The First Descendant players say the 1.0.2 hotfix reintroduced frame rate drops and a few other performance-related issues.
Nexon’s latest free-to-play shooter was beset by performance troubles at launch, many of which specifically affected the PS5 version. Developers addressed these issues fairly quickly in The First Descendant’s July 5 hotfix.
However, players claim new errors have surfaced on the heels of Hotfix 1.0.2, which went live across all platforms on July 11. The patch added matchmaking for Hard Mode, several optimization improvements, and a few content enhancements.
Shortly after the hotfix’s release, though, PC players noticed dropped frames, stuttering, crashing, and unusually high VRAM and RAM usage.
Posts on Steam Community forums and Reddit have identified the issue as a “memory leak” caused by 1.0.2 that seems to occur when The First Descendant remains open for a prolonged period of time.
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One person who said they could previously play the shooter for 10-plus hours without issue explained the following, “After Hotfix 1.0.2… when the game is open for prolonged hours (5+ hours) the game completely fills the GPU VRAM and starts stuttering really bad with lots of FPS Drops.”
Other First Descendant players chimed in to note that crashes have also hit Xbox and PS4 hard since the hotfix’s July 11 update. Wrote one Redditor in response to the post quoted above, “I’ve had a lot of crashes since the hotfix actually on PS4.”
In the Steam Community thread, one PC user added that they’ve been restarting the title every two to three hours “because the FPS goes from 144 to like 3 in an instant.”
As of writing, The First Descendant developers have not acknowledged the latest user-reported frame rate drops and other hiccups. For now, players can only hope these troubles will be tackled sooner rather than later.
