Dec 16, 2020
Dead Cells - mezzamazza55
Hello everyone,
The Christmas Update, also known as the Malaise update, is now available in beta! It mainly includes the rework of the Malaise mechanic, which is a 4 and 5BC exclusive, a lot of weapon color changes, an improved backpack and 4 new mutations, as well as the usual ton of QoL and bug fixes. Full patchnotes are here.
Artwork by the fantastic David Thor Fjalarsson
Since both the reworks to weapon colors and the Malaise have proven more controversial than expected among the community, we thought it would only be fair to explain the reasoning behind the changes and our plans for the future.
Warning: This isn't the shortest explanation ever - we want to communicate properly with you and a TLDR doesn't really work for that...
Previously, this mechanic ensured 4BC+ players wouldn’t abuse HP stacking and rallying strategies so much, by introducing a maximum number of times someone could be hit without dying that wasn’t dependent on those parameters.
Reworking Malaise became one of the most recurrent requests over time, with players accusing this mechanic of ruining the fun by punishing jumping into the melee and encouraging waiting for its cooldowns. Dodging enemies without fighting became a very viable strategy, even the most effective way of beating the game according to many.
Taking it slowly or dodging enemies was never something we wanted to incentivise, let alone reward. That’s why the new Malaise essentially treats time as a balancing factor (our previous post explains the new mechanic) - if you take your time, you’ve got less chance of being hit by enemies and the game is essentially easier for you, so we're increasing the difficulty the longer you spend in a level - this balances with the players who are spending less time in a level by going full hog on groups of enemies and putting themselves at greater risk of being hit. So you can still complete your runs with a slower playstyle, but you now get rewarded by actually playing the game and killing enemies, instead of ignoring them.
However, we know timers often bring stress and anxiety, which then leads to 'stupid' mistakes and people getting pissed off and bored. That’s why we’re trying to soften this feeling as much as we can, by stopping the timer in plenty of situations (merchants, treasure rooms, once you’ve killed most of the level’s enemies, etc.). Basically, if you prefer to take your time, you'll still have plenty of opportunities for a breather.
We’re also aware the increased RNG tied to the Malaise spawning mobs and turning others into Elite can create unfair situations, and we’re really working on identifying when and where to fix it with your input, like we did with the 21.1 patch.
We really hope you'll give this new Malaise a chance and try to experiment with it before judging that it's not for you. In any case, we’ve added an option to disable the Malaise so you can experiment in the two last Boss Cells without it. Unfortunately, letting both types of Malaise co-exist would have been really complex, so, the 'old' Malaise won’t be playable now or with future updates*.
*For Steam players, you can always choose to keep Dead Cells with the old Malaise mechanic by choosing Update 20 in the beta tab of the game settings.
This new Malaise is certainly not perfect, but we feel like it’s definitely more interesting than the previous 10 hits bar. And the work on this mechanic won’t stop with this update release, but continue in future updates. So that's where we're at with Malaise, now on to the weapon color rework.
Broadly, we think each color should mainly be defined by a playstyle. That’s the compass which we use to decide which color each item should scale with. But we also want each statistic to be associated with one or more themes (chosen somewhat arbitrarily), helping with both a sense of identity and variety by allowing in some items that don’t necessarily fit with the playstyle.
Finally, we also want each color to be lacking something by design (and not because we haven’t implemented the needed content yet), to have a distinct feeling of comparative goodness in-between different runs with different colors, and to keep the colorless and legendary items interesting.
However, and despite our best efforts, inconsistencies will most likely always be present, with items that are scaling with a color they shouldn’t fit in with, or the contrary. These inconsistencies may have many reasons, for example, for the sake of balance, variety, or because it can be perceived differently by several players. Also, because of oversights on our end!
Now that we’ve dug a bit in to how we see the point and role of colors, it’s time to do a quick overview of the colors in the newest update.
Brutality
Red lost 2 mutations aimed at increasing its survivability (Berserker and Soldier’s resistance), but is absorbing the “assassin” playstyle of Melee Tactics, with Predator, Scheme and Initiative going red. Thematically, everything related to Fire and Bleed will also scale with Brutality, however poison isn’t part of this color theme anymore (hence why Alchemic Carbine was made Purple only, while Pyrotechnics got its dual-scale).
Red is considered in a good spot right now, although it’s a bit lacking in secondary weapons with only three shields and a handful of range weapons to go with. This is where we will focus our efforts to improve it in the next updates.
To sum it up:
Pro: Quick melee weapons, quick offensive spells.
Theme: Bleed and Fire.
Con: No access to defensive abilities, few ranged.
Coming next: Secondary options.
Survival
Green is in a better spot than before, because of the Malaise rework, allowing it to enjoy its bigger HP pool without that secondary constraint. However, the reduced hp scaling late game and some changes like the Dead Inside mutations reducing the effectiveness of healing sources balance it out a bit. The new green mutation, Tortoise Shell, now allows survival players to benefit from the parry mutations* and effects while handling the Scythe Claws or the Crossbows, which definitely makes that strategy more viable and coherent.
The color has now access to a good arsenal of offensive and defensive skills, but is comparatively to the other a bit poor when it comes to main weapons. A “Survival” pack of classic heavy weapons in the vein of the Broadsword or the Bouzouki would be welcome to add a pinch of variety there for Survival players, hence our priority for Survival in the next updates.
To sum it up:
Pro: Best shields, bigger health pool, defensive skills.
Theme: Freeze, Root.
Con: No access to quick melee weapons, 1h range weapons or quick offensive skills.
Coming next: pack of 1h melee weapons.
*Yes, it doesn’t work as of right now - we’re aware and are working on the issue. Sorry!
Tactics
Purple got it pretty hard, with the loss of 3 mutations and most of its melee scaling weapons in favor of brutality. Lots of skills were also initially taken out, because we didn’t think it was really coherent with the color identity.
However, we reverted this decision following negative feedback from tactics players arguing that these skills were quite good at completing range strategies. On our end, when playtesting more, we were also a bit frustrated, because Purple had become mainly dependent on turrets, which led to many runs feeling a bit too samey.
Now, our priority for Tactics is to implement new mutations, which the color is currently lacking severely. We also want to keep some melee weapons in tactics, but the idea would be to make them able to benefit from the range purple mutations, one way or another.
To sum it up:
Pro: Ranged weapons, Turrets.
Theme: Electricity, Poison, Knockback.
Con: Few melee weapons, low HP pool.
Coming next: Mutations, melee weapons working with tactics mutations.
We're listening to all your feedback, in the Discussions here in the Steam Community, on Discord and on Reddit, and we hope that the adjustments to the weapon colour rework and Malaise that we've made going into the beta have fixed most if not all of your concerns.
If you want to try out the beta and don't know how then follow these instructions:
That's it for now, we'll be back soon with more news!
Thanks,
Joan, EE & MT
Community Highlights:
@blaskoart
u/1sombras1
u/Teifling_Darkhalis
The Christmas Update, also known as the Malaise update, is now available in beta! It mainly includes the rework of the Malaise mechanic, which is a 4 and 5BC exclusive, a lot of weapon color changes, an improved backpack and 4 new mutations, as well as the usual ton of QoL and bug fixes. Full patchnotes are here.
Artwork by the fantastic David Thor Fjalarsson
Since both the reworks to weapon colors and the Malaise have proven more controversial than expected among the community, we thought it would only be fair to explain the reasoning behind the changes and our plans for the future.
Warning: This isn't the shortest explanation ever - we want to communicate properly with you and a TLDR doesn't really work for that...
Malaise
Previously, this mechanic ensured 4BC+ players wouldn’t abuse HP stacking and rallying strategies so much, by introducing a maximum number of times someone could be hit without dying that wasn’t dependent on those parameters.
Reworking Malaise became one of the most recurrent requests over time, with players accusing this mechanic of ruining the fun by punishing jumping into the melee and encouraging waiting for its cooldowns. Dodging enemies without fighting became a very viable strategy, even the most effective way of beating the game according to many.
Taking it slowly or dodging enemies was never something we wanted to incentivise, let alone reward. That’s why the new Malaise essentially treats time as a balancing factor (our previous post explains the new mechanic) - if you take your time, you’ve got less chance of being hit by enemies and the game is essentially easier for you, so we're increasing the difficulty the longer you spend in a level - this balances with the players who are spending less time in a level by going full hog on groups of enemies and putting themselves at greater risk of being hit. So you can still complete your runs with a slower playstyle, but you now get rewarded by actually playing the game and killing enemies, instead of ignoring them.
However, we know timers often bring stress and anxiety, which then leads to 'stupid' mistakes and people getting pissed off and bored. That’s why we’re trying to soften this feeling as much as we can, by stopping the timer in plenty of situations (merchants, treasure rooms, once you’ve killed most of the level’s enemies, etc.). Basically, if you prefer to take your time, you'll still have plenty of opportunities for a breather.
We’re also aware the increased RNG tied to the Malaise spawning mobs and turning others into Elite can create unfair situations, and we’re really working on identifying when and where to fix it with your input, like we did with the 21.1 patch.
We really hope you'll give this new Malaise a chance and try to experiment with it before judging that it's not for you. In any case, we’ve added an option to disable the Malaise so you can experiment in the two last Boss Cells without it. Unfortunately, letting both types of Malaise co-exist would have been really complex, so, the 'old' Malaise won’t be playable now or with future updates*.
*For Steam players, you can always choose to keep Dead Cells with the old Malaise mechanic by choosing Update 20 in the beta tab of the game settings.
This new Malaise is certainly not perfect, but we feel like it’s definitely more interesting than the previous 10 hits bar. And the work on this mechanic won’t stop with this update release, but continue in future updates. So that's where we're at with Malaise, now on to the weapon color rework.
Colors
Broadly, we think each color should mainly be defined by a playstyle. That’s the compass which we use to decide which color each item should scale with. But we also want each statistic to be associated with one or more themes (chosen somewhat arbitrarily), helping with both a sense of identity and variety by allowing in some items that don’t necessarily fit with the playstyle.
Finally, we also want each color to be lacking something by design (and not because we haven’t implemented the needed content yet), to have a distinct feeling of comparative goodness in-between different runs with different colors, and to keep the colorless and legendary items interesting.
However, and despite our best efforts, inconsistencies will most likely always be present, with items that are scaling with a color they shouldn’t fit in with, or the contrary. These inconsistencies may have many reasons, for example, for the sake of balance, variety, or because it can be perceived differently by several players. Also, because of oversights on our end!
Now that we’ve dug a bit in to how we see the point and role of colors, it’s time to do a quick overview of the colors in the newest update.
Brutality
Red lost 2 mutations aimed at increasing its survivability (Berserker and Soldier’s resistance), but is absorbing the “assassin” playstyle of Melee Tactics, with Predator, Scheme and Initiative going red. Thematically, everything related to Fire and Bleed will also scale with Brutality, however poison isn’t part of this color theme anymore (hence why Alchemic Carbine was made Purple only, while Pyrotechnics got its dual-scale).
Red is considered in a good spot right now, although it’s a bit lacking in secondary weapons with only three shields and a handful of range weapons to go with. This is where we will focus our efforts to improve it in the next updates.
To sum it up:
Pro: Quick melee weapons, quick offensive spells.
Theme: Bleed and Fire.
Con: No access to defensive abilities, few ranged.
Coming next: Secondary options.
Survival
Green is in a better spot than before, because of the Malaise rework, allowing it to enjoy its bigger HP pool without that secondary constraint. However, the reduced hp scaling late game and some changes like the Dead Inside mutations reducing the effectiveness of healing sources balance it out a bit. The new green mutation, Tortoise Shell, now allows survival players to benefit from the parry mutations* and effects while handling the Scythe Claws or the Crossbows, which definitely makes that strategy more viable and coherent.
The color has now access to a good arsenal of offensive and defensive skills, but is comparatively to the other a bit poor when it comes to main weapons. A “Survival” pack of classic heavy weapons in the vein of the Broadsword or the Bouzouki would be welcome to add a pinch of variety there for Survival players, hence our priority for Survival in the next updates.
To sum it up:
Pro: Best shields, bigger health pool, defensive skills.
Theme: Freeze, Root.
Con: No access to quick melee weapons, 1h range weapons or quick offensive skills.
Coming next: pack of 1h melee weapons.
*Yes, it doesn’t work as of right now - we’re aware and are working on the issue. Sorry!
Tactics
Purple got it pretty hard, with the loss of 3 mutations and most of its melee scaling weapons in favor of brutality. Lots of skills were also initially taken out, because we didn’t think it was really coherent with the color identity.
However, we reverted this decision following negative feedback from tactics players arguing that these skills were quite good at completing range strategies. On our end, when playtesting more, we were also a bit frustrated, because Purple had become mainly dependent on turrets, which led to many runs feeling a bit too samey.
Now, our priority for Tactics is to implement new mutations, which the color is currently lacking severely. We also want to keep some melee weapons in tactics, but the idea would be to make them able to benefit from the range purple mutations, one way or another.
To sum it up:
Pro: Ranged weapons, Turrets.
Theme: Electricity, Poison, Knockback.
Con: Few melee weapons, low HP pool.
Coming next: Mutations, melee weapons working with tactics mutations.
Beta
We're listening to all your feedback, in the Discussions here in the Steam Community, on Discord and on Reddit, and we hope that the adjustments to the weapon colour rework and Malaise that we've made going into the beta have fixed most if not all of your concerns.
If you want to try out the beta and don't know how then follow these instructions:
- Go to your Steam game library.
- Right click on Dead Cells and click "properties".
- Select the tab "Betas".
- In the first dropdown box select "Beta".
- Click close and wait for the upload to finish downloading.
- Start playing.
That's it for now, we'll be back soon with more news!
Thanks,
Joan, EE & MT
Community Highlights:
@blaskoart
u/1sombras1
u/Teifling_Darkhalis
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