Space Marine 2 will walk back unpopular difficulty changes, public test servers are coming to help avoid hassles like this in the future

Focus Interactive announced today that some of the changes made in Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2's decidedly unpopular 4.0 patch will be rolled back later this week, and to avoid these kinds of headaches in the future, public test servers are on the way.

The 4.0 patch that went live last week drew immediate backlash from Space Marine 2 players over numerous changes to difficulty that many felt forced them into certain classes and playstyles. A mini-review bomb ensued, prompting a quick reaction from Focus, which promised a new balance patch would be rolled out in short order.

That's going to happen tomorrow, October 24. The date was revealed today along with an in-depth explanation of why Focus and Saber Interactive made the changes in the 4.0 patch, and where it all went wrong.

"When the game came out in September, the Ruthless difficulty win rate hovered around 60%," game director Dmitriy Grigorenko wrote. "Weeks later, and with the changes introduced by Patch 3.0, we saw that the same win rate had jumped to over 80%, and we received a lot of feedback stating that the game had become too easy—even at its maximum difficulty (at the time)."

To put some zing back in the experience, developers opted to increase the number of enemies rather than buffing their health, which seems appropriate for a game about butchering endless swarms of tyranids.

But that change also affected lower difficulty levels, and while the win rate at the easiest difficulty only dropped slightly, from 95% to 93%, many players felt the game had become "more intense and stressful," Grigorenko said, which was not the goal: "Space Marine 2 is all about the power fantasy, and Patch 4.0 negatively impacted it for many of you."

So, back to the drawing board. The Extremis enemy spawn rates will be reverted to pre-4.0 levels for the Minimal, Average, and Substantial difficulty levels, and will be "significantly reduced" at the Ruthless difficulty, "to hopefully strike a balance between how hard the game was at launch and how 'easy' it became with Patch 3.0."

Player armor is also being increased by 10% at the Ruthless difficulty, the "Tight Formation" mechanic will be removed, and bots are being buffed to deal 30% more damage to bosses, which will hopefully make them feel a little more useful. Bolter weapons are also being buffed:

• Auto Bolt Rifle -> Damage increased by 20%
• Bolt Rifle -> Damage increased by 10%
• Heavy Bolt Rifle -> Damage increased by 15%
• Stalker Bolt Rifle -> Damage increased by 10%
• Marksman Bolt Carbine -> Damage increased by 10%
• Instigator Bolt Carbine -> Damage increased by 10%
• Bolt Sniper Rifle -> Damage increased by 12.5%
• Bolt Carbine -> Damage increased by 15%
• Occulus Bolt Carbine -> Damage increased by 15%
• Heavy Bolter -> Damage increased by 5%
• Heavy Bolter -> Damage increased by 5%

The patch will also fix a bug that caused roll distance to be shorter than intended, clear up another related to unlocking Lethal difficulty rewards decals, and make various crash fixes and stability improvements.

And yes, public test servers are in the works that will "let you try out major balancing updates and make your voices heard before they are pushed onto public branches." There's going to be a bit of a wait on that, though: A timeline wasn't announced but Grigorenko said developers hope to have them ready in early 2025.