The First Descendant Director & Producer talk Season 1, Upcoming Balance Changes & More

In anticipation of the the launch of The First Descendant Season 1, esports.gg spoke to The First Descendant Producer Beomjun Lee and Director Minseok Joo about upcoming changes, Descendant meta and their thoughts on the journey so far.

Season 1 of NEXON's looter shooter The First Descendant's launches tomorrow (August 29), welcoming a sea of changes. Season 1 will introduce a new Boss, new weapons, new Invasion Dungeons and two new Descendants; Hailey & Ultimate Freyna. According to the game's Producer Beomjun Lee, NEXON currently have around 190 staff working on the upcoming Season 1. Read on to hear more from the developers in our exclusive interview.

 esports.gg: The First Descendant has been out for almost 2 months now. I’ve really enjoyed playing it. It’s my first looter shooter. I was wondering what have been the biggest wins so far for you both personally, and for your teams as a whole?

Beomjun Lee (TFD Producer): Thank you so much for enjoying our game. For our team, releasing this game was a huge challenge. As a Korean developer, launching globally on consoles and Steam, platforms we had little experience with, was a bold adventure. Personally, it's been incredibly meaningful to see our game not only launch successfully but also exceed expectations.

esports.gg: Back in 2022 you said in an interview that you had 150 people on the development team. How many people are currently working on The First Descendant as we head into Season 1?

Beomjun Lee (TFD Producer): Thank you for remembering and asking. Our dev team currently has about 190 members, and we’re in the process of expanding to support live updates. I believe that we’ll need more people to effectively manage live service operations, so we’re actively recruiting for various positions.

 esports.gg: Pre-launch you said communication from the development team will be a key point to help drive player interest and success. As a player myself I want to thank you for the transparency, especially with the Dev Notes on Hotfixes. It’s really awesome to have that kind of communication. You’ve said you're keen for player feedback. How are you gathering feedback data, and how can you sort genuine issues from just general frustration/whining?

Beomjun Lee (TFD Producer): Thank you for remembering what I said. As a player myself, not just as a developer, I've always wanted the dev team to show this kind of transparency and sincerity. That's why I’m trying to share my most honest thoughts through the comments in the patch notes and dev notes at this point in time. We are also closely monitoring players' feedback and community trends.

As you mentioned, categorizing and prioritizing feedback is no easy task. Some decisions are made intuitively based on the intensity and frequency of player voices, but for the most part, we strive to make decisions based on actual user data and logs.

 esports.gg: The community has different opinions of what is the highest priority to fix but from your perspective, what are the three biggest issues you need to tackle to push the game forward? What as leaders are you telling your teams to focus on?

Beomjun Lee (TFD Producer): As a leader, I believe one of the most challenging aspects is having to juggle short-term, mid-term, and long-term plans simultaneously. While this may not directly relate to the game-specific questions you've asked, I believe all three are equally important. We're constantly considering short-term responses like hotfixes to address live issues, mid-term strategies like seasonal updates to provide ongoing content, and long-term plans like major updates to meet player expectations. I share these plans with the team to build consensus and move forward together.

 esports.gg: Ultimate Bunny and Ultimate Valby's character design stand out for me. What are your personal favorite Descendants, and what during the development process made them your favorite?

Beomjun Lee (TFD Producer): Thank you for appreciating the designs of Ultimate Bunny and Ultimate Valby. I also really love both characters from a design perspective. Speaking of designs, Ultimate Freyna, who appears in Season 1, is another character I’m particularly fond of. Her design is incredibly striking, and her overall silhouette is quite unique. I highly recommend you give her a try as well!

 esports.gg: I definitely will. Bunny has such an incredible character design in terms of how her skills synergize with her appearance and personality. To me she is the unofficial mascot of TFD, in the same way Tracer was for Overwatch 1. How early on in the game’s development did you create Bunny and what was the thought process to making the final decisions on how she would play / look like? Also were there other Variants of Bunny you considered?

Minseok Joo (TFD Director): Bunny has been with our game since its early days, and the character you see now is the result of extensive care and polishing from the initial development stages up to the present. The reason Bunny boasts such a high level of polish isn’t just due to its intuitive concept. It’s the result of the development team’s meticulous work over a long period.

When we first envisioned Bunny, we started with the idea, "What if we create a character in a shooter game that’s fun to play even without firing a gun?" This led to the idea, "What if just by running, the character generates electricity that fries nearby enemies?" From there, the image of a fast-running rabbit naturally came to mind, and the concept quickly took shape. Of course, all of this was made possible thanks to the team’s relentless efforts to refine and perfect the character over time.

As for different versions of Bunny… honestly, so many ideas come to mind! But let’s save that discussion for another time. I’m sure there will be an opportunity in the future to reveal some of the secrets that haven’t been shared yet.

esports.gg: As a player it does feel certain characters are infinitely more popular than others. For example Ajax and Bunny. I feel like every Operation I do has at LEAST 1 Ajax and 1 Bunny. Is Descendant diversity a problem you plan to tackle in Season 1 to keep player interest? Or is this an outcome you expected/wanted that there would be a few “main” Descendants and then a collection of niche Descendants (like Luna) that people might specialize in later down the road?

Minseok Joo (TFD Director): We're well aware of the popularity concentration around certain Descendants and are planning balance adjustments to address this issue.

For reference, in the first week of Season 1, we have scheduled balance improvements for Ajax, Blair, and Jayber. Our goal is for every Descendant to stand out as a unique and compelling character, allowing each one to shine in various content by playing to their individual strengths.

Up until now, Descendants like Bunny, Gley, and Lepic have dominated the meta. However, with the upcoming content updates, we are designing the game so that other descendants can take the lead in the meta. We hope this will enable more diverse strategies and playstyles.

Of course, we have no intention of making Bunny, Gley, or Lepic suddenly obsolete, especially considering how many players have invested in them. Instead, we aim to enhance the weaker descendants and create environments where different characters can excel depending on the content. This approach will allow all players to enjoy the game in their own style.

 esports.gg: When I got Luna I managed to take her for level 1 to 19 by completing just 1 Special Operation. This felt crazy good at the time but made me worry later on that if I can do it so easily, am I - and other TFD players - perhaps missing out on the joy of the grind of levels. Was the fact players can level up fast and get rewards easily early on an initial design decision to make the game more accessible, or are these Operations not working as intended? Overall how do you plan to get a good balance between casual player satisfaction and hardcore audience demands? I imagine it’s really difficult.

Minseok Joo (TFD Director): The speed at which players progressed through the game was much faster than we anticipated. While we had some expectations about the current growth rate, we didn't foresee players reaching this level so quickly within just a month. We always knew that efficient experience farming spots would be necessary given the nature of The First Descendant, where players experience multiple level resets, but the speed at which players have advanced has been surprising.

Players always manage to exceed our expectations. They have a remarkable talent for finding the most efficient farming spots, and what we considered extreme figures often turn out to be just average for them.

The First Descendant is a game centered around collecting various descendants and weapons. Therefore, we believe that the difference between beginners and veterans should come from the diversity of collected items and strategies rather than simply from experience points or levels. A faster leveling pace allows beginners to reach the level of veterans more quickly, creating an environment where they can enjoy the game together.

We're committed to supporting casual players in their journey to becoming hardcore players, while also providing new content that keeps them motivated to continue playing. Moving forward, we aim to create an environment where both casual players and hardcore players can achieve their individual goals and enjoy the game together.

 esports.gg: You’ve shared the Road Map For Season 1, which lasts 3-4 months, plenty of new content. Do you plan to stagger that content and spread it out? 3-4 months is a long time and content drought seems to be one of the biggest challenges of retaining a player base for a live service game. Or as a dev is player drop expected and you just need something tasty to bring them back later on?

Beomjun Lee (TFD Producer): Yes, that’s correct. Each season will last around three months, and instead of releasing all the content on the first day, we plan to roll it out gradually over the course of about a month.

As you mentioned, live service games, especially PvE-focused ones like The First Descendant, are highly reliant on content, making content updates and management even more crucial. We are fully aware of this with The First Descendant and plan to support our players through various means, including content updates, operations, and hotfixes.

Introducing larger and more engaging content is also part of our strategy. We are currently brainstorming several content ideas, and some are already in development.

 esports.gg: TFD is obviously a PVE game but there was no mention of PVP for Season 1 or Season 2. Could you ever see it being added to the game? Even if it's not combat, how about a Parkour PVP where people have to traverse an obstacle course?

Beomjun Lee (TFD Producer): This is a question we’ve often received during development. From the early stages of the project to now, our focus as a dev team has always been on cooperative play rather than competition. We believe this aligns with what players expect from our game, and we feel that focusing our efforts on PvE is the most appropriate direction. (That said, I do find the idea of Parkour PVP intriguing, and we’ll definitely keep it in mind for the future.)

 esports.gg: You've mentioned in the past a plan to implement a trading system, what do you think that would look like, and how far away are we from seeing it happen? Would it be exclusively for Weapons?

Minseok Joo (TFD Director): Currently, we’re focusing on stabilizing the game’s farming mechanics rather than introducing a trading economy. Our top priority is to enhance each player's farming experience and provide more satisfying gameplay.

In the absence of a trading system, we’re also preparing ways for players to manage surplus items effectively. In Season 2, we plan to introduce a feature that allows players to dismantle unnecessary blueprints into in-game currency, ensuring that accumulated blueprints can be put to good use.

We will carefully reconsider implementing a trading system once the game’s farming structure is sufficiently stabilized and established. For now, we believe it's important to strengthen the game's core systems to deliver a better farming experience for all players.

 esports.gg: NEXON has had collabs in their games before, and even had collabs with celebrities such as BlackPink in KartRider: Drift, BTS in Maplestory. Could you see crossover/collab characters be a part of The First Descendant in the next year? As a follow-up, what’s a mainstream character you each think would fit well into The First Descendant universe?

Beomjun Lee (TFD Producer): We don't have any specific updates on collaborations at this time, but I can share that we’ve started exploring various possibilities. Regarding character-related questions, I'm a bit hesitant to comment because I’m afraid it might raise expectations about potential collaborations. So, I hope you’ll understand if I say 'no comment' for now.

 esports.gg: Finally, you don’t often do interviews so I have to ask, can you give us a little teaser of what you think will get people’s attention the most in Season 1? What are they going to love?

Minseok Joo (TFD Director): I'd like to talk about our new Descendant, Hailey. Hailey makes her debut in the Season 1: Invasion episode. At launch, we introduced several descendants all at once, so it might have been challenging to fully appreciate each individual character.

However, in Season 1, Hailey takes center stage in the main story, making a powerful entrance with an impressive cinematic sequence that truly showcases her presence.

Special thanks to Minseok Joo and Beomjun Lee from The First Descendant development team for speaking to us.