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

[Solvem Probler]

They tried reinventing the wheel and failed.

[Øv]

Originally posted by B. Arner:

I think enemy HP should be the same for every difficulty. Add MORE of them, sure, but keep HP constant? A swarm of warriors and every single one of them a bullet sponge = no fun at all. It becomes tedious after a while, and there's only so much time I have on my hands.

i agre and alsow you need to recover healt from evry meale attack you make and remove the stime pack.
and im talking in PVE in all modes

[80sMacTonight]

Originally posted by Brother Phobos:

Originally posted by 80sMacTonight:

i completely agree with this take. the game makes you indeed feels like a glass wimp noodle and not a glass cannon or anything strong at all.

this is my review of the game atm

im making a negative review because IMO the game feels too clunky in combat. it just feels off and not correct, it feels like the game is always working against you.
=this is from a player that has played; Chivalry 1 and 2, mordhau, vermintide, darktide and all the souls games with significant hours (4-5K Hours)

1. you aim downsight --> you cant parry or dodge
2. mid combat you are rolling or parrying way to much. sometimes the enemies attack so often im just stuck in a parry loop.
3. the roll catch is insane. i dodge an attack and i still get hit by something else.
4. the gunner enemies have too much HP.
5. ult activation doesn't work normal with assault class. sometimes it decides to just dash instat of fly
6. some attacks have indicators for parry or dodge, but a lot of other attacks dont have it. like come on ( either only have an indicator for unparryable attacks or all of them)
7. gun executions feel awful. because most of the time your armour you get back is instantly gone anyway because you can still get hit in the animation.
8. the space marines feel like wet nudles because you need to hit the common elites way too many times (guns and melee) this just makes you feel weak AF.
9. the space marines also just feel really really slow
10. the grind to the end game easily takes 30 hours per class. this would be fine with 3 or 4 classes, but there are 6 of them
11. the weapon upgrades are locked behind armoury upgrades that you can only get in the higher difficulties (not every player can be good enough for that, why is this a thing?)
12. enemies can stunlock you...... why is this a thing?
13. headshots feel like ass, moslty again because the enemies have wayyyy too much hp (it took 200+ bullets of my heavy gunner to kill a Zoanthrope) like thats half of the ammo you can carry

these are just the things i can think off, of the top of my head.
i know you are supposed to get hit in this game and recover your HP but a couple of wrong moves and i feel like you are heavily punished even on the lowest difficulty.

problem 2, 3, and 12 can all be solved by just making player's space marine's animations not so sluggish, letting player squeeze in attacks in between parry/stun animations, swiftly recover from dodge

yea true, this is why i like vermintide so much, cause you can always cancel animations and if not they are fast anyway. you can instantly switch weapons. this just makes it feel responsive while the weapon still feel strong and heavy

[80sMacTonight]

Originally posted by Jerot:

Originally posted by B. Arner:

I think enemy HP should be the same for every difficulty. Add MORE of them, sure, but keep HP constant? A swarm of warriors and every single one of them a bullet sponge = no fun at all. It becomes tedious after a while, and there's only so much time I have on my hands.

100% this, more enemies, more elites, but fodder should be fodder.

They should look how games like Dynasty Warriors or even Darktide/Vermintide handle swarms of enemies without being too overwhelming. They tried to go for a more action prompt based Doom Eternal-style approach with finishers, but the conservative replenish it gives, mixed with the punishing ranged attacks and chain attacks that don't have dodge/parry prompts makes it feel awkward. It punishes you for storming in ultra-violence style when that should be the ideal way to play.

It's like the game can't decide what it wants to be, duck and roll cover shooter, coop horde survival shooter, QTE action prompt one on one melee combat, or hack and slash through swarms indiscriminately? Not a skill issue, just weird design choices and balancing that feel janky to learn coming from other games that did each of those things better.

yea you get it. the game just feels off. not sure on what it wants to be.
vermintide may give you a ton of enemies at cataclysm than can hit really hard (1/3 or more of HP) but you have the tools to handle them.
as soon as i go down to half HP in SM2 ill play like a ♥♥♥♥♥ because i know i wont get HP back and im a 1 hit anyway (here im talking about difficultie 3)

[badger vortex]

that's just the way the cookie crumbles, you have a power fantasy or you have difficulty you can't have both at the same time. it's same for most games where higher difficulty makes your character feel weaker, and enemy bullet sponges

[BROTHER PHOBOS]

Originally posted by badger vortex:

that's just the way the cookie crumbles, you have a power fantasy or you have difficulty you can't have both at the same time. it's same for most games where higher difficulty makes your character feel weaker, and enemy bullet sponges

that's why i hate bad game designers so much - for the exact way of thinking you've displayed here. they always say that there are some "impossible to pass" limitations, which in reality are self-imposed and artificial.

changing health/damage values is not the only way of making difficulties...

[badger vortex]

Originally posted by Brother Phobos:

that's why i hate bad game designers so much - for the exact way of thinking you've displayed here. they always say that there are some "impossible to pass" limitations, which in reality are self-imposed and artificial.

changing health/damage values is not the only way of making difficulties...

lol "bad game designers" dude almost every game does it this way, you must really hate games in general

[Vast Lord Grim]

Originally posted by NightLexic:

I will say once thing veteran and angel of death are more tuned towards the 3 player co-op experience. It's of course gonna feel a ton harder solo

I wholeheartedly agree with the OP. I also see what you’re saying, the caveat with that is NOWHERE does it say that it is intended to be played with other “actual” players.

What it DOES say, is that the “Veteran” difficulty is the INTENDED experience. Good f*cking luck if you don’t have friends though. I pointed this out the first day I played the game and got such helpful “clever” responses like, “got gud” 🤦‍♂️ then being salty I criticized the game.

Not realizing that I liked the game and want it to be the best it can be. Hence why I even jumped on early access and bothered to post my thoughts.

Sure, Veteran difficulty is more than possible playing solo- but is it FUN!?? No it isn’t. Period. It was up until the “defend the antennae” mission. The bots will LITERALLY just stand there sometimes and not help at all towards the objective. Yes I EVENTUALLY beat it, but up until that point I had been incapacitated only one time, and that was while I was learning how to play!!

Simple issues like still taking damage when locked into finisher animations, not being able to auto pick up ammo and supplies which are scarce and sometimes impossible to use brain during battle, the lack of mobility, and the brain dead AI just lead to an incredibly frustrating and obviously less than desirable state of mind while playing.

From fun to stupid so quick I got whiplash 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️ don’t get me started on the flamethrower missions too. On top of that I tried running a online operation solo on MINIMAL and got all the way to the end and had to do that stupid puzzle to kill the giant bird and MY LORD that sh*t got SO stupid out of nowhere too.

Once again, impossible without friends- EVEN ON MINIMAL!! You never know when or if your AI allies are going to help and when you need them to, just forget it

[Vast Lord Grim]

Originally posted by Very professional:

The problem with the difficult is pretty simple:

- You can only regain health through eitther armour ability or health pickups
- The higher 2 difficulties are tuned for co-op play

For example early in the game you have to set charges on a wall at 4 points, and the game throws about 8 snipers and 3 zoanthropes at you along with a ton of warriors and various chaff

With 3 players? Piece of piss. Target down the zoanthropes, work on the snipers. No problem.

With 1 player? Your AI will almost completely ignore the snipers and zoanthropes do you'll spend the entire mission being blasted from off-screen with high damage weapons that also stun you and knock you out of animations. It's an extremely ♥♥♥♥♥♥ section of the game and it's RIGHT at the start too.

You say that the higher difficulties are intended for co op play but NOWHERE is this stated. On top of that, the “Veteran” difficulty is listed as the INTENDED experience.

I started on veteran and got to the defend the antenna mission and suddenly stopped having any fun. SO many issues reared their ugly heads during that mission that hadn’t been seen before that.

That being said I did beat it and it is not impossible. The thing is though, is it fun?? No it is not. Period. Up until that point it was and there are FUNDAMENTAL issues that are holding the game back and there are PLENTY of similar posts saying these exact same things.

People say to lower the difficulty but just like most games, the normal difficulty lacks any sense of challenge, while the veteran difficulty felt good at first then hit an absolute brick wall. I’m normal mode you pretty much just run up to do finishers on enemies your allies have already staggered, taking away SO much of the actual gameplay. But in veteran difficulty they will LITERALLY just stand there sometimes and not do or shoot anything 🤦‍♂️

I really do think the game can be fun and I want it to be the best it can be. What it is right now tho needs some legitimate work and fixes applied. Unfortunately most of the people who paid to get early access are the “sweaties” who are willing to pay and go out of their way to get and beat these games before others, for whatever reason.

Now that the game hits the general public, I anticipate ALOT more of these APPARENT issues to come to light. Atleast I hope they do, so patches and adjustments can be made….because they NEED to be made, hands down

[80sMacTonight]

Originally posted by badger vortex:

that's just the way the cookie crumbles, you have a power fantasy or you have difficulty you can't have both at the same time. it's same for most games where higher difficulty makes your character feel weaker, and enemy bullet sponges

this is complete bullocks. there are many games out there that have difficulty and power fantasy. Vermintide 2 has it. Helldivers 2 had it before it became nerfdivers

[80sMacTonight]

Originally posted by Vast Lord Grim:

I really do think the game can be fun and I want it to be the best it can be. What it is right now tho needs some legitimate work and fixes applied. Unfortunately most of the people who paid to get early access are the “sweaties” who are willing to pay and go out of their way to get and beat these games before others, for whatever reason.

Now that the game hits the general public, I anticipate ALOT more of these APPARENT issues to come to light. Atleast I hope they do, so patches and adjustments can be made….because they NEED to be made, hands down

ow you are right on that, i forgot that the people who are in general worse at gaming don't preorder the early access

[BROTHER PHOBOS]

Originally posted by badger vortex:

Originally posted by Brother Phobos:

that's why i hate bad game designers so much - for the exact way of thinking you've displayed here. they always say that there are some "impossible to pass" limitations, which in reality are self-imposed and artificial.

changing health/damage values is not the only way of making difficulties...

lol "bad game designers" dude almost every game does it this way, you must really hate games in general

no, i hate bad game designers, which do not equal games as a whole
as 80s mentioned, helldivers is a good example of increasing the difficulty without making the player weaker, but simply throwing more/bigger enemies at them.

[Kazoom]

Played for an hour on Veteran. Might restart on a lower difficulty. You just feel very vulnerable the whole time. Where you would stomp through hordes forward in the first game I find myself retreating to safety and relying on range to minimize damage taken. Not a bad game but a bad Space Marine experience.

[Igis101]

So true. There's no way to easily put gaunts to execute state, or I can't figure it out for ♥♥♥♥♥. After heavy attack sometimes they die, and sometimes they stagger, it's way inconsistent. Beacause of that, fights on higher difficulties are just boring, beacause I can't commit to them fully, as I die like ♥♥♥♥♥♥ in seconds.
Before any dbass says it's skill issue - guess what, dying restore health and armor anyway. So dying after each fight to restore hp is skillful, huh?
Playing Doom Eternal should be mandatory for any gamedev.

[Vultan]

So pick easy difficulty instead of making sigma-energy posts?