In Dune: Awakening, the developers have addressed the community’s biggest issue with a patch and are receiving a lot of praise for it.
What is the issue? The durability of items in Dune: Awakening was too low for many players. It felt for the community as if they were using a toy version of armor or holding a toy tool. Repaired items lose overall durability, creating the impression that players are consuming themselves through the tools.
The community has been complaining about the speed at which items broke since the major update Chapter 3 and has written countless posts about this issue. Now their wishes have been heard.
Here you can see the trailer for Chapter 3:
Developers Listen to Players
How did the developers respond? In a new update on Discord, the developers discussed players’ wishes. They explained that they have been following the community’s discussion and acknowledge the problem.
At the same time, they announced a patch for next week that will significantly slow down durability loss. Although the exact patch notes for the update are still missing, the developers mentioned three key points that can be expected.
- The base durability of all items (except junk) will be increased by 100%, effectively doubling their lifespan. This should be helpful for high-quality items like Power Packs, Suspensor Belts, and Compactors.
- The durability loss on defeat will be reduced from 5% to 2%, helping to alleviate durability strain when fighting tougher enemies or content.
- We are reducing the maximum durability loss from 20% to 15%. So, for example, if you repair an item from 0 to maximum, you will reach 85% instead of 80%.
They further explain that they also consider other improvements to the game necessary and are currently looking into issues that concern the community. Therefore, players can expect a larger patch with many improvements next week.
How is the community reacting? The voices of the community have been heard, and correspondingly, the players are joyfully considering their issues resolved. That is why there is much positive feedback in the comments on Reddit.
As subileus says on Reddit: “A big step in the right direction! Thank you, Funcom.” Similar sentiments are echoed by Ubiquitouslastname who explains on Reddit why the problem is harder to solve than many might think: “This is a good step. It’s hard to find balance: durability should play a role in a survival game but shouldn’t devolve into a burdensome chaos. A revision of the combat system would also help here.”
That this topic is particularly important to the community is also reflected in the reaction of Reddit user ZakuIII, who writes: “Damn yes, I’m pausing the game until next week.”
The community is happy about the changes and is simultaneously looking forward to the patch that is supposed to fix even more issues. However, the biggest issue in the game remains the unresolved identity crisis: Dune: Awakening’s update doubles player counts on Steam, but according to the community, the identity crisis is not resolved
