I really like when issues begin going off the rails in an MMO, and whereas Dune: Awakening’s ongoing Deep Desert troubles are irritating for followers, they’re additionally an interesting experiment in balancing competing participant incentives. Developer Funcom not too long ago nerfed the endgame space’s PVP potential, turning virtually half of it into PVE-only territory. That has unintentionally now resulted within the land lined in a bunch of large bins. Right here’s why.
Dune: Awakening, which has continued attracting plenty of gamers on PC regardless of a minor fall-off from its peak at launch, is a survival crafting recreation. The pure development system is harvesting stuff to construct stuff to reap extra stuff to construct larger stuff. Ultimately, that requires gamers to enterprise out into the largely PVP-centric Deep Desert to be able to entry the rarest Tier 6 supplies. Early on, that meant getting preyed upon by roving bands of veterans who may simply outgun their weaker opponents (or drop whole ships on them).
So Funcom did the wise factor and made the PVP part of the map smaller with additional plans to iterate on PVP mechanics and make it really feel extra participating and honest. The studio additionally significantly elevated the variety of T6 useful resource nodes out there in PVE areas. That patch went reside earlier this week. The Deep Desert additionally wipes each week, deleting all gamers buildings to maintain issues recent and fascinating. So some gamers have been a bit stunned to search out that shortly after the wipe this week, there have been already useful resource nodes boarded up by different gamers, stopping them from being accessed.
“DD PVE T6 mats expertise, a base on every nodes,” wrote one participant on the Dune: Awakening subreddit at this time, alongside an image what appears to be like like a bunch of large raised flower beds. “Effectively, appears to be like much like my Server,” wrote one other in response. “There goes one other week with out T6 mats or development except I wish to get slaughtered by the Russian zerg that principally owns my server’s DD…” One other indignant participant in a separate thread shared the same picture and story. “First day of the wipe, discovered round 15 bases constructed over titanium nodes in PvE space,” the wrote. “Third week of individuals being rats.”
Dune: Awakening followers speculate that this newest type of griefing is geared toward getting determined gamers to enterprise out into the PVP zones and power them to interact with hostile gangs who’re in any other case bored of the underlying development and base-building mechanics. “It’s not even productive for the particular person doing it,” one participant lamented. “You aren’t going to get common sufficient use out of that ore for it to be value farming, and nobody will get the ores in any respect if a big variety of individuals do this.”
What are the options? Some followers have instructed making useful resource nodes no-build zones, whereas others marvel if there’s a strategy to merely have the assets spawn outdoors of the construction. Others have referred to as for the spawn factors to be randomized every wipe, giving non-griefers a combating probability to get some assets earlier than the mud settles. Then there are those that assume assets like Titanium and Stravidium ought to simply spawn again in Hagga Basin, Dune: Awakening’s newb-friendly beginning space.
Within the meantime, PVE and PVP gamers are dealing with one other stalemate within the Deep Desert and even some griefers are becoming bored. “We discovered and downed one other man, landed by him and he tells us that it was his 4th misplaced Thopter at this time, he didn’t know easy methods to pocket or one thing,” wrote a PVP raider on the subreddit. “We gave him a experience again, gave him extra melange than his small refinery may dream of creating in a day’s value of grinding and our outdated mk5 assault. After that, we realised that we aren’t constructed for Funcom’s inventive imaginative and prescient of the endgame.”
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