[PS4/PS5][Latest][Gameplay] the game is unplayable

Console Forums [Console] Bug Reports
1

Summary
I am currently out at the moment and wanted to share some of the generalised issues that i have found on console that have either cropped up recently , or even been there for a year at least since i have been playing it.

I play primarily on multiplayer with my niece and we really enjoy thr egame however we had a 6-12 month break because it was unplayable. We recently revisited the game hoping it was playable but it isnt.

  • Sections of building unsnap and move out of line with the rest of the building after saving / crashing and reloading.

  • shelves would sink through the floor or a foundation, or slide through the walls and poke out after a reload. Sometimes also desyncing and would also fall through the bottom on the other player’s screen.

  • Very often we will not be able to interact with anything with an inventory including your own, forcing a reload

  • regardless if everything is in crates / piles or not , the more islands you visit, and the more you build on one island, the higher chances of crashing and super low frame rates.

  • in one instance, i removed a rudder to be replaced with a motor but it wouldnt allow me to place it. I could place it on other tiles but not on the original, almost like the original rudder existed but it doesnt, even after reload.

Seed
I can provide it when i am back from work.

Settings
No settings are changed, nor are there any custom islands.

Steps
Unfortunately i only know that the interactions with inventories being blocked can alot of the time happen when emptying a pile but are not exlusive to it and can happen seeming randomly.

Many of the issues with buildings, or placeables slide, moving, slipping , and falling through other objects seem mostly to happen after a reload. However the desyncing of placeables can happen at runtime when playing. It does seem to get worse , there more that has been explored, and the more that is built.

Extras

Sometimes to just get the save to load without crashing we have to reload the game or console multiple times.

Clearing the cache also doesnt work, we have also started a new save on my niece’s console and that worked until it didnt.

All methods of rebooting have been used but ha s not fixed the problem. World seed does not aeem to bave an impact either.

if there is any additional info needed please let me know and i will try and get it for you as soon as i can.

2

Hi ChadlyMasterson, welcome to the forums,

I am sorry for the extended delay in responding to your report and I am sorry to hear you are experiencing these issues in your game. Thank you for taking the time to report them.

I have a few additional questions and I will respond to each of the points you made below…

Sections of buildings snap and move out of line

  • Would these building sections be pieces that Player 2 placed, or is it a mixture of pieces placed by both players?

Shelves not staying in position

  • Can you confirm if these are the storage shelves for crates, or if they are wall mounted single shelves?
  • Would this issue occur in a similar fashion to the building pieces moving out of line, affecting only shelves player 2 has created?
  • You mentioned the shelf falling through the bottom of the other player’s screen. Did you actively witness this drift/fall occurring? Did it occur on both screens or just the affected one player’s version of the game?

Not being able to interact with inventory

  • Are you referring to crates as well as your own inventory in this instance?
  • When this occurs, would you have been playing a long gameplay session, or would it have been something that could happen early into a gameplay session?
  • You mentioned it can occur after emptying a pile, as well as with other triggers. Does the issue occur for the host and player 2 at the same time, different times, or only one of the players?

Replacing the rudder

  • When this occurred, did it deconstruct the base where the rudder would have been, replace it and then try placing the motor?

Please also let me know:

  • Does the number 2130 appear in the bottom left of the main menu?
  • Are you and your niece playing in the same household on the same connection, or in separate households?
  • What is the NAT type of the host console?
  • What in-game day are you on?
  • If you have a specific base island where you find performance has dropped, can you describe what you have on your island including buildings, crafting stations and resources etc.
  • If you played following the update to 2130, do you feel like any of these issues are unique following that update?

Again I apologize for my delay in responding to you, I understand that these issues can be frustrating when playing and will pass this information onto the dev team for investigation. They may have additional questions, if so, I will respond here again and add them.

3

Hi thank you for responding, and i do apologise for not responding faster myself, i kind of assumed it wouldnt get seen.

Sections sliding:
I was the only person placing the buildings, and in this scenario i was player 2. So yes i think so.

Shelves falling / sliding
The storage containers are for crates placed on the floor that allows for 3 crates. Sometimes in certain scenarios only one would fall through the floor. This could happen in realtime as i placed them, player 1 would see it underneath the platform, would break it but the resources would drop on top of the platform. As it there was a desync. However if left there and reloaded, the shelves would relocate to the position player 1 saw it, on the floor and not on the platform if that makes sense.

I think part of this issue with them sliding is because i was player 2 placing them. However if the first save that we abandoned because of the constant crashes, i was player 1 and it didnt happen if both player 1 or 2 placed them which is odd. (Might be a great idea to add that i play on PS4 and my niece plays on a PS5)

The drifting wouldnt happen slowly it would appear there as if there was a desync of position.

Not being able to interact with inventory

This is referring to all crates, opening my inventory, interacting with water stills etc… It didn’t descriminate. It was as if the “interact” button was disabled like a menu was still open except no menu was open. I couldn’t save the game, sleep, or anything and would persist after death also.

In regards to playtime length, it really depends. It doesn’t seem to corellate. However, it does seem to ocurr more often aligning with two variables i think. Volume of islands explored , and amount of building on a single island. In most situations, we would have a water still, a shelter of some sort, and sometimes a storage medium for logs on each island we explore, which could be a reason why if they aren’t unloaded fully. There are crashes far too often to attribute it to longer play sessions as it gets to a point where long play sessions is not achieveable.

When it does ocurr, it not exclusively when emptying a pile, i just know it definitely has happened after emptying a pile multiple times. I haven’t found a specific trigger unfortunately which isn’t helpful but it only happens to the player. It doesn’t happen to both player 1 and two at the same time. It seems to just affect the player that triggered it, however it is triggered.

Placing the rudder
This became a little tricky as i tried placing a raft platform in the spot, and it wouldnt allow it, and created it underground and on a reload, appeared totally separate to the raft. The raft was pulled onto the shore in the reload so it wasnt it the open ocean. I couldn’t place anything in that spot and after a while, the physics broke, but only for me (player 2) and player 1 couldn’t place it either.

Additional info
I am unsure about the version as i haven’t loaded it up since. But we are definitely up-to-date

We are both playing in different households but about a mile or so distance between us.

Both of our NAT types are moderate which i always thought was the sweet spot.

In regards to the day count in this save we are most likely on day 80+, on a previous save we were 100+ days.

All of the islands had poor performance, especially the more islands we investigated, the worse it got. Our main island had a decent amount of stuff on it, however we did cut it down, using piles, and we couldnt get into any “base building” because that is when all hell broke loose.

The issues with sliding base pieces are definitely issues introduced in the last couple of console updates and the inventory issue too. However, the crashing, poor performance, crazy physics and desyncs / disconnects have been a long standing issue for us.

thanks for your time, we both really love the good times we have had with the game, it just seems to be unplayable for us.

4

Hi ChadleyMasterson,

Thank you for following up and answering my questions, this extra information can be very helpful to the team when investigating the issues you described.

Because of the variety of the issues mentioned, and because some don’t quite match issues I’ve seen reported before, I was wondering if it would be possible to get a copy of your save for the team to take a look at?

To be clear, the dev team cannot fix and return individual save files, but they’d use your save to try to recreate issues you described internally to try find the causes behind those issues as well as potentially test fixes before releasing them in an update for all players.

If you’re able to send the file, please use the following steps, they should be fairly similar for PS4 and PS5, but only the host will have the save files themselves.

To access the file:

  1. Turn on PS4 / PS5

  2. Insert an External USB Drive into one of the 2 USB ports on the front of the console.

  3. In the main menu, go to “Settings”

  4. Click on “Application Saved Data Management”

  5. Select “Saved Data in System Storage”

  6. Select “Copy to USB Storage Device”

  7. Select Stranded Deep

  8. Select all files and press “Copy”

  9. Wait until transfer is complete

  10. Remove External Drive

  11. Zip up all files copied to USB drive including “.bin” and “Profile” files

  12. Host the zip folder on Google Drive, One Drive, Dropbox or similar and send me a link via direct message, I can then upload these files for the team to take a look at.

Regarding you responses around connection, you are correct that Nat 2 / Moderate should have no connection issues, but I understand the team have been working on desyncs in multiplayer in game which could be the cause behind a few of the issues you mentioned.

Seeing your save file, what you’ve build and changed in game may also help the team in recreating conditions under which you’ve experienced these issues. Please also feel free to send us all the save slot files and let us know which one in particular you feel would be best for the team to take a look at.

If the team have any further questions regarding your saves, I’ll follow up here.