Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin runs at a terrific frame rate, and it’s great! Unfortunately, that introduces a glitch that degrades your weapons really fast, and From Software doesn’t seem to care.
Weapon degradation is not new to the Souls games. It’s possible to induce degradation by hitting dead bodies or striking the game’s environment. Even in Demon’s Souls, weapons could break after enough use, and certain spells were designed to purposely break your weapons really quickly. Most weapons aren’t broken forever, though, as blacksmiths can easily repair them.
What’s weird is how degradation is tied to frame rate in Dark Souls 2. This video provides a good overview of what’s happening:
At 30 frames-per-second, it takes 25 strikes for this player to degrade their weapon enough the game warns them it’s about to break. At 60 frames-per-second, it takes only 11 strikes. The only difference here is the frame rate. The better your game runs, the faster your weapon degrades.
That’s weird, right? Punishing players for having superior hardware?
With the game’s original release, this was only a problem on the PC. Steam users made a stink about it, but a number of customers received this response from publisher Bandai Namco:
The game was working as intended, according to Bandai Namco. If you decided to play the game at a higher frame rate, accidentally hitting dead bodies or the ground would degrade your weapon faster than normal. These games are supposed to be difficult, but this, um, is a little far!
I played Dark Souls 2 on the PlayStation 3, so I didn’t have to deal with this issue. I was stuck with a dreadfully slow frame rate that, in retrospect, was actually giving me a small advantage!
One could argue From Software was dodging the issue because Dark Souls 2 represented its first attempt at making a proper PC version of a Souls game, and its hands were full. Dark Souls was an infamously bad PC port, saved only by fans who dug into the game and fixed its issues.
Unfortunately, that excuse doesn’t hold muster. The bug is also in the recently released Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin, a new version of the game that’s seen all sorts of other tweaks.
There’s no excuse for the durability bug to be part of Scholar of the First Sin. It’s not limited to the PC version, either. The PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions run at 60 frames-per-second.
From Software and Bandai Namco have not yet responded to my request for comment.
You might not be surprised to learn that fans have decided to rescue the game again, however. DS2fix removes the durability bug from the game, in addition to addressing a few other issues. Since it’s not an official patch, there are concerns DS2fix could result in being banned from online play, but I haven’t seen any evidence of players running into such an issue just yet.
Fans are great, but this shouldn’t be how it works. This is From Software’s job.
Comments
17 responses to “Annoying Dark Souls 2 Glitch Has Gone Unfixed For Nearly A Year”
Don’t have the link on me now, but someone has actually released a mod which FIXES the issue by changing the code on how the game calculates durability so its the same no matter what FPS you are getting. So as opposed to DS2Fix which just removes durability, this mod keeps it in the game.
He has even sent the fix into From but its still falling on deaf ears 🙁
Didn’t they make everything harder in Scholar of the First Sin?
Maybe they actually fixed the bug, but decided to make weapons degrade faster to further increase the difficulty?
Unless you could force the framerate down to 30fps on the console, how could you actually test it?
EDIT: Nevermind, SotFS has a PC release too. It’s still too early for my brain to work good.
That would be a terrible way to increase difficulty that’s completely out of line with the philosophy behind these games. Anyhow, you can easily test this with the PC version.
Well personally I think some of the things they did to increase difficulty in DSII were pretty terrible, let alone the additions to SotFS.
This explains so much! I was wondering why my weapon would degrade twice as fast as normal occasionally
I’m glad to see Kotaku taking From to task over this. It’s a dumb problem that is surely easy to fix. They don’t even need to find out why it’s happening, just double the durability of weapons when running at 60fps.
this is INSANE. i dont play bu this seems like a very serious problem in the game
I used that ring that slows the weapon breaking On 360 and xbone. Didnt really notice the difference.
Most of the PC community just accepted the bug a while back.
One of the worst was the Mastodon Halberd, some reports even seeing it broken in two strikes (bigger weapons spend more frames in a body meaning more degredation), not that it stopped people from using the Helixdon build back when it was broken.
Loved bloodborne so decided to give DKS2 a go. I heard about this bug and bought the last gen version because of this reason. sad that they don’t care and are unlikely to fix it.
As SOTFS was my first daŕk souls game, i had no issue playing through the game and through NG. There are enough bonfires to use which repairs gear, repair powder, etc. Bring more than 1 weapon, use the right weapon for the job (ie. Don’t use wide swings in a narrow hallway). I have noticed boss souls weapons do degrade very fast, especially if they have special moves such as moonlight greatsword.
If gear degradation was better than this before, they had might as well remove durability from the game.
Tl;dr it is a non issue. Move on.
Easiest way around this I found on the PC was using the Bracing Knuckle Ring. Using Demon greathammer it was rare that I ran into durability issues after I grabbed this ring.
I’m really hesitating over whether to get Scholar for PS4 because of this issue. I might wait a few months.
A few mates of mine have played it (one clocked it) and while it’s a tad annoying, ultimately not really a big deal they said.
OK cool, I’ll probably check it out soon 🙂
I’m on the fence too, partially because of this issue, but no doubt Dark Souls’ allure will be too powerful for either of us to resist!
I agree this glitch should be fixed, but I’m kinda glad that the repair mechanic in the game was actually effective in DS2. All other Souls games I’m so used to repairing at every opportunity I never had them break.
DS2, though… because that damn blacksmith lost his own damn key to his own damn shop, I literally broke every weapon I had available to me (including the 5 extras I got from the “Black Armour” edition of the game). Enemy weapon drops were bitter-sweet, I could kill better for a time, until I died, knowing that I had to start afresh with a damaged weapon I couldn’t repair. It eventually broke.
Forget any of the games’ bosses, when I finally reached that “first bonfire” (I totally missed the actual first one, thinking the river would kill me), the relief was so palatable, I could of bottled it. I was hooked. The Soulsian Cocaine took hold.
The repair in other Souls games may as well not be there. At least it kind of had a use in DS2.