3mo ago

'Don't leave trash on Arrakis'—Dune: Awakening creative director implores players to 'clean up your old bases'

www.pcgamer.com

16 comments

Ah yes, solving design problems by asking players nicely.
In a traditional MMO like World of Warcraft, it's not like you build a base in the starter zone and leave it there for a week, because imagine how many bases would be stacking up. [But] that's kind of how our game does work because you can end up with a lot of bases.
I'm pretty sure most people dislike destroying their own stuff or alternatively, cleaning up. If you're gonna let them have multiple bases instead of just one, what do you expect?
Just speculating but: it sounds like they only tested this with small groups, and that worked. If that's what you're going for, you have to set up the game to play in small groups, not as an MMO... In hindsight they might wish they had put player bases in separate instances.
- An MMO (that sadly got cancelled) introduced base decay in where, if you hadn't been in your base for a week, it started breaking down. This way, the world cleaned up itself. Was a cool idea
  
  Makes sense in the dune world with all the sandstorms and worms too....
  
  Uuughh, isn't this standard in most online games that have base building? Rust, Dayz and Scum has same mechanic built in very similar ways.
- The system works fine in, say, Conan, or Ark, or whatever survival game because those are small groups. If you've got thousands in a server, it's going to be a mess.
  Hell, even Ultima Online had the brains to keep player houses to specific areas. This is not a new problem.
These people know only how to design system and nothing about human psychology and it shows. The people that play these games are never going to do this because you ask nicely or because you scold them. In fact they might go out of their way to do the opposite just out of spite. Smart designers would have introduced a positive mechanic for tearing down one's base or cleaning out abandoned ones, or as other said, just added a degradation mechanic.
- Ultima Online solved this problem in 1997 by having any house collapse into a pile of everything stored in the house after 90 days of no activity on the account that owned the house.
  I remember spending a lot of time loitering around houses marked as "in danger of collapsing" just to steal some prime real estate outside Brit.
If a base hasn't had interaction from its builder in a certain amount of time send that player a warning that it's about to be marked as fair game. A few days later, if no action has been taken, mark it as abandoned and free to loot. Possibly with quests to access this looting feature. A Scavengers' Guild?
The easiest way to force players to destroy their old bases is to limit the amount of bases they can have. Make it 1 at the first levels or whatever, raise it once they're farther away from a starting area, but never let them build as many as they want, hard caps are a must in these types of games.
As for the blocky boxes, well, what did you expect? It's literally the easiest, fastest thing they can do, in an area they'll probably never return to. Why bother making something more homey or intricate?
I watched Kevduit play a version of this game and one of the early quests was "abandon your first base." Now I don't know what to think.
Have small single block outpost starter bases be cheap and easier to make than the crappy custom built blocks bases.
I have never played this game and don't even really know what it is, but wouldn't the obvious solution be to have the abandoned bases get eaten by sandworms?
I'd build a massive cock and balls TBH

16 comments