“I did not expect this”: Nexon fix The First Descendant Void Shard drop rates and get showered in praise

The most recent The First Descendant patch has had fans pretty baffled. Nexon are doing good things. This is a company that recently had to pay out millions of dollars worth of fines for misleading its customers, that has been criticised recently for its overt emphasis on pay-to-win features, and one that has a starkly astounding and notorious reputation. “No-one was expecting this from Nexon,” fans have noted.

“Why can’t the whole gaming industry be more like this? Transparency and actually listening to the community’s feedback and acting upon it on a reasonable timeline is something that is absolutely lacking from other companies, and I did not expect this from Nexon,” writes Numroth on Reddit.

The recent praise for Nexon spurns from the recent 1.0.3 patch. In particular, one of the Director’s Comments which focused on the devs fixing an issue with Void Fusion Reactors leading to glitch farming. Not only did they fix the bug, but they also considered “why players might resort to using it.” Nexon states that they realised that Void Shards have been far too difficult to get hold of, and so the amount obtained when completing a Void Fragment mission has now “increased by approximately 1.5 times.”

Just yesterday we noted how the amount of Void Shards that certain missions yielded was far too low, and would ultimately contribute to the game’s downfall. Looks like that’s now been sorted. Based, I agree.

There are contrarians who are not yet committed to praise. “Sadly, the last time a Nexon team was this transparent and catered to the playerbase instead of profit, the game was sunset in a year. I really hope this doesn’t cause a repeat.” The game in reference was MapleStory 2, which has long been shut down. It almost sounds like some people like the microtransaction monetisation systems that Nexon games are so notorious for.

There are others who are being cautious for other reasons. “Seems like Nexon is being uncharacteristically transparent and attentive because they want TFD to be their own Warframe/Destiny.” They continue to say that “player retenntion is the life blood of those games,” and that they need to desperately cling to its players.

Ultimately, I think listening to community feedback is the exact thing that game companies should be doing right now, and Nexon have my attention.

About the Author

Amaar Chowdhury

Amaar is a gaming journalist with an interest in covering the industry's corporations. Aside from that, he has a hankering interest in retro games that few people care about anymore.