'Did Not Work': The First Descendant Considered a Failure by Its Developer

Have yall seen some of the skins in that game? 😳 they’re literally trying to bait gooners to spend money

Interesting. And here was I thinking that sex sells. Guess it's more complicated than that, huh?

Shame, I actually quite enjoyed my time with it. Just goes to show what a fallacy GaaS are though. As I’ve said many times, yes there are exceptions to the rule (but even they appear to be struggling lately - Fortnite)… but generally dev-teams are ****ing into the wind chasing this particular dragon.

@danzoEX oh so you mean appealing to “what gamers want” didn’t work for them? Damn lol. It obviously lasted longer than certain other live service games like that one that starts with a C but color me surprised since this game was always mentioned as an example of “appealing to the main audience”😂. At least something like stellar blade actually seemed to still care about the game itself

The reality is that most people don’t want to spend years playing the same game over and over. The games that do manage that sort of success are either excellent games in their field or they are lucky. You can’t plan for it!

Maybe they want take a long hard look at themselves. Amongst grindy games this one was still an absolute joke, determined to funnel you in to those ridiculously priced micro transactions...in fact I don't think micro transactions is appropriate for the amounts they were asking for things. I actually enjoyed the game for a little bit but that left a bad taste in the mouth and I never returned.

Well I enjoyed the game for what it's worth it always felt like it never it was never going to last, I had 400 hours in the game btw... oh and Bunny will always be best girl

@Boxmonkey Exactly my thoughts. I feel like a LOT of people play something like this, enjoy it for a while, get bored with doing the same thing over and over, and move on. There are some games I absolutely love, but I know if I played them constantly for years I'd lose interest.

I'm not saying those people who enjoy riding the same bike for years obviously aren't out there, but as has been said before, most of them have already been captured by older and more established live service ventures.

Live service games all have a time limit of some sort, though. Even the almighty Fortnite has been falling off a bit recently. Years pass, people and tastes change, and what was the hotness one year becomes passé the next. I feel like the single-player game model better fits the longer-term realities of a constantly shifting marketplace, instead of having a product that is inherently more and more limited over time by its own core design elements. No amount of celebrity or brand crossovers can account for that.

I guess sex only sells when you're actually a good game 😂😂😂

I thought it was pretty decent, but after about 30 hours I had my fill of it and moved onto something else.

@DennisReynolds There's an entire industry on Steam that begs to differ 😂

I genuinely had a good time with TFD, but once I was done I was 100% done. If it had an interesting and well made ongoing narrative I probably would've stuck with it, but it wasn't strong enough to retain this butt lovin' rootin' tootin' cowpoke...

I think most people here know that I'm not anti-GaaS, but I think one of the biggest problems in that sector is every GaaS wants to be a "forever" game. It obviously goes against every instinct in a share-holder's body, but games really should be designed to be finite. It makes space for more titles and even more releases from your own teams.

Destiny 2 should have ended with the Light and Dark saga, taking the same approach as Destiny 1: keep the servers up, but no new content. Even with Marathon, Destiny 3 should have been announced by now. The Last of Us Online should have been released with a 1-year content plan and that's it.

Call of Duty is a GaaS and they release new titles every year. I'm not saying that other devs (or even CoD) should have that kind of output, but it shows that games don't need to last forever - even GaaS.

@naruball Unless it's attached to a super popular IP, a game needs to be good first in order to be a bit.

Anyone who thinks Concord, Dustborn, Highguard, etc. would have been successful if they had super hot gooner characters (like The First Descendant does) is kidding themselves

@Oram77 I miss bunny gang 🙏
I still fondly remember the early days of Ult Bunny. I clocked about 400 hours into this game myself, mechanically it was actually pretty fun to play, fun pve boss fights.
Eventually I really just finished the game. Nothing left to do.

I think these games suffer from never taking risks. Look at Warframe: game gets wild new expansions all the time, adding variety to the proceedings. But then you have game like this that expect you to literally do the same exact thing ad nauseum, never adding anything truly new, just more of the same. So they alienate any player for whom that core loop doesn't remain exciting, killing their own playerbase over time as more people grow bored.

Plus, they almost NEVER reevaluate their onboarding processes. New players get absolutely swamped with overwhelming amounts of cruft that rarely gets explained well because modern devs expect players to join a Discord channel or search Reddit communities instead of bothering to design good, informative games.

It never surprises me when such titles crumble under their own misguided decisions.

I played this game pretty heavily when it launched and enjoyed my time with it; even got the platinum trophy. I defended it on the 3/10 review comment section because I felt that was too low (another topic). But what ultimately got me to stop playing is exactly what their president is stating - "retention challenges". Once you complete the story modes (normal and hard), you're left with boring daily grind stuff and the hope that a low drop item you need for an upgrade does indeed drop. Doing the same mission 10+ times for 1 item gets to you after a while and you ask yourself "why?". At least they are acknowledging the issue and maybe will create some new retaining endgame content.

Melons and cakes can't save this game?

I found TFD fairly good tbh during the several hours I put into it, but after doing everything in there that I was meant to do and some more I eventually grew tired of it and dropped out.

@Ralizah @Boxmonkey Yes, these are my thoughts as well. Variety is the spice of life. Honestly, there’s only a very few live service games that actually have had any substantial staying power beyond post launch. And those that have, like Fortnite, had to invest oodles of money and resources to keep it going and still see drops in player engagement. Destiny 2 was similar; player base dwindles by attrition and people seek a new experience. So it’s almost as if the answer is… gosh, I don’t know… maybe making actual separate new games and sequels rather than iterating a solitary game. Imagine that. 😅

Every game has a shelf-life of gaming interest, some longer than others and First Descendant was indeed genuinely fun for a couple of months but the gameplay loop didn't have enough staying power beyond that. The sexy costumes are a red herring either way but some of the characters were a little bit uncanny valley I thought. The 3/10 review was ludicrous considering some of the glazing for certain other much lazier games, don't get me started on that.

Well, I played it for a little while at launch and then left because it was just another grindy, empty game with a copy and paste mission template for every area on the map. The obvious draw for the game is the thirst for saucy skins, which I have no problem with, but when that's all there is to keep you interested it all becomes a bit pointless... especially when you have to grind out the copy 'n' paste missions for hours on end to get said skins unless you pony up the cash to bypass the grind.
I think it could have been an interesting game if it had gone more Stellar Blade and had more substance, variety and depth to it, but the game loop seems to be pretty superficial even in 2026...

Downloaded it, played the not-so-fun beginning, got to the hub, saw all the graphical noise, immediately returned to the home screen and deleted the game.

There is no gameplay loop hook. Like, I don't really care about the skins they chose to make to hook some people. I played when they had the big event that made upgrading everything easy for the Platinum. And within that 30 hours of play it was just pretty boring and bland. I found myself never having any real idea of what progression even was. I finished with maxing out a couple characters and I got to a place where I just didn't know what the point of doing anything more was. So I uninstalled and don't know of a reason I would ever play it again.

I really loved this game I have about 600 hours in it but those first 100 were just trying to figure out how to even progress. Once it clicked it was a ton of fun. Im going to miss my daily dose of butts and over powered builds.

@Questionable_Duck No one likes to admit it but the best gooner games are actually good games first.

I just sunk like £30 into new skins, I hope it doesn't die straight away...

@wildcat_kickz Bro, you can't say GaaS don't need to last forever and then give the example of Destiny 1/2 and then potentially 3. That is all the same game just broken up. That is basically trying to keep Destiny alive forever, lol.

@RyPal I see where you're coming from, but don't really agree. You could reasonably make the same argument for CoD. One of Destiny's biggest problems is that they don't have good onboarding and when a game has been out for a long time, it's really hard for new players to feel like they can have a meaningful experience that isn't completely overwhelming, bogged down by years of layered mechanics.

By releasing segmented installments, it allows for a hard reset, evening the playing field for everyone. It also allows the developer to tackle a different angle, era, setting, etc., while staying in the same universe. Destiny 3 doesn't need to continue the story of 2 or 1, especially because that story arc is over.

@Boxmonkey The games doing that were well established long before today. Look at Bungie. Destiny enjoyed being the live service king back when the live service model was gaining the most momentum and so it carried that game — and to it's inevitable demise today. And now they launch Marathon and no one is around. I don't think there is a taste for live service games anymore. Not the taste there was even 5 years ago. I think people are certainly okay with still buying and playing live service games. But they are more likely to tap out at the 40-50 hour mark, if lucky, and really never dive back in, and daily like used to be the norm. I don't think live service games coming out now or even a few years previous are going to hit the 5-10 year mark of daily log in players who invest hundreds and thousands of hours. Most people just don't want to game like that anymore. I think the live service model can still exist but it needs to be scaled back in scope and cost so that the games don't need hardcore grinders to make it "successful".

I think the reviews were unfair. Yes it copied a lot of stuff from Destiny and Warframe, but I really enjoyed it and put 60 hours or so into it. It was a lot of fun.

@wildcat_kickz I think it is the same for CoD. It's the same game with a new number. But it's still the same game. That's all I am saying for Destiny. I get the onboarding issues. I think Destiny 3 could have easily been WitchQueen – Final Shape and we could be on Destiny 4. But to me these companies are still building forever games because there isn't much changing from release to release other than artwork. I don't really know of a company that built a live service game, saw a few years of real success, ended it, and the built something else. All live service games (or at least the vast majority) either reproduce basically the same game with a new number, or die. Bungie is the prime example. The PvE live service king tried making a new game, Marathon. And while it is a hardcore PvP game that was bound to appeal to a niche player base, it is new and different, but it's very unlikely that game lasts long. Or makes its money back. Even Division 3 is just a continuation of Division 1 and 2. It's going to be the same game with new artwork. But a fresh start like you say — which I agree is helpful with onboarding new players. But I think all of these are still just forever games.

@RyPal I mean, I literally just made that argument about CoD. But what you're describing are franchises, which isn't exclusive to live-service. Every new entry in a franchise is a "continuation" of the last, iterating, building on, etc.

For clarification, what do you mean by "live service" or "GaaS?" To me, these are almost completely interchangeable with multiplayer games, or at least all multiplayer games fall under that umbrella. It's basically non-existent for a multiplayer game to not have some component of live-service because people would get tired of the same content over and over again. All "live-service" or "GaaS" means is that there is additional content added regularly after the initial release.

@Cherip-the-Ripper I think the major problem the game has was the power creep ever since they introduced Ines (who was extremely broken) they keep making every descendant after even more OP and made 90% of them completely pointless.... oh and the grind for season 2 was awful

Considering the only thing I've seen people talk about this game is the bunny girl and nothing else, I'm not surprised lol

@PocketHotDogs this website gave it a 3/10? Undeserved but not surprising coming from this website haha
@Oram77 I didn't even get to Ines, got to Hailey and even got another Descendant slot from that merchant for futureproofing my slots lol but it just took too long for content to arrive.
Got all the cheevs and managed to beat the bosses in pubs so I was happy.
But I get the powercreeps comment, even Hailey was too overpowered already with her near insta kill on bosses....

@Cherip-the-Ripper Oh I completely forgot about the cake queen Hailey!! forgive me I am but a mere tourist lol.

I'm all about the kind of designs they had for the female characters but you need more than that to keep me playing. I'm more into true single player campaigns with an entertaining story (doesn't have to be good, just fun) anyway, so to be fair to TFD, it was going to be difficult to keep me intrigued even if the gameplay was as awesome as say Bungie-era Halo. The main problem is, the gameplay isn't great so even if it had a campaign, I don't see the point with so many better third person shooters out there.

Oh, live service, that's why I don't know what this is.

I guess trying to sell creepy s*x doll skins didn't work out so well for them... Pretends to be deeply shocked
I thought the GAMERS™️said that this is going to "save" the industry. Oh wait...

The visuals and gameplay/combat were decent, unfortunately it played just like Destiny though and got super boring/grindy.

What pulled me off of this game, was pretty quickly you hit a progression point that is a HARD wall. You either spend hours and hours and hours grinding the exact same missions over and over again, hoping for rare drops then crafting stuff (and I mean it could take a LOT of hours to find what you needed)...OR...you spend gobs of cash to shortcut it all. Warframe has something of a similar setup, however there is a LOT more to do in Warframe than there is in The First Descendant. At least when I dropped off not too long after release of the game, there just wasn't content to play through to keep things changed up. Haven't been back to see if they expanded anything, though.

After looking more into it, this article is really doom mongering and sensationalist. I bet you won't even update or add a new story about their new dev live. Do they have a lot of work to do on the games? Yes. But it also shows the game is in fact far from dead.

@Questionable_Duck precisely!

I enjoyed it enough to get the platinum. It's more than a "gooner game". That's an easy and lazy label to give it

@Icey664
For marathon its not good to use steamdb.
But when its a game they dislike like first descendants its a good thing.
4000 for first desc. Versus 11000 for (not free) and a month old marathon.

I enjoyed it to begin with, even the grind to get a powerful build. The trouble I had with it was once you'd got an amazing fun build that could slice through missions there was nothing to do with the build apart from unlocking new characters.

Looks like you've either missed something here or you didn't know of this when writing? "TFD is not shutting down. The director had a meeting last year with management about the issue of player retention and put in place a plan to remedy the situation." From this update : https://www.reddit.com/r/TheFirstDescendant/comments/1sb4yu3/tfd_dev_update_202642/