Woof....some game changers in here for sure and most are not great.

link

Thoughts? Once this goes live, it may kill the game for me, sadly. High Peak Castle and HoTK, I honestly have to spam or play ultra conservative.

The games imperfections actually make it better. I feel like you have to spam a certain points on certain runs in order to progress forward. Looks like they are trying to kill that and make the game much harder.

This biggest thing I took from that was each level now has a set difficulty, no more enemies leveling with you. Seems to give Scrolls a little more value imo BUT having deployables no longer regenerate automatically is super LAME

That's a HUGE patch btw

I have played this game for almost 100 hours and I feel like I understand like half of what is being said in that update. For example, I don't understand what they're saying about the cooldowns and mutations. Does the one about levels being a set difficulty mean that glass cannons are now actually useful? For example, in the current iteration it took someone telling me that you max out how much damage you can do to bosses and the like, meaning it wasn't worth it to upgrade an attribute over a certain point, is that still the case?

Sorry to be the dummy that can't interpret patch notes.

@atastyslurpee: that’s a shame. If I didn’t already get my fill of the game I’d probably be pissed because yes, it sounds like they are making the game a lot more difficult. Making the game a lot more difficult seems like a real dick move, but the fact that most of the worrisome points are prefaced by the words “community suggestions” explains that pretty clearly. I probably correctly sounded jaded, but one thing I learned from watching the early Fallout and WoW communities dorm is ever listen to the people claiming to be your community. They are die-hards. They are not indicative of the largest portion of your customer base.

What changes do you specifically like or dislike? For me:

• "removed mob autoscaling": I like this. Now that the difficult of each stage is fixed, any run where you collect low amounts of scrolls you're going to feel underpowered in later stages, so RIP for speedruns, and I guess any time you try to unlock timed doors it will be harder. I like this because I think I just hate enemy autoscaling in general. If I pick up a level up, I should feel more powerful; what's even the point of having level ups if all enemies globally gain power proportionally whenever I level up.
• "shields no longer grant damage reduction. Parry damage has been increased for many of them.": Well, time to uninstall. Honestly the main reason I was carrying around shields at all was for the passive 25-40% damage reduction, and a nice side benefit was that occasionally I could parry. Now getting high damage reduction is going to be even harder, in a game that already has a final level and boss that do way too much fucking damage

I'll try this patch out, but man, not loving some of these proposed changes in a game that's already ridiculously hard.

The interesting thing to me is how many of these are listed as community suggestions? Like, from what I can understand most of them are largely BAD changes. Is it just a single, masochistic person in the community?

@sethmode: I'm kind of curious about this too. The people who are loudest on a game's official forums/subreddit can sometimes drown out other feedback. It'll be interesting to see how people react to this patch!

random interjection (apologies)- is anyone playing this on the switch? did they end up improving performance or is best avoided?

This all seems like it would be better suited as a game type, and that I wouldn't be opposed to. But replacing the great systems with something that sounds markedly more difficult isn't appealing to me. Hope they decide to let people choose to implement this stuff as opposed to having it dumped on them.

@sparky_buzzsaw: Yeah the "custom game mode" they say they're adding should be that. I do like some of this stuff, like the timed doors being in the stage transitions.

I stopped playing this game when I beat it. I'm not the type of person who plays through a roguelike until they've seen everything but I might check the game out to see if any of this stuff is for the better when the patch drops.

I'm not really liking the sound of a lot of this. I stopped playing after trying to beat the last boss multiple times and finding him ridiculously unfair. To make the game ever harder even though the last few stages are already brutally difficult seems like a poor decision and one that is likely to not get me back into the game.

From what i understand about the level capping is that each level will now have a set difficulty.

I mostly play in handheld, which always seemed to run smoother than docked. I play Dead Cells quite a bit and there was a minor update a few weeks back that seemed to fix some of the framerate issues, though i cant confirm that 100% as i rarely play in docked

Why take the game out of early access if they were going to continue making such significant changes to the game? I understand adding things like weapons, skills, bosses, levels, and expanding the game, but this seems... untenable. It's not the kind of support I would expect for a single player game, especially one that is already pretty beloved and well regarded. The changes individually sound mostly bad, and if I'm not able to beat the game before this patch, and this ends up making it more difficult, I would definitely be pissed.

This also presents an interesting challenge for GotY discussions for GB. The post-release support for MGSV ended up hurting the game in those discussions, will this have a similar effect?

@ozzdog12: So like, the bosses are still basically the same in that if you say, are leaning into turrets, etc...it's not worth it to go over like, 11 or 12 points or whatever in Tactical because there are diminishing (to zero) returns? Does that make sense?

I am not liking some (most) of these changes. The changes to shields makes my parry build a little less survivable. Getting rid of the cooldown reduction mutations also affects my build. This was the only game that I ever like the scaling enemies and they got rid of them.

There are others, but there are two changes that I really like: the change to the healing items and mutations, and the change to what happens to your cells after beating the hand of the king.

Yeah, some of these changes are really obvious, and it's honestly kind of baffling they went unchanged for months in early access. The Frontline Shield, for example, has been ultra garbage for basically its entire existence, and they're only just now changing it. The new version still sounds kinda bad, but at least they're making adjustments. And yeah, it always seemed really stupid that any cells you were carrying at the start of the Hand of the King fight were meaningless, because whether you beat the fight or died, those cells were going to cease to exist.

This just feels like way too many changes to introduce at once, especially when some of them radically overhaul how entire game systems work, or completely change items and abilities from one thing to another.

@sethmode: It's sorta just the natural way of things. You release a game, a bunch of people play it, and then 5 months down the line the only people that are still playing are finding it less and less challenging (as they have put hundreds of hours into the game). I've talked about this before and how it often affects sequels. You try to utilize feedback from the community as you build the next game, only to forget that 80% of the people who bought and enjoyed the game is no longer part of the community, and then you end up with a game that's disappointing to the majority of your audience.

Is this significant in any way for new players? Will they still be experiencing the game that everyone has been raving about or does it sound like this will produce a completely new experience?

@dgtlty: How new are you? That would be the barometer for how impactful this is. If you haven't touched it, it will just be a very hard game. If you have played it, and thought it was hard already (like me) it sounds like it will likely be harder in a lot of respects.

I'm glad they're changing the cooldown and Dead Inside mutations, and nerfing fire. I'm almost always going for that build but now it looks much more situational. I think It'll be fun to get back in and experiment with the new stuff even if I don't agree with all the changes.

Teleporting enemies on 4 boss cells sounds like a nightmare though. At least the shields seems more useful against infection build up.

Edit: I think the first thing I will try is Nutcracker + Roots grenade. I rarely use those items but now it looks like a fun combo.

The easiest way I can explain it is that for example the first 2 levels will be easy lets say difficulty 1, then the next 2 levels will be a level difficulty of 2, Boss fight, then the next 2 levels will be a difficulty of 3, Boss fight, with High Peak Castle a 4 and Hand of the King a 5. or something along those lines, if i understand it correctly. The way it is now, is when you get scrolls, you enemies also do too essentially

@sparky_buzzsaw: Seeing how many of these changes are listed as "community changes" it almost seems like it should just be a toggle option when you start a run. Sure, give your hardcore fans what they want if you can, but changing so many fundamentals and play styles for everyone else just seems like a bad idea. I get that if they did have it as a toggle, then it'd mean almost doubling up the amount of work keeping each "branch" balanced would be, but it just doesn't seem like a good idea to change your game up so soon after release based on the whims of the community.

@jesus_phish: Absolutely agreed 100%.

Some of the changes sound good, like making the Boomerang and Vampirism actually useful, but wow do some of these sound bad. Having bosses not drop legendary items sucks big time because nothing is worse than getting far into a run and ending up only with crappy drops near the end. At least with guaranteed legendaries, you knew that if you could beat a boss you could get a weapon that is at least somewhat strong in some way. The passive bonus removal to shields is stupid as hell too. Unless you can parry perfectly there is no point in taking shields anymore.

I'm quite skeptical about the removal of the auto-scaling mechanic too. With how hit-or-miss drops in some runs can be, this could absolutely make it so I would just restart rather than try and press on with a run if I didn't get good drops. Especially with the nerf to deployables, it's no longer possible to slow crawl with them through a level trying to get a good drop. Now it sounds like if your weapons just suck then you're hosed.

This does very much seem like they listened to a vocal minority who thinks no one else is hardcore enough at the game as they are, and want to make the game much harder at the expense of people who play the game casually actually having fun.

I kinda fell off this game but still play it once or twice a week, but if they actually go through with this patch as is, I can't see myself picking it up again. If there was a way to stop my Switch from getting this update I would do it. I like the game as is.

I loved this game playing through it around release, if I'm reading these notes right I don't know if I'll be going back unless the word on it is great. It makes sense they want to tailor this to the hardcore crowd that doesn't want people to be able to cheese their way through it, but I like cheesing my way through easier difficulties. Maybe someday they'll add a casual mode or something.

@dgtlty: The core game will be the same. It will still have a good style, great controls, interesting weapons, and a meaningful progression system. It sounds like these changes will make the game more difficult, but if you've never played it before you won't know that. To me, the changes seem like they might break certain strategies that work well now and force people to play differently.

I'd be willing to bet some of those BIG updates don't actually come through or are at least modified,still in Alpha and with enough ppl complaining, I'd be willing to bet they ease on some the stuff. I'm a fan of just leaving the base game alone and adding an 'Expert' Mode that allows all this customization. (I know its getting a customization mode of some sort) Otherwise, that update as a whole will absolutely destroy the game for the majority of ppl who have played it and put a significant amount of time into it

I dropped off Dead Cells because I just got stuck after a while and just kept dying with no improvements at all, so this update seems like it will just guarantee I won't be playing any longer.

Haven't played a ton of it but I like the balancing as it is. I might just run 2 versions separately, certainly not gonna update my main install without trying this shit first.

Agreed, agreed, agreed. I feel like this is the change that skews closest to "make-or-break" for me. There's a narrow line to walk between I'm completely overpowering these mobs and if I don't take a scroll-optimal path none of this is even possible. I don't love the current system--as I'll frequently hit that point of diminishing returns vs enemy growth--but it would appear to require a tremendous amount of care to ensure each stage feels balanced, no matter the number of scrolls acquired.

These changes are so incredibly disappointing to me. I've been addicted to the game from the very start and can't believe they're making the game harder and limiting legendary weapon drops. Make this a bonus mode; don't overwrite the game many people are already enjoying.

I think with enough pushback, this update may be changed

I think it sounds cool. More balanced mutations so I dont pick up the same ones every game and no scaling mobs is great. I'm also interested in that new game mode they mentioned.

Honestly I liked this game a hell of a lot less after the first balance patch like a year ago that destroyed shit like Twin Daggers, Rapier, and Corrupted power. You use to be able to become an absolute beast if you found the right gear and now that's borderline impossible. Which imo is something that is antithetical to a rougelike/lite game. You should absolutely have those occasional runs where you get lucky and plow through with close to now resistance. These changes just aim to make the game which already becomes a slog around the "endgame" and beyond, more of a chore.

I'm curious to give it another shot. Haven't looked through all the changes yet. Given that at the end of my time with Dead Cells, I was just plowing through +2 run after +2 run with [red fast weapon], [colorless projectile], [aoe grenade], [damage reduction grenade] (because that was so clearly the optimal build for me), I am looking forward to encouragement to replay in a different environment.

Any follow up on this? I just bought the game on PSN from the TGA sale and I enjoyed my first couple hours with it quite a bit, but I'm curious how these changes have actually settled in with longtime players of the game. I tried to read the patch thread on the Dead Cells reddit but, wouldn't you know it, that place is unreadable as an outsider.

@nodima: Haven't had a chance to sit down since the patch, but as someone who has been playing since it was pretty much first available on early access

I like it.

• Having fixed difficulty levels means there is now actually a sense of risk/reward to speedrunning. Whereas before it was almost pure reward because enemies would hit softer (fewer scrolls) and I would get nice upgrades.
• Getting rid of the cooldown reduction mutations is probably good. The "pro strat" was always to focus on turrets which I actively dislike. I am going to miss spamming grenades, but anything to encourage getting up in there combat wise is a pro in my mind
• I don't like the legendaries change, but I'll have to see how the drop tables work.
• I'll need a few runs to see how I feel about damage reduction, but I am tentatively a fan of focusing more on offense and shields
• Kill streak doors: I really like this. Especially if speed running for timed doors now actually has drawbacks
• Timed doors moved to transitions: I tentatively like this. I feel that it will hurt the flow of them, but I like the idea of not being penalized for taking the wrong fork and coming back to see I am 1 second too late to open the door. Yes, that has happened repeatedly
• Reworked Elites: Ugh. It is probably good, but this just makes me even more likely to not fight any who aren't holding a traversal skill

Overall: I'm cautiously optimistic. The pushback against this reminds me a lot of when everyone lost their mind over the last major rebalance that was mostly "We figured out there was only one or two viable builds"

That being said, I hope that the custom difficulty mode lets people pick what ruleset they want.

I booted this back up again yesterday for the first time since the update, and it feels like the changes have made it significantly easier - bosses in particular. Presumably that's mostly down to the removal of enemy auto-scaling (which was a good move imo). I'm not super great at the game but I've played a considerable amount of it. Before, even though I could reach the final boss on a pretty regular basis, I'd only ever beaten it once. Since yesterday, I've done two runs and beaten it both times, and pretty comfortably at that. That's probably going to be a turn off for some people, but personally I'm having more fun with it this way. It was a bummer to keep reaching the final boss and then just completely get my ass kicked every time (and not always in ways that felt completely fair). Now I can start making runs with boss cells turned on for the extra challenge, and still feel like I have a chance if I play well.

I'm curious if anyone knows if this patch is ever coming to consoles (or at least Xbox One)? I've been playing the majority of it there just because I got REALLY into it again when it released there (and got the satisfaction of unlocking stuff again), and it's still 1.0.1. Trying to find any information on when or if the patch is coming to the One has brought up nothing for me. I'm wondering if there is a plan for it that I just missed, or if they're not worried about it because potentially the version didn't do well?

While I was original concerned about the changes, I'm getting burned out on 1.0.1 after playing some more because I just can't beat he Hand of the King to save my life anymore.

I installed this again for the first time since September and beat it on the first run back so yea it does seem like the patch has made it easier. The game plays so well I didn't feel rusty at all, maybe I'll be able to actually make some progress on the boss cells.

Update is now on the Switch. I’d assume it’s now on PS4 & XBone as well.

It now runs a 60 FPS on Switch, along with custom game mode and improved weapons

Not really liking the update but oh well.