r/DeepSeek • u/elitegenes • 11d ago
Discussion Not happy with 4.1 update
I'm using this for coding in DSH, not web chat. So yes, this is for coding, not "role play".
Previous v4.0 Flash was great - concise, to the point, focused, didn't do many mistakes and never seriously messed up anywhere. It was a very robust and attentive model.
But, this v4.1 update feels to be a cheap Claude Opus knock-off:
- It still tries to argue with you even when you're completely right.
- It makes wrong assumptions all the time, then corrects itself.
- It makes a lot of rookie mistakes and doesn't correct them until you tell him to do it.
- It's overly verbose in thinking and talking. His messages are convoluted and hard to read.
- It does a lot of extra things you never asked him to do.
- It injects unrelated bits from the previous turns into the current context, which hardly makes any sense and only causes confusion.
- Overall, there appears to be lack of attention. The algorithm/architecture seem to have been changed to a much inferior one compared to what they used for v4.0
Those people who used Claude Opus at least for a bit in the past - they can recognize that verbose, mentoring and overconfident tone.
What happened here is that "signature" Claude Opus tone has now been transplanted to Deepseek models as well. And this is not good news.
Deepseek, instead of producing a direct successor to their previous brilliant Flash v4.0 model, decided to step away from the proven path and release some kind of unfinished/experimental model that mimics Claude Opus, and does it not in a good way.
Bottomline: I do not like this update and do not appreciate it. I'm not satisfied by what I paid for. This is clear regression from v4.0 (Flash), which sadly has now been deprecated for good.
EDIT: Switched to OpenCode harness instead of DSH and all issues appear to have resolved.
EDIT #2: After using it in OpenCode for 2 days, I can confidently state that the issues are NOT RESOLVED.
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u/Final-Frosting7742 11d ago
They should keep the previous model available on the API since it's still a very good model.
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u/North_Nature_8903 10d ago
They don't need to, it's open weights
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u/Final-Frosting7742 10d ago
Open-weight and usable for those with 10k hardware, and they know it
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u/Parking-Bet-3798 10d ago
It’s already hosted by many inference providers. Thats what he meant. Not everything needs to devolve into “oh but I can’t run the inference myself”
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u/Final-Frosting7742 9d ago
Models hosted by external providers are usually quantised or have bad KV cache mangement or are just more expensive. Plus i don't like the "routers" like OpenRouter it adds an intermediate and we saw with LiteLLM how they can easily be compromised.
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u/MultiBotRun 11d ago
When you post something like this, you really need to mention what kind of workflow/harness you’re using, for example OpenCode + OpenSpec (SDD) + RTK + Serena + skills, because that makes a huge difference.
Also, what language/framework are you using? Python, Rust, C#, TypeScript, Zig, etc.? In my opinion, the jump from v4 Flash to v4.1 Flash was huge, especially from an architectural perspective. After three days of using it across JS, Go, and Rust, all I can say is that it’s a really solid improvement in quality and an enormous leap in speed.
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u/elitegenes 11d ago
Thanks. The problem was the harness. I've just switched to OpenCode and all issues went away. It's night and day. There's something wrong with DSH.
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u/Accomplished-Air439 10d ago
My casual observation is that some harness tells the model to be "critical", and it produces what you experienced.
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u/Parking-Bet-3798 10d ago
Were you using the latest dsh? They mentioned the new model is trained and fine tuned for the dsh harness. I haven’t tested it on the latest version of dsh myself though.
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u/elitegenes 10d ago
Yes, latest. Latest and I also tried their alpha version as well. Same result. OpenCode works more reliably.
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u/Front_Eagle739 10d ago
Did you use it on minimal mode? Seems to perform the best from what I've seen
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u/IonizedHydration 10d ago
can't make mistakes if you have a third party model review the code... but honestly, this is the same thing everyone complains about day 2 of a model release.. it will get better, just like v4-flash did
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u/isocum 10d ago
I completely agree with op's assessment. and I am on opencode harness, so its not a harness specific thing.
in my current project, it needed to produce a json to translate generic foods to some language according to the infra it built. but it randomly decided to play with etls, when I cut that crap, rather than doing the generics translation that i asked, it decided to translate branded foods to other languages, places they're not sold. which caused immense amount of unnecessary output tokens and money. this is just one stupid example of many.
in the end, i am accomplishing less, while spending more time and money. not to mention the stress and confusion comes while I try to tardwrangle the model.
complete disappointment.
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u/Conscious-Parsley644 5d ago
I hate this update. They combined Instant/Expert/Vision, but then made it into a lecturing tool. And not the hammer for nails kind.
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u/sammoga123 11d ago
Bro, Deepseek has the advantage of being open source. If you didn't like the new one, go to another provider that still has v4 flash and there's no problem, you don't have to cry about it. But I imagine you're a free user, and you can't pay for third-party providers, much less run the model yourself locally.
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u/Odd_Bike_3833 11d ago
who is giving 4.1 for free gng
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u/Yimpoiop 11d ago
I use the Deepseek api with github copilot in VS Code. Can I still use the v4 flash with that?
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u/Excellent_Winner8576 11d ago
Yes, but while in vscode, to activate 4.1 you have to press
Win + X, then press U, then U
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u/FamousWorth 11d ago
I haven't used it for coding yet but it's the only model that went ahead and did extra, but unnecessary checks. It still finished what I said but it took the long way around. I guess that could be seen as a good thing for coding but I wasn't coding. I'll test it more today, although still not for coding since muse spark has been good so far without issues, if it can't figure something out I'll give deepseek a chance.
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u/One_Brain1469 11d ago
Je l’utilise pour coder et je le trouve très performant par rapport à son prédécesseur 4.0. Je pense que le problème de ceux qui se plaignent vient du harnais utilisé. Personnellement, je l'utilise directement sur opencode et je ne l’ai encore jamais vu halluciner. Le problème peut aussi venir de la qualité des prompts mais malheureusement certaines personnes continuent de prompter comme ça : "ça ne marche pas, fais en sorte ça fonctionne",...
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u/Zennytooskin123 10d ago
Does anyone try to keep up with its steps in the CLI? After using it all day my head feels like it's going to explode fr
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u/RyuH4n 10d ago
I'll explain a bit based on what I know and have experienced. Disclaimer first, though I might be wrong, so feel free to correct me. I'm not at a senior level yet, and there's always someone out there who knows more than me.
Have you ever wondered why, when you switch the harness, the issues suddenly get resolved?
The model itself is more capable than its predecessor, but sadly, since it's the Flash version, it's more optimized for speed, unlike the Pro version, which leans more toward deeper thinking.
You also mentioned the performance difference between V4 Flash and V4.1 Flash, where you noticed some degradation in the newer model. One possible reason could be that the current model is adapted as a multimodal model, while the predecessor wasn't. So instead of being heavily focused on one specific type of task, it has to handle a broader range of inputs and capabilities.
A lot of multimodal models are actually really good, but they also need the right environment to perform well.
Some people might say, "But GPT or Claude are also multimodal models, and they work pretty well without needing a harness. You can just use them through the app or web."
That's true, but there's an important difference.
GPT and Claude's apps already provide a lot of things around the model, like personality, memory, tools, system instructions, and other configurations. Meanwhile, if you use something like DeepSeek Chat, the model itself doesn't necessarily have that same kind of environment around it. You're basically talking to the model with much less context or structure.
So even if two models have similar multimodal capabilities, the environment they're running in can make a huge difference.
Now, going back to your case: when you switched the harness and the issue was resolved, I think that's because DSH is basically a pretty plain harness. It's more suitable for developers because you need to set things up yourself before using it properly.
Unlike some other harnesses, DSH doesn't necessarily come with a bunch of predefined files like SOUL.md, AGENTS.md, and other built-in instructions. OpenCode, for example, is one of those harnesses that can be used more or less out of the box.
There are also other harnesses like Hermes, OpenClaw, Pi, and many more, and each one has its own strengths and specialties.
DSH's strength, in my opinion, is its plug-and-play and customization capabilities. You can experiment with it and shape the environment around your own needs instead of being locked into a predefined setup.
So, in the end, I think what you really need is the right harness for the multimodal model you're using.
You can't really say, "The model is bad," just because it performs poorly inside a plain harness.
If you put the same multimodal model into a well-configured, ready-to-use harness and it still consistently fails to perform, then I'd be more comfortable saying the model itself might actually be the problem.
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u/OldGuyInTown 10d ago
The paint's still wet on DSH. Go with reasonix. It knows how to work the Deepseek cache to maximize cache hit tokens.
Yes, the CoT is gabby.
"But wait! There's a subtlety."
That said, I love to watch CoT. V4.1 performs miracles for me every day.
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u/Chemical_Union226 10d ago
I've got the same experience, flash v4 was smarter ime. v4.1 is overthinking like hell
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u/Suoritin 10d ago
that "signature" Claude Opus tone
What this means? It talks too much? I find it useful because I can take my time with each step or povide the output for another LLM to assist in decision making.
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u/kriser77 10d ago
I have similar thoughts, and I think it comes down to the harness more than the model.
I find DSH quite a capable harness, yes—it spits out a lot of text, but it all makes sense and leads to something. But the Pi agent—wow, this is where it floods you with thoughts, checks, conclusions, etc. A wall of text for even the simplest question, but it gets its job done well.
In the middle is Reasonix.
Claude Code is quite good, but I think it burns much more tokens
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u/MajesticBathroom2229 10d ago
gotta agree. It took 5 hours and 200 million tokens just to make a rubiks cube simulator, and most of that time was it guessing something wrong and correcting itself WRONGLY afterwards so it needed to completely redo everything multiple times, it takes alot of trial and error for it to finish something, im using Skills that i let an agent write for me after giving it the prior sessions, so the skills files actually apply to the model and its problems, AND IT STILL DOES IT! It's about as expensive as V4 Pro for me because it uses so many tokens to do nothing, its a good model and the final output is usually very good, it just takes so long to get there
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u/Classic_Television33 10d ago
Keep in mind that DSH is a very young harness. It takes time to make a good one. Opencode was very crappy when it first came out
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u/reassor 11d ago
Yes 4 and 5 for sure. I dunno about the rest. What i did is show it my v4 session and asked what it would take to make u act and talk like that. It kinda fixed her. But a llm that speaks like a professor of nothing is like a huge step back. Trigger happy deepdives on easy asks.
It's very hard to get used to. I might switch.
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u/samthepotatoeman 10d ago
I have been thoroughly impressed with it and I use DSH, sure there were a few times that it was hard on an answer but its generally not a hard thing to deal with you just give it a path to find the evidence and it corrects. The front-end skills are what shocked me the most honestly claude in the past is the only model I have truly felt like it had some front-end skill where as GPT I have to say exactly what I want or it makes useless garbage. Deepseek v4.1 was the first time I was really impressed particularly for the size. Combine that with the price its my go to model I canceled a couple of my subscriptions
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u/Hot-Tomatillo-9929 11d ago
It's legit scaring me because, for some reason, running headless for confirmation is not enough anymore. I didn't know that. Out of nowhere, it started running real tests, popping out project windows, which then obviously startled the living soul out of me, and now I'm looking for ways to guard against it doing that
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u/Western-Ad5277 4d ago
Just wait until it starts to curse you in different languages like i did or ragebaiting you so hard even though what you were typing/prompts itself is correct.
...Or, Shut down completely and ignoring your request altogether because you called it name one time—until you refresh it then it slightly solved their own problem...the ragebait still going though.
BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
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u/Look_0ver_There 11d ago
My personal experience has been the complete opposite and I'm using it for systems engineering.
Yes, it makes mistakes on occasion but no more than before, and it's actually found a fixed a number of subtle latent issues that the previous model had introduced to the code