The developers of Lords of the Fallen are backing down and changing one of the most controversial mechanics

Things clearly move very quickly in the world of game development, and this is especially true Lords of the Fallen. Just days after the developer addressed a major criticism and said it would stay as it is, things have already started to change.

Starting with patch 1.1.224, which went live today.

One of the more controversial aspects of Lords of the Fallen was its enemy density and their seemingly limitless ability to haunt the player for an entire level. I criticized both of these design decisions in our Lords of the Fallen review and they have appeared in many other reviews.

Many players also agreed, so HexWorks was made aware of the issue in a livestream last week. When asked if there were plans to respond to feedback and adjust either, studio head Saul Gascon said there would be no adjustments.

However, just a few days later, the developer started making changes. Patch 1.1.224 kicks things off and is one of two patches planned this week that will fix both issues. After installing the patch, enemies should no longer chase you forever.

The update essentially limits enemies’ ability to leash and increases the likelihood that they will return to their spawn points sooner than before. Thursday’s patch will also expand on this by reducing the number of enemies overall – but only in areas where the developer believes there are the most problems.

The update should also reduce instances of enemies swarming players and landing multiple attacks at once. This makes them less aggressive and less likely to trap players.

However, the current enemy composition remains in New Game Plus, as it is intended to be a more challenging experience. Speaking of NG+: The new mode itself has attracted a lot of criticism because of the unexpected changes to the game world.

Before the patch, NG+ completely removed many of the Remnants (bonfires) from the game. The idea was to keep all shortcuts unlocked by players open, eliminating the need for constant checkpoints. However, in the future, NG+ will allow players to start on standard difficulty.

Thursday’s patch will reduce the number of Remnants, but not to the extent that NG+ currently does. The plan is to gradually remove more and more of it for each successive NG+ option until all remnants are removed (except for a few very important ones).

Across the board, you can expect a more complex NG+ modification system, allowing players to customize their gaming experience and choose what to keep and what to remove. This also applies to Vestiges.

The modifier allows for more meaningful optimizations, like adding a permadeath mode, randomizing between items and enemies, etc. This is the kind of thing mods usually bring to Souls-likes post-release, so it’s good to see HexWorks these systems are created internally. You can expect these to arrive later this year.

Check out the full changelog for patch 1.1.224 at the link.