Is The First Descendant’s profitability really as bad as everyone says? A survey

The First Descendant was a huge hit on both PC and consoles upon its release, and as it steadily climbed the charts of the most popular games, players began to complain about the free-to-play game’s profitability, especially compared to some of its competitors, such as Warframe.

Take Reddit user Goompas, who made a direct comparison to Energy Activators. These items, which can be purchased from the in-game store for 1,500 Caliber (premium currency), significantly increase the mod capacity of your weapon or Descendant of choice. This is important because mods are what provide the majority of your gear’s power, survivability, and overall strength.

1,500 Calibers will cost you a pretty penny. Currently, you can’t buy that many outright, you have to buy 1,060 Calibers for £15.98/£19.99 and 520 Calibers for £7.99/$9.99 respectively. Alternatively, you can buy more and buy 2,750 Calibers for £39.98/$49.99. That’s a lot of money for an in-game item. Now consider that to equip all the weapons and top up the energy offspring with energy activators, you’d need four in total. That’s a whopping 6,000 Calibers, or £83.97/$104.98.

Compare this to the Orikin Catalyst/Reactor in Warframe (which the community calls potatoes). They double the mod capacity of weapons and Warframes and cost 20 platinum in the shop. The minimum amount of platinum you can buy in the shop is 75, and the base price is £4 or $4.99. Right now, though, just by logging in once, I’ve got a 50% discount. Black and white.

Especially when you consider how important such upgrades are. These aren’t just cosmetic items or fancy skins, they have a direct link to in-game prowess. The more mod capacity you have, the more powerful mods you can equip, which in turn allows you to take on harder content. Add to that the fact that the only way to get these in the game, aside from spending money, is as very rare drops from specific quests, and you’ve got a clear bottleneck to progression here. Getting around this bottleneck isn’t cheap.

The comparisons to Warframe aren’t exactly complimentary, especially considering how similar The First Descendant’s skeleton is to Digital Extremes’ own sci-fi shooter. Hopefully, these games become more accessible soon in the near future, otherwise you might see players start to abandon the games before they’ve even paid for them.