Lords of the Fallen will tone down infamous gank squads and restore checkpoints to New Game+ in its second week of patches

pcgamer.com:

Lords of the Fallen's been getting patched at an absurd rate. Since its release October 13, Hexworks has pumped eight whole updates into the game, fiddling with the dials on performance, the game's parry system, enemy projectiles—the whole nine yards. The studio has started as it means to carry on, it seems—Patch v.1.1.224 (and more updates coming Thursday) looks like it's giving Mournstead its biggest shakeup yet.

Some context: Lords of the Fallen's wider critical reception has been, uh, complicated. Issues with the sheer amount of monsters you're fighting has been one hot button topic. 

In my review, I had a lot of good things to say about the game overall, but my experience was plagued by the game's overreliance on ambushes, gank squads, archers, dogs, little marauders, you name it. This issue really gets glaring towards the game's second half, and the final area was an absolute headache. This produces a game that's often difficult by technicality—in practice, it's just tedious and exhausting. 

It looks like Hexworks has listened. «Today as a means of helping with enemy density, we're improving our 'leashing' system, further limiting how far enemies will pursue players from their spawn point. This helps prevent large crowds of enemies from relentlessly pursuing the player when rushing through a level.» Hexworks will also be making changes to the AI, making it less likely for them to just dogpile you in great numbers.

The devs are also planning to reduce «the number of enemies present in areas where players most struggle.» However, there's a twist I think is actually really smart: «These enemies will be removed in your initial playthrough, but will remain in NG+, in keeping with the more challenging experience players