Space Marine 2 difficulties are very bad

[BROTHER PHOBOS]

skip to "why are the difficulties made badly" for a quick summary

(for context, i've spent over 3000 hours in Space Marine 1 exterminatus simply because of how good of a synergy of power fantasy and challenge it has. cutting thru constant hordes of xenos with a chainsword while holding a point for 2 minutes straight in solo exterminatus can never get old to me. it makes you feel like a true self-reliant superhuman war machine that can sustain themselves in a prolonged battle, a true space marine. naturally i was extremely excited for Space Marine 2, as i expected something similar.)

why challenge and power fantasy are important for Space Marine game

challenge gives the player deeper game engagement thru making them push themselves into improvement. it's important for many combat-based games, not just Space Marine.

power fantasy simply makes the player feel like a superhuman, which is obviously mandatory for a Space Marine game. without that factor, the immersive experience of being a space marine cannot be achieved.

my expectations

as i 1st started the game, i've been very excited to see difficulty levels, as i trusted Saber Interactive to understand the nature of Space Marine. i've obviously picked lethal difficulty without 2nd thought, as i want as many and as large enemies on screen as possible to maximize power fantasy and challenge.

my experience with Space Marine 2

unfortunately it turned out that i was gravely mistaken.
lethal difficulty certainly didn't fail me with its challenge level, but the problem is that it achieves it not thru throwing more and/or bigger enemies at the player (like Helldivers for example), as i expected it to do, but thru removing power fantasy aspect. it makes your space marine weak and brittle, as it makes it longer to kill the same enemies, while taking more damage from them.
it also doesn't help how Space Marine 2 made space marines seem too weak to operate a chainsword with the same speed as they did in Space Marine 1, despite looking lighter than SM1 chainswords.

Space Marine 2 makes you unable to fully recover thru combat itself. it kills the combat flow that was present in Space Marine 1, which made your space marine feel like a self-reliant war machine, able to sustain themselves in combat thru swordsman's zeal perk (healing from hitting enemies), or quickly and reliably self-healing when successfully dodging enemy attacks with larraman's blessing perk.
unfortunately, in Space Marine 2, if you're not reliant on stimulants (which are unsustainable by being depletable and unobtainable while in constant combat anyway), the health damage you take doesn't heal, making combat flow go down with it. you cannot force the player to be focused on survival and expect them to play offensively, which is required for combat flow. any unhealable damage at the end of the fight makes the player feel like they've lost a won fight.
it also makes each fight unproportionally differing in difficulty due to varying amount of HP and inventory state at the start of the fights.

regarding stimulants, if you make the player reliant on their inventory (or any factor they cannot fully control), it'll make them feel that they are as strong as their inventory is, destroying their self-confidence in the process, which is an important factor for combat flow. (not to mention how it draws player's attention from immersing themselves in the battlefield in favor of making them constantly look for some stupid boxes)
lack of combat sustainability by having such inventory-reliant solutions hurts combat flow, which is about sustained, engaging combat.

lethal difficulty lets you last long while fighting hormagaunts (swarm of basic small tyranids), but it does so by making you feel like you're always on the brink of death (because only the last bit of the healthbar gets healed thru hitting enemies well enough to last in any fight of decent length), which removes power fantasy aspect of doing that.

difficulties above minimal severely lack power fantasy aspect, despite providing more engaging challenge. sure, i can play on minimal difficulty if i want some more power fantasy, but all difficulties below lethal don't have sufficient challenge to make me engaged thru making me push myself into improvement.

injustice to original Space Marine game

experiencing this made me already miss Space Marine 1 despite how i played it 1 day before. the prologue was a blatant jab at Firstborn (and thru which also Space Marine 1), pushing the message that it takes a single tyranid warrior to kill a Firstborn, and that an outstanding Firstborn like Titus (who bested such a powerful traitor Firstborn as Nemeroth despite being worn down by his rubric marines) can be defeated by some carnifex just because he fought a couple of hormagaunts and tyranid warriors beforehand.

these jabs were thrown to show how Primaris lack such inadequacies Firstborn have... inadequacies which were clearly not present in Space Marine 1, and were made up in Space Marine 2. i understand that GW has a need to push Primaris on top of Firstborn, but making up Firstborn inadequacies that didn't exist just to achieve it feels disrespectful, inappropriate, and unnecessary. why not highball Primaris abilities and leave Firstborn as they were instead of downplaying them?

not giving Primaris such a crucial survivability tool as swordsman's zeal perk Firstborn have in Space Marine 1 doesn't exactly feel like highballing Primaris, but rather another tool of retconning Firstborn into being horrible. not to mention how the player is forced to play with Primaris bots (if not having 3 players) which are absolutely useless despite being "so superior to Firstborn", which further pushes Firstborn downplaying narrative. somehow the great superior Primaris have to spend so much time to kill a hormagaunt (because of how adequately weak their anemic strikes are), and somehow guardsmen (literally NORMAL humans) constantly win in close combat with them with their "dive back and shoot" animation, further jabbing at Firstborn thru Primaris performance. the game's campaign also pushes the message that Primaris instantly die from an explosion that's too weak to tear them apart or even lift them off the ground. you can even notice dead Primaris marine (or once even 2) without a single tyranid corpse laying around. it's like the game says "sure, Primaris are quite weak... but at least they are stronger than FIRSTBORN HAHAHA AM I RIGHT?".

what feels like yet another jab at Firstborn is how Thousand Sons (chaos marines) are so immensely weak in comparison to tyranids and daemons. it seems like Saber Interactive is pushing the message that 3 Primaris marines can take on dozens of Fistborn... especially considering how weak Thousand Sons sorcerers are to them, which supposed to be the most powerful of all sorcerers.

(i made a separate thread about the specific point above here)

why are the difficulties made badly

because of how Space Marine 2 increases the challenge by making the player's space marine weaker, instead of throwing more and/or bigger enemies at them, these difficulties force the player to choose either challenge or power fantasy instead of letting them have the best of both worlds.

i understand that it's easier to simply change the health and damage values to make difficulties in comparison to duplicating enemies and/or changing enemy variant spawn proportions, but it shouldn't be an issue for a game of such budget. more enemies make the game more hardware demanding, but you can turn them into bigger ones instead if that's the problem.

if Saber Interactive really wants this specific way of making difficulty for some reason, then they could at least make custom difficulty with customizable values (health, damage, enemy numbers, large enemy spawn likelihood, enemy aggression, down amount for mortal wound, respawn timer etc.)

solution

please vote for my 5 carefully crafted game update ideas if you want the gameplay to be fixed:

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praise the Emperor

[Travis Touchdown]

I'm only playing on the 3rd difficulty (Veteran, I think) and the difficulty has been the boring kind of bad. Enemies feel way more tanky than they should and AI feels absolutely useless. So many encounters seem to hinge on killing the annoying floating shield and laser guys (Neurothropes, I think?) and the AI is absolutely useless at it. It's up to the player to manage the defend objectives, swarms, and shooting at flying guys that constantly blast dizzy lasers and AoE explosives at them while the AI just kind of stands there.

However, it's not even an actual problem because I'm guessing the AI is scripted to give up or be less aggressive when you get super low on health. I'm just about done with the campaign, I'm on the second-to-last mission and I've been playing solo the entire time, and I haven't once died for good. I've been downed once because I think I blew myself up when experimenting with a plasma pistol, but I was able to just rez myself with a guardian relic and one other time I was downed and a teammate just picked me up.

I can't imagine slogging through this on the hardest difficulty though. Things are already tanky enough as is.

[AngelHeart19]

Originally posted by rosariodoamaral:

I think most (if not all) issues with difficulty would be solved if Finishers/Executions restored a small amount of health, too.

Maybe 2 segments for diff 1, 1 segment for diff 2 and 3, and for diff 4, 1 segment AFTER armor is full?

I actually agree to this but I saw a streamer earlier healing after they meleed enemies not even finishers either was that maybe a streamer boost from the devs

[Mildly Nuclear]

Absolutely agree that the balancing in this game is out of wack, the best way I can describe it is "Abusive", in the sense that the game seems to expect you to move like Doomguy, and then punishes you for not being able to do so. I'm not expecting anyone to actually read this, but since this is a difficulty thread and the OP already went overlong, I don't feel bad about ranting about this. Here are a couple of points that could at least improve the combat pacing in this game somewhat:

1) enemies that go into an executable state don't recover at the end of it, but DIE, because sometimes you LITERALLY CAN'T GET TO THEM, or get shredded to ♥♥♥♥ for trying, OR automatically mark enemies that go into an executable state for a gunstrike if you get close enough, for the same reason.
2) Speaking of gunstrikes, the fact that executions give you invincibility frames but gunstrikes don't is MENTAL, a gunstrike is effectively an alternate execution with the same benefit, LET ME USE THE MECHANICS.
3) Health needs to recover to at least the nearest health increment, OR recoverable health should not degrade below the nearest health increment. that way, health loss is still punishing but not completely ruinous, plus why even have such obvious health increments on the healthbar if they don't DO anything. Aesthetic consistency with the armor bar? I don't care.
4) You can't heal mortal wounds unless you TOP OFF YOUR HEALTHBAR with a health pack? No, wrong, bad. With how scarce health packs are, they need to either top you off completely, always, or at least heal mortal wounds with just ONE use, no matter how much health you have.
5) I understand that this is not a cover shooter, but the fact that it takes TWENTY FIVE SECONDS for your shields to recharge on their own is once again, COMPLETELY MENTAL, that's sometimes not even enough to replenish your shields BETWEEN FIGHTS. If it was 15 seconds that'd still be really long for the fast paced combat, but not completely unreasonable.

[Travis Touchdown]

Originally posted by AngelHeart19:

I actually agree to this but I saw a streamer earlier healing after they meleed enemies not even finishers either was that maybe a streamer boost from the devs

You heal contested health from hitting enemies or doing finishers. Contested health is the white part of your health after you get hit that lingers for a bit.

[AngelHeart19]

Originally posted by Travis Touchdown:

Originally posted by AngelHeart19:

I actually agree to this but I saw a streamer earlier healing after they meleed enemies not even finishers either was that maybe a streamer boost from the devs

You heal contested health from hitting enemies or doing finishers. Contested health is the white part of your health after you get hit that lingers for a bit.

Im not seeing that in the Veteran Difficulty then again they were playing in the Normal difficulty

[Mildly Nuclear]

Originally posted by Travis Touchdown:

Originally posted by AngelHeart19:

I actually agree to this but I saw a streamer earlier healing after they meleed enemies not even finishers either was that maybe a streamer boost from the devs

You heal contested health from hitting enemies or doing finishers. Contested health is the white part of your health after you get hit that lingers for a bit.

Too bad by the time you get the chance to do so the enemies have already shredded half your health bar, unless you manage to sneak in an execution

[IbuKondo]

There's already hordes of aliens swarming the player in several missions. Where are they gonna put em? Between the plates on the space marine's armor? (hyperbole)

[Mister Magician]

Originally posted by AngelHeart19:

Originally posted by rosariodoamaral:

I think most (if not all) issues with difficulty would be solved if Finishers/Executions restored a small amount of health, too.

Maybe 2 segments for diff 1, 1 segment for diff 2 and 3, and for diff 4, 1 segment AFTER armor is full?

I actually agree to this but I saw a streamer earlier healing after they meleed enemies not even finishers either was that maybe a streamer boost from the devs

you DO heal to full on execution on lower difficulties.

[Big Awoo]

Increasing the amount of enemies and the damage they deal is perfect fine- why directly nerf the player? It then feels like a punishment rather than a challenge to play on.

[Derrame]

true, is clunky and too many enemies to react fast enough to block or execute to heal, and FOV doesn't help

[BROTHER PHOBOS]

Originally posted by Born2Dive:

Originally posted by Brother Phobos:

is there any ambiguous or hard to read part or did you just complain about aesthetics?? which word did i misspell?

"Through", about 5000 times.

so there's no ambiguity (since you clearly know what it means) nor reading difficulty, and you are messaging me just to be a tw@ about word lengthening aesthetics?

[BROTHER PHOBOS]

Originally posted by rosariodoamaral:

I think most (if not all) issues with difficulty would be solved if Finishers/Executions restored a small amount of health, too.

Maybe 2 segments for diff 1, 1 segment for diff 2 and 3, and for diff 4, 1 segment AFTER armor is full?

the problem with that solution is how executions are not a consistent source of healing that's reliant in any situation which a good combat flow requires, it'd also bear negative side effects:

- it'd make hordes without executable enemies unproportionately stronger.

- it'd make the player's healing reliant on something that's not fully in their control (even tho less than being stimulant-reliant) because the player cannot control if executable enemy happens to be near them or not, compromising player's confidence, and therefore combat flow.

- it'd make feel killing without executions like a failure. it makes more sense for rewarding the player for meleeing the enemy in any way they can and like more, especially in a context of being a space marine, which should prioritize efficiency.

[HUNTY]

It doesn't help that there is an insane amount of ranged enemies, and on higher difficulties you just have to hang back and snipe them one by one, because a single sniper tyranid will remove most of your HP, and also send you to the ground in one hit. It does not help that the ranged enemies have a LOT of HP. I played on angel of death in solo and it was unplayable. Bumped it down to veteran, and I just got tired or constantly having like 5% HP, now I'm playing on normal, and atleast now there's some power fantasy.

The bolters and melee feels pretty bad though, and parrying is really inconsistent. I shoot a small tyranid with a heavy bolt rifle and it doesn't explode, but keeps coming at me. I hit a small chaos enemy that has the sword and shield with the giant fkin power hammer and it just stands around without issue, despite the hammer being bigger than the entire enemy.

The game was clearly made with coop in mind, which makes me a bit sad, I don't want to play with randoms. Like the part with the small rat enemies, none of the AI teammates pick up the flamethrowers, so if you run out then it's over. Also the AI straight up ignors executing enemies, and as far as i've seen, chaos marines can recover from the execution state if not executed, and they'll keep shooting at you.

[Vanta]

I honestly highly agree.

Guns feel incredibly anemic, with pitiful damage against anything bigger than a cultist or Hormagaunt. This makes half the arsenal feel pointless.

Why use the standard Bolt Rifle? Why use the Bolt Carbine?

I know it's supposed to force you into melee combat, but legitimately, what the hell is the point of half the arsenal?

The melee focus was cool at first, but then I realized very quickly it feels horrendously balanced. The Power Sword and Thunder Hammer kinda suck because they don't give you executes or quick shots as much as the Chainsword and combat knife

Enemies can stunlock you
Ranged enemies can do incredible amounts of chip damage, and sometimes chunk your health instantly meanwhile, your bolt rifle will dump a mag and a half or even more just to kill them.

I feel like focusing entirely on melee was stupid and brings the game too close to the whole Batman Arkham combat feeling that's gotten so boring in recent years.

A stalker bolt rifle should kill a Warrior in a very small amount of headshots. Hell. Any bolter should be able to do more damage than they do.

The whole non-regenerating health I'd almost be fine with if health items weren't so damn rare and if there were alternative methods of healing than Righteous Fury and stims.

Even the melee combat feels too dang risky, as the recovery of lost health in melee barely helps, stims are too rare and there's no health regeneration on executions. Only armor which you don't get a whole lot of.

The whole games design feels like it was built with co-op in mind aswell. Everything feels ridiculously overwhelming, several encounters are clearly built with competent co-op teammates assisting as opposed to the frankly disgraceful AI teammates (Such as the satellite realignment on the orbital defense gun mission)




I don't feel like a badass space marine because i'm having to play too conservatively and i feel forced to plink away with a bolter that does way too little damage in most combat situations because if I go in with melee, even with a well calculated amount of executions and quick shots I feel too squishy and all it takes is ONE stunlock to utterly delete half of your HP. The punishment for failing a parry or dodge is frankly INSANE.

[BROTHER PHOBOS]

Originally posted by Big Awoo:

Increasing the amount of enemies and the damage they deal is perfect fine- why directly nerf the player? It then feels like a punishment rather than a challenge to play on.

increasing damage player's space marine takes IS nerfing the player