I'm sorry you did not have fun playing the update, but you are generalizing your own personal feelings onto others. Yes patrons are more likely to support the dev, but anyone who is 80 hours into the game won't die a few times in a row and say "Too hard I am done."
as i state before, isn't "few time in a row" but more of the whole game over i have suffer in the game for the last couple of years.
and i usualy replay the game in full each time reworks my playthrough, this mean usualy 2/3 time at years.
the basic fight in this update is more difficult of the skittering nighmare original version. the harded fight much more.
the 'last' boss i need to redo the fight five time only to be able to land enough atk debuff to keep him to kill me for the whole fight. and this AFTER i try basicaly everything else to evaluate any viable strategy. and this is a mandatory fight. done with everything outside the optional gauntlet done. so without any room for improvement.
and this are objective evaluation. my enjoiment is irrilevant. die 20 time only to understand how you can win it ins't accetable, the need at least other five try only to have enough rng to your side to finish the fight even less.
and no, i am not generalizing. a lot of people agree with my feedback, with a some of the most 'senior' in the community.
As for your description of the update itself, I"m sorry but it is wildly unfair and largely inaccurate. Yes, this update requires constant vigilance and thinking, EVERY enemy has the potential to be deadly, but I rather enjoyed living on the edge. Again I'm sorry you did not enjoy it, but your description is highly biased based on your own personal bad experience with it. EDIT: For fairness though, I'm not trying to say you are dead wrong. While I do feel like you slightly exaggerated just how "bad" the update was, there were some bits of feeling unfairness with RNG and not knowing which battles would be impossible, but most of those concerns were raised and being fixed by SL as we speak.
in the demon maze you cannot return to the saving point until you reach the end. one of the fight you are against three stealing mana demon, demon weak only to magic attack, or you are strong enoguh to made trough the gauntlet (because with that power level the demon steal nothing) or the only outcome of this fight is death, and nothing else, you cannot possibily win this fight, at the minimun they have 9 strikes before you can kill them, two mana stealing attacks are enough to drain you, usualy this happen the first round of the fight, so you die, and lose everything you are done in the maze. and this is math, brutal math, no amount of planning and no amount fo thinking can save you. the only thing you can do is know that group is death and avoid it, but this mean you already reach them, already died, and already lose everything.
blind it's rng, if the one you must blind had three consecutive good roll you are dead. even if you spend all the three round healing you cannot keep with his damage, this isn't vigilance, this isn't thinking, it's pray rnjesus to be merciful, even if you know exactly what you are suppose to do you will die an abnormal amount of time, because a lot are to much rng dependant. and the only feedback in the game for doing things wrong is your death.
the secription of the update IS accurate, i'm not happy writing this, mind you, i'm happy when I find a challenge, something having a clever resolution. but this update is nothing of it. it's die enough to figure the viable strategy and die enough to have the rng to your side enough to defeat the enemies.