5 reasons why The First Descendant has failed to retain players

The First Descendant's launch saw a lot of players after multiple successful beta tests. However, the numbers quickly dropped, with the game losing over 40% players within a month. A year later, the count is down by 90%. If you’re hearing the name for the first time, The First Descendant is a free-to-play looter shooter game by Nexon.

This article will explore five reasons why the game has seen a massive drop in its player count since its release.

Note: This article is subjective and reflects the writer’s opinions.

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Reasons why The First Descendant’s player count declined

Before we begin, it’s important to note that the reasons I mention seem to be the most common reasons to me as to why most of the players left. Each point mentioned takes away a chunk of players that gradually adds up until the game is left with the current player count.

1) Lack of content during release

There is a lot more to do now compared to the game's launch (Image via Nexon)

While the game has added a lot of new activities since its release, the launch was lacklustre. The missions were repetitive and padded with timers, leaving players to line up outside mission zones. Some of the rewards, including Amorphus materials for Descendants, were locked behind the restriction of completing missions without alerting the enemies, which was nearly impossible to do in public lobbies.

The endgame was mainly the Hard Mode dungeons and Void Intercept boss fights, which featured bosses with the same designs and mechanics but with new names. Both activities were challenging at first, but as players started upgrading mods and found out meta characters like Bunny, the endgame became much more trivial, which brings us to the second point.

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2) Character balance

Some characters are too strong compared to others (Image via Nexon)

With each update, new Descendants started to get stronger. As a result, the base content became too easy for meta characters, which prompted the developers to make even more challenging boss fights. The problem was that most of the old characters struggled to catch up. As a result, players started using the same characters.

Season 3 attempts to put a stop to this trend by improving multiple characters while trying to keep the new ones on par with others. However, the new Descendant, Nell, is still a powerful character for single-target damage, while also having a good amount of crowd control.

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3) Optimization issues

The game requires decent hardware to run properly (Image via Nexon)

Like many games released in the last two years, The First Descendant is an Unreal Engine 5 title. The game has a recommended system requirement of RTX 2060 with Ryzen 5 2600X, but I can confirm that it’s barely enough to meet the minimum settings. Even with a Ryzen 7 5700X3D and an RTX 3060 Ti, you may need to put DLSS on Performance. I’m no expert on how game engines and optimization work, but Unreal Engine 5 games have performance issues.

Budget gaming GPUs take up a large chunk of the PC gaming market, as shown in the Steam hardware survey, which is something to keep in mind while making a free-to-play game. As a result, it only became hard for the game to compete with competitors like Warframe and Destiny 2, which not only run on weaker hardware but also have a decade worth of content.

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4) Aggressive monetization

Extensive monetization can ruin player experience (Image via Nexon)

There’s nothing wrong with monetizing a free-to-play game, but when mixed with a lack of content and steep pricing, players will question the direction it's taking. Most people played the game on launch because it was free, but they were surprised to see even the basic aspects, like the increasing character slots and customization, being heavily monetized.

The paint is a one-time use item you cannot unequip and use on other Descendants, and at launch, this feature was not available for the base character cosmetics. The battle pass is also something that helps bring back players, as it is one of the most common purchases. However, The First Descendant didn’t provide much value or currency to keep people coming back.

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5) More looter-shooter options

Warframe provides a similar experience (Image via Digital Extremes)

With everything mentioned above, the most common step for players is to look for an alternative, which isn’t hard to find. Warframe, a game that The First Descendant takes heavy inspiration from, is free to play and offers hundreds of hours' worth of content for solo players. Moreover, those spending money would rather get expansions in Destiny 2 that add a new campaign and in-game content.

Apart from the story and regular content updates, there are in-game events that add limited-time activities and rewards that scratch the looter-shooter itch much better.

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Despite all this, tens of thousands of people are playing the game. Season 3 has only begun, and the developers still have plans to add more content. While the chances look slim, the game still has the potential to turn things around.

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Check out other articles for The First Descendant:

• The First Descendant: Exterminator build guide
• The cost for The First Descendant's eight-man raid? Last-gen console support
• The First Descendant: Storm Hanger boss guide
• Wall Crasher boss guide for The First Descendant