way for people to judge a game. It's misleading players ... proof is I could not suspect that rolling evade move was THE one to use at Substantial difficulty to move from A to B. Also, no youtube video was prepping me to suffer the bad KB & mouse input when the game is sold for PC on Steam. (controllers are optional on PC, they're marked as supported, but not as mandatory)

To add also to youtube videos. None of them are showing for real the current state of any game nor their failures. But for sure.

"So I'm confused as to how this can be an issue now? And dodge roll is not infinite invincibility at all. Higher difficulty require you to be in the thick of it to utilize the mechanics and/or reposition to deal with threats" : which difficulty ? I'm puzzled : Substantial one too ? Because, my friend, I can assure you : you will roll like a crazy stupid circus clown on those.

And yes, roll is not giving you invulnerability ! True, it's just a 2011 SM1 mechanic which is totally outdated and used by devs in 2024 only because they are not brilliant enough to come up with something new.

But don't worry, I bet your kids will mock your 2024 games pointing at that one and saying "and your were having fun and immersion rolling like that forever with your character in a full armor ??? hahahahahaha"

[wasteland_ghost]

> But lore accurate is not the way.

Then why calling it Warhammer 40k and Space Marines? The whole point of making a licensed game is to translate the universe and its lore and rules, not just take a bunch of skins out of it.

[Hexagoros]

Originally posted by wasteland_ghost:

Originally posted by NeonBone$$:

Bro assault is garbage this is the answer

Vermintide is hard for the right reasons. Space Marines 2 is hard for the wrong reasons. In fact it's not hard, it's clunky. And randoms are not helping - it's sometimes easier to go with bots than trying to deal with waves brought by someone running forward and failing to stop the call.

This.

[FromChaosTheory]

Originally posted by Rastlaff:

Originally posted by FromChaosTheory:

This isn't a table top game. Why would you expect table top rules? That's not a very sound rebuttal. There are lots of things that could make it better. But lore accurate is not the way. There wouldn't be much of a game if we did that. Alternatively you can try 40k Gladuis or Dawn of war. I think that's more what you might be looking for. A 3rd person horde fighter is not going to represent table top rules in any fashion. Thinking otherwise is wishful and not very thought out. You could also try table top simulator. You can actually play table top on that.

It's the year 2024. We have had months to view this game before release. Everything is on youtube. So I'm confused as to how this can be an issue now? And dodge roll is not infinite invincibility at all. Higher difficulty require you to be in the thick of it to utilize the mechanics and/or reposition to deal with threats. Every time I take on a horde I feel like I'm on the pages of my favorite 40k book, while trying not to one of the ones that fell on the battle field.

It's up to the creative director or whoever is in charge nowadays (those fancy names that lead to nothing) to translate as much as possible and as best as possible into a game.

Now the perfect example these days is Julian Gerighty who is still puzzled by the flop of Star Wars Outlaws. He does not understand that it's not about the difficulty which is yet sadly missing from any Ubisoft game since a while (they stick with their very small ultra casual playerbase). He was incapable of translating Star Wars mechanics into his game. You play as an outlaw (aka Han Solo) but the trade system, the factions, the tools you've got are totally disconnected from the challenge you can expect being an outlaw and constantly having factions & Empire on your tail because you are smuggling goods in a secret compartment of your spaceship ....

Here, in Space Marines 2, they just messed up the only thing they had to tweak at its finest : the combat system. It's not a bad one at all from melee point of view but some animations or mechanics are just hilarious and make no sense in SM2.Look at another game that makes the same mistake - Blight: Survival. Nice visuals but it's just ridiculous to see a man in a full plate armor crouching, crawling and vaulting ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3VxGTH8ReY

And, please, stop saying youtube videos are the perfect way for people to judge a game. It's misleading players ... proof is I could not suspect that rolling evade move was THE one to use at Substantial difficulty to move from A to B. Also, no youtube video was prepping me to suffer the bad KB & mouse input when the game is sold for PC on Steam. (controllers are optional on PC, they're marked as supported, but not as mandatory)

To add also to youtube videos. None of them are showing for real the current state of any game nor their failures. But for sure.

"So I'm confused as to how this can be an issue now? And dodge roll is not infinite invincibility at all. Higher difficulty require you to be in the thick of it to utilize the mechanics and/or reposition to deal with threats" : which difficulty ? I'm puzzled : Substantial one too ? Because, my friend, I can assure you : you will roll like a crazy stupid circus clown on those.

And yes, roll is not giving you invulnerability ! True, it's just a 2011 SM1 mechanic which is totally outdated and used by devs in 2024 only because they are not brilliant enough to come up with something new.

But don't worry, I bet your kids will mock your 2024 games pointing at that one and saying "and your were having fun and immersion rolling like that forever with your character in a full armor ??? hahahahahaha"

Well, some things I would like to point out.

Games have had this for over 30 years, and I haven't found it ridiculous yet. I mean it's a video game. Trying to bring real world logic into a video game is how we get stale gameplay. Every time they try to do it, it leads to people being frustrated at how overly complicated the game is and how you can't do anything because realism. I always think it is best to stick to a few mechanics, have the player learn them and give them a chance to improve on themselves at it. Thats pretty much what every game (video and physical) has been since I was a small child. It's been working this long, and gaming has only gotten exponentially larger. I'm not saying up not up for new formulas, but it's been pretty successful so far.

About Star Wars. I do personally think you can get a good idea of what a game has to come from YouTube. Star Wars is not one of those games. There were not hundreds of hours of people playing the beta version right before release like Space Marine 2 had. I knew what I was buying before I got the game. I understood the combat before I got the game. The only thing left for the most part was learning muscle memory and how the perk system ties into my class levels. There is a large amount of evidence for how this game operates for anyone seeking it. Including hard difficulties and how hard it seemed to be to pull off with just bots. Ubisoft famously fails at what they do, and they seem to be the only people not paying attention to why. They are the King of amazing ideas that they half azz. No one in their right mind wants a Star Wars game that's mostly stealth with virtually no other options. Anyone could have told you that part of the fantasy of being in that universe is experiencing the excitement in that universe. Not boring slow stealth gameplay. This seems to be an odd choice when we just had two back-to-back action games in the Star Wars world released. They had a chance to give the same energy but with a regular human and they choose not to. In my opinion incompetent leadership. But players also didn't know what they were buying. Which is why I did not purchase that game. I bought the other 1 of those and it was a blast. I did not buy Outlaws. I had no idea what that game was like. I also don't trust Ubisoft to save my life.

I never once said YouTube was perfect. But you have to admit if you open videos and pay attention, your bound to collect a good bit of information. Quite a lot if you really want to know. I agree that Blight is kind of goofy. But it's a video game about a zombie outbreak in the Middle Ages. How could that not be goofy? Just hearing the idea is hilarious. I might still play it if the combat is fun. But that particular video is alpha footage. I will never form an opinion on alpha footage. Every time I have. I have been robbed. They drop early alpha footage and nothing else. Then the game is completely different from any type of footage they shown. I would rather trust my own eyes, of someone playing a close product, months before release. I try to be a smart consumer in today's word of corporate video game creations. I have not had as much fun as I used to since games turned into a money farms, and big, huge companies ate all the best studios and replaced everything with gimmicks that are cash grabs. So, I do my best to collect information before I purchase anything now a days.

I also don't spam the roll option because it likely leads to death. The game has very clear mechanics and rolling is a last resort to "I couldn't get out of the way of an orange AOE I mistimed a dodge on. It's a nice fail safe. I could just die lol. It doesn't break immersion for me. I still playing a space marine and fighting Aliens and chaos alike. Just like I wanted to. The combat is fun and engaging enough for me to invest in playing it. Thats pretty much all I ask for in a game. Do I want to play it. That will very in opinion from person to person. I'm not really one to want to play tank simulator because well Space Marine games are only about a genuine threat to an Astarte's. There are not many things that can take one down. So, in the game you are supposed to feel like your lives are on the line. Otherwise, it would be a pretty pointless game/story.

I think you can judge a lot gameplay wise from YouTube videos that are showing footage from pretty finished builds. Although you can't predict server issues and hardware malfunction. That is a real problem that would get under my skin. Other than that, I think they can be pretty informative about if I think I will enjoy a game or not. I don't think I'll enjoy that Blight game btw. Gameplay looks very bland. I don't want to fight random zombies in an armor suit 1v1 as I roam the countryside. Seems like a silly idea for a game. That does not sound like it will have much to offer.

In short, I'm not saying we can't change things. I'm just saying it's not bad. Always try to be a smart consumer today's video game companies are not like they used to be.

[Norbac]

You might not like rolling as a gameplay mechanic, but astartes probably can do it for hours with no issue thanks to their black caparace.
Some inquisitors and rogue traders wore space marine armor and felt clunky movement, just like you think it should be for everyone.

[Azrail]

Agree overal melee mechanics are done very poorly for game thats been made in 2024

[FromChaosTheory]

Originally posted by wasteland_ghost:

> But lore accurate is not the way.

Then why calling it Warhammer 40k and Space Marines? The whole point of making a licensed game is to translate the universe and its lore and rules, not just take a bunch of skins out of it.

Story wise it's pretty great with the lore. You can't translate gameplay into lore often. There wouldn't be much of a game. I don't want my Thunder hammer to evaporate anything it touches lol. That kind of over accurate gameplay leads to games everyone plays for 2 weeks and then drops. I like to get my money's worth when I buy something, and two weeks is not enough for a me.

Personally, I bought it for another 40k story. I was pleased with that story. Thats what I wanted. Thats what the IP was for. To tell the next part of the Space Marine Titus story. Nothing is close to lore accurate. It's an impossible task with too many details. Thats like asking why a fighting game character can take a more hits in the game then he can in the story (AKA Street Fighter among others). There literally would not be a game. At least not a fun one. By all rights that means every time a Lector hits you from stealth you die instantly because he cut your head off. Every time you fight a horde with only 3 people the tyrranids just pile on you till you can't move and then rip you apart.

3 space marines are not winning this fight nor making a dent in the forces they fight (not to mention having to deal with chaos later). Tyrninid number so highly they bring down even the largest colossal weapons. They just pile on then and destroy from sheer numbers. Most of the time we lose against them. They just overwhelm you with numbers. The entire first company of ultra marines were slaughtered by them without even putting a scratch on them. The entire first company. So, this is where we enter video games. Do we want to give the players something fun to play? Or do we want to be ultra lorelistic and make a game where they can literally do nothing but watch an entire company get destroyed. Personally, I like fighting them, I think the other option wouldn't be as fun. And hey being an Astartes has never felt so good.

[Shemp]

yup op hits the spot combat design is totally garbo

[Heru Ra Ha]

skill issue