The beta of Dune: Awakening has ended and the community is discussing potential improvements to significantly enhance the player experience at launch.
Wasn’t the beta actually well-received by many players? That is true. Some even refer to it as the best survival game they’ve ever played. However, typical of Funcom, Dune: Awakening still has small flaws and weaknesses in detail that negatively impact comfort, control, or the interface.
Previous online games from the Norwegians, such as Conan Exiles, The Secret World, Age of Conan, and Anarchy Online, also faced comparable issues (and in some cases even much more serious problems).
The class trailer for the Bene Gesserit from Dune Awakening:
Valuable community feedback from the beta
What are the suggestions from the community? Beta tester SirSaltie claims to have spent almost 40 hours in Dune: Awakening in the past few days, having apparently started the download with a great deal of skepticism. However, the skepticism seems to have transformed into “pure fascination.”
On Reddit, SirSaltie explains that he can easily see himself spending hundreds of hours with the current version of the game. At the same time, there were 20 points that irritated him during testing and that could be relatively easily improved. Here are the optimizations he considers important for Funcom to address before launch (some summarized, hence there are fewer than 20 points listed below):
- The hotkeys “Spacebar”, “E”, and “Hold E” are poorly chosen for looting, as they slow down the gameplay and collide with other interactions or jumping. The same goes for “Hold E” to exit a vehicle. All of this should be doable without a hold action or the spacebar.
- Additionally, there should be hotkeys for moving items to the action bar and for splitting item stacks.
- There are far too many tools. For example, the blood extractor and the dew harvester should not take up space in the limited action bar. The welder and securing tool could be combined into one device, as could the resource scanner and cutter. Constantly switching tools disrupts the gameplay experience.
- Furthermore, the somewhat hidden item wheel could be separated from the action bar, allowing all tools to be selectable that way – which would noticeably improve handling and free up the action bar for other important things.
- Why can’t vehicles be repaired or refueled in your base if the fuel and cable are in storage? Crafting works that way too. If you need to repair your motorcycle, you have to search through boxes, take out the cable, repair the motorcycle, and then put the cable back in a box.
- In addition to the weight limit, there is also a restriction on the number of items you can have in your inventory or boxes. Both together are needlessly restrictive, especially since there will be no way to increase inventory space at launch.
- The list of schematics is getting longer and longer. At some point, you’ll be searching absurdly to find the desired recipe. A simple search function would be great for both the inventory and the crafting area.
- You can sort your inventory, but the game does not remember your preferred setting once it deviates from the default.
- Players have access to materials in boxes via production machines that they actually have no rights to.
- It would be great if you could see the markers and outposts of group members on the map. Currently, coordinating joint trips is unnecessarily uncomfortable.
- Group members should automatically be given the right to ride along as passengers.
How is the community reacting to these suggestions? With more than 240 thumbs up and over 50 comments within a few hours.
- zachdidit writes on Reddit: “I agree with a lot of what you write. This game definitely needs more comfort and polish. One thing though: I’ve jumped out of my airplane often enough in Battlefield to know that it’s a blessing to hold E to exit.”
- finnster73 agrees on Reddit: “You have some really good concrete ideas for consolidating tools that I fully support. All I was saying was ‘too many tools! wah!’, but your feedback is very useful.”
- mullirojndem also praises the post on Reddit: “I couldn’t agree more with the post. This post cannot receive enough upvotes. Please, devs, implement this.”
Did you check out the beta weekend of Dune: Awakening? What were your first impressions? What should Funcom improve before launch in June? Let us know in the comments! You can find out more about the new survival MMO for the Dune universe in our overview: All about the release, prices, editions, and content of Dune: Awakening.
