Do you like videos? Funcom likes videos. Dune: Awakening really likes videos. The game has three new videos to watch cut from the livestream earlier this week. These cannot be in an email; these must be in a video format. This lovely set for recording videos can’t just be left to gather dust, after all, and the studio has to fill the time for the game’s latest release delay.
The first and longest of the lot goes over the survival sandbox’s combat, with devs discussing the overall design ethos of fighting in the game, which can basically be boiled down to an emphasis on ability use paired with switching from melee to ranged as the situation demands. The devs also provide an overview of some of the ranged weapons players can wield, an explanation on how firing weapons actually lowers characters’ shields, and briefs on how some abilities work.
In the second video, the devs talk about servers, guilds, and friends in the sandbox. Funcom demonstrates how to arrive to a friend’s instance through a menu, confirms Steam friend lists will be integrated, and talks up party play and guilds. On the subject of guilds, those are once again confirmed to have a max of 32 players, can align themselves to one of the major houses, and offer wide varieties of permissions for things like bases, vehicles, and storage chests. Finally the devs confirm seven different server locations that will be available at launch.
The last video is another Q&A round. Here are some of the answers provided:
- Yes, players can choose their world and server. Players will also want to ensure they’re all on the same world in order to at least use friend visiting functionality.
- If players are aligned to one house but they join a guild aligned to another, then that allegiance is changed.
- PvE players are once more being assured they can still get things in the FFA PvP Deep Desert and can avoid fights by driving away “really fast,” using an ornithopter, or using abilities to escape. The devs also believe that people entering this zone will have had enough hours in-game to know how to play and promise “thousands of hours without engaging in PvP.” We note here the question asked was whether PvP was required for advancement and the answer did not really address the actual question.
- Balancing melee durability to counter the use of ranged weapon ammo was not precisely answered, but the devs did confirm that ammo is “really cheap” and that durability values will likely be tweaked multiple times.
- Players cannot learn every skill from every combat discipline; they can go pretty deep into multiple trees or reach the end of a few of them.
- Friendly fire in a PvP area is confirmed.
If you happen to have about two hours to yourself, all three videos await below.
