You mention at 7:05 that you feel like a glass cannon, but the enemy health scaling makes that not really the case either. A glass cannon would at least be able to blow enemies away, but they're too damage-spongey for that to happen.
@darksaiyan2006 yeah the difficulty scaling is crazy especially in operations. More enemies + their health and damage goes through the roof. This wouldn't be as much of a problem if they didn't also make supplies super rare and if there were a better way to regen health.
@@Auzzymandias honestly i think people not having upgraded equipment atm is a huge problem. Once all of your weapons are on-level with the difficulty stuff feels immediately less tanky but that takes a few runs on each difficulty with each class
@@pootisspencer5492 yeah i agree with u, for example when u play substansial diff with artificier equipment the enemy is not so spongy. But if u brought a Mastercrafted equipment then the enemy will be extra spongy
@@Auzzymandias It's not crazy. Stop trying to play the highest difficulties without properly leveled classes and upgraded weapons. ALSO, take your time to learn the intricacies of the parry and block system. You people are constantly complaining about the difficulty when its REALLY not that hard. You just don't have the skill or levels rn to attempt it.
@@jordanwilson4182 I recently dove back into it, and even on damnation as a veteran I feel like I can take twice the punishment I do on average as a bulwark.
@@Jason354 serious. People are too often afraid to pick easy options, when it's not always made for journalists and can be a part of intended experience
Basically what I was hoping Darktide would have been. Instead we felt like Space Marines dressed like normal humans. I'd love to feel like a real underdog in a warhammer game
Even on lower difficulties (3 and down) it gets really annoying how enemies just pop the blue/orange attack while you are slamming them and as a SM where you are supposed to feel OP I feel weak way more then that I feel like powerful in any way. Getting plinged down by the fodder in the back is indeed very annoying while you also get stun locked by the enemies close by quite often, then there are the flying enemies which are bullet sponges and if you have no high powered long range damage (you don't have a heavy/sniper on your team or the heavy picked the multi-melta) you end up out of ammo before taking out 1 of those causing you to have to strategically go down 1 by 1 while others stay alive so you come back with ammo... So much can and needs to be improved on in this game but atm. people are indeed so stuck in the honeymoon phase that they refuse to see the ways the game can improve.
"it gets really annoying how enemies just pop the blue/orange attack while you are slamming them" You can't expect enemies to be stunlocked the entire time you are attacking them, in fact it just makes them easier to perfect parry.
@@coptool3344 Yeah you can't expect the game to be fun nah we're in the current DS obsession of making every game ball bustingly hard just because. Never mind the fact that the enemies can stun lock you into no health on every single difficulty with their near infinite combos and the fact that you're only a squad of 3 versus the world that is currently around you so have fun not being able to use your I Frames.
@@hawk9mm The game isn't "ball bustingly" hard. You're just not good enough. Genuinely. I play ruthless all day long with people and we beat it no problem. Know why? Because we have properly built classes and are good at the game and understand the parry/attack/block mechanics. Just learn the game LMAO.
@@OGBenji- You are like the helldivers 2 community...bro seriously the game has issues that need to be worked on. Keep your "GET GOOD BRO" rubbish to yourself because it helps absolutely no one.
I think my general experience is that you're mostly playing the Parry Mellee combo mini game. There's no way to opt out of it and you have to do it all the time just to survive. Other than that you're just rolling around the floor like Sonic the hedgehog. It does have really great spectacle and immersion but once that wears off it feels like I'm playing more of the mini games than the actual game itself
@@unrelentingduress This is definitely a better way to put it than gimmick. There's also something to be said about executions contributing to this as well.
@@Claysthetics this is just a hot take but. I don't think that the whole melee combo system should refund you health at all. I think that you should be more durable in general and that the melee system rewards you with a bonus health that soaks damage. In each class could have a different maximum amount of damage you're able to soak. That way it would reward you for doing those executions preemptively and if you are really good at it you could be a juggernaut going into the battle not someone scrapping for your life coming out of it. Maybe have a slight regen on your health. I mean they do have an altered metabolism that is supposed to auto clot wounds and regenerate.
I mean there is a story in 40K where someone was trying to kill a space Marine by bleeding him out and he had to cut his throat every couple hours because the wound would heal so fast. And the space Marine was more pissed off about the way he was dying than actually anything else..... Which is about as 40 k as you can get
@@unrelentingduress I see your take and it sounds like the game play loop might just not be for you. I haven’t really found a strong need to spam roll personally. I come from a history of playing doom eternal and that game also revolves around sustain and finishers for health, shield and ammo regen. I loved that experience and I feel right at home in this game. I don’t think the gameplay loop is inherently flawed but it might not be for every one. I hope they continue to add new finishers to existing enemies to help keep it fresh. Some of the extrimis threat enemies only seem to have a single finisher which will definitely get stale at some point
@@calebheisserer5391 I think where I'm coming from is that I don't really feel like what I expect a space marine to feel like. You should feel like the physical embodiment of impending doom. A juggernaut that takes concentrated efforts or immeasurable power to take down. Rolling seems like a bandaid to facilitate some game design rather than something a space marine would regularly do. To be clear I think it's fun. Just as the game ages the aspects I mentioned are just going to get old.
@@Claysthetics I don't have any insight but if I were to guess is things get wrongly culled or simply ignored for optimization purposes when checking for light of sight
Space Marine 2 is almost like Elden Ring, just dodge roll everywhere, compared to SM1 where you're actually encouraged to go melee because executions gave you health instead of a measly 1 armor pip
Whenever I am playing I always think like I went through the trouble of targeting a warrior rather than grunts to execute him. I should at the very least get 2 armor pips
- melee weapons need more stagger - light attacks should stagger hordes - chip damage from horde enemies needs to come WAY down - we need a passive armor regen, even a little bit just so we dont lose all our health by a ranged enemy we didnt see - guns need a massive bump in damage - elite enemies besides chaos marines need less HP - AI director needs to send larger hordes and send them way more often. Most games, even on Ruthless, have large periods of time where you just walk around with nothing to kill
-melee weapons do stagger they completely lock a major from attacking for an extended period of time -light attacks do cleave and stagger horde you can't expect to stagger the entire horde, you need to perfect parry the horde attacks to give yourself some breathing room -Heavy attacking and then gun strike give you an armor segment back, said gun strike also staggers some of the hordes. -shoot /melee the ranged enemies as soon as you see them (or when they shoot at you) don't let them strip all your armor and only start worrying about them when you take health damg. -bolter guns suck ass yess -nope -sounds like you can't even handle a horde so I'm not sure why you would want that.
@@coptool3344I know all of this. I already have 60 hours logged with all missions completed on the highest difficulty and two max level classes. These are common problems that everyone is complaining about. You are insulting me for really no reason at all
@@coptool3344 Factually incorrect, heavy slam or heavy hit to any Warrior and they will just power through it and finish THEIR animation, completely negating yours and you can do nothing about it because the animation takes a year to play out. Regaining armor is pointless since it last a single chip from snipers or light units hitting you from all over.
@@hawk9mm How is what I've said "factually incorrect"? when you melee a majoris they get staggered this is a fact. Obviously, they have armor when attacking how else are they going to attack? If they didn't have armor players could just button mash without them getting a turn.
Well said. I wanted to main heavy with heavy bolter but the dps on that gun is laughable. The guns sound good, but not 40k good. Why does the bolt pistol sound so much better in darktide?
The concept of a Space Marine somersaulting is fine - in real life, a regular person wearing a well-tailored suit of armour can somersault, do cartwheels etc. The point of good armour is that it doesn't actually impede movement - the point of power armour is that it actually enhances the wearer's strength (especially if they're hooked up to it like a space marine, so it's a second skin), rather than impeding it. The mechanic of it being the primary source of i-frames and spammable? Yeah, that's an awful game design sin.
Roll spam is also a trap that will get you overrun and killed in big fights. You absolutely need to master combos and parrying to survive on the higher difficulties.
I'm sorry but to add to the discussion... it COMPLETELY kills the power fantasy of a HEAVY SPACE MARINE to watch everyone ROLL everywhere with a melta, las fusil, etc... it LOOKS completely stupid. HTF would that even work, really?!?!?! There I said it, it had to be said, someone had to say it. Don't believe me watch Clay's gameplay from 7:20 to 8ish minutes... It looks stupid as all hell.
@@seanstrickland6501 I absolutely resonate the fact that we spam roll is not the gameplay loop anyone wanted. It doesn't just look stupid it feels stupid but it's the best way to play lol
@@Claystheticsi didnt even realize it was a strategy till i saw randoms do it. and i beat the campaign veteran and am doing mostly solo t2/3 operations. Don’t know if i’m playing different but i feel plenty powerful, especially in melee. just want that horde mode so i don’t have to wade out of my bloodbath
Space Marines are strong enough to be athletic and sometimes acrobatic in their armor, Primaris even moreso, it would make more sense for Terminators to not be able to do what you're asking for in this comment, or you could just play Heavy, hence the name.
@@Claysthetics If you spam Iframe roll you'll get roll caught like against the Hive Tyrant boss, if you Iframe roll it shows you don't really know how to fight or what to do.
I appreciate you speaking out on this stuff, I'd imagine it's annoying to deal with people who just label you and anyone else criticizing the game as "haters" but this sort of critique is very helpful for making the game better.
I was hoping they’d add a system like Darktide where you get toughness (or armor in this game) back from melee kills and perhaps a bit of HP from executing Majoris+ enemies. That said, this game has so much potential (horde mode hype!) so I hope the devs make thoughtful decision on their balancing methods. I have hope and the experience I got from the campaign and operations alone was well worth the price tag! Great video and I appreciate your well-spoken and thoughtful opinions.
@@Phnx117 Thank you for the kind words, this game also reminds me of darktide alot with the hive city and mission progression so that's why I think I'm so off put by the hp gating. I think with some work they could spawn twice as many enemies and make a really insane experience
@@falcor2325 That's actually kind of a fun idea for block. Mine was that you could just turtle up and get a few temporary armor while you held it but combined our block ideas would go super hard
There are so many tiny tweaks that would massively improve the game. My favorite idea now is to make 'block' weapons have a higher proc rate for gun strikes, so theyre not blatantly bad, just a different option.
@@Reach4God1 brother, block weapons are the only weapons that cannot proc gun strikes.. Perfect parry is how you proc a gun strike. Block weapons forfeit being able to get gun strikes from block/parry by being stronger. Block weapons are basically useless and will get you killed. Gun striking is best way to get armor back and great damage. Blocking is also not even blocking in this game, you do a little block then counter so basically it’s just a parry. But with block weapons you can never get a gun strike from parrying.
Most players are currently in the honeymoon period, just like they were for a time when Helldivers launched. When SM2's novelty has worn out, the general consensus of the game will become more accurate and less clouded by hype. If that consensus is positive or negative depends on how Saber handles their product.
Yea the game is really fun so that honeymoon will last a good bit I don't think most people will feel what I'm talking about here for 2-3 weeks but it is what it is
I think maybe people were expecting a different product potentially. People were making out that it was some new answer to Helldivers or a brand new live service.
Graphic design and story are 10/10 (may be 11/10 for a Warhammer game). Combat (i.e. THE gameplay) is a 5/10. The combat, in my opinion, is very clunky and prioritizes parry/kill animations over fluid battles. When you are surrounded by a horde and click parry or execute: the battle will practically stops, you will become invulnerable, you casually walk over to the enemy (through other enemies), the animation will play out, then the battle resumes. It is like you are the lord of time itself because during these animations the enemies will stop targeting you and they will stand there and wait. Dodge is super slow, especially in comparison to other actions. And stun locks from enemies makes combat slow. Despite these actions being slow, your marine can put away his chainsword, pull out his bolter rifle, shoulder it, aim, and fire it at the speed of light. Whenever I am transitioning from melee to ranged, I feel like, "Hell yeah, let's go", because it is so responsive and fluid, but during melee, slogging through a horde, it is just bad game design. Painful, even.
It's one reason I haven't bought it and don't plan on doing so as of now, seeing the gameplay trailers always made me think it was prioritising look over feel.
"Graphic design and story are 10/10" Except there's no significant environmental damage, no footprints, no impact decals on enemies, doesn't seem to be any limb damage (compare the visuals for weapon impacts to Left 4 Dead 2, a now ancient game that runs on a potato), and weapons that shoot fire so hot it can melt metal... apparently don't scorch the scenery or set plants on fire. People seem to have not noticed that the game is missing features that date back 20 years.
@@NicholasBrakespear I didn't even notice, that's when you know the story is good. All that stuff takes time though, and if they'd made a good combat system, I wouldn't have minded that they spent less time on stuff like that :P
@@bajasmancer It's stuff that's supposed to be implemented early on in development, and it takes rather less time than you'd think - given that such functionality was present in titles, as I said, that date back 20 years and often had development times of about 1 year.
@@NicholasBrakespear It took less time in 20 year old game engines... doesn't necessesarily mean it takes as little time now, and with longer developement times overall, it becomes even more important to spend time and resources on stuff that improves gameplay, not saying they've couldn't have done better here though 😄Guessing stuff like that could be trends as well, I remember seeing a video about Farcry 2, and how the effects were better in every way than the following sequels 😞
It's weird to see space marines rolling. I would have preferred if the side step dodge was the dodge we got, would make more sense. I am with you brother, soon the novelty will wear out and people will see the flaws with the game. I am pretty sure if the game wasn't a warhammer 40k it wouldn't have gotten the praise it did.
He protec, he attac, but most importantly, he interac. It really annoyed me throughout the campaign that to interact with things I had to hold down the button. And be directly on top of the interaction. And some items you pick up with a single press, others you have to hold down. Compared to the smoothness of Darktide or Doom it just felt super clunky. Small petty gripe I know, but still.
i will say this is on point for alot of it. the meta right now (from what my friends and i have gathered) for operations is bring a tactical and a heavy with you every operation, the 3rd slot i feel can switch between bulwark and sniper. tactical because they can buff everyones damage by up to 200% against targets that are scanned, heavy for crowd clearing, sniper for the insane amount of damage they can dish out even without the scan. sniper can melt the hive tyrant within seconds if its scanned. its stupid
Team optimization potential is huge and almost the entire community is low-level and has very little game knowledge atm. I think the perceived difficulty of the game will go down drastically as people level up and improve.
@@pootisspencer5492 so, no footage bc i dont really do editing. but can confirm, tactical, sniper and heavy makes ruthless a walk in the park. melta is op, even the heavy was using heavy bolter, i was using melta gun. crowds were a piece of cake, warriors and carnifax were melted when scanned. granted we played inferno, if i can get them in a squad with me again we will do decapitation.
Still doesn't address the main points in the video though; health/armor, block/parry/dodge, and weapon balance is all over the place... there needs to be a healthy adjustment to everything at this point - the RPG-ification of this game works against the entire purpose of being an Astartes: being a bad-ass no matter what weapon you're carrying.
The forever JOINING SERVER is gonna kill it for me. And then they had the nerve to say its because you're getting kicked from the group or your internet is the issue.
I've played a bunch and I get the feeling the game doesn't know what it wants to be. I feel like I'm getting punished for engaging in melee, sometimes your timing really gets thrown off due to the thing you try to parry/ kill shot dies so you end up getting nuked to oblivion, kill shot seems like it might be a good idea while in a pinch but you're vulnerable while at it so it defeats its purpose
@@ClaystheticsI just attempted a solo average threat op because I'm having connection issues and got hit with a massive wave. Spores everywhere, melee enemies bumrushing me leaving 0 space for even 1 swing. Absolute misery
@@Claysthetics I gotta ask because i'm seeing this specifically from people who aren't Warhammer fans. What does being powerful mean to you? Because the answer i get is " Well not getting folded like a lawn chair " Okay so what should change? " So i don't die " Meaning what? Nerf the enemies damage to do 1 damage to you and you do so much damage back you might as well play Path of Exile with a fully kitted out Righteous fire build? I'm not the biggest warhammer fan, however i understand it enough to know the power we have is little below what would be accurate to the books. We may be 2nd to gods but we are still mortal and 1 snoozing and a space marine is gone in an instant. So to me Ruthless is fine in terms of difficulty and i'm not rolling around like a formula 1 wheel that got loose at 200mph. My friends and i are playing Bulwark, Assault and sniper and i doing perfectly fine in melee. So i'm honestly just confused here.
@SuddenFool I want to believe your comment comes from a good place, but seeing "I play max difficulty and I'm doing fine" makes it hard. It's really easy to take damage and replenishing it is punishing. That's all it comes down at.
I played yesterday for 3 hours with my friend, and there so much things that Saber changed that really bothers me. 1. Ranges enemies spawns and locations were really well balanced that you could take your time and deal with them before you would go into melee combat 2. Armor was regen per second and HP was obtaines through executions 3. I really hate to hold my RMB just to force some executions or s so I can survive a little bit longer, in original game there was a dedicated stun button that worked all the time against thrash mobs and on wounded harder enemies 4. Guns feel like nerf toys, first game had much more smaller arsenal but all of them felt like they were perfect for specific occasions like Heavy Bolter against hordes or much more armored enemy, sniper rifle for picking far away targets. Im gonna soon replay first Space Marine to see if I am right about this, it's been 8 years since I finished that game so it's hard to remember everything
I can agree with most of the bolt weapons feeling not as good to use over the energy based weaponry but it was the exact same in SM1 in horde mode the bolt weapons sucked unless you headshot even then you just take a plasma gun more dps and better ammo efficiency, Or im not sure if you talking about pvp or the campaign but the bolt guns are generally the same in either mode for sm1 and 2 Headshots is what you want the bolt gun absolutely destroys things with headshots. The armor/health system almost works the exact same in campaign mode with executions in the first game you get hp back where as in the second game you get armor back for completing a weapon strike and you can get your contested hp back from doing executions/ doing a ton of damage. The armor system in the first game never regen'd inside of combat. if you think trying to survive in this game is annoying go back and play sm1 on the harder difficulties and you would be surprised, as for the dedicated stun button, its a completely different game with different combat the way you stun enemies is by counter or perfect dodging them and then weapon striking them. I think you have to give the game some more time and stop thinking about sm1 this game is superior in gameplay to the first one, there are some things that are frustrating to deal with right now and the low content but besides that I think the game is starting out good.
After playing SM 2 for 4 hours I felt combat makes me feel angry and that I had no fun at all. I had some ideas why. And I had to reassure if I am right by plaing SM 1 again. The combat in SM 1 is a bit simpler but really fun from the get go: 1. You can not be stunned. 2. Ranged wepons feel and are impactful. You can play with very little melee and have a fun shooter experience. 3. You can stun enemies with a stun button and you can choose to finish an enemy or 2. But you do not really rely on it. 4. You heal with the finishers. After 2 finishers, you can go an and have a fast, fluid melee combat. 5. Combat feels rewarding and fun overall. Very little need for QTE.
@@bajasmancer now that i have played a few days i have to say i am way better now. And the melee combat is really fun. You just have to train your reflexes, parry and dodge. Once you get this right it just works. I have to say though i wish the melee would have some more fun moves which give more mobility. And melee damage should be buffed for some classes/Weapons. And yes the Bolters are a little weak. It is better if you manage to do headshots. But they should mow down minors with 1 hit.
12:16 this 100%. Having to spam roll is not fun. I can forgive the time-stopping for melee parry and execution because it’s visually satisfying and gives plenty of “hell yeah” moments - but the “roll away” meta is just not fun at all.
Yes, all of this, unfortunately. You can see that a really good game is in there but some major tweaking needs to be done. The more you play the more it comes out and as more get through the honeymoon period there will be more pointing it out. I hope they adapt quickly or I can see this dying out quick which would be sad.
@@rottn1580 I usually take the L from the honeymoon glazers to call stuff out early that they will run into in a month but it seems like most people that played ea agree with it which is a nice change of pace. Let's hope some feedback gets listened to so the game can get better and most people never have to deal with some of this stuff.
@@Claysthetics Every game has its fanboys that will never accept any criticism but at least so far it feels like most truly love the franchise and want it to be as good as it can be.
I just want to play the PVP and it kicks me off of every single match when I'm done it is driving me insane they shouldn't have released the game broken
I maxed vanguard first and am able to keep health pretty high by targeting any ranged enemies w the grapple but it does create a weird balance where I’m running past a terminus to prioritize ranged chaff. Great video clay
Thank you, I've been playing around with a lot of weird stuff on ruthless and it mostly just gravitates back to melta gun go brrrt. Have you tried all the guns with vanguard yet?
@@Claysthetics same here, I maxed out the melta and combat knife first and have been dabbling with a bolter and chain sword combo back on the lower difficulties but it honestly can’t keep up Vanguard especially seems to benefit from melta use bc I can debuff them w a grapple up to their face and melt them away literally
@@calebheisserer5391 Ye that's what I was vibin to the cc aoe damage and just cool factor of the melta gun are so hard to give up. Chainsword gets good once you mega max it out btw
@@Claysthetics I like the chain sword a lot. Combos feel great, it practically feels needed for me to make up for the bolter weapons weakness with close range cc
Going to continue to play HD2 , apex , titanfall 2, Fortnite and my other games and pick this up when the price drops and horde mode is added. It’s like most games in 2024 , potential but unfinished Great review broski
As playing Heavy mostly, sometimes Bullwark on Dif 4, yes i agree i think to about almost anything you said the problems are so far. I was extremly lucky (until today) never having any bugs with enemies shooting through walls. Now after official launch somehow starts happening and more and more often
@@robynrriderr7419 It seems to mostly happen on elevators and shipping containers but when it does it's gg lol. I still need to max out the plasma and heavy bolter on heavy did you try them yet?
@@Claysthetics Yes but not on Dif 4 yet, suprisingly the Heavy Bolter (as long as nothing distracts you) was really nice dealing with the Hive Tyrant. However, i wonder if the Heavy Plasma Incenerator does better against it
me and my friend are giving up on the angel of death run for now. playing on that mode you see issues staring right at you the entire time. tons of tiny ones and unfortunately big ones. it almost feels like it wasn't play tested. we spent 20 minutes last night checking and reading the internet to see if anybody else was getting shot through walls. they were. you absolutely need to be able to rely on cover in these missions. cover play is something you learn and depend on in any shooter that promotes aggression, contrary to what you might think. doom eternal players know what i mean. imagine an enemy in that game could constantly shoot you through walls. and not just one, but multiple big and small on different corners of the arena. the entire game balance would shit itself and that's exactly what happens here imo
I finished solo Angel of Death. The only enemies that could shoot through walls on my entire run were psychic attacks, and those made total sense to bypass physical barriers. No normal shooting ever hit me behind a cover. Maybe I was lucky?
@@michaelalves8900 i'm gonna call you lucky and also impressive considering the challenge. that's as far as my anecdotal evidence goes but unfortunately this is a common issue. seems to be the worst on the barge mission. combined with the memory leaking, the more you die and restart, the worse it gets. can't pick up items, enemies blast us through cover. same outcome every time. clearly something fixable but frustrating.
I feel like I'm punished for engaging in melee even though I'm a high level bulwark. Surely melee should be my advantage. I also feel like the melee weapons barely do any damage even when performing combos, I still love this game just feels abit unbalanced atm
Devs, please do not add a cooldown to blue and orange attacks. Its my lifeline, without it my assault will die as i would miss out on s and gun strikes
I 100% agree with your takes on the melee, health, and armor system. They def need to be tweaked and/or a rework of perks that supplement it. Getting caught by an unblockable because Im stuck in an attack animation feels so bad.
Completely agree. We criticise and give suggestions because the game precisely because it's good and has potential. No one's talking about the balance and gameplay of dustborn or concord
Don't care what anyone says about darktide, they need to go in the direction of darktide with the combat don't get me wrong the game is fun and I like the parry system don't remove that but make us feel like actual marines lol more tanky and this can easily be fixed by making armor better cause right now its garbage lol I have 3 stacks I lose a stack from one small enemy hitting me? then I lose all 3 I knock one back get a stack back and instantly lose it again from a small enemy what the hell lol and after doing that just spawn more enemies just do it like darktide does it it works well
16:53 It's still in the game, It's just the case for Bulwark if you break his shield then he gets stuned, otherwise only assualt jump can do stagger on melee
The game promised I'd feel like a space marine, but I feel more like a Tau. Especially in melee combat. I don't like souls like mechanics. Edit: Also, they should have mentioned implementing the parry mechanics. In trailers this is shown as more of hack and slash/ shooter game. Didn't like the surprise.
Honestly I feel a lot more powerful as any character in Darktide than I do in this game ... literally feel like I have paper armor instead of power armor on. Also it felt like there was way more crappy enemies to kill in Darktide (hence the "tide") and they aren't as annoying to kill as the little enemies in this game. In Darktide you are dodging smoothy in concert with your melee swings, in this game you are dodge rolling and barely get openings to attack, it just feels bad. The game is so fun though, they really need to fix the enemy scaling at least.
Glad I’m not the only one that feels this way. Such a lazy design for level scaling, *turn up enemy damage and health* voila there’s your higher unbalanced difficulty that is not an ounce of fun.
Honestly, hard agree with the stats and damage just being off on some enemies, like you said I feel BAD for the guardsmen, because they just fold like nothing compared to your average gaunt or demon. Hp also just suuuuch a pain to regen, the amount you gun from the gun special is tiny so often. Even in normal.
It feels like the game is missing a cover system. I get it is its own thing but i cant help but think of gears of war where you would similarly be getting shot at a lot but being able to take actual cover helped tremendously to negate that, and that game too had certain enemies to try and flush you out of cover. I think space marine would've benefitted from this a lot as that was definitely my number one thing i noticed on veteran campaign and the pve missions is just getting absolutely pelted from a far distance whenever i try to do anything so you end up trying to find a suitable hallway with a wall you can wallbang the enemies around
A lot of these issue spill into keeping me from having fun, and I have no desire to play on harder difficulties. I just miss the fun power fantasy of the first game, and I'm constantly struggling to hit parries, so you can imagine how frustrating operations are for me on Normal when the game refuses to drop that green upgrade currency on Easy.
finally started playing and its kind of weird to me that the healing off executions isnt in like the first game, so far really enjoy it but ive only done campaign so far
The green vine that spawns on the ground causes massive stuttering for me. It's very noticeable when you go look at it close. And this is pretty much all settings minimized. Game usually runs just fine on 3060ti like this, but the green effect is simply broken somehow.
massive agree on the way hp and armor work in pve content I played the campaign solo on diff3, all the enemies were only shooting at me (my AI pals had their hp completely topped off 95% of the time btw, they absolutely do not take the same amount of damage you do) and if I stood still for any amount of time my hp would melt to nothing immediately. My "armor" might as well not exist for all the good it did. Had a ton of fun, but the overall experience felt a lot more frustrating than it should have. I thought I was supposed be a walking tank/demi-god, yet more often than not I felt like a common foot soldier. when I was done I went to play Darktide instead and honestly had a way better time.
I don't understand making an online game that requires twitchy block and parry mechanics especially when those are your only methods surviving? I don't understand ramping the health pool of the most trivial enemies as a way to increase difficulty? This directly make us LESS powerful as the means to increase difficulty. I do not understand the extreme ammo scarcity especially coupled with the increasing health pools? The game is about shooting stuff and I dont want to, because i will be out of ammo when a zoanthrope shows up. I don't understand why game developers constantly base difficulty on how annoying they can make the content? The difficulty shouldn't be fighting through irritating mechanics. This stuff doesn't show up as much in low difficulty. But the minute you go to three it is obvious that things are tuned badly, and that it is going to get much worse. And it does. Look, the game wont last with the main mechanism for difficulty being scarcity of ammo and scaling health pools. It isn't fun. It is lazy approach to difficulty.
Love all your purposed changes I really hope the devs listen we also need an armory data exchange like 4 green to one purp as leveling weapons feels awful right now.
I did level 3 difficulty solo right at 9.5 hours. Loved every minute of it. It felt rough at first, but the change of encounters later was surprisingly easier for me personally
06:31 DO NOT LISTEN TO TIM WILLITS. Guy is probably the worst game designer ever, a liar and horrible towards his colleagues. Can't believe he still gets a job at game developer studios.
Couldn’t agree more about health system and damage. We all expected facing and overcoming uncountable hordes not freaking roll through them in panic like it some kind of Hydra dominatus simulator
I appreciate the thoughts. It's been hard finding honest feedback from people that are clearly big 40k fans and aren't being very honest with how the game is beyond their fanboy campaign moments.
Balance is weak aff. On higher difficulty it feels like an mmo with the bullet sponges even with the opp “weapons” Got every chart to level 25 but man you need to have a decent team and best weapons and perks to make it. It is not even an option to use weapons that arent meta because you are leaching on your team. Worst balance i have seen in a game And dont start on the swarm mechanic. Max is 30 enemies and the problem isnt the number of them but the amount of health and damage they do. Everybody is doing the nids missions for a reason. Also they need to fix the leaking of memory 64 gig and 24 gig video Card and game still crashes because of memory.
I sincerely hope that someone from the dev team watches this video and seriously consider the changes you are proposing. I have played both Darktide and Vermintide well over 400 hours and regrettably suffering and getting frustrated a lot when playing Space Marine 2 in higher tier difficuilties. Sometimes it feels almost impossible.
Enemies shoot through walls whilst your heavy bolter is blocked by foliage on most trees...I mained vengeance launcher in SM1 and lacking that in SM2 I have fallen into playing the Heavy (fanboy gripe, why isn't it called a Devastator) because the tactical, bulwark and assault marine kept being taken. Rolly Polly Heavy to stay alive vs everything whilst everyone else respawns hurts my thumb. Multimelta feels bad to start, dunno in artificer/relic but it does sweet fa damage vs bosses and warriors, it's just a glorified astartes shotgun in effect now. Heavy Plasma feels worse then normal plasma because 35 ammo with 5 for charge vs 110 and 10 for charge, yeah. Never been good with heavy plasma so it might be me, but plasma pistol is my warrior/lictor/ravener killer whilst the heavy bolter takes obscene shots to kill warriors.
I completely agree with these points. The game is extremely fun and has a lot of room for potential. If they make these fixes, add things to the game, make more customization, and not nerf everything like Helldivers, it will be amazing.
I’ve basically hit a wall after a certain point in operations. The difficulty from the lowest difficulty to average is crazy lol. It gets frustrating after a while. You’re supposed to feel powerful and yet I’m here rolling across the map to stay alive
Honestly, my one gripe with this game is it doesn't have FSR3 come with at launch. They said they planned post launch but I think we all kinda knew they may or not release it soon. I'm betting it'll be next year the earliest.
In the middle of watching this video I had a thought of how they could balance bolters better. You know how melee weapons have the category of block, balance, and fencing for defenses? What if bolters fell into Hellfire bolts for shredding 'Nids faster, and Kraken rounds for dealing with Chaos. Could be an interesting change to the game.
I keep running out of ammo and it also does seem like yeah, the tiny mobs do way more damage than any of the bigger Warrior types. Also fact that you are limited to one pistol and one actually useful weapon makes it pretty tough. If they wanted to make you feel like a giant damage soaking pinata, they accomplished it.
Great takes, another issue that isn’t being mentioned a lot is the blatant false advertising from saber. Stating you could play with 5 other friends in PVP yet the squad cap doesn’t permit it, they have since scrubbed their websites of any mention of playing with more than 2 other friends.
The armour feels good on Easy difficulty, it feels god awful veteran plus. Health feels awful at all difficulties. If you get bursted down, you're left feeling like well wtf do I do now? Dodge rolling everywhere until you see that glorious health pickup. Like Doom? Like Halo 1? Like Quake? Really? Armour replenishing with only a headshot post counter / dodge, or an execution, makes what could be a fun gameplay loop just feel so forced and rigid that it's unenjoyable. Primaris marines have innate regeneration in the lore... I feel like they should swap armour and health. Armour is this beefy health bar that sits in front of your health and there are a few ways to bring it back dotted around the levels, but health is this thing that regenerates slowly, and replenishes when you land an execution. Then you can show the armour being damaged depending how close the bar is to empty and the game would actually feel like a modern game and not an arcade game with quick time events and a forced gameplay loop.
Agree with all of this. The ranged enemies are busted and shoot through lots of environments. The little chaos enemies with the shields are 10x stronger than the bulwark class lol
Ive had more long term fun game play with darktide. But as of cool things happening, SM2 wins. Your right roll fests isnt what space marines are all about.
tho I personally have not played diff4 of operations yet, what you've described mirrors almost perfectly my own assessment, I'm glad we (my friends and I) are not the only ones experiencing said issues... cuz apparently some people are not having the same ones, and this was the 1st hint for be that this was related to desync and lag... the game while fun, needs fixing, I'm willing to cur Focus some slack as long as they don't pull an AH move, and starting messing around stuff that doesn't matter instead of fixing the glitches...
The inconsistency in parry windows from visual notification makes swarms difficult also. In a swarm having multiple enemies with different windows is unnecessary difficulty. Nids should have 1 window etc.
I think this game has issues on every difficulty... They were so afraid of it being called easy, that they chose to discourage casuals like myself, who've just played shooters for 30 years or something... I think you nailed it on the head though, they failed to utilise the best parts of this game. Rolling around like a damn barrel half the match is not why I bought this game. Darktide is a much better horde shooter than this, even though that is the selling point of this engine. Oh, and look at that carnifex clip, the multi-melta barely deals more damage than the bolt pistol, that's just silly.
I pretty much agree with your take on the difficulty/ health bit. While I played the campaign on difficulty 3 - (coop with 1 buddy + AI) it felt good against the nids specifically - however against chaos I stuck to melta - and he to Sniper Stuff. So sorta agree that bolt weapons need a buff - mainly against chaos though. (On that note - nerf those damn shield Tzangoors) On the Hp bit I agree too - some sort of passive regen maybe + less accurate ranged enemies. Also maybe less "Sniper" type enemies - because these guys are the biggest offenders to force roll spams. (Again this bit feels better against nids - since only some warriors (Majoris) have Snipers - which makes them into elites that should feel threatening) however tsons have Human Cultists as snipers - and these guys should not be able to take down half my hp bar every couple second If I miss a dodge.
Thank you for not making a mindless "this game pure perfection" video. I have less than 30 hours in the game and I bought it on the 6th. I can play single player just fine, but the multiplayer is absolutely broken. Can rarely ever get into a match. I can run the game at 4k max settings, but this if it's not fixed will be the first and last Warhammer game I ever play.
8:18 nah to level gating. I already have my 25 heavy and I did lvl 1 ruthless bulwark and tactical. Yeah you will not be in the top of dmg, but you can cc and help teammates, AND have some relic or purple gear to do ok dmg. For real, if you dont have anything purple or relic, you dont belong on ruthless. Cause its pretty easy to get purple and if you cannot even do this... And I definetly dont wanna play 4-5 missions to level up my stuff on other classes to purple. While you can just do 2 on ruthless, or 3 if you fail 1. Just dont bring anything bolter based, parry and dodge. Run to big ammo box spawns when facing bosses and you are good.
All valid points! although my biggest problem rather then gameplay as of right now is just the instability of the game + servers like you did mention & Loading times / unoptimised. I'v JOINED 32 games, and only finnished 3, non has failed so far, either I disconnect or host does and merge fail, then game crashes or you join and class occupied, and all the reloading But all the gameplay changes are needed too.
I dont play heavy but Vanguard, and he is also very good at regaining contested health, IF you use the melta rifle that is. One shot into a bunch of fodder basically gives you all contested health back.
I hope they will fix/add the things you talked about. It's critical to listen to a bunch of differing opinions, whether you like them or not to get a feel for what could be done better. I hope that Saber Interactive manages the gathering of feedback well and makes the right choices for the game. As of right now, I have no reason to doubt that they will mess this up.
I've always hated that "more health/damage = challenge" mindset that developers seem to take on all too often. Get creative with difficulty. The game's campaign was fantastic, but I ended up turning down from Angel of Death to Veteran on the Elevator objective (it's a problem with any of these defense objectives, including the "Blow the Wall" objective where the charges can glitch out) because other than pickups bugging out after you die the first time, I played solo with AI team mates. I was fine with the difficulty of the enemies but Gadriel and Chairon were absolutely brain-dead during combat. Anything where we had to accomplish multiple objectives at once while also defending against waves ended up with me running from place to place, baby-sitting spot objectives because the AI would just stand around occasionally shooting their bolters and wildly swinging at trash enemies while yelling "THEY'RE HARRYING THE CHAINS" repeatedly. They also seem to LOVE leaving executions un-finished at random. Kind of muddied the immersion.
Combat is bonked, space marine primaris armour is sheet paper and bolt rounds don't one shot trash mob members. Playing the game on veteran mode shows you that the game Devs don't really understand what a space marine is.
Yeah, shield mob facing the might of a thunder hammer like that is just wild. Hell even a chainsword not ripping right through that is insane. Is that supposed to be a ceramite shield or something?
Assault class is dog water and I agree about the melee being a lil punishing. As space marines we are beast but I feel like we are not. You made so many valid points and I agree
here is some things in no particular order that I have started to hate. 1 all of the guns feel like nerf guns with a few exceptions, like the melta guns and the Las rifle. All their guns feel useless against elites and not very good against the hordes either. 2. Fighting against chaos is a ball ache. Snipers chunk your HP and armour. The lesser creatures have shields more powerful than space marine armour. Being shot at in higher difficulties sucks because there is no cover system so you are forced to face tank the damage. 3. The mastery system that is used to level weapons feels bad, it takes way to long and after completing a mission it does not tell you how much XP you had and how much you have gained. Often there is no bar that shows any mastery progress at all. 4. weapon perk system is bad. its uninteresting and no worth of any time as the perks that you can choose are very limited and its obvious what ones you are supposed to pick because the other perks suck so much. 5. Ammo.......Not only do guns not do nearly enough damage but keeping enough ammo is a huge problem. so to add insult to injury you have to use more ammo to kill because the damage is so low while not having enough ammo, it just feels bad! Ammo box! on the Carnifex boss fight locating that ammo box that some some reason randomly spawns in different locations is a pain in the ass to find when you need it, and lastly the class perk system just doesn't even need to exist if its going to continue in its current state. 88 hours in I really do like this game but these issues get even more clear the more you play to the point that i am actually starting to not like playing the game anymore.
I think the main issue is that it has a lot of glaring issues and yet is incredibly fun despite those issues. So there's a huge amount of missed potential just laying on the table because it could go from a really fun game to a perfect game.
Lets compare to Darktide, how you find it at the current states? I mean Space Marine 2 is "just" Darktide with Space Marines in 3rd Person plus Animation lock. The campaign is absolutly awesome tho. Try to sniper stealth thru the levels like we did on zealots :)
Darktide can be hard and punishing, but when you cleave through hoard with a power sword and you see heads fly, then dodge backwards and unload with a bolter, you feel powerful. In the few matches SM2 has allowed me to play, I haven't really felt powerful. I've felt distinctly unpowerful.
On God I need my red bolters. The only bad part of the campaign was the flamer (I refuse to call it pyreblaster) but except for that it was a 10/10 as a Warhammer fan. Best 40k game yet.
You mention at 7:05 that you feel like a glass cannon, but the enemy health scaling makes that not really the case either. A glass cannon would at least be able to blow enemies away, but they're too damage-spongey for that to happen.
@darksaiyan2006 yeah the difficulty scaling is crazy especially in operations. More enemies + their health and damage goes through the roof. This wouldn't be as much of a problem if they didn't also make supplies super rare and if there were a better way to regen health.
@@Auzzymandias honestly i think people not having upgraded equipment atm is a huge problem. Once all of your weapons are on-level with the difficulty stuff feels immediately less tanky but that takes a few runs on each difficulty with each class
@@pootisspencer5492 yeah i agree with u, for example when u play substansial diff with artificier equipment the enemy is not so spongy. But if u brought a Mastercrafted equipment then the enemy will be extra spongy
@@Auzzymandias It's not crazy. Stop trying to play the highest difficulties without properly leveled classes and upgraded weapons. ALSO, take your time to learn the intricacies of the parry and block system.
You people are constantly complaining about the difficulty when its REALLY not that hard. You just don't have the skill or levels rn to attempt it.
64000 chainsword swings later and the warrior is finally able to be executed.
I love how my bolter barely kills bullet sponge bugs
@@Jij29 I've known you for 10 years so I guess weel play ruthless later tn brother (:
@@Claysthetics I barely get time to do minimal lol
Skill issue
@@Juggs009Brain dead comment
ah sounds like Division 1... instead of making the enemies more tanky... y not make them more tricky like dodging u or smarter.....
Its funny that Darktide characters are more tanky than primaris space marines in this game
Idk I remember melting like butter on the higher diffs in darktide
@@jordanwilson4182 I recently dove back into it, and even on damnation as a veteran I feel like I can take twice the punishment I do on average as a bulwark.
I felt more powerful as a kitted out convict than a primaris marine
Seriously! My Ogryn could whoop my Space Marine.
Play easy mode.
It's specifically for that => they blow up from each move and you can afford killing everyone!
@@FirstLast-wk3kc sarcasm or are you serious?
@@Jason354 serious.
People are too often afraid to pick easy options, when it's not always made for journalists and can be a part of intended experience
@@FirstLast-wk3kc the second hardest difficulty literally says it is the “intended experience”.
I can't play alone with bots is pissing me off the most - besides of this I had an absolute blast.
@@PROPHYZ I think turning the bots off would be fun for solo spec ops but yea the game is ridiculously fun to play
My thoughts exactly im prob guna have to hop online
@@Claysthetics id like an option to limit who can join to friends list. or run it solo.
Disconnect a moment the internet and you alr can play with bots
Just Que up Quickplay, if you don’t want to play with bots lol
All the Imperial guard moments in this game really makes me hope they make a guardsmen game with massive battle.
That would be my dream come true the guardsman have the best representation they have ever had in this game.
I've always wanted a survival horror game playing as imperial guard or citizen of the Imperium.
just play helldivers 2 haha if you want guardsmen
@evildaddyz helldivers 2 has the crappy guardsmen weapons but at least guardsmen have thousands of guys not 4 dudes + plus screw the HD 2 devs.
Basically what I was hoping Darktide would have been. Instead we felt like Space Marines dressed like normal humans. I'd love to feel like a real underdog in a warhammer game
Even on lower difficulties (3 and down) it gets really annoying how enemies just pop the blue/orange attack while you are slamming them and as a SM where you are supposed to feel OP I feel weak way more then that I feel like powerful in any way. Getting plinged down by the fodder in the back is indeed very annoying while you also get stun locked by the enemies close by quite often, then there are the flying enemies which are bullet sponges and if you have no high powered long range damage (you don't have a heavy/sniper on your team or the heavy picked the multi-melta) you end up out of ammo before taking out 1 of those causing you to have to strategically go down 1 by 1 while others stay alive so you come back with ammo... So much can and needs to be improved on in this game but atm. people are indeed so stuck in the honeymoon phase that they refuse to see the ways the game can improve.
"it gets really annoying how enemies just pop the blue/orange attack while you are slamming them" You can't expect enemies to be stunlocked the entire time you are attacking them, in fact it just makes them easier to perfect parry.
@@coptool3344 Yeah you can't expect the game to be fun nah we're in the current DS obsession of making every game ball bustingly hard just because. Never mind the fact that the enemies can stun lock you into no health on every single difficulty with their near infinite combos and the fact that you're only a squad of 3 versus the world that is currently around you so have fun not being able to use your I Frames.
@@hawk9mm The game isn't "ball bustingly" hard. You're just not good enough. Genuinely. I play ruthless all day long with people and we beat it no problem. Know why? Because we have properly built classes and are good at the game and understand the parry/attack/block mechanics. Just learn the game LMAO.
@@OGBenji- You are like the helldivers 2 community...bro seriously the game has issues that need to be worked on. Keep your "GET GOOD BRO" rubbish to yourself because it helps absolutely no one.
@@coptool3344 Oh so we can be perma stunlocked but we cant do the same to the enemies? Very good game design
I think my general experience is that you're mostly playing the Parry Mellee combo mini game. There's no way to opt out of it and you have to do it all the time just to survive. Other than that you're just rolling around the floor like Sonic the hedgehog. It does have really great spectacle and immersion but once that wears off it feels like I'm playing more of the mini games than the actual game itself
@@unrelentingduress This is definitely a better way to put it than gimmick. There's also something to be said about executions contributing to this as well.
@@Claysthetics this is just a hot take but. I don't think that the whole melee combo system should refund you health at all. I think that you should be more durable in general and that the melee system rewards you with a bonus health that soaks damage. In each class could have a different maximum amount of damage you're able to soak. That way it would reward you for doing those executions preemptively and if you are really good at it you could be a juggernaut going into the battle not someone scrapping for your life coming out of it. Maybe have a slight regen on your health. I mean they do have an altered metabolism that is supposed to auto clot wounds and regenerate.
I mean there is a story in 40K where someone was trying to kill a space Marine by bleeding him out and he had to cut his throat every couple hours because the wound would heal so fast. And the space Marine was more pissed off about the way he was dying than actually anything else..... Which is about as 40 k as you can get
@@unrelentingduress I see your take and it sounds like the game play loop might just not be for you. I haven’t really found a strong need to spam roll personally.
I come from a history of playing doom eternal and that game also revolves around sustain and finishers for health, shield and ammo regen. I loved that experience and I feel right at home in this game. I don’t think the gameplay loop is inherently flawed but it might not be for every one. I hope they continue to add new finishers to existing enemies to help keep it fresh. Some of the extrimis threat enemies only seem to have a single finisher which will definitely get stale at some point
@@calebheisserer5391 I think where I'm coming from is that I don't really feel like what I expect a space marine to feel like. You should feel like the physical embodiment of impending doom. A juggernaut that takes concentrated efforts or immeasurable power to take down. Rolling seems like a bandaid to facilitate some game design rather than something a space marine would regularly do.
To be clear I think it's fun. Just as the game ages the aspects I mentioned are just going to get old.
Enemies shooting through wall ? Is this helldivers ???
@@adspartan04 How do all the games with pve not have walls
Me and a friend noticed that on a lift mission
Crates everywhere but the enemy can shoot through it
Became a big pain but we got it done
@@Claysthetics I don't have any insight but if I were to guess is things get wrongly culled or simply ignored for optimization purposes when checking for light of sight
Hunk Helldivers
Space Marine 2 is almost like Elden Ring, just dodge roll everywhere, compared to SM1 where you're actually encouraged to go melee because executions gave you health instead of a measly 1 armor pip
Whenever I am playing I always think like I went through the trouble of targeting a warrior rather than grunts to execute him. I should at the very least get 2 armor pips
100% THIS
It’s nothing like elden ring lol
War hammer is so easy to the point where just melee and spamming guns wins eveything easily
@@Slaughter_Hill r/Whoosh
@@Slaughter_Hill Its nothing like Space Marine 2 lol
Elden Ring is so easy to the point where just rolling and spamming attacks wins everything easily
- melee weapons need more stagger
- light attacks should stagger hordes
- chip damage from horde enemies needs to come WAY down
- we need a passive armor regen, even a little bit just so we dont lose all our health by a ranged enemy we didnt see
- guns need a massive bump in damage
- elite enemies besides chaos marines need less HP
- AI director needs to send larger hordes and send them way more often. Most games, even on Ruthless, have large periods of time where you just walk around with nothing to kill
-melee weapons do stagger they completely lock a major from attacking for an extended period of time
-light attacks do cleave and stagger horde you can't expect to stagger the entire horde, you need to perfect parry the horde attacks to give yourself some breathing room
-Heavy attacking and then gun strike give you an armor segment back, said gun strike also staggers some of the hordes.
-shoot /melee the ranged enemies as soon as you see them (or when they shoot at you) don't let them strip all your armor and only start worrying about them when you take health damg.
-bolter guns suck ass yess
-nope
-sounds like you can't even handle a horde so I'm not sure why you would want that.
@@coptool3344I know all of this. I already have 60 hours logged with all missions completed on the highest difficulty and two max level classes. These are common problems that everyone is complaining about. You are insulting me for really no reason at all
@@coptool3344 Factually incorrect, heavy slam or heavy hit to any Warrior and they will just power through it and finish THEIR animation, completely negating yours and you can do nothing about it because the animation takes a year to play out.
Regaining armor is pointless since it last a single chip from snipers or light units hitting you from all over.
@@hawk9mmI wouldn't argue with a guy who has 2 maxed out classes already. He has more hours than me, you and someone else Combined from pre access.
@@hawk9mm How is what I've said "factually incorrect"? when you melee a majoris they get staggered this is a fact. Obviously, they have armor when attacking how else are they going to attack? If they didn't have armor players could just button mash without them getting a turn.
Well said. I wanted to main heavy with heavy bolter but the dps on that gun is laughable. The guns sound good, but not 40k good. Why does the bolt pistol sound so much better in darktide?
Right? I wanted a HEAVY bolter instead we got a tiny water gun.
Space Marines somersaulting around is wrong.
Roll Spam in games is bad.
Another clunky souls-like
The concept of a Space Marine somersaulting is fine - in real life, a regular person wearing a well-tailored suit of armour can somersault, do cartwheels etc. The point of good armour is that it doesn't actually impede movement - the point of power armour is that it actually enhances the wearer's strength (especially if they're hooked up to it like a space marine, so it's a second skin), rather than impeding it.
The mechanic of it being the primary source of i-frames and spammable? Yeah, that's an awful game design sin.
Roll spam is also a trap that will get you overrun and killed in big fights. You absolutely need to master combos and parrying to survive on the higher difficulties.
Just stop roll spamming and get better at the game, don't blame the game for your faults.
I'm sorry but to add to the discussion... it COMPLETELY kills the power fantasy of a HEAVY SPACE MARINE to watch everyone ROLL everywhere with a melta, las fusil, etc... it LOOKS completely stupid. HTF would that even work, really?!?!?!
There I said it, it had to be said, someone had to say it.
Don't believe me watch Clay's gameplay from 7:20 to 8ish minutes... It looks stupid as all hell.
@@seanstrickland6501 I absolutely resonate the fact that we spam roll is not the gameplay loop anyone wanted. It doesn't just look stupid it feels stupid but it's the best way to play lol
@@Claystheticsi didnt even realize it was a strategy till i saw randoms do it. and i beat the campaign veteran and am doing mostly solo t2/3 operations. Don’t know if i’m playing different but i feel plenty powerful, especially in melee. just want that horde mode so i don’t have to wade out of my bloodbath
The rolling is so stupid and ouitside of canon - all power fantasy gone when its just special olympics 24/7
Space Marines are strong enough to be athletic and sometimes acrobatic in their armor, Primaris even moreso, it would make more sense for Terminators to not be able to do what you're asking for in this comment, or you could just play Heavy, hence the name.
@@Claysthetics If you spam Iframe roll you'll get roll caught like against the Hive Tyrant boss, if you Iframe roll it shows you don't really know how to fight or what to do.
I appreciate you speaking out on this stuff, I'd imagine it's annoying to deal with people who just label you and anyone else criticizing the game as "haters" but this sort of critique is very helpful for making the game better.
I was hoping they’d add a system like Darktide where you get toughness (or armor in this game) back from melee kills and perhaps a bit of HP from executing Majoris+ enemies.
That said, this game has so much potential (horde mode hype!) so I hope the devs make thoughtful decision on their balancing methods.
I have hope and the experience I got from the campaign and operations alone was well worth the price tag!
Great video and I appreciate your well-spoken and thoughtful opinions.
@@Phnx117 Thank you for the kind words, this game also reminds me of darktide alot with the hive city and mission progression so that's why I think I'm so off put by the hp gating. I think with some work they could spawn twice as many enemies and make a really insane experience
What do I want in this game? Relic Blades, Power Claws, Power/Chain Axes, Autocannons.
Block should release a big cleave swing if you block enough damage. Balanced should be able to do both but to a lesser degree.
@@falcor2325 That's actually kind of a fun idea for block. Mine was that you could just turtle up and get a few temporary armor while you held it but combined our block ideas would go super hard
Needs some optimization and a few tweaks in combat
Nailed it
They are definitely coming along with optimization and have posted the next patch is focused on it so hopefully after that spec ops gets some love
@@Claysthetics thank goodness
MASSIVE tweaks in combat my dude. Combat in this game sucks Deeeeee; Space Marine 1 has superior combat.
There are so many tiny tweaks that would massively improve the game. My favorite idea now is to make 'block' weapons have a higher proc rate for gun strikes, so theyre not blatantly bad, just a different option.
Block weapons need much higher stats to make them even somewhat viable.
@@Reach4God1 brother, block weapons are the only weapons that cannot proc gun strikes..
Perfect parry is how you proc a gun strike. Block weapons forfeit being able to get gun strikes from block/parry by being stronger.
Block weapons are basically useless and will get you killed. Gun striking is best way to get armor back and great damage.
Blocking is also not even blocking in this game, you do a little block then counter so basically it’s just a parry. But with block weapons you can never get a gun strike from parrying.
Most players are currently in the honeymoon period, just like they were for a time when Helldivers launched. When SM2's novelty has worn out, the general consensus of the game will become more accurate and less clouded by hype. If that consensus is positive or negative depends on how Saber handles their product.
Yea the game is really fun so that honeymoon will last a good bit I don't think most people will feel what I'm talking about here for 2-3 weeks but it is what it is
I think maybe people were expecting a different product potentially. People were making out that it was some new answer to Helldivers or a brand new live service.
@@Prockski That's possible but with the dev interviews they painted a pretty good picture of what we were being sold
or maybe most will just play it, have fun, and move on then come back for the xpac.
@@PatrickF.Fitzsimmons this, not sure when it became a hot take that you can enjoy it, finish it and move on with it still being a good game.
Graphic design and story are 10/10 (may be 11/10 for a Warhammer game). Combat (i.e. THE gameplay) is a 5/10. The combat, in my opinion, is very clunky and prioritizes parry/kill animations over fluid battles. When you are surrounded by a horde and click parry or execute: the battle will practically stops, you will become invulnerable, you casually walk over to the enemy (through other enemies), the animation will play out, then the battle resumes. It is like you are the lord of time itself because during these animations the enemies will stop targeting you and they will stand there and wait.
Dodge is super slow, especially in comparison to other actions. And stun locks from enemies makes combat slow. Despite these actions being slow, your marine can put away his chainsword, pull out his bolter rifle, shoulder it, aim, and fire it at the speed of light. Whenever I am transitioning from melee to ranged, I feel like, "Hell yeah, let's go", because it is so responsive and fluid, but during melee, slogging through a horde, it is just bad game design. Painful, even.
It's one reason I haven't bought it and don't plan on doing so as of now, seeing the gameplay trailers always made me think it was prioritising look over feel.
"Graphic design and story are 10/10"
Except there's no significant environmental damage, no footprints, no impact decals on enemies, doesn't seem to be any limb damage (compare the visuals for weapon impacts to Left 4 Dead 2, a now ancient game that runs on a potato), and weapons that shoot fire so hot it can melt metal... apparently don't scorch the scenery or set plants on fire.
People seem to have not noticed that the game is missing features that date back 20 years.
@@NicholasBrakespear I didn't even notice, that's when you know the story is good. All that stuff takes time though, and if they'd made a good combat system, I wouldn't have minded that they spent less time on stuff like that :P
@@bajasmancer It's stuff that's supposed to be implemented early on in development, and it takes rather less time than you'd think - given that such functionality was present in titles, as I said, that date back 20 years and often had development times of about 1 year.
@@NicholasBrakespear It took less time in 20 year old game engines... doesn't necessesarily mean it takes as little time now, and with longer developement times overall, it becomes even more important to spend time and resources on stuff that improves gameplay, not saying they've couldn't have done better here though 😄Guessing stuff like that could be trends as well, I remember seeing a video about Farcry 2, and how the effects were better in every way than the following sequels 😞
It's weird to see space marines rolling. I would have preferred if the side step dodge was the dodge we got, would make more sense. I am with you brother, soon the novelty will wear out and people will see the flaws with the game. I am pretty sure if the game wasn't a warhammer 40k it wouldn't have gotten the praise it did.
He protec, he attac, but most importantly, he interac.
It really annoyed me throughout the campaign that to interact with things I had to hold down the button. And be directly on top of the interaction. And some items you pick up with a single press, others you have to hold down. Compared to the smoothness of Darktide or Doom it just felt super clunky. Small petty gripe I know, but still.
Yea, it's like he really has to consider pushing that button before he does 😄
i will say this is on point for alot of it. the meta right now (from what my friends and i have gathered) for operations is bring a tactical and a heavy with you every operation, the 3rd slot i feel can switch between bulwark and sniper. tactical because they can buff everyones damage by up to 200% against targets that are scanned, heavy for crowd clearing, sniper for the insane amount of damage they can dish out even without the scan. sniper can melt the hive tyrant within seconds if its scanned. its stupid
Team optimization potential is huge and almost the entire community is low-level and has very little game knowledge atm. I think the perceived difficulty of the game will go down drastically as people level up and improve.
@@pootisspencer5492 so, no footage bc i dont really do editing. but can confirm, tactical, sniper and heavy makes ruthless a walk in the park. melta is op, even the heavy was using heavy bolter, i was using melta gun. crowds were a piece of cake, warriors and carnifax were melted when scanned. granted we played inferno, if i can get them in a squad with me again we will do decapitation.
Still doesn't address the main points in the video though; health/armor, block/parry/dodge, and weapon balance is all over the place... there needs to be a healthy adjustment to everything at this point - the RPG-ification of this game works against the entire purpose of being an Astartes: being a bad-ass no matter what weapon you're carrying.
The forever JOINING SERVER is gonna kill it for me. And then they had the nerve to say its because you're getting kicked from the group or your internet is the issue.
I've played a bunch and I get the feeling the game doesn't know what it wants to be. I feel like I'm getting punished for engaging in melee, sometimes your timing really gets thrown off due to the thing you try to parry/ kill shot dies so you end up getting nuked to oblivion, kill shot seems like it might be a good idea while in a pinch but you're vulnerable while at it so it defeats its purpose
That's how most of the people I play with regularly feel about melee. It's just to gimmick focused rather than feeling powerful.
@@ClaystheticsI just attempted a solo average threat op because I'm having connection issues and got hit with a massive wave. Spores everywhere, melee enemies bumrushing me leaving 0 space for even 1 swing. Absolute misery
Gun strike is an unsafe mechanic you shouldn't do it the second you see it. I'm sure it's intended to be that way as well.
@@Claysthetics I gotta ask because i'm seeing this specifically from people who aren't Warhammer fans.
What does being powerful mean to you? Because the answer i get is " Well not getting folded like a lawn chair " Okay so what should change? " So i don't die " Meaning what? Nerf the enemies damage to do 1 damage to you and you do so much damage back you might as well play Path of Exile with a fully kitted out Righteous fire build?
I'm not the biggest warhammer fan, however i understand it enough to know the power we have is little below what would be accurate to the books. We may be 2nd to gods but we are still mortal and 1 snoozing and a space marine is gone in an instant. So to me Ruthless is fine in terms of difficulty and i'm not rolling around like a formula 1 wheel that got loose at 200mph.
My friends and i are playing Bulwark, Assault and sniper and i doing perfectly fine in melee. So i'm honestly just confused here.
@SuddenFool I want to believe your comment comes from a good place, but seeing "I play max difficulty and I'm doing fine" makes it hard. It's really easy to take damage and replenishing it is punishing. That's all it comes down at.
I played yesterday for 3 hours with my friend, and there so much things that Saber changed that really bothers me.
1. Ranges enemies spawns and locations were really well balanced that you could take your time and deal with them before you would go into melee combat
2. Armor was regen per second and HP was obtaines through executions
3. I really hate to hold my RMB just to force some executions or s so I can survive a little bit longer, in original game there was a dedicated stun button that worked all the time against thrash mobs and on wounded harder enemies
4. Guns feel like nerf toys, first game had much more smaller arsenal but all of them felt like they were perfect for specific occasions like Heavy Bolter against hordes or much more armored enemy, sniper rifle for picking far away targets.
Im gonna soon replay first Space Marine to see if I am right about this, it's been 8 years since I finished that game so it's hard to remember everything
I can agree with most of the bolt weapons feeling not as good to use over the energy based weaponry but it was the exact same in SM1 in horde mode the bolt weapons sucked unless you headshot even then you just take a plasma gun more dps and better ammo efficiency, Or im not sure if you talking about pvp or the campaign but the bolt guns are generally the same in either mode for sm1 and 2 Headshots is what you want the bolt gun absolutely destroys things with headshots.
The armor/health system almost works the exact same in campaign mode with executions in the first game you get hp back where as in the second game you get armor back for completing a weapon strike and you can get your contested hp back from doing executions/ doing a ton of damage. The armor system in the first game never regen'd inside of combat.
if you think trying to survive in this game is annoying go back and play sm1 on the harder difficulties and you would be surprised, as for the dedicated stun button, its a completely different game with different combat the way you stun enemies is by counter or perfect dodging them and then weapon striking them.
I think you have to give the game some more time and stop thinking about sm1 this game is superior in gameplay to the first one, there are some things that are frustrating to deal with right now and the low content but besides that I think the game is starting out good.
After playing SM 2 for 4 hours I felt combat makes me feel angry and that I had no fun at all. I had some ideas why. And I had to reassure if I am right by plaing SM 1 again. The combat in SM 1 is a bit simpler but really fun from the get go:
1. You can not be stunned.
2. Ranged wepons feel and are impactful. You can play with very little melee and have a fun shooter experience.
3. You can stun enemies with a stun button and you can choose to finish an enemy or 2. But you do not really rely on it.
4. You heal with the finishers. After 2 finishers, you can go an and have a fast, fluid melee combat.
5. Combat feels rewarding and fun overall. Very little need for QTE.
@@alexanderb.5135 I agree, I feel the emphasis on reaction time combined with the stunlock, is what makes this game so frustrating to me.
@@bajasmancer now that i have played a few days i have to say i am way better now. And the melee combat is really fun. You just have to train your reflexes, parry and dodge. Once you get this right it just works.
I have to say though i wish the melee would have some more fun moves which give more mobility. And melee damage should be buffed for some classes/Weapons.
And yes the Bolters are a little weak. It is better if you manage to do headshots. But they should mow down minors with 1 hit.
12:16 this 100%. Having to spam roll is not fun. I can forgive the time-stopping for melee parry and execution because it’s visually satisfying and gives plenty of “hell yeah” moments - but the “roll away” meta is just not fun at all.
Yes, all of this, unfortunately. You can see that a really good game is in there but some major tweaking needs to be done. The more you play the more it comes out and as more get through the honeymoon period there will be more pointing it out. I hope they adapt quickly or I can see this dying out quick which would be sad.
@@rottn1580 I usually take the L from the honeymoon glazers to call stuff out early that they will run into in a month but it seems like most people that played ea agree with it which is a nice change of pace. Let's hope some feedback gets listened to so the game can get better and most people never have to deal with some of this stuff.
@@Claysthetics Every game has its fanboys that will never accept any criticism but at least so far it feels like most truly love the franchise and want it to be as good as it can be.
I just want to play the PVP and it kicks me off of every single match when I'm done it is driving me insane they shouldn't have released the game broken
@@ROADKIL80 The servers have a lot to do with that on prime time which sucks
I maxed vanguard first and am able to keep health pretty high by targeting any ranged enemies w the grapple but it does create a weird balance where I’m running past a terminus to prioritize ranged chaff. Great video clay
Thank you, I've been playing around with a lot of weird stuff on ruthless and it mostly just gravitates back to melta gun go brrrt. Have you tried all the guns with vanguard yet?
@@Claysthetics same here, I maxed out the melta and combat knife first and have been dabbling with a bolter and chain sword combo back on the lower difficulties but it honestly can’t keep up
Vanguard especially seems to benefit from melta use bc I can debuff them w a grapple up to their face and melt them away literally
@@calebheisserer5391 Ye that's what I was vibin to the cc aoe damage and just cool factor of the melta gun are so hard to give up. Chainsword gets good once you mega max it out btw
@@Claysthetics I like the chain sword a lot. Combos feel great, it practically feels needed for me to make up for the bolter weapons weakness with close range cc
@@Claystheticsyeah but wtf is with that balance chainsword having 1 speed
Based. Critiques but all based on real experience with similar titles.
I liked Dark Tide more. And I dropped that after the first month. At least you could level your characters there.
Going to continue to play HD2 , apex , titanfall 2, Fortnite and my other games and pick this up when the price drops and horde mode is added. It’s like most games in 2024 , potential but unfinished Great review broski
@@Bohdisattva326 Thank you, I think horde mode is supposed to drop in December off of the timeline so it'll probably be on sale for Christmas by then
It's a good game, but the difficulty is a little excessive for what your character can do.
As playing Heavy mostly, sometimes Bullwark on Dif 4, yes i agree i think to about almost anything you said the problems are so far. I was extremly lucky (until today) never having any bugs with enemies shooting through walls. Now after official launch somehow starts happening and more and more often
@@robynrriderr7419 It seems to mostly happen on elevators and shipping containers but when it does it's gg lol. I still need to max out the plasma and heavy bolter on heavy did you try them yet?
@@Claysthetics Yes but not on Dif 4 yet, suprisingly the Heavy Bolter (as long as nothing distracts you) was really nice dealing with the Hive Tyrant. However, i wonder if the Heavy Plasma Incenerator does better against it
me and my friend are giving up on the angel of death run for now. playing on that mode you see issues staring right at you the entire time. tons of tiny ones and unfortunately big ones. it almost feels like it wasn't play tested. we spent 20 minutes last night checking and reading the internet to see if anybody else was getting shot through walls. they were.
you absolutely need to be able to rely on cover in these missions. cover play is something you learn and depend on in any shooter that promotes aggression, contrary to what you might think.
doom eternal players know what i mean. imagine an enemy in that game could constantly shoot you through walls. and not just one, but multiple big and small on different corners of the arena. the entire game balance would shit itself and that's exactly what happens here imo
I finished solo Angel of Death. The only enemies that could shoot through walls on my entire run were psychic attacks, and those made total sense to bypass physical barriers. No normal shooting ever hit me behind a cover. Maybe I was lucky?
@@michaelalves8900 i'm gonna call you lucky and also impressive considering the challenge.
that's as far as my anecdotal evidence goes but unfortunately this is a common issue. seems to be the worst on the barge mission. combined with the memory leaking, the more you die and restart, the worse it gets. can't pick up items, enemies blast us through cover. same outcome every time. clearly something fixable but frustrating.
Just finished solo myself aswell didn’t really notice getting shot through walls either besides the laser from nuerothropes
I finished it solo just fine by myself as well as a couple other people here, sounds like a skill issue tbf.
I feel like I'm punished for engaging in melee even though I'm a high level bulwark. Surely melee should be my advantage. I also feel like the melee weapons barely do any damage even when performing combos, I still love this game just feels abit unbalanced atm
Devs, please do not add a cooldown to blue and orange attacks. Its my lifeline, without it my assault will die as i would miss out on s and gun strikes
I 100% agree with your takes on the melee, health, and armor system. They def need to be tweaked and/or a rework of perks that supplement it. Getting caught by an unblockable because Im stuck in an attack animation feels so bad.
Fun Fact: Guilliman loves constructive critism
Completely agree. We criticise and give suggestions because the game precisely because it's good and has potential. No one's talking about the balance and gameplay of dustborn or concord
Don't care what anyone says about darktide, they need to go in the direction of darktide with the combat don't get me wrong the game is fun and I like the parry system don't remove that but make us feel like actual marines lol more tanky and this can easily be fixed by making armor better cause right now its garbage lol I have 3 stacks I lose a stack from one small enemy hitting me? then I lose all 3 I knock one back get a stack back and instantly lose it again from a small enemy what the hell lol and after doing that just spawn more enemies just do it like darktide does it it works well
16:53 It's still in the game, It's just the case for Bulwark if you break his shield then he gets stuned, otherwise only assualt jump can do stagger on melee
The game promised I'd feel like a space marine, but I feel more like a Tau. Especially in melee combat. I don't like souls like mechanics.
Edit: Also, they should have mentioned implementing the parry mechanics. In trailers this is shown as more of hack and slash/ shooter game. Didn't like the surprise.
Honestly I feel a lot more powerful as any character in Darktide than I do in this game
... literally feel like I have paper armor instead of power armor on. Also it felt like there was way more crappy enemies to kill in Darktide (hence the "tide") and they aren't as annoying to kill as the little enemies in this game. In Darktide you are dodging smoothy in concert with your melee swings, in this game you are dodge rolling and barely get openings to attack, it just feels bad. The game is so fun though, they really need to fix the enemy scaling at least.
Glad I’m not the only one that feels this way. Such a lazy design for level scaling, *turn up enemy damage and health* voila there’s your higher unbalanced difficulty that is not an ounce of fun.
Honestly, hard agree with the stats and damage just being off on some enemies, like you said I feel BAD for the guardsmen, because they just fold like nothing compared to your average gaunt or demon. Hp also just suuuuch a pain to regen, the amount you gun from the gun special is tiny so often. Even in normal.
It feels like the game is missing a cover system. I get it is its own thing but i cant help but think of gears of war where you would similarly be getting shot at a lot but being able to take actual cover helped tremendously to negate that, and that game too had certain enemies to try and flush you out of cover. I think space marine would've benefitted from this a lot as that was definitely my number one thing i noticed on veteran campaign and the pve missions is just getting absolutely pelted from a far distance whenever i try to do anything so you end up trying to find a suitable hallway with a wall you can wallbang the enemies around
6 / 10 is a fair score, it might even be a 5.
A lot of these issue spill into keeping me from having fun, and I have no desire to play on harder difficulties. I just miss the fun power fantasy of the first game, and I'm constantly struggling to hit parries, so you can imagine how frustrating operations are for me on Normal when the game refuses to drop that green upgrade currency on Easy.
finally started playing and its kind of weird to me that the healing off executions isnt in like the first game, so far really enjoy it but ive only done campaign so far
Campaign is lit and hard to beat tbh
The green vine that spawns on the ground causes massive stuttering for me. It's very noticeable when you go look at it close. And this is pretty much all settings minimized. Game usually runs just fine on 3060ti like this, but the green effect is simply broken somehow.
massive agree on the way hp and armor work in pve content
I played the campaign solo on diff3, all the enemies were only shooting at me (my AI pals had their hp completely topped off 95% of the time btw, they absolutely do not take the same amount of damage you do) and if I stood still for any amount of time my hp would melt to nothing immediately. My "armor" might as well not exist for all the good it did.
Had a ton of fun, but the overall experience felt a lot more frustrating than it should have. I thought I was supposed be a walking tank/demi-god, yet more often than not I felt like a common foot soldier.
when I was done I went to play Darktide instead and honestly had a way better time.
Man multiplayer gives me that back in high school vibe I missed it 🎉
I don't understand making an online game that requires twitchy block and parry mechanics especially when those are your only methods surviving?
I don't understand ramping the health pool of the most trivial enemies as a way to increase difficulty? This directly make us LESS powerful as the means to increase difficulty.
I do not understand the extreme ammo scarcity especially coupled with the increasing health pools? The game is about shooting stuff and I dont want to, because i will be out of ammo when a zoanthrope shows up.
I don't understand why game developers constantly base difficulty on how annoying they can make the content? The difficulty shouldn't be fighting through irritating mechanics.
This stuff doesn't show up as much in low difficulty. But the minute you go to three it is obvious that things are tuned badly, and that it is going to get much worse. And it does.
Look, the game wont last with the main mechanism for difficulty being scarcity of ammo and scaling health pools. It isn't fun. It is lazy approach to difficulty.
Love all your purposed changes I really hope the devs listen we also need an armory data exchange like 4 green to one purp as leveling weapons feels awful right now.
I guess it’s a glitch but if you’re a Bulwark and change your weapon at the station it fully heals you. Don’t know if they’ll patch that out
Can't even get the damn thing to start, spent 3 hours real time and 1,4 hours in the game, so I gave up and requested a refund
Are you on PC?
I did level 3 difficulty solo right at 9.5 hours. Loved every minute of it. It felt rough at first, but the change of encounters later was surprisingly easier for me personally
I think you and Dough are the only people not glazing this game.
06:31 DO NOT LISTEN TO TIM WILLITS. Guy is probably the worst game designer ever, a liar and horrible towards his colleagues. Can't believe he still gets a job at game developer studios.
Couldn’t agree more about health system and damage. We all expected facing and overcoming uncountable hordes not freaking roll through them in panic like it some kind of Hydra dominatus simulator
I appreciate the thoughts. It's been hard finding honest feedback from people that are clearly big 40k fans and aren't being very honest with how the game is beyond their fanboy campaign moments.
I haven't bought the game yet but it's promising that many of these issues could be resolved through patches, rather than being foundational.
Balance is weak aff. On higher difficulty it feels like an mmo with the bullet sponges even with the opp “weapons”
Got every chart to level 25 but man you need to have a decent team and best weapons and perks to make it. It is not even an option to use weapons that arent meta because you are leaching on your team. Worst balance i have seen in a game
And dont start on the swarm mechanic. Max is 30 enemies and the problem isnt the number of them but the amount of health and damage they do. Everybody is doing the nids missions for a reason.
Also they need to fix the leaking of memory 64 gig and 24 gig video Card and game still crashes because of memory.
hope you release a good explanation of dodge/parry mechanic and how to best use it. Think that would be a cool vid for community
I sincerely hope that someone from the dev team watches this video and seriously consider the changes you are proposing. I have played both Darktide and Vermintide well over 400 hours and regrettably suffering and getting frustrated a lot when playing Space Marine 2 in higher tier difficuilties. Sometimes it feels almost impossible.
Enemies shoot through walls whilst your heavy bolter is blocked by foliage on most trees...I mained vengeance launcher in SM1 and lacking that in SM2 I have fallen into playing the Heavy (fanboy gripe, why isn't it called a Devastator) because the tactical, bulwark and assault marine kept being taken.
Rolly Polly Heavy to stay alive vs everything whilst everyone else respawns hurts my thumb.
Multimelta feels bad to start, dunno in artificer/relic but it does sweet fa damage vs bosses and warriors, it's just a glorified astartes shotgun in effect now.
Heavy Plasma feels worse then normal plasma because 35 ammo with 5 for charge vs 110 and 10 for charge, yeah. Never been good with heavy plasma so it might be me, but plasma pistol is my warrior/lictor/ravener killer whilst the heavy bolter takes obscene shots to kill warriors.
I completely agree with these points. The game is extremely fun and has a lot of room for potential. If they make these fixes, add things to the game, make more customization, and not nerf everything like Helldivers, it will be amazing.
I’ve basically hit a wall after a certain point in operations. The difficulty from the lowest difficulty to average is crazy lol. It gets frustrating after a while. You’re supposed to feel powerful and yet I’m here rolling across the map to stay alive
Honestly, my one gripe with this game is it doesn't have FSR3 come with at launch. They said they planned post launch but I think we all kinda knew they may or not release it soon. I'm betting it'll be next year the earliest.
They have HP and Armor all backwards. It is inversed from SM1. It would make sense if it was like SM1.
In the middle of watching this video I had a thought of how they could balance bolters better. You know how melee weapons have the category of block, balance, and fencing for defenses? What if bolters fell into Hellfire bolts for shredding 'Nids faster, and Kraken rounds for dealing with Chaos. Could be an interesting change to the game.
I keep running out of ammo and it also does seem like yeah, the tiny mobs do way more damage than any of the bigger Warrior types. Also fact that you are limited to one pistol and one actually useful weapon makes it pretty tough. If they wanted to make you feel like a giant damage soaking pinata, they accomplished it.
Great takes, another issue that isn’t being mentioned a lot is the blatant false advertising from saber. Stating you could play with 5 other friends in PVP yet the squad cap doesn’t permit it, they have since scrubbed their websites of any mention of playing with more than 2 other friends.
The armour feels good on Easy difficulty, it feels god awful veteran plus.
Health feels awful at all difficulties. If you get bursted down, you're left feeling like well wtf do I do now? Dodge rolling everywhere until you see that glorious health pickup. Like Doom? Like Halo 1? Like Quake? Really? Armour replenishing with only a headshot post counter / dodge, or an execution, makes what could be a fun gameplay loop just feel so forced and rigid that it's unenjoyable.
Primaris marines have innate regeneration in the lore...
I feel like they should swap armour and health. Armour is this beefy health bar that sits in front of your health and there are a few ways to bring it back dotted around the levels, but health is this thing that regenerates slowly, and replenishes when you land an execution.
Then you can show the armour being damaged depending how close the bar is to empty and the game would actually feel like a modern game and not an arcade game with quick time events and a forced gameplay loop.
Agree with all of this. The ranged enemies are busted and shoot through lots of environments. The little chaos enemies with the shields are 10x stronger than the bulwark class lol
We needed that baneblade to follow the dreadnought into battle, make that 10/10 combat moment cinematic 11/10
Good Takes. Everything you mentioned is a real problem, hope this gets to the devs
Ive had more long term fun game play with darktide. But as of cool things happening, SM2 wins. Your right roll fests isnt what space marines are all about.
tho I personally have not played diff4 of operations yet, what you've described mirrors almost perfectly my own assessment, I'm glad we (my friends and I) are not the only ones experiencing said issues... cuz apparently some people are not having the same ones, and this was the 1st hint for be that this was related to desync and lag... the game while fun, needs fixing, I'm willing to cur Focus some slack as long as they don't pull an AH move, and starting messing around stuff that doesn't matter instead of fixing the glitches...
Finally a honest breakdown!.
The inconsistency in parry windows from visual notification makes swarms difficult also. In a swarm having multiple enemies with different windows is unnecessary difficulty. Nids should have 1 window etc.
I think this game has issues on every difficulty... They were so afraid of it being called easy, that they chose to discourage casuals like myself, who've just played shooters for 30 years or something... I think you nailed it on the head though, they failed to utilise the best parts of this game. Rolling around like a damn barrel half the match is not why I bought this game. Darktide is a much better horde shooter than this, even though that is the selling point of this engine. Oh, and look at that carnifex clip, the multi-melta barely deals more damage than the bolt pistol, that's just silly.
I pretty much agree with your take on the difficulty/ health bit.
While I played the campaign on difficulty 3 - (coop with 1 buddy + AI) it felt good against the nids specifically - however against chaos I stuck to melta - and he to Sniper Stuff. So sorta agree that bolt weapons need a buff - mainly against chaos though.
(On that note - nerf those damn shield Tzangoors)
On the Hp bit I agree too - some sort of passive regen maybe + less accurate ranged enemies. Also maybe less "Sniper" type enemies - because these guys are the biggest offenders to force roll spams. (Again this bit feels better against nids - since only some warriors (Majoris) have Snipers - which makes them into elites that should feel threatening) however tsons have Human Cultists as snipers - and these guys should not be able to take down half my hp bar every couple second If I miss a dodge.
Thank you for not making a mindless "this game pure perfection" video. I have less than 30 hours in the game and I bought it on the 6th. I can play single player just fine, but the multiplayer is absolutely broken. Can rarely ever get into a match. I can run the game at 4k max settings, but this if it's not fixed will be the first and last Warhammer game I ever play.
8:18 nah to level gating. I already have my 25 heavy and I did lvl 1 ruthless bulwark and tactical. Yeah you will not be in the top of dmg, but you can cc and help teammates, AND have some relic or purple gear to do ok dmg. For real, if you dont have anything purple or relic, you dont belong on ruthless. Cause its pretty easy to get purple and if you cannot even do this...
And I definetly dont wanna play 4-5 missions to level up my stuff on other classes to purple. While you can just do 2 on ruthless, or 3 if you fail 1. Just dont bring anything bolter based, parry and dodge. Run to big ammo box spawns when facing bosses and you are good.
All valid points! although my biggest problem rather then gameplay as of right now is just the instability of the game + servers like you did mention & Loading times / unoptimised.
I'v JOINED 32 games, and only finnished 3, non has failed so far, either I disconnect or host does and merge fail, then game crashes or you join and class occupied, and all the reloading
But all the gameplay changes are needed too.
I dont play heavy but Vanguard, and he is also very good at regaining contested health, IF you use the melta rifle that is. One shot into a bunch of fodder basically gives you all contested health back.
I hope they will fix/add the things you talked about. It's critical to listen to a bunch of differing opinions, whether you like them or not to get a feel for what could be done better. I hope that Saber Interactive manages the gathering of feedback well and makes the right choices for the game. As of right now, I have no reason to doubt that they will mess this up.
I've always hated that "more health/damage = challenge" mindset that developers seem to take on all too often. Get creative with difficulty. The game's campaign was fantastic, but I ended up turning down from Angel of Death to Veteran on the Elevator objective (it's a problem with any of these defense objectives, including the "Blow the Wall" objective where the charges can glitch out) because other than pickups bugging out after you die the first time, I played solo with AI team mates. I was fine with the difficulty of the enemies but Gadriel and Chairon were absolutely brain-dead during combat.
Anything where we had to accomplish multiple objectives at once while also defending against waves ended up with me running from place to place, baby-sitting spot objectives because the AI would just stand around occasionally shooting their bolters and wildly swinging at trash enemies while yelling "THEY'RE HARRYING THE CHAINS" repeatedly. They also seem to LOVE leaving executions un-finished at random. Kind of muddied the immersion.
Combat is bonked, space marine primaris armour is sheet paper and bolt rounds don't one shot trash mob members. Playing the game on veteran mode shows you that the game Devs don't really understand what a space marine is.
Yeah, shield mob facing the might of a thunder hammer like that is just wild. Hell even a chainsword not ripping right through that is insane. Is that supposed to be a ceramite shield or something?
Assault class is dog water and I agree about the melee being a lil punishing. As space marines we are beast but I feel like we are not. You made so many valid points and I agree
here is some things in no particular order that I have started to hate. 1 all of the guns feel like nerf guns with a few exceptions, like the melta guns and the Las rifle. All their guns feel useless against elites and not very good against the hordes either. 2. Fighting against chaos is a ball ache. Snipers chunk your HP and armour. The lesser creatures have shields more powerful than space marine armour. Being shot at in higher difficulties sucks because there is no cover system so you are forced to face tank the damage. 3. The mastery system that is used to level weapons feels bad, it takes way to long and after completing a mission it does not tell you how much XP you had and how much you have gained. Often there is no bar that shows any mastery progress at all. 4. weapon perk system is bad. its uninteresting and no worth of any time as the perks that you can choose are very limited and its obvious what ones you are supposed to pick because the other perks suck so much. 5. Ammo.......Not only do guns not do nearly enough damage but keeping enough ammo is a huge problem. so to add insult to injury you have to use more ammo to kill because the damage is so low while not having enough ammo, it just feels bad! Ammo box! on the Carnifex boss fight locating that ammo box that some some reason randomly spawns in different locations is a pain in the ass to find when you need it, and lastly the class perk system just doesn't even need to exist if its going to continue in its current state. 88 hours in I really do like this game but these issues get even more clear the more you play to the point that i am actually starting to not like playing the game anymore.
I think the main issue is that it has a lot of glaring issues and yet is incredibly fun despite those issues. So there's a huge amount of missed potential just laying on the table because it could go from a really fun game to a perfect game.
Lets compare to Darktide, how you find it at the current states? I mean Space Marine 2 is "just" Darktide with Space Marines in 3rd Person plus Animation lock. The campaign is absolutly awesome tho. Try to sniper stealth thru the levels like we did on zealots :)
Darktide can be hard and punishing, but when you cleave through hoard with a power sword and you see heads fly, then dodge backwards and unload with a bolter, you feel powerful.
In the few matches SM2 has allowed me to play, I haven't really felt powerful. I've felt distinctly unpowerful.
6 co op missions and like 7 story missions is criminal imo
On God I need my red bolters.
The only bad part of the campaign was the flamer (I refuse to call it pyreblaster) but except for that it was a 10/10 as a Warhammer fan. Best 40k game yet.