Space Marine 2 will roll back unpopular changes to the difficulty. Public test servers are on their way to help avoid future hassles.

Focus Interactive announced today some of the changes in Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine 2’s decidedly unpopular 4.0 update will be rolled-back later this week. To avoid such headaches in future, public testing servers are on their way.

Space Marine 2 players were outraged by the 4.0 patch, which was released last week. They felt that it forced them to play certain classes or playstyles. Focus responded quickly with a mini-review that triggered a mini-review explosion. They promised to release a new balance update in a short time.

Tomorrow, October 24, is the date. The date was announced today, along with a detailed explanation of why Focus Interactive and Saber Interactive changed the 4.0 patch and where everything went wrong.

Dmitriy Grizenko, game director, wrote: "When the game was released in September, the Ruthless level win rate hovered at around 60%." "Weeks later, with the changes brought by Patch 3.0 we saw that the same rate of win had jumped to more than 80%. We received a lot feedback that the game was too easy, even at its maximum level.

To bring back some excitement, the developers chose to increase the number enemies, rather than boost their health. This seems appropriate for a video game that involves slaying endless swarms tyranids.

The change affected the lower difficulty levels as well. While the win rate on the easiest difficulty dropped from 95% to 93% only slightly, many players said the game was "more intense and stressing," Grigorenko stated. This was not the intention: "Space Marine 2 focuses on the power fantasy and Patch 4.0 negatively impacted this for many of you."

Then, it's back to the drawing boards. The Extremis enemy spawn rate will be reverted back to pre-4.0 for the Minimal and Average difficulty levels. It will also be "significantly" reduced at the Ruthless level, "to try and strike a balance between the difficulty of the game at launch and the ease it became after Patch 3.0."

The player armor will also be increased by 10% on the Ruthless difficulty. The "Tight Form" mechanic will also be removed. Bots will now deal 30% more damage to the bosses. This should make them feel more useful. Bolter weapons will also be buffed.

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

The patch will also fix various bugs and stability improvements.

Yes, there are public test servers in the works. They will "let you test out major balancing changes and make your voice heard before they are pushed to public branches." It's going be a little while before that happens: A timeline was not announced, but Grigorenko said developers hoped to have them ready by early 2025.