Everyone - please use the PS5 screen recording option to record videos and post them here via YouTube or other streaming service.
I am going to create a video detailing all the bugs and Larians lack of communication. It is concerning because this has been the state for PC co op since it released.
Once the video is created or your videos are shared here, I will forward to all major content creators. I am sure they would love the controversy clicks, and it will bring more attention to the issue.
That's a good idea, will do so as soon as I get the chance.
I got to chat with a sony customer support rep, they asked me to record videos using the ps5 with these issues and send it to them. They added that this would probably "take time" (read: not gonna happen). Will post how it goes, however.
I completely agree on the fact that Larian was aware of this issue, but it being mainly a single player game with online capabilities, reviewers didn't focus on co-op for longer than a few minutes. Regarding comments (reddit, twitter) about the co-op working properly: they are pretty much all one-liners and sound like bullshit to me. The Ps5 has only one hardware configuration, so the chance of everyone running into the same bugs is immense. The implementation of split screen in BG3 seems to be "we'll just split the screen in two and run two games at the same time, let the cpu handle it lol". In a market where every instance of multiplayer is heading towards online gaming, using resources to have a proper local coop seems counterintuitive if not for loyalty points from their consumers (mainly DOS).
Working around the issue, as in trying to send items back to camp or recruiting less characters feels like a lost battle. It all comes down to some sort of CPU bottleneck I guess. I have a very high end PC that I use for work training machine learning models and it runs very well in split screen but it sometimes stutters at the very same places as the ps5 version. Granted, the freezes last a split second, but it goes to show that even with overpowered hardware there is a clear optimization problem.
Also, I have now been playing in split screen co-op for at least 20 hours on PC and I have to say that, even without freezing and lagging, the fact that the screen never merges like it did in DoS2 is extremely bothersome after a while. It's very hard to track where you are and where you are going and have to use the map very frequently while exploring. If the screen merge can't be implemented, I'd rather have cross-play tbh
