Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 Players Up in Arms Over 'Bulls**t' Nerfs: 'Have You Learnt Nothing From Helldivers 2?'

The Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 community is up in arms over sweeping nerfs made by the latest patch — so much so that some players are review bombing the game on Steam.

Update 4.0, which kicks off Space Marine 2 Season 2 with a new PvE map, Tyranid enemy, and Lethal difficulty, also changes the game balance in significant ways to make Operations mode harder.

Here’s the relevant section from the Update 4.0 patch notes:

Melee Archetypes: Fencing weapons' perfect parry window will now have the same duration as balanced weapons but it will start from the first frame of parry animation.

Melee Perks: Chainsword, Power Fist, Combat Knife charged attacks perks get significant damage increase.

Basic Auspex Scan: bonus damage on bosses is reduced by 30%.

Melta Charge: damage to bosses is reduced by 70%.

​Enemy Spawn Director PvE:

• Tweaked idle spawns.
• Enemy variety within waves is now less random while enemy variety between waves is bigger.
• Extremis enemies can now spawn with additional enemies.

Difficulty:

• Ruthless: Ammo crates have limited refills per player.
• Ruthless: Player's armour reduced by 20%.
• Substantial: Player's armour reduced by 10%

It’s worth highlighting the change to fencing weapons’ perfect parry window (Space Marine 2 combat is all about well-timed perfect parries, indeed they’re essential for success on the harder PvE difficulties because they let you follow up with a high damage shot from your pistol).

Fencing weapons were by far the most popular weapon type in the game due to their more generous perfect parry window compared to the balance weapon type (block weapons can't perfect parry). But Update 4.0 limits fencing weapons' active parry frames to the first half of the parry animation (frames 1-10), whereas pre-patch it covered the entirety of the animation. This means fencing weapons now revolve around parrying at the last moment; indeed it may be the case that the developers wish for fencing weapons to lean on last moment parries.

In contrast, balance weapons parry frames 11-20, and so require players predict a parry in advance. There are trade-offs here when you get down to the stats, but the perception of this change right now is currently a negative one, given it halves the active parry frames of all fencing weapons.

Then there’s the significant nerf to the basic Auspex Scan, which was a popular, some say essential method of doing bonus damage on enemies and bosses (some of the Operations mode bosses are incredibly tough, especially on harder difficulties).

The change to the Melta Charge has also sparked a backlash. This one-hit high damage piece of equipment (you can only carry one at a time) was often used against bosses to give Space Marines a fighting chance on higher difficulties. Now, players say, they’re next to useless.

And then there are the changes made to the ruthless and substantial difficulties, which make Operations mode a lot harder for everyone chasing rewards tied to those tiers.

Even on the new Lethal difficulty, which is designed to be brutally hard, players have complained about its exclusive mechanic that only restores armor from finishers if you stay close to your teammates (restoring armor through finishers is essential to survival in Space Marine 2).

Anyone who has played Space Marine 2’s Operations mode will know it’s not easy to stick together, especially when playing with randoms. Some of the more raid-style mechanics in the Operations require player coordination while Space Marines do their thing in different spots on the map. Players are now reporting that the radius players must be within to restore armor is tiny. This change, then, feels like a particularly harsh kick in the teeth.

The backlash has been aggressive and swift. The official Space Marine 2 discord is packed with complaints, as is the Space Marine subreddit. “STOP THE NERF GIVE US FUN,” declared Wyndolll. “Haven't you learned from Helldivers 2 experience? Nerf player = negative reaction.”

“‘Thanks for the nerfs in my PvE powerfantasy game,’ said no one ever,” said a clearly disgruntled Aspharr. “What’s with all the bullshit nerfs,” added Old_Competition8765. “Extremely disappointing to see this game going the way of Helldivers. Hope they do proper balancing and not this lazy nerf shit.”

The mention of Helldivers 2 is of course a reference to the backlash Arrowhead suffered from doing pretty much what Saber Interactive has done here: nerf the game at a time when players were hoping for buffs. Arrowhead spent a great deal of time, energy, and resources getting its playerbase back on-side, culminating with a recent update that rebalanced the entire game.

Will Space Marine 2 end up stumbling down the same path? There are early signs players may review bomb the game to voice their displeasure. On Steam, Space Marine 2's recent user review rating remains ‘very positive,’ but at the time of this article’s publication, 181 new negative reviews were left so far today, October 17. That number, many more than is usual for a single day, seems likely to grow.

For Focus and Saber’s part, in today’s Patch 4 notes they admitted the changes would make Operations mode harder and promised to keep an eye on feedback. The developers made the changes, they said, because they felt Operations mode was too easy, especially after the release of Patch 3. “This is not the last change,” they promised.

Here’s the statement:

"With Patch 3 we have noticed that Operations mode became noticeably easier, especially Chaos operations. We are happier with what we have right now compared to what we had on release, because before Patch 3 Chaos missions were unpopular. Still, we think that currently Operations mode is a bit too easy.

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

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.