Warhammer 40000: Space Marine 2 rolls back difficulty changes that made fighting xenos "intense and stressful"

rockpapershotgun.com:

The developers of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 have released an update to the third-person shooter that reverts a lot of tough difficulty changes made in a previous patch. Turns out upping the spawn rate of the vicious Tyrannid baddies across all difficulty modes was not welcome among the meathead murder boys of the Imperium. And this change wasn't the only one that caused enough ructions to justify hasty recalibrations from Saber Interactive.

Last week, patch 4.0 for the action game introduced a "lethal" difficulty mode alongside a new Operations map (the shooter's replayable co-op multiplayer jaunts). It also created a modifier that forced players to stay close to one another, or face swift annihilation. By universally increasing the number of spawning enemies to bump up the hardcore difficulty settings, they also made all lower difficulties tougher. The new difficulty setting was meant to be punishing, but even at the time Saber were unsure about the changes they were implementing.

"Overall these changes are going to make Operations mode harder, but it is difficult to measure by how much," they said in the previous patch notes. "We will continue to monitor those changes and will continue to adjust the balance of Operations mode. This is not the last change."

They were not wrong to be wary. Following the patch, some players were annoyed enough to leave the gamer equivalent of dog poo in a bag on a doorstep, with over 2700 stinky Steam reviews piling up within a week of the patch hitting the game (compared to approximately 340 negative reviews the week before the patch). The general feeling was that Operations had become more frustrating, even on easier difficulties.

Today, the devs have rejigged things. In the notes for Patch 4.1, the developer sets out their reasoning for the previous changes and give details on the roll back. Mainly, that enemy spawn rate has been reduced. But armour has also been increased in "ruthless" difficulty, damage has been