Dark Souls 2 Game of the Year Awards

Fans of From Software's most recent title Bloodborne realized a few weeks ago that the developer had found a way to make the game harder without player's noticing. The fact that the Hand Lantern was designed to sneakily reduce stamina regeneration was viewed by some as an annoyance but many others found it a devious but genius plot by the developer to make a hard game even more difficult.

But while some gamers admired From Software's handiwork in this case, the same can't be said about an unintentional bug that has plagued players in another title by the developer. Dark Souls II on PC has long suffered from what players call "the durability bug".

Players weapons' lost durability based on the game's frame rate, with gamers with a faster frame rate having their weapons degrade at a faster pace. Thankfully, the developer appears to have finally fixed the issue. Multiple users on Reddit and Steam are posting that the awful bug is now squashed.

A reading of the patch notes goes over the fix in more detail.

"Fixed issue whereby weapon durability was decreased drastically when used on enemy corpses, friendly characters, etc. (Especially apparent for users running the game at 60 fps as the durability decrease rate was lined to the frame rate.)"

Players who purchased the original version Dark Souls 2 on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 did not suffer from the problem as badly, because those consoles ran the game at a fixed 30 frames per second. But the PC and next-gen update that allowed support for faster frame rates left many players upset that they were having a worse experience with the game on what was supposed to be a superior platform.

Players who chose to run the game at 60 FPS found themselves needing to repair twice as much as users running at 30 FPS. This led to players carrying around multiple weapons throughout the game, and plenty of Repair Powder to boot.

It's a testament to how good the game is that players were willing to put up with the bug. There was also some thought among the game's community that the bug should just be viewed as an extra challenge. After all, Dark Souls is a franchise known for making gamers fight for every inch of progression they get.

There's a certain kind of gamer out there that genuinely enjoys getting roughed up by a game. If any other developer or franchise had gone this long with such a debilitating bug unpatched, the player base would have likely left in droves.

The patch notes state that other fixes have been made as well, including fixing the sensitivity with jump attacks and guard breaks.

Dark Souls II is out now on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Xbox One, Xbox 360 and PC.

Source: IGN