You’d rather pay than grind The First Descendant? That’s the point

When the Dead Bride boss’ snow globe attacks took my under-levelled character down, I was struck by a thought no free-to-play game has ever given me: I’d rather work harder in real life and pay up instead. I was taken aback, especially since The First Descendant had already given me two three-day bonus XP tokens for a rocky launch. Would the grind have been worse had I started the game later? 

In free-to-play games where ‘everything in-game can be earned,’ time becomes a currency, one that only some have in abundance. This isn’t news in the industry but Nexon’s looter shooter The First Descendant tries to take your money more often than most F2P titles. From single-use paints and Twitch drops to erratic drop rates for resources, the game ties new characters to an exhausting grind.

While it had over 250,000 players hop in on Steam at launch, the game currently sits at a Mixed rating. A dull story, derivative mechanics, and bullet sponge foes aside, most users point to its concerning monetisation. The game is scummy at best and feels like a habit-inducing parasite as you crawl past imaginary speed breakers.

Ultimate character variants like the Bunny that everyone’s talking about need RNG items with an appalling 3% drop rate. What’s the cheapest way to get her with a premium in-game currency, you ask? A cool $70 for 3920 Caliber, since Ultimate Bunny costs 3000 of Albion’s sweet Caliber. Maybe that Game Pass price hike doesn’t sound so bad now. And if you think its battle pass has enough Caliber for the next season’s pass like most live service games, I’ve got more bad news.

As reported by the Korean Economic Daily, Nexon was fined by Korea’s Fair Trade Commission for secretly lowering drop rates of items in MapleStory and Bubble Fighter. What’s worse is that the company proceeded to pretend like this never happened. This resulted in the largest-ever fine imposed in South Korea. It’s a trend that remains alive and well in The First Descendant. While there’s no PvP combat where you can gain an unfair advantage, it can be disheartening to fall short of unlocking a skin by design as your lobby greets you with Ultimate Viessas and Gleys. While I might have scoffed and moved on as a kid, having a wallet shouldn’t feel like a cheat code.

The winding grind for gear promotes spending real money from an option to a recommendation.

There’s no denying that The First Descendant looks stunning, runs fairly well, and offers a variety of environments and enemies to encounter. And while Nexon promises free seasonal content unlike Destiny 2’s paid expansions, I’m worried that new regions and endgame activities will be time-gated or paywalled harder than Warframe. True, free games cannot exist without microtransactions. But when games test the micro part of that word, players rightly call them out. While The First Descendant doesn’t have a price tag, the winding grind for gear promotes spending real money from an option to a recommendation.