Developer Saber Interactive says it’s “ramping up our server capacity” and “working day and night to reduce the issues” some fans are experiencing with connecting to Warhammer 40k Space Marine 2’s online functions. A Q&A published on Wednesday responds to a variety of common fan requests and complaints, with “loss of saves or impossibility to connect with friends” literally top of the list.
As well as working on the capacity problems by bringing more servers online, “a bigger patch is planned soon”. It’s hard to tell if there are underlying issues with Space Marine 2’s netcode, as the game has been phenomenally successful since it launched, putting the servers under persistent strain – according to SteamDB it hit a peak of 225,000 simultaneous players on Steam alone, all eager to slash and burn in the Warhammer 40k universe.
The second item that Saber addresses in the Q&A is the quality of AI bots, acknowledging that they “can sometimes be a bit too passive”. Saber says this is intentional, as “we don’t want them to take the spotlight from the player”, but nonetheless the next patch will contain “a few improvements of their behavior against boss fights in the campaign”.
The development team is also considering “improving their involvement during specific objectives in the campaign for a later patch”. As this was one of Wargamer’s major complaints in our Space Marine 2 review, we feel deeply vindicated. In a similar vein, Saber plans to “adjust Veteran difficulty in a future patch”, by tweaking “AI aggressiveness” on that difficulty level specifically.
PVE changes
Another much reported problem that Saber is considering is the issue of class clashes in Operations mode, where players match-make with another player of the same class and then can’t enter a mission together. Saber is focusing on improving matchmaking to prevent two players with the same Space Marine 2 class joining a lobby. It’s also considering allowing private lobbies where players can run multiples of the same class in the future.
A helpful change to PVE mode will grant players who are booted midway through a mission the XP for all the objectives they’ve completed to that point. This may soften the sting a little, but won’t stop the frustration of missing out on requisition data and that big end-of-mission completion bonus.
Several changes are planned to Space Marine 2 weapons. In PVE mode, Saber acknowledges that the ‘blocking’ weapon trait – which totally removes the “perfect” parry window from certain upgraded weapons – is “a bummer”, and says it will “definitely make changes in a future patch”. A bug that allows the melta rifle to recover more contested health should also be fixed in the next patch.
Though people think the bolt rifle family is underperforming in PVE, Saber says the “core issue” is that Space Marine 2 enemies are “too bullet spongey on higher difficulty”, and it’s testing changes there rather than to the bolt rifle’s output.
PVP changes
Saber states it “wants to add custom PvP lobbies and give players more control over the match (for example: frag limit, class restriction, etc.)”, but says “it’s not that easy to make and it takes time”. It’s also looking into team rebalancing after matches, promising a fix in “future patches”.
Saber is much more circumspect on making changes to weapon performance in PVP, and about making changes to any of the Space Marine 2 classes in either multiplayer mode. At the moment it is still gathering data. We’re inclined to side with them on this one – as we said in our guide to understanding PVP, it’s a class-based game that relies on co-operation. There may be imbalances, but they can’t easily be judged by a player base that’s still pretty green.
Fan requests
Saber addresses many other ideas suggested in the Space Marine 2 Ideas forum – we’ll summarise them here:
Coming in the next big patch
- Custom lens colors.
- Overwrite custom armor profiles with default ones.
Coming in the future
- Expand specific cosmetic “color masks, such as hand, decals, or facemask”.
- Will add “all successor chapters eventually”
- An option to “change your Marine’s face”, though it won’t be a “quick fix”.
- Pyreblaster for PvE or PvP.
Being considered
- Extra Chaos customization – but this won’t be as modular as Loyalist customisation, due to lore restrictions, issues with parts clipping, and the need to retain the visual identity of each class.
- New classes are being “heavily” discussed, but they’re a large undertaking.
- New melee weapons – this will take time because they require multiple unique finisher animations.
- Enabling PvP Crossplay is still under discussion, though “custom PVP lobbies will solve a good part of the issue”.
- Customizing AI squadmates.
- FoV slider – being considered because it’s so popular, but the team thinks it would be both difficult to make and possibly deleterious to the experience.
Not currently being considered
- Battlebarge or Thunderhawk customization – the art team is focused on creating new maps instead.
- Shoulder swapping the camera – would need to be reimplemented for every animation and transition; not happening.
- Cloaks and tabards are part of class identity, and won’t be unlocked as a cosmetic option for other classes.
- Gunstrikes won’t receive i-frames; they are “very easy to spam”, and the choice to use them is supposed to be a “risk/reward” action.
- Saving distinctive perks with each PVE loadout is “not currently a priority”, but isn’t totally ruled out.
The Q&A doesn’t address some of the wilder requests we’ve seen, like adding whole new Warhammer 40k factions to the game for your Space Marines to battle. Nor does it address the popular request to make the campaign missions playable in Operations mode – if you want to do that, check out our rundown on the Space Marine 2 mod that lets you do just that!
Source: Wargamer
