Dune: Awakening now has a public test client, which offers players an early peak at upcoming changes coming to the game. One of these is a substantial change to the endgame Deep Desert – a vast expansion to the shielded PvE section.
Right now in the live game, the shielded PvE areas of the mostly-PvP dominated Deep Desert covers zones A and B. However in the Public Test Client version of the game, this has been pushed far out into the sands, covering zones A through half of E.
This comes in reaction to community-uproar around the Deep Desert, as a substantial chunk of the game’s huge playerbase. In response, Funcom ceded ground on its original vision, with creative director Joel Bylos stating: “Our goal is not to force PvE players to interact with a PvP system [they] have no interest in.”
What this means for the dynamic of the Deep Desert is all of the highest tier resources will still be found in PvP-flagged areas, valuable goodies like titanium and stravidium, will still be risky to farm. However PvE players will now be able to venture out into the Deep Desert, farm large spice blows, and explore a selection of challenging bio labs and crashed ships without worrying about swarms of enemy ornithopters.
The spirit of PvP still remains strong in the Deep Desert however, especially where the Landsraad is concerned. House control points, a way of winning the weekly Landsraad, are always PvP zones in the Public Test Client.
Dune: Awakening, Funcom’s biggest release in its history, has proven popular yet divisive in its later hours. The developers have also stated they intend to release more substantial PvE maps to give those ardent anti-PvPers something to do.