The shooter “The First Descendant” (Steam, PS4, PS5, Xbox) by Nexon is known for its revealing skins for heroines. With these outfits, publisher Nexon is believed to have made a lot of money. However, now they are introducing massive buffs for male heroes, who have apparently been too weak for a long time. The game director believes that new heroines like Serena or Ines have been introduced to the game too strongly.
This is what The First Descendant is known for: The loot shooter The First Descendant was released in July 2024 and was surprisingly successful on Steam.
Fans have been discussing early on that revealing skins for the female heroes in the shooter would bring publisher Nexon a fortune. One fan once called the loot shooter “Destiny with strippers.” Skins like “Ultimate Bunny” have been particularly discussed.
However, it seems that the focus on female heroes led to a loss in balancing, which they now want to address.
She is considered one of the new heroines that came into the game too strongly:
The First Descendant strengthens the abilities of male heroes
These are the changes in the patch: In a hotfix on April 3, numerous balancing adjustments are being made. According to the site MassivelyOP, this mainly affects male characters who have performed worse than their female counterparts.
As a result, there will now be massive buffs. The damage of some abilities will increase between 100 and 300%.
As MassivelyOp says, it may seem drastic, but the female top-tier characters are so far ahead that even with powerful buffs, their male counterparts will hardly reach the top of the meta.
Director regrets that new heroines came into the game too strong
This is what the developers say: According to the head of development, Minseok Joo, it has been widely discussed in the community that new heroines like Ines and Serena have made some content easier than intended by the developers. Therefore, they must now address the issue (via steam).
Characters like Freyna, Serena, and Ines are too strong, and they have released new characters that are “overpowered”. They do not know why this has happened and want to prevent it in the future.
We are also aware that we released the new descendants in too powerful a state. While the development team hopes that the new descendants will be in the spotlight, we do not want them to be so overpowered that the content structure collapses. We are internally looking for the reasons for this recurring problem and are working to improve our development process so that we can provide more stable and balanced content in the future.
However, the game director does not address the notion that heroines are favored in any way.
This is behind it: Two accusations come together, which are often found in online games:
- Companies intentionally make new characters too strong, forcing players to buy them
- Developers favor attractive female characters, designing more skins for them because they sell better
Both accusations are well-known, especially in games from Asia, and have been discussed many times. A typical case of “too much favoritism for women” has been leveled against the MMORPG Tera: TERA: Enough with the women classes – I feel discriminated
