Borderlands 3 has been out for a couple months now, and has received plenty of patches and content updates, still hasn't fixed a major issue that it launched with. On the console versions of the game, the split screen co-op still suffers from glitches and performance issues that make it a suboptimal way to experience the game.
When it was released in September, the split screen of Borderlands 3 launched as a complete mess. This upsetting to fans, especially given the series history of being a fun co-op shooter both online and on the couch with a buddy. Even on pro consoles Borderlands 3 chugs and has massive framerate dips in the co-op mode. Navigating menus is difficult due to the text size and the performance difficulties the game runs into when players are in the menus. Bugs and minor glitches in the actual game are more prevalent while playing console split screen than when playing solo.
Borderlands 3 is not free from glitches, but many of them have been patched or are beneficial to players. This just isn't true for the split screen co-op. According to a post on the Borderlands 3 reddit, the game is still experiencing a majority of these issues.
It seems like the Borderlands 3 split screen experience on consoles remains virtually unchanged from the way the game launched. The framerate stutters and load times are still present even in the most up to date version of the game. In the Reddit video above, user Petwins writes that the loading times for co-op are just under a full minute. The rest of the video shows major framerate hiccups and straight-up game pauses pretty much constantly. In a response to a comment, Petwins said "we can only play in 1 hour max increments before getting too motion sick."
This issue has not gone without notice from the publisher of the game. In September 2K responded to the split screen lag issues that many players were reporting. In an interview with IGN 2K gave the following quote.
"We are aware that in some cases during split-screen couch co-op play, players can experience lag while in heavy combat and one of the players goes into their ECHOdevice and tries to navigate the skill trees and menus. While we will continue to work to optimize the Borderlands 3 experience, we'd advise split-screen players to prep for combat ahead of big encounters, and not leave a teammate to fight solo mid firefight!"
Borderlands 3 is available now on PC, PS4, and Xbox One, with a Stadia version also in development.
Source: Reddit