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 that’s a good way to look at it—they’re the baseline with other stuff scaled up or down off of them.

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.

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…

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.

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.

I was playing balanced and changes to tactician two days ago to see how it was. Was expecting to get clobbered, but actually it’s been going fine. The fights are tough, but it sorta quickly pushes you to pay more attention, examine enemies, think about positioning a bit more. The Grymforge fight was way larger than I had expected, and I decided to play it a bit, die and then reload, but I ended up beating it (although poor station did get treated into the lava, and I tested Nere in after him).

Anyway, so far I’m loving tactician, don’t think I need to shift back down. It uses up camp supplies more, both because the cost is 80, and I find that I need to long rest more frequently because I use my character resources up more fully in every engagement. I don’t foresee it becoming a situation where the supplies economy actually starts to become a pressure point, supplies are super prevalent, but it does make make me more “excited” to pick up and store all those wine bottles and mushrooms…

Caveat is you do have to be comfortable getting wiped in engagements, then reloading and trying a different strategy. I’m doing my first playthrough, so most encounters are unknown to me when they start, which means it’s easy to get caught in bad positions, etc.

I say try it if you’re curious—you can switch it back down if you find it frustrating with no downside.