Beta Feedback (Ps5/Ps5Pro)

After playing 80 hours and reaching endgame i want to give you my feedback for the early access. I´m playing on ps5 and switched to ps5 pro recently.

1. Performance: This is a big problem on consoles. There are lags, network spikes, disconnects, fps drops and long loading times which take a big chunk of the fun away. I measured the loading times and the average are the following:
From town, camp etc. to a map: 26 seconds
From a map via portal or waypoint to town, camp: 37 seconds

So what i don´t understand is why the loading times to the camps is so much longer. The maps are way bigger, so i expected the loading should be longer otherwise.

Maybe it has something to do with the disconnects. These only happen when porting back to town. These only happen in the afternoon, evening (i assume the servers are more crowded).

For endgame the disconnects are a much bigger problem then only be waiting longer to play again. You loose progress. For every disconnect you loose 1 Portal.

With your recent patch you enabled fast travel in a map between checkpoints, which works great. There are no loading times, travel is instant. This should be the goal for travelling back to town. Imagine you would be instant in town after using the portal. Selling, disenchanting would be way faster.

2. Enemies: Enemy variety is good. Bosses are great. There are times where enemies one shot you. Mostly enemies that jump / charge on you, for example the big skelletons or the birds in the desert ruins. Overall balancing issues which i think will be solved.

It´s hard to see rare enemies, they should be easier to recognise.

There are some rare combinations, that are too powerful, for example i encounter one rare with movement speed, life drain and mana drain. If you can´t one shot the rare enemy you have no chance.

3. Endgame: This needs work. Not fun at the moment.

Again Performance and disconnects are a part of it!

Biggest complain is the one try mechanic for maps. If you want the game to be hard, it´s okay. But i think it´s no fun in loosing a map and xp and have only one try. Also bosses are designed to be difficult. So you need multiple tries to learn attacks. Give us checkpoints in endgame.

Overall the endgame does need a tutorial. In the pesent state you got thrown in to engame / atlas and as a new player you don´t have a clue what to do.

4. Game mechanics / miscellaneous:

Ascendancy: Not a fan oft he honour system. Same problem as endgame. If the content is hard, let us try again. One try mechanic is no fun. Let us retry at the stage in which we have died. There is no fun in dying in room 9 of 10 or at the boss and have to start all over again.

Poison / Bleed calculation: Played a poison ranger, and could not find out how poison dmg is calculated. Maybe expand the character sheet for more info.

Stash / Portal: Your inventory is very small, so you have to return often to camp / town. Everytime you have to sell your stuff, you have to wait 2 loading screens and hoping that you get no disconnect. I don´t think making the inventory bigger would help a lot.

Instead make travel to camp / town instant.
I know your game is designed to have one instance per map. So if only one instance can be active you need a loading screen to load another one (new map, town…). Maybe you could have the instance for the camp / town always in the background running, so that you actually can travel instant, like with the checkpoints in the maps. This would give the game so much more flow.

Miscellaneous things that are needed on console:

Zooming on controller. In the pc version you can zoom in on your character.

Zooming the map. The maps are so big, that i often wanted to zoom out to see the end / beginning oft he map. Overall smaller maps (20-30 %) would help.

Waystone stash for endgame.

Loot filter!!