What do you want to know?
- “Nerfing” is a common term in live gaming communities, referring to weakening, removing, or changing powerful weapons, builds, abilities, and exploits.
- Nerfs may be necessary to preserve balance, but they often seem to prioritize that balance over player enjoyment.
- The First Descendant, however, seems to be taking the opposite approach, with the Nexon team repeatedly pledging to embrace player findings.
- Except, now we know that’s not entirely true: the Valby Run farming technique players discovered is apparently being weakened, despite previous communications from Nexon saying the exact opposite.
Updated, July 23, 2024 — The First Descendant team updated the community with a more accurate translation following the previous “misinterpretation” and, oh my, people are not happy (and I’m disappointed too).
Ah, Nexon was so close to pulling it off. So close to overturning the overwhelmingly negative expectations of every major live service game. So close to being different. Now it seems that a “bad translation” gave us all the wrong idea, and Nexon has corrected the TFD community… Except the new translation is literally the exact opposite of the old one, so what’s really going on here?
We apologize for the confusion caused by the misinterpretation during the translation process of the original Korean text. No decision has been reversed and our initial statement remains that we have no intention of restricting the Valby-run playstyle. However, as we… https://t.co/1CZDnuVsauJuly 23, 2024
Unfortunately, it seems that the Valby Run East being heavily nerfed. This is sad, disappointing, and frustrating considering the response The First Descendant received regarding the initial letter to the community. Now, Nexon’s position is that The Fortress Outpost is being patched to match the effectiveness of other Outposts, not the other way around. It’s hard to believe that a translation error led Nexon to tell the community the exact opposite of what it intended, and players are understandably furious.
The Nexon team still seems to want to respect player creativity in other ways, such as with Descendant and weapon builds, but farming techniques are always susceptible to being eviscerated by patches. Honestly, this update took away some of my passion for the game, just because we were led to believe that The First Descendant would be different… And now we know that’s only half true.
At first, it seemed like the Stronghold outpost would be tweaked to not be completely broken, but that all other outpost locations would get a farming efficiency buff to become relative. The reality, however, is that the Stronghold is simply being weakened to the same level as all other current outposts: tedious and slow.
Nexon manufactured two The First Descendant team made two mistakes in a row and admitted to both… but they still stick to their original plan. The First Descendant team admitted that the Valby Run was made possible by a mistake they made, and now they’re admitting they made a mistake in communicating their intentions to us. Why aren’t players allowed to take advantage of that mistake? Let’s have some fun.
Our original article continues below.
There are too many live service games to count, and many fade 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 one thing in common: aggressive nerfs. The First Descendant, a new free-to-play co-op shooter MMORPG, seems to be going against the grain when it comes to nerfs and embracing player creations, and I love it.
In short, nerfs refer to features like weapons, builds, or farming techniques in games being weakened or fixed in a way that makes them “balanced” and 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’ve discovered is stripped away. A popular example of this in recent times is Helldivers 2, which has garnered massive popularity but has also received regular criticism regarding all of the game’s most popular weapons being regularly weakened to oblivion.
Nexon, the developer and publisher of The First Descendant, doesn’t seem to be going down that route at all. In the last major patch for The First Descendant, Nexon acknowledged a powerful build featuring the Descendant Ultimate Gley and the Tamer weapon dominating the meta, but actually celebrated players’ ingenuity rather than diminishing it. Now, that mentality is also extending to a new farming exploit that allows players to collect items, gold, and other resources at a much faster pace.
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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 spawn exploit at the strategic Stronghold Outpost. Through this exploit, players can collect items and resources at a rate 2-3x faster than other outposts and locations, making it an incredibly lucrative way to harvest resources. But instead of shutting down the exploit, Nexon has embraced it.
“In order to maintain our game and for our players to love it for a long time, we believe it is wrong to simply watch and leave unbalanced content that provides biased rewards behind,” the letter begins, which is not a good start. “However, as Valby Run has become very popular within our community, we assume that many players have been searching for Valby to take advantage of the newly discovered content. The current issue is clearly due to our own mistake, but we do not wish to suddenly remove it.”
Yes, the Valby Run remains in the game, but Nexon is taking it a step further. In the next hotfix (version 1.04), Nexon will polish the exploit with a patch without blocking it or preventing players from taking advantage of it, And will extend this same agricultural efficiency to all In-game outposts. That’s right: a creative way to farm, discovered by players, becomes 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 providing a fun experience for its players. We already know what the next major content for The First Descendant will look like, and what Season 1 will bring to the game. But it’s Nexon’s approach to nerfs and taking player feedback into account that really makes me a fan.