Is The First Descendant’s monetization actually as bad as everyone is saying? An investigation

The First Descendant is out, and making waves on both PC and consoles. As it rises steadily up the most-played charts, players are starting to lodge complaints about the free-to-play game’s monetization, especially in relation to some of its competitors like Warframe.

Take Reddit user Goompas, who made this comparison directly in regard to Energy Activators. These items, bought on the in-game store for 1,500 Caliber (premium currency), vastly increase your chosen weapon or Descendant’s mod capacity. This is important, as mods are what provides much of the power, survivability, and overall strength of your equipment.

1,500 Calibur will cost you quite the sum. Right now, you can’t buy that much directly, you’d have to buy 1,060 for £15.98 / £19.99 and 520 for £7.99 / $9.99 respectively. Or, you could grab some extra and fork out £39.98 / $49.99 for 2,750 Calibur. A lot of cash for an in-game item. Now consider that for a loadout with all your weapons and your descendant powered up with Energy Activators, you’ll need four in total. That’s a whopping 6,000 Calibur’s worth, or £83.97 / $104.98.

Compare this to the Orikin Catalyst/Reactor in Warframe, dubbed a potato by the community. These double the mod capacity of weapons and warframes, and cost 20 Platinum on the store. The lowest amount of platinum you can buy on the store is 75, which sells at a base price of £4 or $4.99. Although right now, just for logging in, I got a 50% discount. A black and white comparison.

Especially when you consider the importantance of such an upgrade. These are not mere cosmetics or fancy skins, these have a direct link to play power. The more mod capacity you have, the more powerful mods you can equip, which in turn allows you to take on harder content. Add in too that the only way to get these in-game – aside from spending money – is as a very rare drop from specific missions, and you’ve got a clear bottleneck for progression here. One that is not cheap to bypass.

The comparison to Warframe is not a complimentary one, especially given how similar the bones of The First Descendant is to Digital Extremes’ own sci-fi shooter. Here’s hoping that in the near future, these become more accessible soon, otherwise you may see players start dropping the game before they drop a payment.