Dune Awakening: Escalating Griefing Poses Major Challenges

Dune: Awakening troublemakers are at it again, devising new and inventive ways to ruin the experience for other players. Once more, the complaints revolve around Ornithopters.

Last week, Funcom rolled out the Public Test Client for Dune: Awakening and expanded the PvE zone in the Deep Desert from roughly 10% to 50% of the map. This came after an AMA where the studio informed players, who were frustrated with the endgame, that it was "developing a strategy" to enhance PvP in the Deep Desert. Earlier, players had criticized the endgame as "toxic" due to persistent griefing, even after a patch was meant to remove the ability for players to crush each other with their Ornithopters.

Despite Funcom's efforts, some players have found another method to cause trouble—this time by landing their Ornithopters on unsuspecting players to block them from gathering resources.

"All the griefers are now coming to Hagga to farm spice. They're using the same thumper and Ornithopter landing technique they perfected in the [Deep Desert], but now they're applying it to hog all the minor resource nodes in Hagga," wrote one frustrated player over the weekend.

"This game is facing some major issues. Griefers are waging a full-scale war against everyone else on their server, and there's no way for solo players to unite and fight back. As a Dune fan, I don't believe that setting up a thumper only to have four Ornithopters land on you is part of the lore."

u/RandoFinder later updated their post to add: "I kept my Ornithopter at 730 km for 30 minutes waiting for a spice blow, but the moment I moved, four Ornithopters started chasing me. Good grief, some of you are just sad. This happened in Hagga. Tonight, players in Hagga chat were even encouraging each other to doxx me after I spoke up. I've been in WoW general chat and other terrible places, but Dune's general chat is the most toxic I've ever seen."

"It should go without saying that PVP is PVP, and eliminating other players in a PVP zone is completely legitimate and expected," replied another player. "But trapping someone by exploiting mechanics that were designed to prevent griefing—like pinning players with Ornithopters that can’t be destroyed or escaped in a PVE zone—is griefing. Griefing should be explicitly and implicitly forbidden. If you're in a PVE zone, you should not have to worry about players killing you through mechanic abuse."

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As of this writing, Funcom has not publicly addressed the issue.

Dune: Awakening has had an outstanding launch, earning a 'Very Positive' user review rating on Steam. Within hours of its release on June 10, Funcom's survival MMO attracted over 142,000 concurrent players on Valve's platform and set a new record earlier this month with 189,333 players. It has also surpassed 1 million players, making it Funcom's fastest-selling game to date and receiving a Great 8/10 in our review.

If this has piqued your interest but you're unsure where to begin, take a look at all the Dune: Awakening classes available, and follow our Dune: Awakening walkthrough for a step-by-step story guide. We also offer Dune: Awakening resource guides to help you locate iron, steel, and aluminium, plus a Dune: Awakening Trainers locations guide to help you survive on Arrakis.