Live service games such as The First Descendant - a Warframe-ish co-op looter shooter coming next month - can often suffer from a chronic case of numbers-itis, a tragic and goopy disease that stagnates game feel, letting raw and tasteless maths multiply and overwhelm what I, in all my critical wisdom, call “fun button pushy.” Developer NEXON Games were kind enough to answer a few of my questions recently, and most of all, I wanted to know how they’d immunised their endgame against this miserable ailment. The aim, NEXON tell me, is in motivating players to try out different approaches to combat rather than relying on flat progression.
