Focus Entertainment really dropped the hottest hotfix for Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, and the players… well, they do have some things to say. It got dropped earlier today, in the hope of alleviating the community’s utmost complaints, but judging by some online reactions and recent opinions, the hotfix has probably missed the mark for the better part.
How much goodness has gone into this tiny package? The big one-line change: increase the rewards of Accolades for doing your daily stratagems. In layman’s terms or a casual player mind frame, Accolades are money for buying gear and cosmetics. Here we have people crying out that the rate at which they earned Accolades was too slow, so that the grind had to go second to their working life. Focus really seems to have taken this into account and has boosted the rewards. One N7FireWarrior did some math and said that in a full week of Hard dailies one could garner about 315 Accolades, whereas previously the combined points of Normal AND Hard challenges for the whole week totaled 315. So, that’s something.
Then, and of course, fixing those bugs that caused Trygon to vanish from the fight was the highlight. Just can’t be good for those wishing to purge xenos with their own tests.
But the real mess was beginning to take place when the community’s response to the hotfix was less than universal. Surely, User Superfly_37 rampaged against it, “the worst patch notes I have ever seen,” demanding fixes to more important issues. Enemy balancing was first: Biovore sniper fire is “awful,” block timings for Chaos Spawn “horrible,” they said; being damaged through full armor by ranged attacks, oh, what a crime! And then, the “infinite” spore mines on higher difficulties-they went on to complain about that. Ouch!
That in turn went on being expanded by more. DeathTrapCult posited that just increasing the Accolades doesn’t fix the “broken economy” of Stratagems mode. Their point was that it doesn’t solve the actual problem: there really isn’t a strong motivation for people with enough skill to do Normal mode to actually do the dailies, so the under-leveled ones then jump into Hard mode and have a hard time. It’s really an issue of matchmaking and incentives, not just currency.
And then those damned technical glitches are still here. More players, with TriniOutsider and Pointy Paints among them, put it out there that they still can’t join any PvP. This has been going on for over a week, and the hotfix hasn’t done a thing to ameliorate it. DiamondDog8404 just said “Same here on Xbox,” putting a stamp on it being a very widespread issue across all platforms. For a game actually trying to lay down a PvP element, that’s pretty crushing.
Those sneaky bugs were spilling into the reactions, as well. Kimber Prime wanted an explanation from the devs on an unannounced stealth Sniper class change, said it felt “inconsistent” that sniping a target now immediately drained a quarter of their ability energy. Lord La Sadies begged the devs to “look over the stunlock mechanics,” describing a forced frustration into death from being stunlock’d by four spawns and they “could not do anything.” And lesh noted the bug they *wanted* to keep-a double pump multi-melta-was still there despite attempts to remove it, and requested it be considered as a heroic variant soon. Sometimes you don’t want to fix a bug. The duality of gamers, man.
There were a few glimmers of light amidst the pounding. Upon this we shall now speak in some light-warmth: AceParty simply replied with an enthusiastic “That’s what I like to read 😀 – thanks!” in response to the Accolade increase. Then danielc4vtr thanked them for the increase but also warned, “I hope you have more armor ready to launch, cause people will get everything and say ‘there’s nothing to grind for 😒.”
And this is a valid argument about the live-service treadmill.
As it is, what now? The game is highly regarded indeed-DanteAmerigo even finished his critique with “Other than that I’m loving the game, almost have everyone max prestige.” That’s dedication. But this hotfix feels like a case of slapping a Band-Aid on a couple of surface-level irritants while leaving untouched the deeper and pricklier issues that have been heavy on the seasoned players during their daily grind. Disconnecting servers, pvP match-making, and enemy balancing at harder difficulties… these are the things that bind or break a co-op shooter in the long term.
There’s no question in name Space Marine 2 is a hit for Focus Entertainment. The core gameplay in itself is basically fantastic. However, the community is hung loud and clear about what’s broken in the foundation. So, this hotfix is a step, definitely. However, judging from all the reactions, it’s only a small step along a very long road. Players need to see much bigger and meatier updates addressing those very human problems if these games are going to run for many months. Ball’s now in Focus’s court. Let’s see what they serve next.
