Space Marine 2 developers resist demands for a harder difficulty setting than Absolute, stating, “We’re nearing our limit.”

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 developers Saber Interactive are pushing back on player calls to add an even-harder difficulty mode, following the introduction of an Absolute difficulty setting this spring via game update.

Apparently, some of you muscleheads have been finding Absolute “a bit easy”, or at least, not enough of a shake-up from the preceding Lethal difficulty. Saber are open to suggestions, here, but game director Dmitriy Grigorenko also reckons that “we are almost at our limit in terms of how we can make the game harder without making it unfair and not fun”.

Posting in a community note on publisher Focus Entertainment’s website, Grigorenko described Saber as “quite happy with how intense” Absolute is, on the whole. “We see that it requires a lot of concentration and we feel like it’s fun in terms of how many enemies you have to face, how hard they hit you etc,” he wrote. “At the same time, we see some comments that it’s a bit easy. Yet on the other hand we don’t want to mess it up and would like to hear the voice of the community first.”

He’s got some “data and context” to justify his fears about messing things up. Argh, context! It burns, it burns, etc. Briefly, the average win rate on Absolute difficulty is around 60%, which is “a bit higher than we expected” and around 10% higher than the average for Lethal difficulty. This can be explained, however, by the fact that Absolute difficulty has to be unlocked, so all the people smashing their faces against it are pretty seasoned. Also, only around 12% of average daily play time has been spent in Absolute, and only around 15% of weekly active players play at least a single match on Absolute difficulty.

In short, “only a small portion of very hardcore and well-prepared players are playing the Absolute difficulty”, so it doesn’t make sense to devote overmuch resources to pumping up the challenge even further. Besides which, Grigorenko doesn’t think there’s much to be gained in general from making Space Marine 2 even more of a meat-grinder.

“I will be completely honest,” Grigorenko continued. “I think we are almost at our limit in terms of how we can make the game harder without making it unfair and not fun. We can’t significantly increase the number of enemies for performance and memory reasons. Greatly increasing enemy damage and hp will make it so players will die randomly and will make enemies bullet sponges, which will not be fun.

“We do not want to implement a new difficulty, because that would split the matchmaking pool even more. We have to stick to the existing 6 difficulties.”

Saber are, however, looking to introduce a new set of modifiers, similar to the controversial Tight Formation multiplayer mechanic, which punished players for straying apart in Lethal difficulty, and was removed a week after its introduction.

Grigorenko hopes that the “combination of [these modifiers] would make each challenge unique”, and is happy “to announce that we are already working on the system, however this will take some time.” Beyond that, he’s set up some reader polls for possible smaller tweaks to Absolute, such as limiting ammo and adding more Terminus enemies.

I haven’t really played Space Marine 2 since rambling about Warhammer 40,000’s fascist sensibilities last year, but I wonder to what extent Saber’s difficulties with game difficulty are exacerbated by the Space Marine mentality of securing a righteous death against unwinnable odds. There is no act of martyrdom Absolute enough for these lads.