Dune: Awakening’s 1.1.0.15 patch makes a couple of notable changes to PvP, including a fix for the notorious goomba stomp meta where players were squishing each other with ornithopters.
How did that work? Well, since players realized that ‘thopters take no damage from collisions with the environment, there was zero risk in repeatedly slamming the flying vehicle into players running around on the ground in PvP zones. It was a viable strategy that doesn’t require mounted rockets or even getting out of the choppa to put a sleeper to sleep—but it didn’t feel particularly fair, either.
Funcom’s fix isn’t what I was expecting, though. Instead of making vehicles take environmental damage from collisions, we got this: “Players no longer receive damage when hit by vehicles.” Huh.
I guess I get it. If you enable environmental damage to vehicles—fall damage, in other words—you’re gonna have vehicles wrecking all over the place. Lagged while entering a new zone and wind up plummeting to the ground? Damage. Repeatedly rubber-banding into a cliff because the servers are choppy? Damage. Clip the sandworm while speeding across the desert? Damage. Driving a buggy or speeder off a cliff because you honestly can’t be arsed to climb or drive safely down? Damage. It wouldn’t be a lot of fun to spend even more time with a welding torch in your hand repairing all that wear and tear.
Hell, everytime I land my ‘thopter in the hangar at my guild’s base I clip the walls and roof and the other ‘thopters parked there. I’d probably cripple us financially if vehicles took collision damage.
But on the other hand… shouldn’t ramming another player with a speeding vehicle hurt? It’s so much fun to run down NPCs with a sandbike, and if I ever have the chance to mow down a player with a vehicle in a PvP zone I’ll be severely disappointed when they don’t even take a little damage.
We’ll see if Funcom sticks with this fix: it could just be a bandaid until a more reasonable solution is found.
Another change to PvP is included in the patch. Respawn timers in PvP were reportedly no longer than 10 to 15 seconds, meaning if you killed a player or team they’d quickly pop back up and you’d have to kill them again.
A few days ago Dune: Awakening’s creative director Joel Bylos said this issue was one of the changes planned, and now the fix is in. The first respawn timer in PvP now lasts for 70 seconds and the second timer takes a full 115 seconds. Again, I wouldn’t be surprised if this continues getting tinkered with—just my opinion, but that feels like a slight overcorrection.
Here are the full Dune: Awakening 1.1.0.15 patch notes:
Changes:
- Respawn timeout in PvP zones was adjusted. The first respawn will take 70 seconds, second and following respawns will take 115 seconds.
- The Dvyetz Ornithopter Engine Mk5 Schematic was removed from loot tables, as it was a deprecated item.
- Players no longer receive damage when hit by vehicles.
- Since the Unstuck feature doesn’t work for vehicles and when the player is on the Overland Map, the Unstuck button won’t show when the player is on or in a vehicle or on the Overland map.
- Service messages like server restart alerts now appear at the upper central part of the screen for better visibility. (used to be in the upper-right corner)
- An additional safeguard was added when a player respawns across maps: Players now need to manually type “Respawn” into the confirmation popup field.
- When players select the Private servers tab in the Server Browser, they will receive a notification pop-up.
- Another set of changes to further improve the game server and client stability.
Fixes:
- Fixed an issue where the game client could freeze when the player attempted to cross the Deep Desert server border.
- Fixed an issue where players who shared their base access with friends could not sometimes abandon their base via a map marker.
- Fixed an issue that caused the dart trails from the Maula Pistol to sometimes deviate from the intended direction.
- Fixed an issue where the Atreides Leader that the player needed to kill in The Advanced Contract – Mentat – Cataloging Defectors contact respawned immediately.
- Fixed an issue that caused a possible crash when restoring a vehicle with the Vehicle Backup Tool.
- Fixed an issue that made it possible to move Crysknifes into storage containers by swapping them with other items.
- Fixed an issue causing the Landsraad refining time reduction bonus not to apply if multiple instances of the same resource were being refined simultaneously.
- Fixed an issue that could cause the player to lose Solaris deposited in the bank.
- Fixed an issue where service alert notifications would not show due to being blocked by other notifications.
- Fixed an issue where exiting the dialogue with Anton Tolliver too soon after delivering the “Deep Extraction” contract would block the player from progressing the faction storyline.
- Fixed an exploit where players could damage other players’ bases with a cutteray.
- Fixed an issue where Research Journey steps wouldn’t get completed retroactively if the player was in a vehicle when performing research. Logging out and back into the game was needed to fix the issue.
- Fixed an exploit causing people to be able to take out water from a deathstill that did not exist in the base.
- Fixed an exploit where players could fire a salvo of projectiles.
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