If I had a magic wand: Dune Awakening
This is our series where we pretend to have magical powers to alter reality and make the game’s developers do whatever we want. A few ‘effin flicks of a wand, and all our gripes with the game are gone, and all our wishes come true.
And now it’s your turn, Dune Awakening.
Giving credit where it’s due
Because I’m lazy, a couple of my gripes in this game have already been addressed, and solutions are coming in the next big patch. Funcom’s devs also released a roadmap with development plans up to the start of next year.
I always say there is an original sin of any RPG-type game, and that is not releasing with the Transmog System and the ability to Change Your Character Appearance in-game.
Well, we have a Transmog system, and character recustomization is coming in the next patch, so no need to use the wand on this one.
There is also a major rework of the endgame and Landsrath system coming in 6 months, so that is a second major gripe we have about the game in the works.
So let’s move on to things that are not confirmed or not 100% confirmed.
Imperial testing stations
I’m warning you right now, this will be a bit of a rant, as this is my biggest gripe with a game. Imperial testing stations are supposed to be “dungeons” of this game… Supposed to be because I’ll be honest, guys, these are the most horrible, boring dungeons I have seen in a long time.
And what surprises me the most is that Funcom’s devs made them, when they are the same people behind Conan Exile dungeons.
Now, people who played Conan Exiles will probably know what I mean right away, but for those that didn’t, let me explain. Conan Exiles dungeons were amazing and memorable. Every dungeon had a theme and a couple of Boss fights. I still remember almost all of them, but I’ll tell you about two that stand out.
- First is a Midnight Grove, where you would go into a lair of Jhebbal Sag (god of the Beasts) and fight through all the animal mobs in the game. There are also cool boss fights against a Charging Bull and a Werewolf at the end. The coolest thing is that Mister Beast God himself pops his huge head out over the horizon after you finish the dungeon and talks to you. I was so shocked and impressed by the whole spectacle when I first saw it that it made me fall in love with survival games.
- The Second Dungeon is an underwater one called Sunken City, where you and your boyz go into the Atlantis-like city underwater and fight fish people. One thing that is really special about this one is that you need to incorporate survival aspects to do the dungeon effectively. You can breathe underwater because you are not a stinky fish person, so you need to take a potion of underwater breathing with you. And after you fight your way through it, once you reach this amazing temple, Two Clay-like Golems bosses are waiting for you, followed by the priestess of the Fish god Dagon.
Oh… and this God also pops his giant ass fish head and watches you while you fight his Priestess.
And what do we have in Dune? More or less the same testing stations filled with the same mobs you fight in the open world, with a boss who is just a normal mob without a Helmet.
I have no clue what happened here, but with a flick of my magic wand, this is what I would change:
1. Make dungeons instanced like in Conan, with a penta shield key at the start to adjust your difficulty.
Why: I can’t tell you how many times I went to the dungeon, and it was already cleared. It’s one of the primary reasons I have my private server now.
And setting up the difficulty can keep the dungeon relevant for the whole game, no matter how good your gear gets.
2. Lean more into testing stations’ themes and give them thematic bosses (Just like in Conan).
What do I mean by this? I don’t know if you guys noticed, but every testing station does have its theme.
First one had a biohazard incident, there is a long one that has a lot of vehicle parts and a theme to it, and one of them also explores an AI theme (AI is illegal in Dune, btw)
So, in the first station, why not have some mutated creatures in the first one(Half human/ Half Animal)?
The Boss can be a fully mutated human that looks fully like an animal and acts and attacks like one.
What about a testing station with a vehicle theme? You make a big arena at the end where the Boss jumps on the modified Sand Bike and rides around it, shooting at you with sandbike rocket pods and guns.
You can make the fight super fast-paced and give a boss a stagger bar, so when enough damage is applied, he falls from the bike, and you can whale on him.
And the one with the AI theme? Have mobs be Ixian mind slaves and gholas, and the boss be a crazy scientist who, in the end, releases the Terminator-looking AI that comes down from one of those torture-looking things and activates.
You can make him a Tank with mini guns that has a huge HP pool of shields, and the player needs to focus on bringing disruptive weapons to the fight to take the shield off before shooting down his limbs one by one.
And I’m not creating anything outside of Dune lore…. This is all in it!
If I can come up with this stuff in 5 min, I’m sure Devs can do even better if they put their mind to it.
So don’t try to reinvent the wheel with your endgame systems, Devs. There is a reason every successful MMO has dungeons and raids as endgame…. It works.
2. More gear and building parts!
There is one gripe I’m 100% sure will be solved over time, but I’ll just write about it anyway.
I find it to be a huge mistake to give NPCs cooler stuff than players can have.
We are talking about armour, weapons, and building pieces.
I remember the first base I made, and I was really proud of it … but then I went over to Harkonnen Compound in Haga Basin and saw all the cool building pieces they have, and we don’t, and I was actually mad.
I’ll give you an example with a picture.
The first one is a structure that I wanted to recreate from the Harkonnen compound. And the second one is my version… It’s a “we have that structure at home” version.
Why? Because I can’t invert Roof Tiles like that, and I don’t see a reason why that is the case.
So I’m just gonna spitball the thing I want to see:
- Every armour that the NPC is wearing, we want as well as a Transmog or Appearance Variant. That includes all the Cool Clothing I see NPCs in Harko village and Arakeen.
- More freedom in building, like in the example above.
- More faction-based building pieces (faction-based crafting stations, storage, water tanks, generators, etc).
Cool stuff like, for example, floor shielding (so you can park vehicles outside without a roof over their head). - 4. Faction-based appearance for all vehicles… I would love to have Harkonnen looking Carrier Omnicopter and Spice Vacum cleaner (sandcrawler)
3. More control over private servers
I will keep it simple here. I want more control over my private server and, at some point, mod support.
One example of what I’m talking about is the restriction on lights and building pieces.
Now I understand the logic of not tanking the people’s FPS on official servers, but I don’t see why this has to be the case on the server I pay for.
If my friends and I want to have 100 more lights in our base, and our FPS drops to 30, that is our business.
And I’m assuming mod support doesn’t exist because on private servers, you still share the Deep Desert with other people with private servers …. Well, I think we should have the option to go completely private and have mods installed on our server so we don’t mess with anyone’s PvP experience.
Conan Exiles has a wonderful modding community that is keeping that game alive long past its expiration date. I want the same thing for Dune.
4. Big beards
This is my little private gripe with the game, and I don’t expect anyone to take it seriously, but here it goes.
Check the difference between the movie Leto and the in-game Leto:
Now this dude looks like he just conquered the planet, and all the virgins there jumped on his shit when he was heading home because they never want to forget what a real man with a real beard looks like.
And the in-game Leto just stopped sucking on his mama’s titty, and he grew his first teenage beard and has to wait for at least 10 more years for it to turn into something decent.
ut jokes aside, I beg you, Devs, give us some big beard to nail that “surviving in the desert doesn’t have time to shave look.
As a matter of fact, here I’ll leave you some of my characters from other video games… just copy these beards so I can make my character look like he is not 14-teen.
That’s all the tips and stuff we want for Dune for now, my dudes and dudettes. Hope it’s Friday where you’re at and Game On.
