The spice must flow, but apparently so must the patches tostop players from being absolute menacesto one another.Dune: Awakeningjust dropped patch 1.1.15.0,and it’s focused on making life harder for the griefers who’ve been turning the Deep Desert into their personal torture chamber.
Dune: Awakening Update Fixes Goomba Stomping And PVP Respawn Times
PvP experience gets improved and a bunch of bugs get zapped.
The biggest news from this patch is thatthe 5-second timer when leaving PVP zones just got cranked up to 30 seconds, which should, on paper, stop border campers from playing peek-a-boo with death. But that’s not all because Funcom is also throwing in some game-changing tweaks for the Landsraad tasks that might benefit solo players and those who belong to smaller guilds.
The 30-Second Solution
Let’s talk about the elephant, or in Dune’s case, the sandworm in the room. The PVP security zone timer has been increased from 5 to 30 seconds, which Funcom claims, will"prevent border camping and allow PvP players to protect their area."
The truth is, I’m split on whether this actually helps the griefer problem or just makes things worse. Because, on the one hand, 30 seconds does give you more time to prepare before entering the danger zone, but on the other hand, it also gives those same griefers who are camping around the border more time to spot you and set you up for ambushes.
This isn’t the only problem that players and the devs have had to deal with. Last month, the “goomba stomping,” issue plagued this game but has already been resolved. If you don’t know, or haven’t experienced this form of griefing, this has become a big in-game issue where a player will crash their ornithopters into another player in order to take them out in one hit without taking any damage. I’m sure you’d agree that getting dive-bombed by a flying machine like you’re in WW2 is just about as fun as kissing a sandworm.
Some Love for Small Guilds and Solo Players
The other big change from this patch is the new Landsraad Reward System:
Personally, I think this change is even more important than the griefing solution, because it simply makes the game more fair and accessible. Before this patch, big guilds would literally camp on these tasks and have resources on hand so they’re able to finish them and reap the rewards before anyone else.
The thing is, if you areworking a day job, sleeping, or doing whatever else, you’re not going to be able to havea chance to get some rewards, so having a solution to this problem is a more welcome change.
Patch 1.1.15.0 feels like Funcom’s trying to thread the needle between keeping PVP and PVE filled with action and stopping it from just becominganother toxic wasteland. Personally, I think that the 30-second timer change is good, but whether it would actually stop griefers depends entirely on how players will adapt to it.
That said, what’s clear is that Funcom is listening to feedback and is actively trying to make changes and make Dune less frustrating for the victims involved. Each time a dev listens to its community, that’s a win for everyone.
You can view the entire patch notes page atDune: Awakening’s official site.
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