Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 Players Praise the Emperor as Dev Rolls Back Controversial Balance Changes
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 developer Saber Interactive has announced Update 4.1, set to hit the game on October 24, and detailed its patch notes.
Update 4.1 follows hot on the heels of last week’s controversial Update 4.0, widely criticized by Space Marine 2’s community for making the game significantly harder, even on easier difficulties. The backlash to Update 4.0 spread to Space Marine 2’s Steam page, where disgruntled players review-bombed the game.
The Update 4.1 patch notes were published alongside a message to fans from game director Dmitriy Grigorenko, who, having digested the criticism of the last week, admitted: “The key takeaway for me, personally, is that I forgot that once the game comes out, it's no longer a dev's game. It's yours first and foremost.”
To that end, Saber will establish Public Test Servers (PTS) that will let players try out major balancing updates and make their voices heard before they are pushed onto public branches. Expect PTS to go live early 2025.
As for the changes made with Update 4.1 there’s plenty to dig through (patch notes below), but overall they should make Space Marine 2’s PvE Operations mode feel easier via a series of buffs to weapons and the Space Marines, nerfs to the enemies, and in some cases the removal of controversial mechanics entirely.
Players of Space Marine 2’s new Lethal difficulty will be delighted to hear the universally hated 'Tight Formation' system, exclusive to Operations mode’s hardest difficulty, is not long for this world. Grigorenko revealed that the system was designed as a first step towards the introduction of gameplay modifiers down the line, both negative and positive, “but your feedback showed that the proximity requirements felt too restrictive.”
“Classes like Assault and Vanguard felt especially penalized as playing them effectively requires a certain freedom of movement,” Grigorenko added. 4.1 ditches the Tight Formation system entirely, and Saber will continue to work on modifiers until
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