The First Descendant Desperately Needs to Fix a Predatory Feature That Once Existed in Destiny 2

In live-service games such as The First Descendant, fashion and cosmetics typically play a significant role. There’s nothing better than flaunting your personalized character to the numerous other players you meet. In addition to using flashy skins, you can also use Paint to change the color of your Descendant’s attire.

Paint recolors portions of your character’s clothing, just as you might expect. While many other multiplayer games almost always have this feature, The First Descendant takes a different approach. And this is the approach Nexon needs to change if it wants to stay longer in the race.

The First Descendant needs to change how the Paints work in the game

As of now, you can buy Paint in The First Descendant through the game’s premium currency. And the only way to obtain these currencies is to buy them with real money. Albion used to have a crafting station where players could mix random paint, but now they can only purchase the colors they desire for 25 Caliber each.

Furthermore, Paint cannot be applied to any of your Descendant’s default clothing. This option was available in the beta, but the game’s launch version did not include this feature. You will be limited to using Paint on skins if you ever get it.

Also, a color can only be applied once because paint is consumable and can be applied to a specific skin. It’s comparable to the Shader system in Destiny 2, except you’ll have to pay multiple times to get the colors you want to use. And here’s where the hell breaks loose.

It means, if you want to color your different skins, then you have to cash in real money multiple times as Paints can’t be used on different outfits. However, Destiny 2 has now got rid of this heavily-criticized Shader system. Now, it’s high time The First Descendant also works on its Paint system if it doesn’t want to replicate its rocky launch.

The First Descendant has lost 96% of its playerbase in six months

Despite stumbling hard at the beginning, The First Descendant shortly corrected all its mistakes and built a substantially large fanbase with solid numbers. After six months, things are not exactly the same as before. And a lot of that stems from the structure of the entire seasonal model as well as enhancements the game could have made but chose not to.

As a result, The First Descendant has seen a decline from its initial peak of 264,860 players to its current peak of 9,781 (according to SteamDB, at the time of writing this article) on Steam since its July launch, which was six months ago. That means 96.4% of its original player base has been lost.

The First Descendant is actively working to retain its player base through regular updates and additions using a seasonal model. However, there are always some arguments regarding declining player numbers in games and whether they matter.

It doesn’t seem like it’s going very well. Small blips on the chart indicate the start of seasons or major updates, but at this point, we’re talking about a shift like going from 12,000 players to 26,000 players for two to three weeks. And it continues to fall to all-time lows.

Now if Nexon is not going to make some changes in the Paint system, then who knows, the graph might stoop even lower!