A Dune: Awakening player recently took to Reddit to complain about the current state of griefers plaguing the newly expanded PvE zone in the Deep Desert. Dune: Awakening’s most recent patch has drastically reduced the PvP zone in the game’s final end-game map, but the transition has been anything but smooth.
Dune: Awakening’s Deep Desert is divided into nine layers, arranged in alphabetical order. Each layer is further divided into nine individual sectors, making 81 sectors in total that make up the totality of the Deep Desert. Originally, eight out of these nine layers were the domain of PvP players, but with patch 1.1.0.17, Funcom has expanded the PvE zone to now cover five and a half layers of the Deep Desert, resulting in a completely even division between PvE and PvP. The entire southern half of the Deep Desert is now exclusively PvE.
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Posts 2In a recent Reddit post, user xxTRYxxHARDxx shared how their experience in the newly minted PvE zones has been marred by armies of griefers trying to take down Carrier Ornithopters by abusing the collision system. In his experience, some trolls have taken to the skies with an army of Scout Ornithopters in order to cause trouble for players using Carrier Ornithopters and Harvesters to harvest Spice in Dune: Awakening. Ambushing players on their way back from a successful harvest, the griefers use the collision system to dogpile on top of the Ornithopter, forcing it to land, then using their combined bulk to keep the Carrier grounded. Their goal is to make the other player land on open sands within the Sandworm’s detection range. Since Scout Ornithopters are inherently faster than Carriers, they have the opportunity to escape when the Sandworm inevitably arrives to claim their due.
Griefers are Weaponizing Sandworms in Dune: Awakening’s PvE Zones
Commenters have corroborated xxTRYxxHARDxx’s account with anecdotes of their own, stating that Dune: Awakening’s PvE zone change has seen a large uptick in griefers on their respective servers. Quite a few players have suggested the complete separation of the PvE and PvP zones and stricter punishment for griefing across the board to discourage this behavior in the future. Others have recommended increasing the maximum flying height of Carrier Ornithopters as a stopgap solution.
CloseWhile many have been quick to equate these griefers with disgruntled PvP-ers looking to take out their frustration on regular players, others have pointed out that this group does not represent the entire PvP community. Most PvP fans are in it for the thrill of the competition, to test their mettle against other like-minded folk. Since Dune: Awakening’s Sandworm doesn’t leave behind any loot when it swallows something, there is no inherent benefit to griefing players in this way from a gameplay standpoint.
Regardless of how Funcom decides to address this issue, most players want to see this resolved quickly. Unlike other open-world survival games, Dune: Awakening is a live-service title that needs to retain its player base for as long as possible in order to thrive.
