I’ve been holding on hope that the devs will address the awful armour and health in this game and im just done at this point, every video I see where the devs respond to community questions has nothing on it.. not a single mention on the health or the armour… 

Im likely going to uninstall it and play something that feels fun to play instead because every time I play im whittled down to death by the unrelenting enemies and their stupid damage, I go from full health to near death in one single instance and then I’m running around clutching my parry and roll button, playing in the most boring and repetitive way possible as a “gameplay mechanic”

There is no power fantasy, it makes space marines look like jokes and it ruins the lore of space marines being heavily armoured shock troopers..

All I want is some kind of confirmation that the health and armour systems will either get a fix or they don’t plan on doing anything about it, all so I can know if it’s worth playing in the future or to just brush my hands of this game and walk away disappointed.. I know im not the only one too

I loved this game at launch, I’ve played nearly 100 hours of it and I want to play it.. but this health and armour system, the overreliance on parries and perfect rolling.. it’s awful, and the only reason we all look past it is because during the campaign we can heal with tituses ultimate, healing supplies are abundant and it feels good gameplay wise, but on harder difficulties it’s just horrible, the cracks show so loudly.. we love the universe so we are forgiving of the game mechanics for a time.. some are so aggressively defensive of this game and their experience that they shout git gud and skill issue from the rooftops in solidarity to their experience.. 

I just can’t anymore.. 

Not going to lie, this sounds a lot like a skill issue. And your complaints are all oxymoronic. You can't put the game on harder difficulties and then complain that the game is harder. If you want the power fantasy and to just have fun then just play on easier difficulties?

At this point im starting to doubt they really want to make things right. They didnt test their game before launch, and now they dont want to change anything, other than removing the ability to heal with the melta. What im hearing is that they didnt learn from helldivers failure. They also refuse to fix gunstrikes having no Iframes, refuse to even acknowledge all the hacking happening, refuse to add a report button for cheating...

All they said is they will fix "matchmaking" although they refuse to acknowledge the problem with not being able to use multiple of the same class.
The only thing they seem to give confirmation is they will add skins in the future (for more money probably)

I cant take them seriously anymore, I dont think they really care if the game becomes great or not

I understand the frustration of not getting tweaks that could really heighten the feel of the game, but 100+ hours in the first week of a game is very much a burnout pace.  You speedran the honeymoon phase and got right into realizing just how annoying you think it is that Space Marine 2 chews with its mouth open and ends ever sentence with an upward inflection.

I really enjoyed just slamming through the Tier 2 ops difficulty on new weapons, if you just want to pound around feeling strong they still toss some decent waves and such at you at the lower difficulties.  Maybe see if that captures the feel you're looking for until they make other changes.

And if it doesn't, there's nothing at all wrong with dumping over 100 hours into the game and being like "Man that was fun", then giving it a break until they do something to add some spice.  I'm sure part of the problem is that there isn't really another game that feels quite like SM2, so if you wanted to do something similar, I'm not sure what you'd play.  So that's definitely a bummer.  But it's better to find something you enjoy while SM2 goes through the post-release patch process if you truly aren't enjoying yourself.  I'm about 50 hours in (playing basically every free minute I can spare), and still excited to log in, even with my eyes wide open to the game's flaws.  I just look past them because the rest of the experience is crunchy, meaty, forearm-grabby goodness.

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Cyanid_ wrote:

At this point im starting to doubt they really want to make things right. They didnt test their game before launch, and now they dont want to change anything, other than removing the ability to heal with the melta. What im hearing is that they didnt learn from helldivers failure. They also refuse to fix gunstrikes having no Iframes, refuse to even acknowledge all the hacking happening, refuse to add a report button for cheating...

All they said is they will fix "matchmaking" although they refuse to acknowledge the problem with not being able to use multiple of the same class.
The only thing they seem to give confirmation is they will add skins in the future (for more money probably)

I cant take them seriously anymore, I dont think they really care if the game becomes great or not

Did you say Helldivers failed?  You're talking about Helldivers 2, or 1?

Also, not being able to use two of the same class is only a problem in that the matchmaker doesn't take into account the players' current choices.  Otherwise, they treat each class as a uniquely named hero, as far as I can tell.  Would be a little odd with the current implementation to have two Vespasius talking to one another.  If they do allow multiple of the same class, it's likely going to require some fundamental changes to how the game treats each class, which won't be quick.  Best bet is a matchmaking fix.

Also saying they didn't test the game is wild.  So much of it feels extremely smooth and operates very, very cleanly.  Some knob-turning aside, they've got a very clean product out there.

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Cyanid_ wrote:

At this point im starting to doubt they really want to make things right. They didnt test their game before launch, and now they dont want to change anything, other than removing the ability to heal with the melta. What im hearing is that they didnt learn from helldivers failure. They also refuse to fix gunstrikes having no Iframes, refuse to even acknowledge all the hacking happening, refuse to add a report button for cheating...

All they said is they will fix "matchmaking" although they refuse to acknowledge the problem with not being able to use multiple of the same class.
The only thing they seem to give confirmation is they will add skins in the future (for more money probably)

I cant take them seriously anymore, I dont think they really care if the game becomes great or not

it seems like they’re answering what they can, as in things they have answers to..

As for harder things to fix or add, they seem to be either reluctant or incapable.. 

Either way, I’ve lost hope

Like, as I see it, the gameplay loop they seem to want is set on difficulty.. that turns away casual players and leaves the elite and the diehard Warhammer40k fans.. the elites will eventually drop off the game and play something that scratches those itches and so the player base will drop off with no casual base to sustain them, any returning fan of the game will find the repetitive gameplay loop miserable and quickly leave again.. 

It started off strong but unless they address the causes of the issues rather than treat the symptoms or worse, ignore the problems and keep catering to the elitists and the diehard fans, they won’t have a base to sustain their live service

It doesn’t make me feel good, it actually makes me annoyed and sad.. I want to play this game more, but I just don’t find it fun anymore.. it’s not the gameplay, it’s not the world or the maps or other lesser features.. it’s the dumb health and armour system, the overreliance on parrying and rolling to keep your precious delicate health and armour up.. 

I’m walking away from this game until they do something about the health and armour system

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FatherGoose wrote:

I understand the frustration of not getting tweaks that could really heighten the feel of the game, but 100+ hours in the first week of a game is very much a burnout pace.  You speedran the honeymoon phase and got right into realizing just how annoying you think it is that Space Marine 2 chews with its mouth open and ends ever sentence with an upward inflection.

I really enjoyed just slamming through the Tier 2 ops difficulty on new weapons, if you just want to pound around feeling strong they still toss some decent waves and such at you at the lower difficulties.  Maybe see if that captures the feel you're looking for until they make other changes.

And if it doesn't, there's nothing at all wrong with dumping over 100 hours into the game and being like "Man that was fun", then giving it a break until they do something to add some spice.  I'm sure part of the problem is that there isn't really another game that feels quite like SM2, so if you wanted to do something similar, I'm not sure what you'd play.  So that's definitely a bummer.  But it's better to find something you enjoy while SM2 goes through the post-release patch process if you truly aren't enjoying yourself.  I'm about 50 hours in (playing basically every free minute I can spare), and still excited to log in, even with my eyes wide open to the game's flaws.  I just look past them because the rest of the experience is crunchy, meaty, forearm-grabby goodness.

dude, I’ve got a level 24 tactical, 15 and 16 assault and vanguard, 4 and 6 bulwark and sniper and a 25 heavy, I have quite a few relic weapons and I’ve played every pve map, I enjoy the games gameplay, I like to play when it’s fun.. but the problem is where any single mistake or moment you’re caught out is irrecoverable without scouring every corner for stims or relics, often leaving you super weak to even a slight battle, and if you don’t enter every battle ready to parry parry parry for your life, you instantly lose armour and contested health and dwindle down to death in seconds with no control over the situation.. perfection is demanded of you, not a skill that is enjoyable.. 

All I want is stronger armour, more means of recovering health.. it would keep the game as challenging as it is but give the player more agency over the game and open it up to even harder difficulties while remaining fair.. because part of the problem with the current system is the aggressiveness of the enemies and their damage.. so the alternative I propose would keep it as challenging as it is but allow players more means of gameplay and survival.. 

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JesterAmnseiai wrote:

​

dude, I’ve got a level 24 tactical, 15 and 16 assault and vanguard, 4 and 6 bulwark and sniper and a 25 heavy, I have quite a few relic weapons and I’ve played every pve map, I enjoy the games gameplay, I like to play when it’s fun.. but the problem is where any single mistake or moment you’re caught out is irrecoverable without scouring every corner for stims or relics, often leaving you super weak to even a slight battle, and if you don’t enter every battle ready to parry parry parry for your life, you instantly lose armour and contested health and dwindle down to death in seconds with no control over the situation.. perfection is demanded of you, not a skill that is enjoyable.. 

All I want is stronger armour, more means of recovering health.. it would keep the game as challenging as it is but give the player more agency over the game and open it up to even harder difficulties while remaining fair.. because part of the problem with the current system is the aggressiveness of the enemies and their damage.. so the alternative I propose would keep it as challenging as it is but allow players more means of gameplay and survival.. 

I want stronger armor too, but I also enjoy the razor's edge gameplay with minoris doing way too much armor damage as it currently is.  It SHOULDN'T be this way, but it is, and I really enjoy the feeling of knowing that the game is way harder than is sensible design-wise, and I can still rock and roll through a swarm.

If they make the primary change I want, I think it would honestly make the game maybe too easy, BUT it would open up the door to finer tuned difficulty.  More swarms, etc. 

Health and armor system seems fine.  I've watched people play like they have invulnerability on and just die because they play poorly, as opposed to those who play with a much greater understanding of how a classes mechanic or the enemy mechanics... or the game's core mechanics work.  

It is a bit ill-contrived to think of a Space Marine fantasy where the Space Marine is too unskilled to dodge, parry or kill his foe before it even has a chance to attack.  

If someone wants to just run through and make plenty of mistakes and not be punished for it, the easy difficulty gives them that option. 

My argument is, if adding health regen in some capacity and stronger armour would make the game too easy, then removing stims and relics wouldn’t be a problem, if people wanted difficulty, remove the ability to parry or perfect dodge, the problem then would be the game would be virtually unplayable on any difficulty above minimal

Again, I have seen a fair number of commenters on numerous platforms talk about how the gameplay and difficulty being too punishing pushed them away and they likely won’t come back unless they change something, and as a fan of this game and someone who has put a lot of time into it, I’m also walking away

The relationship with armor being paper, the power fantasy of being a space marine and the general "avoid all damage at all costs" playstyle seen in upper difficulties is something I was looking to be addressed or at least mentioned, and wasn't. 

The issue isn't really difficulty so much as whether this is the kind of experience you want to have. The systems are fine but I don't like the way they are balanced at all. People are finding things that work, like overheal or total avoidance of enemies/damage, and then assuming everything is fine as a result. Space Marines are human tanks, not glass cannons. The gameplay doesn't reflect that in any way, and that's why you have tangential issues like Assault or melee, in general. Fix armor and most other "issues" vanish.

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Enot83 wrote:

Health and armor system seems fine.  I've watched people play like they have invulnerability on and just die because they play poorly, as opposed to those who play with a much greater understanding of how a classes mechanic or the enemy mechanics... or the game's core mechanics work.  

It is a bit ill-contrived to think of a Space Marine fantasy where the Space Marine is too unskilled to dodge, parry or kill his foe before it even has a chance to attack.  

If someone wants to just run through and make plenty of mistakes and not be punished for it, the easy difficulty gives them that option. 

The two things I think feel off are:
* Minoris enemies doing a full bar of armor damage in a single swing.  I'm pretty sure the Hive Tyrant hits for a single armor bar too, it just doesn't add up given the volume.  I kind of think it's a bug, and it's the one thing in the Q&A I didn't see that I wish I did.

* Contested Health diminishes extremely quickly.  If I take a hit, by the time I'm swinging back with a Thunder Hammer, the contested health is mostly gone.  It kind of feels like it's designed for you to take hits while you're swinging so you can just chunk your health right back, but something about it doesn't feel tuned quite right.  To me, anyway.

I would love to see some dials turned on those two things.  Otherwise, I agree that most of the systems at play are generally good.

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PlagueOfGripes wrote:

The relationship with armor being paper, the power fantasy of being a space marine and the general "avoid all damage at all costs" playstyle seen in upper difficulties is something I was looking to be addressed or at least mentioned, and wasn't. 

The issue isn't really difficulty so much as whether this is the kind of experience you want to have. The systems are fine but I don't like the way they are balanced at all. People are finding things that work, like overheal or total avoidance of enemies/damage, and then assuming everything is fine as a result. Space Marines are human tanks, not glass cannons. The gameplay doesn't reflect that in any way, and that's why you have tangential issues like Assault or melee, in general. Fix armor and most other "issues" vanish.

I was up late the other night and I asked chat gpt about space marines, I described some instances of the game space marine 2 and the general gameplay loop

The answer I got was that space marines use their armour and would shrug off lesser enemies, they don’t fear, they’re not nimble parry spamming martial artists or gymnasts rolling around all the time

I even asked about the gameplay loop being a satisfying experience I forget it’s response but it’s retrievable, essentially it said that some might enjoy it but some will find it oppressive.. and they do..

Space marines also have health regen in the lore, not to grow back limbs but enough to stop blood loss almost immediately, it could be a means of implementing health regen into the game but.. no hope

A lot of people are saying “well I like it and I’m having fun so the problems people are saying, don’t exist and shouldn’t have anything done about it” because they are the centre of their own universe and they play games as some form of achievement in life and not as something fun.. they’re only happy if a game makes them bleed.. 

I’m sure a game will truly peak to them if when playing the game, any mistake costs them actual money and if they die in the game their heart stops in real life, the kinds of elitists you get in any souls like game where if you play in any other way asides from naked and with a broken sword, you’re playing it wrong.. funnily enough the same kinds of people who cling to “meta” broken builds and one shot kos in all games including souls likes, for their sense of beating something… 

A game comes out and their first port of call is to google the best builds and most broken ways to play so they can then “win” and get their “skill issue” permission card in the mail to use on everyone forever

I know I’m walking away because the game isn’t being fun and I want to enjoy it still but can’t.. but I’d be lying if I didn’t in some part just feel defeated by the elitists and their endless nonsense, because I know the devs will cater to them, ruining their own game for people who don’t care.. passionate people like me who want the game to get better and do well will get sidelined every time.. 

my issue with contested health is that though great in bloodborne, it worked then because you can recover by being aggressive and skilful AND you had a lot of ways to recover too, you could carry more than two, they were abundant and they could be improved to heal you more AS WELL AS the enemies were forgiving enough to have a moment where they don’t attack so you can retaliate..

it doesn’t work here because there are a lot of enemies who all attack together at the same time while you’re being attacked by even more, it goes away too quickly and if you get hit before the last enemy dies, you just watch as your health fades away..

I had a cultist sniper hit me with a sniper shot, I hit him once and he evaporated.. then I watched as the 60-70% of my health I just lost faded to nothing all because I couldn’t “contest” it

Which is why I propose different means of healing.. 

It doesn’t matter if you are full health or no health, the combat is hard enough that if you play poorly you die.. SO even if you had health regen, you could still die quite easily, BUT you’d be able to recover.. 

THAT is my problem.. THAT is what I want to see fixed…

Last night I tried PvP for the first time, and at one point I thought "Man it'd be nice if your health regenerated too".  Then after not just diving in and dying, I realized that behold:  it *does*.  Armor comes back first, pretty quickly, then a little bit after health regenerates slowly but surely.  I was so happy.

I think they want it to feel like a scrappy mission of attrition, but I also think they could make individual encounters more difficult/swarmy/intense if they allowed you to regen health afterwards.  Then, each major encounter is designed around the fact that you start full but can die in the encounter, and stims are an "oh sh**" item instead of a few drops of water in the desert. 

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FatherGoose wrote:

Last night I tried PvP for the first time, and at one point I thought "Man it'd be nice if your health regenerated too".  Then after not just diving in and dying, I realized that behold:  it *does*.  Armor comes back first, pretty quickly, then a little bit after health regenerates slowly but surely.  I was so happy.

I think they want it to feel like a scrappy mission of attrition, but I also think they could make individual encounters more difficult/swarmy/intense if they allowed you to regen health afterwards.  Then, each major encounter is designed around the fact that you start full but can die in the encounter, and stims are an "oh sh**" item instead of a few drops of water in the desert. 

it’s like I said, it doesn’t matter if you’re full health or close to death, playing without skill can see you die, but having some health means you can be alittle more aggressive and survive when everything is shooting you while you’re blocking

I’d like it if stims were more of a burst of survival in a tough fight and not the only means of not immediately dying in the next encounter all because a few enemies get alittle shooty

I spend every mission looking at the ground and checking every corner.. that’s just a problem with any game that has floor available loot, if I could regen health and ignore some pickups, I’d be looking at the awesome scenery and having more fun, stims would be a mid combat tool to balance out a tough fight, and not the only means of recovering from a lickter or a snake enemy or a flamer or a terminator.. 

And again, it doesn’t matter if you have full health and armour, you can still be burst down quite quickly, so if that is the case, health regen isn’t an issue, it just makes the gameplay more forgiving and fair, it lets you have fun

You’re one of the good commenters, but alot of people assume that a call for balance and change is an extreme demand, like myself and others are asking for god mode or enemies to just disintegrate when insulted or turn all difficulties into easy mode but spelt wrong…

I’m a guy who gets deep and analytical, my brother works in the gaming industry, I play alot of different games and I’ve ranged from the casual to the competitive, I know game logic and mechanics quite comfortably and i am aware that some things people have asked for (like a mode where you play as hormagaunts and hunt down humans.. what the heck..) just demand a whole new game engine to be created in order to function.. it would be easier to just make a whole different game at that point, not tack it on to this one

So im not asking for something impossible like a full redesign and rework of the enemy Ai, new animations and gameplay, just something to change in the current systems in place.. and even then it might be a tall order.. 

But as I said, this game is pushing me away, the fans of this game are pushing me away and if I could get a refund, I would right now (I know I can’t but I would) some might enjoy the brutal and unforgiving health and armour system, but I don’t, it kills my enjoyment of the game long before the game becomes boring.. and everywhere I go,  there are people who agree with me :/ as well as people who are shelfing the game too

Ive found that the better I get at the game, the more i can make my health last.  when i started playing assault all i could do is die.  then when i got much better at parrying voila, now i can actually play the assault class.  

now i can wade into a huge group if i feel like doing it and sometimes take no damage because of contested health, and understanding all the moves in the game that support it.  gun strikes, the game seems to be more about not losing a lot of health, and using your armor to help you not lose it.

there are some tweaks that need to be made on in game spawns and stuff but i think health is kinda the way it was designed.  the game isnt easy.

honestly we just have to wait and see. It seems like the devs have heard the feedback about the enemy resilience and aggression values, so let's calm down until the next balance update rolls out