Space Marine 2 settled on 3-player co-op because having 4 lore-accurate 40K marines made it too much of 'a massacre'
Space Marine 2 settled on 3-player co-op because having 4 lore-accurate 40K marines made it too much of 'a massacre'
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That doesn't feel like the true reason that happened. Feels more like performance issues.
It kinda works both ways—in order to make 4 player coop functional, you’d require so many tyranids on screen that it would be unplayable, both hardware and for the players brain.
I know fanboys would scream if the marines were squishier, but what’s always confused me is that despite the legendary invincibility of space marines, in tabletop they still feel moderately squishy. Sure not like tyranids and orcs and such, but not like super human either. I suppose terminator squads with custom gear might feel closer to that mark.
All relative I guess.
It’s important to remember that the lore books are intended to be tinged as propaganda by the narrator. Of course the imperium will say it’s angels of death are semi-gods of the battlefield, but in reality armor only stops so much and a 7ft tall slab muscle walking tank is impressive, but a carnifex is still gonna carry its weight on the field as well and fuck up some astartes
Right—exactly. Like yeah an ultramarine is more durable and lethal than a single gene stealer, but that’s why the tyranids roll in large packs, etc. if the space marines in tabletop mirrored the books “propaganda” the tabletop game wouldn’t really function very well. You’d have to have like a small fortune in enemy figurines to compete against them. Not saying tabletop is balanced well or anything, also haven’t played in years, just that there’s lore, and then there’s gameplay mechanics and balance, and sometimes you compromise on the lore to improve the gameplay, etc.
On the other hand—you could say the high point heros are closer to the lore vision of space marines, and that the characters in this game are closer to a hero character than a rank and file SM squad member…
Either way excited to see more gameplay, I remember liking the old one.
To be fair, you have to have a small fortune in figures anyway haha
Haha true, I should have said like an actual huge fortune, since a regular army still costs an insane amount for what amounts to molded plastic…
Unless you print :3
In the space hulk og board game and most video game adaptations, Space Marines die very quickly to genestealers and such.
Even in the first SM game, the resilience came from doing melee executions (akin to glory kills from doom) which triggered health regen. And you were not even immune to damage during the animation !
In the space hulk og board game and most video game adaptations, Space Marines die very quickly to genestealers and such.
Just getting touched was death, in Space Hulk
speaking as a warframe player, i disagree with your first point.
Yeah Ive played warframe. And there are plenty of games that have higher multiplayer counts or coop numbers.
But warframe is its own thing—engine wise, what might work in warframe, might be impossible in the new space marine game given the mechanics and engine they’ve used.
I’m not trying to say “hey the devs are right and no one should criticize them”. I’m just sympathetic to the idea that even though 4 player coop might be a sort of industry standard target for stuff like this, you might find that design Choices you made about the game might make that experience non-viable.
Yeah on table top space marines are the reference for other things. Other armies usually have a unit that is considered a SEQ (space marine equivalent)
If I put a number on them it would be 1 where as IG flashlight trooper would be 0.1 and a tank would be around 7-10
Yeah that’s a good way to look at it—they’re the baseline with other stuff scaled up or down off of them.
Nah, Deathwing is 4 players co-op and never saw anyone complain about it.
For sure, but it does vary game to game though. I didn’t find a problem with it, but chaos gate:daemonhunters had a lot of reviews with people complaining that the grey knights were too human and squishy compared to their lore conception.
But like others have said, given the engine and or chosen enemies, it’s likely that since they’re using swarms it was just too much overhead or insane numbers of tyrannids on screen at the same time and game sync was hard to manage.
Yeah, that's PR-speak for "our game design and/or performance does not scale well to more than 3 players".
In the middle of their marketing blitz they try and cover all their bases I guess.
Then I guess all other games like MMOs with 4 player dungeons aren't designed around 4 players?
The original Space Marine story was largely focused on 3 Marines. It's kind of how the series is. They likely wrote the story around that, and adding another would give yiu too much advantage. It's entirely possible their vision for the story and difficulty required a balance that works well with 3.
It's hard to render too much massacre...
At least it's "lore accurate" to the first game, only 3 Marines needed