The First Descendant was yet another one of 2024’s ‘flavor of the month’ games. Reaching an all-time peak of 264,860 players, its numbers have been slowly but surely declining, now only reaching 11k at peak. As of April 3, however, recent reviews have hit ‘mostly negative,’ with a meager 36% of responses in the positive. Things aren’t looking great for Nexon’s sci-fi shooter.
On Thursday April 3 Nexon released hotfix 1.2.13, which was specifically aimed at rebalancing the multiplayer game‘s roster. “Recently, successive releases of new overpowered Descendants such as Ines and Serena have caused some content being cleared way more easily than intended,” it writes on The First Descendant‘s website. “While the dev team does hope for the new Descendants to be in the spotlight, we don’t want them to be released overpowered to the point of breaking down the content structure.”
Ines is the Descendant that takes the biggest hit, with her cooldowns being increased across the board while her damage across all skills has taken a heavy nerf. Serena and Freyna are next on the chopping block, with Nexon monitoring both before it makes any adjustments.
The refocus on balance appears to have prompted a review bomb of the game. As of April 3 there were 475 negative reviews, with 430 on April 4. Anger appears to stem from a GameMeca interview from June 2024, where the devs supposedly stated that they wouldn’t nerf Descendants, or release them in an overpowered state.
In response to a question about player sensitivity to nerfs, director Joo Min-seok states that “in an inevitable situation” the team “thinks [nerfs] should be done if necessary. I think that a process of persuading users through transparent disclosure and objective explanation is necessary when changing the balance.” Note that this interview has been machine-translated.
Many understood this to mean that there were no plans to nerf elements of the game, especially its characters. “The nerf was a stupid idea,” reads one review. “It goes against the devs’ ‘no nerfs policy’ in the first place.” “In what universe does a co-op PVE looter-shooter need to butcher a character’s viability because some players… checks notes… actually optimized their builds?”
There have been one hotfix since 1.2.13, but this simply fixed a disconnect error. The current balance state remains the same.
Balance in PvE games is always tricky. Arrowhead famously ‘overbalanced’ Helldivers 2, and eventually walked back myriad changes as the playerbase began to decline. Some of the best PC games just allow you to dive on it, let loose, and pump enemies full of lead; they’re easy to play, and let you turn your brain off. The First Descendant certainly sat in that camp, so we’ll have to wait and see what Nexon decides to do.
In the meantime, however, we have a list of all the current The First Descendant codes to score you some new cosmetics. Alternatively, if you’re looking for something new that doesn’t break the bank, check out our list of the best free Steam games.
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