The hot and dangerous desert world of Arrakis is brought to life in Dune: Awakening, an open-world RPG that drops players onto the world of Frank Herbert’s literary classic to fend for their survival against the elements and other players.
Interestingly though, most players appeared to strongly prefer the PvE content that sees you surviving from the world rather than the PvP areas that pit you against other players. Perhaps even more interesting is the announcement just made by developer Funcom that they will be pivoting their focus towards these players following their feedback.
As shared in their latest developer update, Dune: Awakening has over 80% of their lifetime players engaging exclusively with the PvE parts of the game, and not even touching the PvP options. Despite this, Funcom has previously been focusing on adding a lot of content for PvP players in the hopes of seeing more players to try out the multiplayer offerings. Now though, after assessing in-game engagement data and player survey results, Dune: Awakening will be making a pivot to please its players by leaning further into the PvE elements.
This doesn’t mean that PvP will be going anywhere in future, but as Funcom puts it they’re looking to make this part of the gameplay “optional and incentivized rather than required for progression.” This seems to be the right approach, especially if the vast majority of their gamers are opting to play for planetary survival rather than getting in fights with their fellow players.
To reflect these changes, all PvP zones in the Hagga Basin area are being disabled, whilst all official Worlds will be getting separate Deep Desert instances that players can now choose from, being either PvE with exploration and survival or PvP with enemy players and 2.5x more yields from mining and harvesting on offer to incentivise those who enjoy the risk.
Arrakis is the perfect planet for a survival game, so it’s perhaps not surprising to see so many people playing Dune: Awakening and focusing on their survival against the harsh climate and environmental threats. From the absence of water to the burning sun and, of course, the sandworms, Arrakis was practically built for a game like Dune: Awakening.
