PS5 Game Performance is just awful and unplayable

It was pretty good on ps5 pro before the last patch.

It's unplayable now, end of act 2 / act 3 cruel, i do not have 30fps, please do something.

The topic starter is back.
Today, my wife and I, with heavy hearts, decided to stop playing Path of Exile 2 on PS5—a game we had been eagerly anticipating for over a year, watching every developer update video they released. We were thrilled as they teased the game for consoles, speaking about the extensive work done to optimize it for this platform and how they aimed to make co-op gameplay fun and balanced.

The game itself is fantastic and truly engaging, but we can no longer endure the lags, freezes, and FPS drops to 20-25 during battles, where even effects sometimes fail to render correctly. We completely understand that early access might come with bugs and performance issues. However, what should never be part of early access is the absolute silence from the developers regarding these issues. There hasn’t been a single statement acknowledging that this level of performance is unacceptable or confirming that it will be fixed.

I’m glad I didn’t buy the most expensive supporter pack and started with the minimum. At this point, I’m unsure if I want to invest in a gaming PC just to play PoE2—it’s leaning towards a no. As a console player and a loyal fan who waited for this game alongside my wife, I can say with 100% certainty that GGG let us down with this release.

They didn’t let us down because the game runs poorly—that’s something we could tolerate in early access. They let us down by failing to take even a minute to acknowledge the abysmal performance and reassure players that it’s a priority to fix. That’s incredibly immature, entirely unacceptable, and, for a paid experience, it shouldn’t be this way.

After the announcement that there would be a separate team to do the console version, I thought that maybe it would be better than Poe 1. I unnecessarily bought the package for 99€ and was very disappointed. I rather see no hope that they will do something about it. Worst optimization of a ps5 game I've seen.

Performance is atrocious. Especially in towns and some of the end game maps.

FSR
Balanced
4k 120hz display
VRR
Dynamic Resolution: On
Dynamic Culling: On
Shadows only

It's not better in other settings, I've tried every combination I could think of.

Half the maps in the endgame have performance issues on base PS5. Some maps get 45 fps just by STANDIND there with no enemies around and no special effects (I have no MTX).

The trailers were awesome, the game was made for next gen consoles yet feels like I'm playing a game back in the 90s-2000 with 30 fps.

The game looks good, but it's not so graphically advanced that it should run so bad. Anything fire or flame wall eats performance. Towns are a constant 20 or lower fps. I'm glad pc ppl can enjoy low settings that look better but give us a bone here.

no shot they were bragging about extensive work done to optimize for consoles are you serious? i dont believe thats true ggg isnt usually that scummy cause that would be a straight up bold faced lie. looks terrible and runs terrible on all settings this has to be top five LEAST optimized games ive ever seen. top three even.

My 2 cents. I'm a medium-level gamer. I mostly play on PS5 (non-pro) but I also have a gaming PC (rtx 3080) that I use here and there. Just want to say that the experience of playing PoE 2 on PS5 vs. PC is night and day. I love the gameplay of PoE 2 and have spent the past couple of days looking for threads about PoE 2 PS5 performance. Best one I found was:

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Than I've changed graphic setting:
- upscaling mode: NIS (standard) -> FSR
- balanced -> ultra performance

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Those settings make the game at least playable on a stock PS5, but I was still getting nasty screen tearing.

So, this afternoon I decided to try to the game on my PC with my PS5 controller plugged in. Goodness gracious. Not only does the game *look* way better, I am dying less frequently. I think the heavy input lag combined with visual bog down (technical term) on the PS5 makes the game much harder to play.

I realize I'm posting this message in a PS5 support forum. I'm not saying the solution is to get a PC. I'm saying I'd prefer to play the game on my PS5. But, until GGG looks at the staggering performance issues there, it's going to be a slog. Fingers crossed for PS5-friendly patches coming soon.

Edit: I shouldn't provided my PC specs originally so that people can compare with theirs (or the PS5). Here they are:


- OS: Windows 11
- MB: ASUS PRIME X570-PRO
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 9
- GPU: Nvidia RTX 3080
- RAM: 16 GB (DDR4)
- SSD: Games run from a WD Black M2.2 NVMe drive

I would consider myself quite picky with framerate, so the framerate in some spots is definitely NOT normal or ok. I'm sure the devs are aware and will fix at least some of it in the short term. There are areas where the framerate drops inexplicably, like a little pit area in act 2 (the boss dies and it goes back to normal). Some optimization is definitely needed.

In the meantime, I've experimented a lot using the really detailed ingame metrics to try to get the best settings possible, so here is what I suggest:

Leave dynamic resolution on, it will downscale your resolution to attempt to hit the target framerate. Even if you have a 120hz display + VRR (I do), I recommend setting your refresh rate to 60hz. If you set it to 120hz, no matter what maximum resolution you set, it will scale down to the lowest resolution at all times because the game pretty much never hits 120hz. Even in scenarios where the game is CPU limited it will drop the image quality severely. Also the game -will- drop below 60 fps when things get crazy, so in my opinion a drop from 60 to 30 will perceptually feel less severe and more stable than a drop from 90ish fps to 30. At 60hz I do get screen tearing sometimes, which I do not in 120hz. Regardless I think it's a lesser evil in this case.

While NIS probably looks the best, in my testing NIS and FSR seem to suffer heavily when certain spell effects go off. To mitigate that drop, for now I highly recommend playing the game on -bilinear-. While the framerate of bilinear is not that different in static scenarios, it makes a world of difference in actual combat, particularly with certain skills which tank the framerate. Test it for yourself in combat. Take note that if you set your framerate cap to 120hz and put it on bilinear with dynamic scaling, the game will look like complete garbage because it will drop the resolution to PS1 era in its attempt to hit 120 fps.

As the devs say in the tooltip, global illumination has a fixed cost, it doesn't scale with the amount of activity on the screen. Turn it off and leave it on shadows for a bit more performance and stability, turn it on for a prettier image. Regardless of that setting, sometimes the framerate will just drop a lot no matter what you do, but it may give a little bit more headroom on the GPU for more stability. Up to you.

Dynamic culling seems to simplify a lot of attack and spell effects (but not all yet, it looks like), reducing the amount of particles which should save both CPU and GPU power. In some scenarios during heavy action this can really help the framerate, especially if you're playing with multiple people. Particles are pretty though! Experiment with the setting and see what's worth it for you. When it's serious time and I'm taking on a hard boss or doing an ascension trial, I'm definitely turning dynamic culling on.

That's all there is to do for now as far as the tools we have, the rest is up to the devs. Not saying the situation is good right now, just trying to offer some suggestions that may be helpful for now. The settings are a little bit confusing if you're not tech oriented, and even if you are they need a little bit of testing to understand how they behave and interact with each other. I don't have a ps5 pro so I'm not sure what the best settings are for the pro.

I am getting a lot of screen tearing after the last patch :(