While there is a lot of cool stuff coming in The First Descendant season 1, players have been upset that Nexon has revealed that the season is being broken up into three parts, with the most sought-after addition, Ultimate Freyna, still months away in October even though the season launches in a few days.
Now, Nexon is reversing course to a certain extent essentially instantly after pushback, and has announced that the planned third update will move up three weeks from October 30 to the 10th.
The season will now be split in half rather than in thirds. It begins August 29th and then the second half is October 10th. What that means in practice is that the third update is being merged with the second update, which means the second one is actually being pushed back a bit, by two weeks, in order to make this happen, as it was previously supposed to arrive on September 26th. However, that was the least important update as it just added a new boss and new ultimate weapon.
So this is what the schedule looks like now, updated from the one released literally a day ago:
First Update: August 29
- New Descendant Hailey and Hailey Skins
- Invasion Dungeon
- Inversion Reinforcement
- Invasion Season Battle Pass and Ultimate Weapon Excava
Second Combined Update: October 10
- New Intercept Battle Death Stalker
- New Ultimate Weapon Frost Watcher
- New Ultimate Skins and Ultimate Descendant Exclusive Spawn Effects
- Ultimate Freyna and Freyna Exclusive Story
- Ultimate Freyna Modification Modules
- Hailey Modification Modules
- New Ultimate Modules
- Highest Difficulty Infiltration Operations
- ETA-0 Vendor
So, while this is better in some ways as it moves Freyna up three weeks, you can see a ton of stuff players want to play is still being pushed for a month and a half from season launch. I’ve seen other games struggle with the Act structure like Destiny 2, which is now pivoting not launch all story content at the start of each of its Acts, but not until next season. Nexon just changed this on a dime with under a week until the season arrives. Nexon also talks about “examining update methods for the upcoming season in the future.”
It is a fine line to walk in live service. You have to keep players engaged over a period of time without making them too annoyed about timegating off content they actually want to play, or rewards they want to earn. Here, Nexon seems to realize they struck the wrong balance and like they’ve done many times now, have instantly reacted to feedback. It’s good to see.
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