Despite a Day One update, Borderlands 3 is in a pretty rough place right now, with all sorts of issues being reported by players across all platforms. The most common and numerous complaints include drops in FPS, severe multiplayer lag, and even corrupted saves. All very bad things to experience right after a much anticipated game comes out.
Analysts have determined that both Xbox One X and PS4 Pro regularly drop below the target frame rates, though Xbox One X supposedly delivers the most stable experience. On the other hand, the regular Xbox One and PS4 have it even worse, constantly struggling to maintain a playable framerate at all. Even PCs with specs above the recommended settings for the game experience such frame rate issues, noticeably dipping during combat and vehicle sections and utterly dying in multiplayer, roughly every time a player examines an item or the Echo menu. Some players have even reported that aiming down their gun sights is enough to cause FPS stuttering.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are scores of console specific issues, such as odd menu lag and inconvenient unchangeable settings, as well as many bugs, with player names disappearing, quest markers being invisible, and the fast travel map messing up and limiting where you can even go. Worst of all, lots of players have been reporting crashes and corrupted save files, especially on PC.
See YongYea’s review on YouTube
A big part of the problem is that many reviewers didn’t even get a chance to test the game until the day of its release, or just prior to it. Groups like GameSpot or GamesRadar were in this boat, meaning that most of these problems weren’t spotted until it was far too late to do anything about them.
Gearbox has made it clear that they are well aware of the problems and are working to fix them right now, but they weren’t able to provide any estimate as to when that would probably be, which isn’t good for players. Nothing hurts a game’s reputation like serious issues right on the day of the release. That said, hopefully Gearbox will be able to take care of it relatively quickly; the longer these bugs and problems plague their game, the quicker people are going to move on and play something that isn’t lagging out every few seconds or deleting their data.