Hello community, I've just been able to play this new version of Catan as part of the PlayStation Deluxe version early access, and I really want to love this version of the game but I'm really struggling to. I've been waiting for another port of Catan since the PS3 version for years so I really want this to be the version that carries over that fun legacy. Hopefully, this criticism will come across as constructive as I really really want this game to be good, so here's some thoughts: Performance: Terrible frame rate — Immediately after booting, unmissable and a terrible first impression. How can a game that barely has anything happening on screen be dropping these many frames like that? This is also consistent throughout any regular gameplay. Looking at your unnecessarily emulated water background. General Gameplay: Slow die register — These can take way too long to register the numbers that were just rolled unnecessarily slowing the pace of an already slow paced game. Please make these register extremely shortly after they were rolled. Slow player turns — Currently, the pacing of turns is very boring and a big downer. Please add a time cap to player turns and trading requests, and a way to nudge players when they remain unresponsive for too long. Confusing auto settlement — Settlements are automatically set by the game during some mode I still haven't been able to understand what's causing it. Also, I don't want to join a multiplayer game with this setting on, so please make this a filter before looking for a new match. Settlement and Cities are too similar — These are too similar and it's hard to tell the difference. Lack of clarity. UI/HUD: Overlapping lower black bar — The translucent black bar sitting on the bottom of the screen including the button prompts overlaps the player badge on the bottom left corner. L2 (Hold) Development Cards constantly flashing — This is constantly flashing and is incredibly annoying. The holding time for these actions also feel a bit too long. Resources and Cards toggling — Why do we need to choose between not see this super important information or showing in an intrusive way? Please makes this visible at all times in a clear a non-intrusive way. Keeping track of turns — It's really hard to keep track on who's dice roll turn it is if you are not paying full attention as the indicating red arrow to the left of the player badges keeps changing places during trades. Place separate these two and make them distinctively clear. Settings: No permanent board preference settings — I pre-ordered the game to be entitled to more board type although I might never actually use these if I just join sessions and the host doesn't select the one I want. Specially going forward as the game opens to newer players that won't have the pre-order board skins. Please let us use our individual preferred board type permanently regardless of what other players choose to use. Increase volume fader granularity — I find the UI sound to be way too loud on 1 but I can't play with it at 0 either so being able to have more control over these would be great. Audio: Reduce/remove per click UI sound — There is some kind of clicky UI sound that plays almost every, single, time a button is pressed. It's piercing and becomes increasingly annoying as the game goes. Please re-consider how often this is being triggered. Player requests: Dynamic/Static water toggle — Please give us a way to toggle between these as the constant movement of water is very distracting and somewhat draining long term. Villagers toggle — Similar to the above, these can be very distracting so please give us a way of disabling these. UI/HUD redesign — The current design is confusing and overwhelming. Please make this more straightforward and easier to digest. There's too much happening at any given time. Too much information and lack of clarity. 2D gameboard — Even though I appreciate the 3D gameboard, I'd love to have the option to have a super basic classic 2D gameboard! I find the 3D gameboard very noisy geometrically and colour wise. I'd love a tone basic 2D board with player colours that have enough between themselves and the gameboard design I'm rooting for the success of this game and I'm hoping it will keep being supported and updated based on community feedback. I definitely intend on keep playing it but how much is definitely going to depend on how pleasant the overall experience improves over time.
