Why I Dislike The Current Direction of Dead Cells

[Phirestar]

I'm writing this post to express my frustration with how Dead Cells is seemingly having its entire identity changed, and is becoming almost a different game to what it was back in 2019. From reading posts on the forums, I know that there are others out there that will likely agree with the general idea of this topic, so please do reply with your own comments, too.

Over the course of the last six updates - from the Corrupted update (1.5) to the new Malaise update (2.1) that is currently in the Alpha Branch - we've seen drastic rewrites to much of the game's core design. Obviously my issues with these changes are my own, and others will likely dislike them for different reasons. (And of course there are some smaller changes that I haven't included in my post, such as the crossbow reworks, that nonetheless have their crowds.) But in my case, all of them boil down to the same problem: 5BC is becoming more and more simplistic to play.

                                                              - - - - - -

For me, the issue very much began with the Corrupted update taking away the cursed chests. A huge chunk of both the difficulty and appeal of playing on this mode, to me, came from the prevalence of curse. If you play Dead Cells for long enough, you are inevitably going to become accustomed to fighting the enemies, and taking damage will be a less frequent occurrence. This is where curses introduce a layer of uncertainty to that rule, as making a mistake is also inevitable, and that means instant death. This meant that you required both game knowledge and mental fortitude in order to get through the game and have enough stats for the final bosses.

And this is where the first layer of complexity was removed: with many biomes having multiple chests, and certain biomes being more or less friendly to clear out curse in, you wanted to play through the game in a methodical manner, and think about where you were going and what actions you took. Ensuring that you were leaving enemies behind to serve as fodder, or planning to leave the curse for an easier next biome, and not simply diving in and killing everything on an instinct, like you might in lower cell difficulties.


After this is the change to scrolls and enemy stats in the Update of Plenty. I can respect that the developers have their own vision for how they would like the game to be played, but I can't deny that removing stats on items contributes to making gear choices feel more inconsequential. A core principle of roguelikes/lites is the idea of having to work with what you get, and not always being in the most preferred situation. You're already capable of taking out much (or all) of that factor through Custom Mode, and so the fact that now you can re-roll dual-scaling items to get exactly the affixes that you want - with no concern for potentially having to trade off a couple extra points in your main stat - means that you don't have to be as thoughtful about what items to take and how they affect your current build, as you once were.


And finally comes the Malaise update. I will state up-front: I have not put any time into trying out the changes for myself, so feel free to take this comment with a grain of salt. But after what I said in my analysis about the Corrupted update, this became the final nail in the coffin for me upon reading how the mechanic was changed. In my mind it pushes things over the edge, removing the last bit of unique distinction between 4BC+ and 0-3BC, and taking away what might be the only remaining characteristic of depth to these modes alone.

The malaise bar served a very interesting role as something of a second health bar, and it was possibly my favorite mechanic in any game to date as a result. Unlike armor or a shield in any other game, malaise acts an entirely independent resource that must be balanced alongside your main health, and consumes the same resources to repair. It led to rare scenarios in which the two bars were at odds with each other, and you had to make calls on questions like, "Should I eat this piece of infected food so that I'm no longer in one-shot range, despite the fact that I'm already at 6 malaise?", or, "Is this one point of malaise reduction worth having to clear out five curse?"

Now, in the new system, those scenarios seem like they will become a thing of the past. Your only goal at this point is to get through the levels as quickly as possible and kill everything you see, to stop your malaise from rising. And I view this as the game turning more one-dimensional, taking away almost any other factors that you'd have to think about otherwise on high cell difficulties. It sells hard what I stated earlier: "diving in and killing everything on an instinct, like you might in lower cell difficulties". It sounds less like playing on 5BC, and more like playing on 3BC with stronger enemies.

                                                              - - - - - -

Aside from the main change, the new additions in the Corrupted update brought up a concern that I felt about the game, which I've since come back to today. That concern is that Motion Twin / Evil Empire are running out of ideas for what to do with this game, and they seem to want to update it purely for the sake of keeping the game fresh. Dead Cells has been officially "done" for over two years at this point, yet they're implementing major changes that feel as though they're still treating it as an Early Access project, where they haven't fully settled on how the game is supposed to function.

This isn't to say that I believe all of the updates are negative, or even that the game is bad. I am happy to have bought the Bad Seed DLC, and I'm very happy that we're going to have a full third route through the game to play around with. There's also a lot of high praise that I can give to this game, and I'd still consider it to be the most well designed roguelite, for its sheer amount of player choice in how to approach the challenge.

But at this point, I just have to wonder: what next is going to be overhauled? Will the curse mechanic be completely removed from the game in the future? Will we see, in a few updates from now, the colored scaling system be abandoned in favor of returning to a more basic system like the old Strength/Skills/Health scrolls of pre-Brutal Update, or something else? It's disappointing to me that the game was set up with a set of rules and mechanics, and now many of them being torn up and remade. It is no longer the same game that I played around a year ago and a half ago, and that's why I don't feel any incentive to want to return to it when Fatal Falls comes out.

[DoppelGangster]

Not a single post is praising the new changes, especially the malaise rework which is the central focus of this update. That should tell you something about where this game is going.

[Enoby]

yeah well i'm praising it. i think this update is absolutely great. I think pretty much all the updates I've seen so far have made the game a better experience overall.

[travistotle]

I can certainly understand the complaints --hell, I definitely share the majority of them-- and I'm a little worried about the direction they're taking the game too, but let's take a breath before we all start performing mass suicide. I'm definitely not a fan of the new malaise mechanic as well, but I don't think it's a complete and total abortion of an idea. In fact, I think it's just a tweak or two away from being pretty cool.

Even something as simple as the malaise not starting to rise UNTIL YOU GET HIT I think would make a world of difference in making the new malaise system more bearable. I DO like the idea of the game getting harder as you accrue more malaise, I think it provides an opportunity to keep the game unpredictable. Perhaps they could add something within that which could fix the other thing I really don't like: the malaise continuing to rise indefinitely, no matter how perfect you're playing. Maybe they could do something like every 2 or so Elites that you kill once they warp in could drop something that cures a bar or 2 of malaise?

These are just some early ideas I had, but my point is I think this new system is just a tweak or two away from being VERY fixable and an actual improvement on the old system. Plus, I do like some of the changes they made. The katana is awesome, and I love the new backpack mechanic and the mutations around it.

I'm hopeful that we might get the malaise reworked, and even somewhat quickly. As you probably know, there's another update coming soon, and this one will be much, much bigger. I think they'll be taking the malaise into account with all the other changes they'll be bringing in the next major DLC update. I know there is the worry that they will look past the complaints about it like they did with some of the other changes they made, but to my understanding a lot of those other changes were met with a much more mixed reception from the fanbase overall, like the removing scrolls from weapons. I just checked out the Dead Cells Reddit page, and it looks like they're not feeling the new malaise mechanic either. The alpha update thread, that was posted BY Motion Twin, has quite a few posts of people mentioning they're not fans of the malaise. So I think this is going to be a much more difficult change to ignore. Let's hope so, anyways.

[bronze_aged]

Completely agree...I don't play this game religiously, I revisit once every few months....and every time I come back I feel like I have to relearn the entire game. It feels like the devs just keep reworking it because they're bored, not because it actually needs changes. I didn't even realize they removed cursed chests until I read this! And now items don't have scrolls, crossbows take two hands, and who knows what else has been rebalanced since I can't bother to go back and research all the patch notes.

[Phirestar]

Originally posted by bronze_ager:

Completely agree...I don't play this game religiously, I revisit once every few months....and every time I come back I feel like I have to relearn the entire game. It feels like the devs just keep reworking it because they're bored, not because it actually needs changes. I didn't even realize they removed cursed chests until I read this! And now items don't have scrolls, crossbows take two hands, and who knows what else has been rebalanced since I can't bother to go back and research all the patch notes.

Well they weren't removed entirely, but they were reduced to where there is now only a maximum of one (guaranteed) cursed chest per biome, with many biomes that previously had multiple chests (such as the Ancient Sewers and Stilt Village, both of which contained three chests prior to 1.5) now having zero.

A couple of other issues that came about with this change included the fact that now Acceptance is almost worthless, as well as the fact that there's now no real incentive to take the alternate route through the game over the standard path.

• In regards to Acceptance, the way the mutation functions means that its effectiveness scales with the amount of curse per biome. One cursed chest with Acceptance = -5 curse, and a food limit of 1. If you take a cursed chest (+5) and eat two or more pieces of food (+5 per each), you will have taken more curse (+15) than you would've had without using Acceptance (+10). With multiple cursed chests in a single biome, this raises the amount of food you are "allowed" to eat, and increases the amount of total curse that is reduced by Acceptance - up to -15 curse, in the case of the previously mentioned Ancient Sewers / Stilt Village, provided you eat zero pieces of food in those biomes.
  
  Essentially we now have the problem that Alienation faced prior to its changes, in which Acceptance is pretty much never worth taking now, while it was previously a hugely impactful mutation. The only time I would argue that it actually has a positive effect is when it is paired alongside Alienation, for a free boost of health and malaise reduction. (That's another thing that I wonder about being changed with this new overhaul to the malaise mechanic.) But I don't feel that a mutation should have to rely on another just to be useful.
  
  
  
• As for how the removal of cursed chest changed the alternate route: it used to be that going through the path to fight Conjonctivius and the Giant would be more difficult, but also offer a greater reward. I never went in and worked out the exact numbers, but to my knowledge, the high amount of cursed chest available in the Toxic / Ancient Sewers and the Graveyard would net a great amount of scrolls of power, allowing you to increase your main stat further than you typically would accomplish by going Concierge / Time Keeper.
  
  This was a great example of the game rewarding you for taking a higher risk to acquire a greater reward. But since the Corrupted update, biomes have been overhauled so that they're all much more on-par with each other, and as a result there's pretty much no benefit to doing it. You can choose to go and fight Conjonctivius, but when the path to the Concierge (or potentially even Mama Tick, depending on your build) offers a lesser challenge for the same rewards, what's the point? Beyond the reason of, "Well I'm bored with fighting the Concierge.", what is the incentive to choose the harder path?

[Local Jerk]

Originally posted by travistotle:

I can certainly understand the complaints --hell, I definitely share the majority of them-- and I'm a little worried about the direction they're taking the game too, but let's take a breath before we all start performing mass suicide. I'm definitely not a fan of the new malaise mechanic as well, but I don't think it's a complete and total abortion of an idea. In fact, I think it's just a tweak or two away from being pretty cool.

Even something as simple as the malaise not starting to rise UNTIL YOU GET HIT I think would make a world of difference in making the new malaise system more bearable. I DO like the idea of the game getting harder as you accrue more malaise, I think it provides an opportunity to keep the game unpredictable. Perhaps they could add something within that which could fix the other thing I really don't like: the malaise continuing to rise indefinitely, no matter how perfect you're playing. Maybe they could do something like every 2 or so Elites that you kill once they warp in could drop something that cures a bar or 2 of malaise?

These are just some early ideas I had, but my point is I think this new system is just a tweak or two away from being VERY fixable and an actual improvement on the old system. Plus, I do like some of the changes they made. The katana is awesome, and I love the new backpack mechanic and the mutations around it.

I'm hopeful that we might get the malaise reworked, and even somewhat quickly. As you probably know, there's another update coming soon, and this one will be much, much bigger. I think they'll be taking the malaise into account with all the other changes they'll be bringing in the next major DLC update. I know there is the worry that they will look past the complaints about it like they did with some of the other changes they made, but to my understanding a lot of those other changes were met with a much more mixed reception from the fanbase overall, like the removing scrolls from weapons. I just checked out the Dead Cells Reddit page, and it looks like they're not feeling the new malaise mechanic either. The alpha update thread, that was posted BY Motion Twin, has quite a few posts of people mentioning they're not fans of the malaise. So I think this is going to be a much more difficult change to ignore. Let's hope so, anyways.

So you're OK with the malaise rework screwing everyone else over as long as it caters to your preferred playstyle, wow man, awesome.

[Daniel_Claudius]

This game started out as a sequel to Motion Twins browser based zombie game Hordes. It originally was going to be something of a tower defense game where you defended your little home. The original project just kinda kept evolving into something else entirely and became Dead Cells. I'd say its had its identity changed a few times.

There's a fundamental problem with games like this. Is there a word for that type of release model? Games released unfinished and played through the bugs, updating, tweeking, fixing, changing, updates, rinse, repeat. There isn't really a set final design in mind, it's supposed to be fluid. But at a certain point your going to make players unhappy, and often very unhappy as they are the OG's, with the changes. But stagnation in the game probably looses more players, and updates draw more players back even if briefly but eventually you get to a point no one is happy, support drops to near zero as the team has moved on to the next project. I was a English version player of Hordes, Die2Nite. Slow quiet death there while the team had gone to work on this game, which was depressing for that game, but gave us this game. So there's that.

Also for what it's worth any complaints addressed to the team in English were historically ignored, so if you want the team to actually read anything you have to say, write in French.

[d.a.elliott]

Originally posted by Daniel_Claudius:

This game started out as a sequel to Motion Twins browser based zombie game Hordes. It originally was going to be something of a tower defense game where you defended your little home. The original project just kinda kept evolving into something else entirely and became Dead Cells. I'd say its had its identity changed a few times.

There's a fundamental problem with games like this. Is there a word for that type of release model? Games released unfinished and played through the bugs, updating, tweeking, fixing, changing, updates, rinse, repeat. There isn't really a set final design in mind, it's supposed to be fluid. But at a certain point your going to make players unhappy, and often very unhappy as they are the OG's, with the changes. But stagnation in the game probably looses more players, and updates draw more players back even if briefly but eventually you get to a point no one is happy, support drops to near zero as the team has moved on to the next project. I was a English version player of Hordes, Die2Nite. Slow quiet death there while the team had gone to work on this game, which was depressing for that game, but gave us this game. So there's that.

Also for what it's worth any complaints addressed to the team in English were historically ignored, so if you want the team to actually read anything you have to say, write in French.

Wasn't aware of that history. Thanks for sharing.

I think my biggest complaint is that the game is out of EA, and so that should mean that the time for massive, sweeping changes is over. They'd get more play, I think, if they didn't make those broadbrush changes but instead added new biomes, new weapons and skins, new enemies, a 6th boss cell with a tweak on end game content, etc. Some of these (e.g. 6th boss cell) would be a really low investment strategy (can be as easy as upping enemy count, cursed chests, and speeding up some attacks), and even something as simple as new skins can make the game feel fresh enough.

At this point, I'm just feeling alienated, and it's hard to find the enthusiasm to support future projects because this is an indication of what to expect.

I revisit my games precisely because I know what to expect when I load them up. This is why I've been playing the OG Castlevania series for nearly 3 decades. I can't say the same for this game, and it's sad because I had it up there as an all-time favorite last year. Even after beating 5BC the mandatory 2x, I felt a compulsion to continually revisit, but much of that is faded in light of the changes.

[Phirestar]

Originally posted by d.a.elliott:

I think my biggest complaint is that the game is out of EA, and so that should mean that the time for massive, sweeping changes is over. They'd get more play, I think, if they didn't make those broadbrush changes but instead added new biomes, new weapons and skins, new enemies, a 6th boss cell with a tweak on end game content, etc. Some of these (e.g. 6th boss cell) would be a really low investment strategy (can be as easy as upping enemy count, cursed chests, and speeding up some attacks), and even something as simple as new skins can make the game feel fresh enough.

That pretty much summarizes it, I would say.

While I’m not opposed to the idea of them making tweaks to fine-tune the game’s difficulties, and I’m happy to see new content - and even pay for it, should they ask - I think the time for changing the foundation of Dead Cells is over. Personally, I view the 1.2 Rise of the Giant update to be the true “full release” patch, as there was so much in that pack of content that felt like core content, and it helped to solidify the boss cell difficulties as something more than just NG+. Once that update was put in, the game was “done”, and didn’t need to be reconceptualized anymore. If it did, then perhaps it should’ve remained in Early Access.

They added in 5BC difficulty and said, “This is how this mode is supposed to work.”, with cursed being an essential mechanic to complete the mode. Only three updates later they went in and made a drastic change to that original design. It would be one thing if it were a small tweak, like taking one cursed chest out here and there from certain biomes - I thought that would’ve been a better idea, myself - but they instead took a hammer to it and nearly removed the system entirely. And now six more updates following that, they’re redesigning a mechanic that was finalized before launch, and has had multiple updates put into refining and improving it ever since.

Like I said in my original post, I wouldn’t be surprised if more of these major overhauls will happen again, to other systems. I can’t find myself enjoying the game anymore if they’re just going to change it from it used to be.

[travistotle]

Yo guys, I'm glad that everyone is very explicitly sharing their thoughts on the changes, I happen to agree with a lot of the points made. But if you really are voicing these opinions because you want them to be taken into account by the developers, TAKE THEM TO THE DEAD CELL SUBREDDIT! There is an official Alpha feedback thread that was posted by Motion Twins themselves; if you really want the dev team to hear your voice in what you like and don't like, the feedback thread that they themselves started would probably be the best place.

There's no guarantee that the devs are looking through individual threads on the Steam forums, in fact, posters have noted that feedback threads here largely went ignored. While there's no guarantee that they're going to read each individual post, their own Reddit thread is much more likely to catch their eyes and have a chance at getting your feedback noticed. Also, post in French if you can, apparently Motion Twin prioritizes French replies.

[d.a.elliott]

Originally posted by travistotle:

Yo guys, I'm glad that everyone is very explicitly sharing their thoughts on the changes, I happen to agree with a lot of the points made. But if you really are voicing these opinions because you want them to be taken into account by the developers, TAKE THEM TO THE DEAD CELL SUBREDDIT! There is an official Alpha feedback thread that was posted by Motion Twins themselves; if you really want the dev team to hear your voice in what you like and don't like, the feedback thread that they themselves started would probably be the best place.

There's no guarantee that the devs are looking through individual threads on the Steam forums, in fact, posters have noted that feedback threads here largely went ignored. While there's no guarantee that they're going to read each individual post, their own Reddit thread is much more likely to catch their eyes and have a chance at getting your feedback noticed. Also, post in French if you can, apparently Motion Twin prioritizes French replies.

I hope I'm not being too much of a quietist, but my impression of the reddit, having lurked for quite a long time now, is that it's filled with a bunch of users who demand "balance" (and thus, in ways, caused these problems in the first place) and halo their feelings about the devs around the changes the devs make, leading to a 'do no wrong' mentality. The devs seem like great people; but even great people make poor decisions.

You're right though.. if that place were filled with more dissent, we'd probably see better changes.

[d.a.elliott]

I missed this from earlier in the year, but it essentially explains the EA mentality that MT seems to have:

https://venturebeat.com/2020/02/12/not-so-dead-cells-why-maintaining-an-archive-of-your-game-is-good-for-both-you-and-your-players/

Basically, since they've allowed archiving, they feel like they have the freedom to do whatever they want, and if you don't like it, then go back to your version (never mind any new weapons, affixes, enemies, or biomes). It's a stone's throw away from a 'FYDC' attitude.

I'm just glad that this isn't the norm. I'd be beyond frustrated if I found out that Konami suddenly decided to nerf the Crissaegrim, change around the affixes on other items, speed up random enemy attacks, introduce a constant MP drain mechanic, and introduce a timer in Symphony of the Night just because why not.

[Uncle Fester]

To be honest, I started disliking it when they locked content with difficulty barriers (astrolab and some items). some casual players as myself cant enjoy some of the content we paid

[Moon]

Do you guys know if EE reads here? Maybe you should bring this up on Reddit? I've seen them reply there.

[Get Out]

Totally agree. I feel the same. I made a similar (alltough shorter) post about it on this forum. Ever since the introduction of two handed weapons, the game slowly but steadily on downhill. Every balance related change that came from Evil Empire is just horrible. The DLC content is good, but it's not gonna save the game if no one wants to play it.