Some serious props to Motion Twin / Evil Empire for their legendary-status customization system. Dead Cells isn’t even the type of game where you’d expect to have skins / outfits, and yet it commits to it harder than some actual “fashion show” genres and games. This and Terraria should be the kinds of character customization depth that other games strive for. Call me a boomer if you want, but I always love seeing cosmetics be a part of game progression instead of just a purchasable item like in a free-to-play game. And I like that there are options available at all levels of player experience, meaning that you always have something new to find no matter where you’re at in the game. Like sure, 25 kills on the Giant or beating 5BC may be some steep requirements, but it also gives you something to work towards. You have a reason to keep playing the game, and that’s never a bad thing in my book.
1:32:14 That’s the problem with the reworked Malaise system: it punishes builds and items that have a longer time-to-kill (ToK). The more time that it takes you to clear the biome, the more time that is spent accumulating Malaise and leaving you with a great amount at the end of the level. When people say that you have to speedrun the game, what they really mean is that you have to maximize your dps by picking items which drain an enemy’s health faster. Not all items are equal in this regard. Stuff like the Wrecking Ball and Punishment are put at a disadvantage due to their wind-up time during their attacks. So often do you end up having to animation cancel to dodge an enemy’s attack that you’re left not reaching your true dps. The damage stat listed in the item’s description only represents the _potential_ amount of damage - as in, if you were to attack continuously with no downtime between swings in the combo. A fast-swinging weapon like the Frantic Sword can perform 2-3 successful attacks on a monster in the same time that the Wrecking Ball charges up the first swing and then have to animation cancel out of it because the monster’s attack came sooner. The Frantic player now has their enemy on lower health, while the Wrecking Ball player’s monster is still at full hp. And this sort of dilemma existed even before the reworked Malaise system introduced a time-based element. DoT builds are often seen as superior to all other type of builds, including heavy weapon builds especially, because they continue dealing damage even while the player isn’t actively attacking the monster. Alchemical Carbine and Hokuto’s is so good because you’re regularly stacking poison on the enemy passively, and that poison is raising your dps number constantly. The same goes for turrets, it’s consistent damage output without having to dodge and waste time not lowering the enemy’s health. And look at it this way: if you’re using a ranged build against Concierge, you can keep attacking him while his damage aura is up. You can’t do that with a small melee weapon’s hitbox that requires you to get up close and tank the aura’s damage. Ranged dps > melee dps. The old Malaise system didn’t have this issue, because Malaise build-up was based on a per-hit-taken basis. Successfully dodging attacks meant that all builds were equal in their ability to avoid gaining infection. Survival builds could be just as viable as higher ToK builds like Brutality and Tactics, with the only difference being that they missed out on optional timed doors and took longer to finish a run through the game. You could opt to play the slow and methodical approach, and you’d still have the same chance of success as other play styles assuming an equal skill level throughout. The counterargument to the old system was that, like with Cursed chests and pre-1.5 5BC design philosophy, it encouraged “perfect play” by punishing you for getting hit. But the devs added a solution to this problem by adding extra modifications to mutations that gave Malaise-remedying benefits. Alienation would clear 2 Malaise alongside every 5 stacks of curse, making s single Cursed chest heal 45% health and cure up to 6 points of Malaise. Dead Inside gave a +6 Malaise count to your bar at the cost of food no longer restoring health, making it a great choice to take with another mutation that gave health back, such as Adrenaline or Frenzy. And then with stuff like red-scaling Berserker and What Doesn’t Kill Me, you were given a 3-second window of immunity to Malaise upon killing an enemy or parrying an attack, putting you in the position to continue fighting without worrying about Malaise build-up If you got hit. It all worked out for everyone, there were options available for whatever playstyle you chose to use. In my opinion, the rework to Malaise was a downgrade that made things more unbalanced and favor playing the game in specific ways over others, which is a problem that Dead Cells has been struggling with for a long time. Timed doors used to award power scrolls, making running past enemies and avoiding combat the most effective option. Then pre-nerf Arbiters that turned the game into a bullet hell pushed for patience and shields being a required pick, which got on the nerves of people who don’t like going slow. Now we’re back to speedrunning being the “right way” to play the game, lest you risk being put into the spot of having to play with high Malaise frequently. The pendulum swings back and forth too far in each direction.
I personally believe that they should djust some biomes to mke them s viable as others. Cursed biomes are a good step in that direction but for example you could put one extra scroll on derict destillery, or maybe a fountain that refills 2 health flask charges. Maybe in ossuary you could add osmething too but those biomes are good ones but dont feel really good to navegate knowing that you are getting less rewarda than in other biomes. I think
Some serious props to Motion Twin / Evil Empire for their legendary-status customization system. Dead Cells isn’t even the type of game where you’d expect to have skins / outfits, and yet it commits to it harder than some actual “fashion show” genres and games. This and Terraria should be the kinds of character customization depth that other games strive for.
Call me a boomer if you want, but I always love seeing cosmetics be a part of game progression instead of just a purchasable item like in a free-to-play game. And I like that there are options available at all levels of player experience, meaning that you always have something new to find no matter where you’re at in the game. Like sure, 25 kills on the Giant or beating 5BC may be some steep requirements, but it also gives you something to work towards. You have a reason to keep playing the game, and that’s never a bad thing in my book.
1:32:14
That’s the problem with the reworked Malaise system: it punishes builds and items that have a longer time-to-kill (ToK). The more time that it takes you to clear the biome, the more time that is spent accumulating Malaise and leaving you with a great amount at the end of the level. When people say that you have to speedrun the game, what they really mean is that you have to maximize your dps by picking items which drain an enemy’s health faster.
Not all items are equal in this regard. Stuff like the Wrecking Ball and Punishment are put at a disadvantage due to their wind-up time during their attacks. So often do you end up having to animation cancel to dodge an enemy’s attack that you’re left not reaching your true dps. The damage stat listed in the item’s description only represents the _potential_ amount of damage - as in, if you were to attack continuously with no downtime between swings in the combo. A fast-swinging weapon like the Frantic Sword can perform 2-3 successful attacks on a monster in the same time that the Wrecking Ball charges up the first swing and then have to animation cancel out of it because the monster’s attack came sooner. The Frantic player now has their enemy on lower health, while the Wrecking Ball player’s monster is still at full hp.
And this sort of dilemma existed even before the reworked Malaise system introduced a time-based element. DoT builds are often seen as superior to all other type of builds, including heavy weapon builds especially, because they continue dealing damage even while the player isn’t actively attacking the monster. Alchemical Carbine and Hokuto’s is so good because you’re regularly stacking poison on the enemy passively, and that poison is raising your dps number constantly. The same goes for turrets, it’s consistent damage output without having to dodge and waste time not lowering the enemy’s health. And look at it this way: if you’re using a ranged build against Concierge, you can keep attacking him while his damage aura is up. You can’t do that with a small melee weapon’s hitbox that requires you to get up close and tank the aura’s damage. Ranged dps > melee dps.
The old Malaise system didn’t have this issue, because Malaise build-up was based on a per-hit-taken basis. Successfully dodging attacks meant that all builds were equal in their ability to avoid gaining infection. Survival builds could be just as viable as higher ToK builds like Brutality and Tactics, with the only difference being that they missed out on optional timed doors and took longer to finish a run through the game. You could opt to play the slow and methodical approach, and you’d still have the same chance of success as other play styles assuming an equal skill level throughout.
The counterargument to the old system was that, like with Cursed chests and pre-1.5 5BC design philosophy, it encouraged “perfect play” by punishing you for getting hit. But the devs added a solution to this problem by adding extra modifications to mutations that gave Malaise-remedying benefits. Alienation would clear 2 Malaise alongside every 5 stacks of curse, making s single Cursed chest heal 45% health and cure up to 6 points of Malaise. Dead Inside gave a +6 Malaise count to your bar at the cost of food no longer restoring health, making it a great choice to take with another mutation that gave health back, such as Adrenaline or Frenzy. And then with stuff like red-scaling Berserker and What Doesn’t Kill Me, you were given a 3-second window of immunity to Malaise upon killing an enemy or parrying an attack, putting you in the position to continue fighting without worrying about Malaise build-up If you got hit. It all worked out for everyone, there were options available for whatever playstyle you chose to use.
In my opinion, the rework to Malaise was a downgrade that made things more unbalanced and favor playing the game in specific ways over others, which is a problem that Dead Cells has been struggling with for a long time. Timed doors used to award power scrolls, making running past enemies and avoiding combat the most effective option. Then pre-nerf Arbiters that turned the game into a bullet hell pushed for patience and shields being a required pick, which got on the nerves of people who don’t like going slow. Now we’re back to speedrunning being the “right way” to play the game, lest you risk being put into the spot of having to play with high Malaise frequently. The pendulum swings back and forth too far in each direction.
I love your livestreams if vods or here 👍
I personally believe that they should djust some biomes to mke them s viable as others.
Cursed biomes are a good step in that direction but for example you could put one extra scroll on derict destillery, or maybe a fountain that refills 2 health flask charges.
Maybe in ossuary you could add osmething too but those biomes are good ones but dont feel really good to navegate knowing that you are getting less rewarda than in other biomes.
I think
Hey, I love the content. The question is will this update come to console? Currently on xbox?
I cant believe i missed thissssssss 😢😢😢
Is this update on mobile yet?
How to update sir