After admitting Chaos isn’t that fun to fight, Space Marine 2 devs make Chaos easier to fight – and tone down Veteran difficulty for a “better single player experience”

Merciless



Space Marine 2 game director Dmitriy Grigorenko told us he agrees that the forces of Chaos aren’t as enjoyable to blast as the Tyranid swarms, so it’s convenient that the latest update for Saber Interactive’s Warhammer shooter makes Chaos enemies significantly easier to deal with in Operations. 

Patch 3.0 came to Space Marine 2 earlier today, headlined by private lobbies for Operations, ultrawide support, and a sparring PvP arena in the Battle Barge that lets you clown on your friends between missions. There’s a nice addition to custom color presets – you can now reset and replace them “instantly” – and a few buffs to weapons such as the Power Fish and Heavy Plasma. Med Stims are better, too, as they now “restore contested health in addition to actual healing.” 

That said, the biggest changes, numerically speaking, are down in the nitty-gritty of Operations. Several Chaos enemies have been heavily nerfed – not in quality, but in quantity. The game’s AI director will now spawn fewer Chaos enemies in Operations, and I mean far fewer. Here’s the full list of changes: 

  • Max number of Tzaangors With Shield on the arena at the same time reduced from 10 to 4
  • Max number of Cultists Snipers on the arena at the same time reduced from 10 to 3
  • Max number of Tzaangors on the arena at the same time reduced from 30 to 20
  • Max number of Rubric Marines with Boltguns on the arena at the same time reduced from 8 to 5
  • Max number of Rubric Marines with Warpflamers on the arena at the same time reduced from 4 to 3

The campaign received an interesting balance adjustment of its own. Enemies on Veteran difficulty, which is one notch above normal, will now behave less aggressively. Saber says this is for a “better single player experience,” which I’m choosing to read as, ‘more time with your face intact.’ However, this is offset by a “slight” reduction to your health on Veteran difficulty “to compensate for AI aggressiveness and armor management updates.” This seems to be a small net decrease in difficulty, expressed in a way that’s meant to make things more fun solo rather than dramatically easier. Veteran mode is still pretty darn hard by my count. 

Space Marine 2’s directors had to “fight quite a lot” for one level to be included, as some people thought the game was becoming a “40K fancy dress party.”