What you need to know
- “Nerfing” is a common term in live service game communities, referring to powerful weapons, builds, abilities, and exploits being weakened, removed, or tweaked.
- Nerfs can be necessary to preserve balance, but oftentimes seem to prioritize that balance over players having fun.
- The First Descendant seems to be taking an opposite approach, however, with the Nexon team committing multiple times to embracing player discoveries.
- This includes the infamous “Valby Run,” a farming exploit at a specific outpost that, in a future update, will actually be applied to more locations across the world rather than patched.
There are too many live service games to count, and many fade away into obscurity (or fall off a cliff) without much fanfare. The ones that succeed are the games that evolve with their community, rather than in spite of them, with a common pain point being aggressive nerfs. The First Descendant, a new free-to-play MMORPG co-op looter shooter seems to be going against the tide when it comes to nerfs and is embracing player creations, and I love it.
As a quick note, nerfs refer to features like weapons, builds, or farming techniques in games being weakened or patched in a way to “balance” them and make them less lucrative for players. Sometimes this is necessary, especially in player-versus-player (PvP) scenarios, but other times it only serves to annoy the community when the fun new mechanic they discovered is nuked into the ground. A popular example of this lately is Helldivers 2, which accrued massive popularity but also received regular criticism in regard to all the game’s most popular weapons being regularly nerfed into oblivion.
Nexon, the developer and publisher behind The First Descendant, doesn’t seem to be going this route at all. In The First Descendant’s latest major patch, Nexon acknowledged a powerful build featuring the Descendant Ultimate Gley and the weapon Tamer dominating the meta, but actually expressed delight at the ingenuity of players rather than nerfing it. Now, that mentality is also extending to a new farming exploit allowing players to collect items, gold, and other resources at a much faster rate.
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In a new letter to the community on The First Descendant website, the Nexon team discussed the “Valby Run,” which refers to players using the Descendant Valby to take advantage of an infinite spawning exploit at The Fortress Strategic Outpost. With this exploit, players are able to collect items and resources at 2-3 times the rate of other Outposts and locations, making this an incredibly lucrative way to farm. Instead of shutting down the exploit, though, Nexon is embracing it.
“To maintain our game, and to be adored by our players for a long time, we believe that it is wrong to just look on and leave the unbalanced content, which is providing biased rewards,” the letter begins, which admittedly isn’t a great start. “However, as Valby Run became popular very quickly within our community, we assume many players have researched Valby to enjoy the newly discovered content. The current issue has occurred clearly by our own mistake, but we do not wish to suddenly remove it.”
Yes, the Valby Run is remaining in the game, but Nexon is going a step further. In the next hotfix (version 1.04), Nexon will be tweaking the exploit with a patch without blocking it or preventing players from enjoying it, and will extend that same farming efficiency to all Outposts in the game. You read that right — a creative way to farm discovered by players is becoming a permanent part of The First Descendant, which is exactly how a live service game should adapt to its community.
Honestly, The First Descendant is shaping up to be one of the best Xbox games for looter shooter fans, especially if Nexon continues to focus on delivering a fun experience for its players. We already know what The First Descendant’s next major content drop will look like, too, and what Season 1 is going to bring to the game. It’s Nexon’s approach to nerfs and addressing player discoveries that is really making me a fan, though.
