Dune Awakening

Dr.Retarded

<Silver Donator>
18,061
39,902
I saw that - he gets a lot of things wrong about the game, which to me says he didn't have a lot of personal experience with it and he also missed a lot of community complaints. I can tell you what killed the game population just from having played it for hundreds of hours

1) Unsatisfying endgame loop for both PVE and PVP
2) Survival game style tedium creep (needing to maintain/power bases constantly or you lose them, gear degredation)
3) Poor foresight on player behavior (aka griefing and PVE player tendency to solo play)
4) Balance decisions that completely broke certain playstyles or made them non-viable, or made certain builds so OP that if you don't run it you auto-lose (for example, some of the melee changes made melee almost completely non-viable in PVP and even made it less viable in PVE...IN A DUNE GAME)

To their credit they are trying to fix or have fixed a some of these issues, or at least mitigated the impact. For example, griefers would usually gank a solo in deep desert and then thumper their vehicle so a worm would eat it. That is a big loss for a solo player, since vehicles aren't cheap...especially if you're not that established from a resource perspective. Adding the ability to restore a lost vehicle for solari (the currency in the game, which isn't super hard to get) at least makes that sting less.

However, they still have a long way to go. Server merges and the base tool will help consolidate and stem player loss in the short to medium term, but they will need some really engaging content for both pve and pvp to get people to come back.
Like I said I've never played the game and don't ever plan to, I was just surprised he was making a video about it so quick whereas a lot of his other content was older stuff but maybe he's hard up for cash / content.

Figured it was at least a valid video because it's just kind of cursory reading of the thread, that seems that the game kind of tanked off somewhere down the line.

I will say Funcom did make the secret world, and still one of my favorite MMOs to this day.
 

Gravel

Mr. Poopybutthole
45,476
163,139
It's the end result for any game that tries to force PVP on the playerbase. Especially one that was PVE focused up until endgame. That's why you're seeing it for a "new" game.

PVP players never want an even footing. Ever. They want to shit on people they have an advantage over (grief). Game developers love putting PVP into games though because they think it's "content" that they don't actually have to develop. Just let the players do it! In practice though, no one actually likes PVP in these types of games. PVP should be relegated to games that entirely focus on PVP (think MOBA's, Battle Royales, BF/CoD type games, etc).
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user

Dr.Retarded

<Silver Donator>
18,061
39,902
It's the end result for any game that tries to force PVP on the playerbase. Especially one that was PVE focused up until endgame. That's why you're seeing it for a "new" game.

PVP players never want an even footing. Ever. They want to shit on people they have an advantage over (grief). Game developers love putting PVP into games though because they think it's "content" that they don't actually have to develop. Just let the players do it! In practice though, no one actually likes PVP in these types of games. PVP should be relegated to games that entirely focus on PVP (think MOBA's, Battle Royales, BF/CoD type games, etc).
Maybe that's the case nowadays but back in the day with UO, that was the gloriousness of open world PVP and full loot, and everybody loved it until MMOs started to catch on and you had people who didn't want to get killed while playing their games. That's how you got the trammel world BS.

Everybody could take the same damn skills or mix thereof, and loot was basically crafted or there were some tears of magical stuff with vanquishing being the strongest but it wasn't a huge deal. It was about mixing and matching your skills and your play style and who the hell you were running around with to go and tear it up.

There were some skills that were way more powerful than others but it took a hell of a lot more work to level it up to GM. If you had GM parry and couple that with GM magic resist, you were a god. GM animal taming, tame a dragon to either sell or used to crush people. Anybody could do whatever.

Original UO through the late 90s into the early 2000s was the Pinnacle of pure sandbox PVP that was about as balance as he could possibly get, because there were no classes, just whatever creative way you could mix and match skills, and gear really didn't matter that much, just a nice bonus.
 

Blitz

<Bronze Donator>
6,146
6,860
The issue with this title is that there is no endgame, at all. A lot of people seemed to have played this game 60-200 hours, loved the game, but had no reason to continue. Even the PvP "endgame" was just a big giant, empty zone of nothingness. They practically launched a game with no endgame loop. It feels as if they needed to launch the game for financial reasons, and hoped they could fix it as they go.

The Ch. 3 update that's coming should help set a foundation for an endgame loop that's worth, at least occasionally, checking in on. Although anecdotal, I know quite a few people who enjoyed the "Hagga Basin" (first 100 hours) portion of the game enough that they would absolutely try it again.

As others have said this game was never going to sustain itself with meaningless air combat PvP. If this game was ever going to retain some form of consistency, it was going to come in the form of an endgame akin to Destiny or The Division etc.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user

Cybsled

Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
18,193
14,715
That's how you got the trammel world BS.

Trammel saved UO - the population was on a downward spiral until they released Trammel. Even back then it was clear that when people play games, they don't enjoy the digital experience of walking in the bad part of town at 3am
 

Dr.Retarded

<Silver Donator>
18,061
39,902
Trammel saved UO - the population was on a downward spiral until they released Trammel. Even back then it was clear that when people play games, they don't enjoy the digital experience of walking in the bad part of town at 3am
No it didn't. If you actually played UO you would know that if you attacked anybody in town the guards would instakill you. Accidentally look at somebody's inventory and try to move something, dead.

I don't know maybe they changed that at some point but town was the safest place you could ever be. There was one town and I don't remember the name that didn't have guards and that was a crazy place, but that's what made it fun. I think it was some sort of Pirate Island.