Dune: Awakening Launch AMA with Funcom Team

Funcom has just announced that they will be holding an official Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) on /r/duneawakening subreddit on June 19th, 16:00-18:00 PM CEST (10:00-12:00 EDT).

This announcement comes as part of Funcom’s efforts to listen to player feedback and improve the game to ensure enjoyable experience for all players.

The questions will be answered by Funcom’s Team:

• Joel Bylos, Creative Director, u/Funcom-Joel
• Scott Junior, Executive Producer, u/Funcom-Scott
• Viljar Sommerbakk, Senior Game Director, u/Funcom-Viljar
• Ole Andreas Hayley, Lead Producer, u/Funcom-OleAndreas

All questions can be posted on the already live Official Dune: Awakening Launch AMA with Funcom Development Team - June 19th thread and will be answered there on June 19th.

Following the AMA, we at Awakened by Spice will do our best to summarize the most important answers and provide them here.

u/MalakiUK asked: “What QoL plans do you have in the pipeline? What are the PvE plans for the near future?”

To which Scott Junior replied: “We have an update in testing that contains a lot of QoL updates, which we are aiming to release in early July. When we get closer to it being publicly testable we will release the full patch notes. It contains too many changes for me to list here, but you’ll be seeing it soon!

For PvE plans for the future each of our major updates will always continue new story content and new PvE content, which will release at the same time as our DLCs come out. Our goal is to have these release every 3/4 months.”

u/Happy-Hyena asked: “Once you do all the contracts in Hagga there arent any more “quests” to do. Are there there any plans on adding repeatable/new contracts every Coriolis storm or are we just supposed to do with the not very engaging landsraad “tasks”?”

To which Joel Bylos replied: “Yes, there are plans to add new contracts across the board. In addition, the Landsraad itself is supposed to involve more contracts in order to reveal tasks for the Houses.

As well as contracts that lead into the Deep Desert.”

u/jpx asked: “Are you at least entertaining the idea/change to make Scout Ornithopters weaponless? And what are your goals regarding changes to PVP in the Deep Desert, now that it’s been in the players’ hands for a short while?”

To which Viljar Sommerbakk replied: “The plan is not to remove rockets from the Scout ornithopter. We will make it so how you equip your scout will affects its maneuverability, speed etc., making the Assault ‘thopter the better choice when you want to engage in combat, but still keeping some offensive capabilities for the Scout if that’s how you choose to spec.

As for PvP in the deep desert, we’re currently formulating a plan considering:

1: We want players to make meaningful decisions about what they bring with them and how they outfit their vehicles

2: Once players have engaged in PvP, we want the experience to be reliable, responsive, and clearly understood. This determines how PvP as a whole feels and how players make their moment to moment decisions in a fight

3: To ensure a more reliable experience in ground combat, we are continuing to address issues with movement desyncs and rubber banding, as well as ability activation reliability.”

u/Thunder_and_Laughter asked: “Will you be looking at a change so we can name storage containers? (Please for my sanity)”

To which Scott Junior replied: “Definitely! That is on the list of changes we want to make to improve base/resource management. I can’t commit to exactly when this is coming, but we understand the difficulty in managing huge bases with tons of storage containers.”

u/Thunder_and_Laughter asked: “Will you be looking at a change so we can name storage containers? (Please for my sanity)”

To which Scott Junior replied: “Definitely! That is on the list of changes we want to make to improve base/resource management. I can’t commit to exactly when this is coming, but we understand the difficulty in managing huge bases with tons of storage containers.

Vehicle naming is also something that will be coming to help out with management of inventory/bases. This will appear on the inventory drop down in the base so you know which vehicle you are taking resources from.”

u/soviman1 asked: “Are there any plans to implement something like faction based warfare in the DD with a war map and such? PVP in DD is a big issue at the moment as it is an almost entirely aircraft based free for all. I do not mind having aircraft being able to fight, but would like to see something to encourage more ground combat to make use of all the skills and gear we have for such things.”

To which Ole Andreas Hayley replied: “The Deep Desert will always stay a PvP free-for-all area, but we might consider adding other locations that offer factional warfare.”

u/wraithexe asked: “Will you change Landsraad so that players can continue to contribute to it after it has been claimed?”

To which Joel Bylos replied: “Our current plan is to allow your contributions to stack week after week, so that small groups and solos can work towards larger rewards over time. And then adding more tiers of rewards as well as new activity drivers in the Landsraad.”

u/MagGamer asked: “Can we get a deep dessert zone for only on foot combat? Feels like its just air combat at the moment. Creating a mode where only bikes and buggy are allowed. Also can we get more dungeons within deep desert with a variety of bosses and targeted loot farm systems where players can select loot they want to drop.”

To which Joel Bylos replied: “No this is not the plan. However a lot of our adjustments and balancing are going to drive combat towards the core vision, which is people competing over points of interest in the Deep Desert. The current balance between vehicles and on-foot is not tuned to our liking and there are multiple changes in the pipeline to address this (above and beyond bugs we will fix).

We will continue to add dungeons but we will not add targeted loot systems as the entire point of the Deep Desert is the randomization and re-exploration loop and this would work entirely against that.”

u/over2take asked: “Will we ever be able to stack storage boxes?!”

To which Ole Andreas Hayley replied: “There are ways to do this already, using half-walls to create shelves. We are continuously looking into ways to improve QoL, and stacking storage boxes is on that list.”

u/lllllIIIlllllIIIllll asked: “A lot of PvE players feel disheartened and discouraged by the current setup for endgame play, as PvP is basically forced on anyone wanting to advance in the game. Are there any considerations to adjust for this or perhaps make resources available without having to delve into PvP?”

To which Viljar Sommerbakk replied: “We will continue to make improvements to the Landsraad to ensure that it better serves needs of PvE players. The deep desert itself will remain PvP as it is today, with a PvE area in the south.”

u/Upset-Goal-8485 asked multiple questions: “What are your plans to improve PVP?
Right now, PVP feels meaningless—there’s no real risk or reward.

• Killing someone on land only gives a few lootable items. The player keeps their gear and crafted items.
• Taking down someone in the air is fun, but all we get is a destroyed chopper—no real gain.

When you die, you just respawn and jump back in. There’s no consequence, and that removes all the intensity from PVP. It should be the core end-game experience, but right now it feels hollow. PVE quickly becomes repetitive with nothing more than farming and crafting.

Can we introduce:

• A meaningful ranking system?
• Faction control or territory influence?
• Smaller DD map size to increase player encounters?
• Be able to loot crafted and farmed items ?

Can we consolidate sietches and servers to see people more frequently for PVE and PVP encounters?

When are going to fix the CLASSES quests?

Most people are having issues with finishing the classes quests due to journey issues and bugs, planetologist is the class presenting the most problems.

Can the in-game notifications have the time associated with player or server time zone instead of UTC ??

Can we have ‘DEPOSIT ALL’ and ‘EXTRACT ALL’ button for water storages and any other items ?

Can we increase the party size or remove friendly fire between guild mates?
The current party size feels limiting, especially during larger coordinated fights. It would also make a big difference if friendly fire was disabled for guild members—it’s frustrating accidentally damaging teammates during combat.

Can the map filters be more granular and persistent?
Right now, every time I open the map, I have to manually toggle filters. For example, I don’t care about copper ore—I only want to see aluminum ore. It would be much better if the map remembered my preferences and allowed more specific filtering options.

Can the radar (top HUD) be made dynamic as well?
Instead of always showing POI distances, I’d prefer to customize what appears there. For example, I’d like the radar to only show the specific POIs or resources I care about, based on my filter settings. This would reduce clutter and make exploration much more efficient.

Can we make it easier to distinguish between players and NPCs, especially in PVP areas?
In fast-paced fights, it’s often hard to tell who’s a real player and who’s an NPC.

Also, can we make player names and guild tags more visible?
Quickly identifying allies and enemies—especially in large fights—would greatly improve clarity and reduce friendly fire or confusion.

Can we have an option to skip all dialogue and animations ? Some players, like myself, are not into the LORE or all this nonsense, we are here to play a survival game. It would be great if we could have an option to skip all of this.

Can we remove that mini-map game between worlds? Such waste of developer resources. Just make the option to go directly to the place or makes really fly to there.

Can you make the map feature be able to toggle the map across the worlds and see party ? Or just toggle between worlds instead of restricting the map only to the player location.

To which Joel Bylos replied: “A lot to address here, so I will try to keep my answer short and to the point.

What are your plans to improve PVP?
We have a lot of plans to address your points about respawn times and revives. Full loot is a decree that can be obtained via the Landsraad (so compete there if you want to make it a reality), there are control points in the deep desert already, we have no plans to reduce the DD size. As we work on the game we will continue to work on making PvP more rewarding (I am sure you will note I am not being very concrete but that is because we are planning and watching how people are playing and finding the right points to address)

Can we consolidate sietches and servers to see people more frequently for PVE and PVP encounters?
We will do this when we feel it is necessary.

Can the in-game notifications have the time associated with player or server time zone instead of UTC ??
Yes this is being improved.

When are going to fix the CLASSES quests?
We’re making multiple improvements (worth noting that a majority of people have zero issues completing them but we have a few reporting issues)

Can we have ‘DEPOSIT ALL’ and ‘EXTRACT ALL’ button for water storages and any other items ?
We are working on it.

Can we increase the party size or remove friendly fire between guild mates?
No this is the party size we have chosen for the game and our encounters in PvE are balanced towards this. Changing it is not in the plans. We also expect guilds to co-ordinate and work together, FF is there to ensure that they do.

Can the map filters be more granular and persistent?
We’ll look into this.

Can the radar (top HUD) be made dynamic as well?
No this is not planned and is very expensive to implement and change.

Can we make it easier to distinguish between players and NPCs, especially in PVP areas?
No this in line with the vision of the game.

Can we have an option to skip all dialogue and animations ?
Absolutely not. It is clear from your questions that you value efficiency above all else, but the vision of the game is to value DUNE above all else. So no.

Can we remove that mini-map game between worlds? 
Nope, this is also in line with the vision for the game.

Can you make the map feature be able to toggle the map across the worlds and see party ? Or just toggle between worlds instead of restricting the map only to the player location
No we have no plans to implement this, it would add a lot of server overhead and it absolutely not worth it.”

u/Thunder_and_Laughter asked: “Will you be looking at a change that allows us to take a corpse from a storage box and place it directly into a deathstill? At the moment, it’s not possible, however, I would be happy if you limited it to the proximity of the deathstill as we tend to have a storage container full of corpses right next to the deathstills.”

To which Joel Bylos responded with this hilarious reply: “My friend, the intentionality of lifting a corpse and placing it in the sacred machine known as the Deathstill is a ritual that must be honored with contemplation of each and every victim that you place within.

I was a friend of Jamis. Bi-la Kaifa!

(Also deathstills are an insanely rewarding way to get water and we feel that the current design is in line with convenience given by the automated machinery. There is a core difference between Fremen technology and CHOAM technology and corpses are not compatible with the circuit systems)”

u/MalakiUK asked: “How do you plan on fixing the pvp balance atm? Surely the scout shouldn’t have offensive capabilities as a balance?”

To which Viljar Sommerbakk replied: “I assume this is in relation to flying vehicles specifically.

Things we are considering:

Scout Ornithopter Thrusters to provide a bonus to the maximum speed of the Ornithopter at all times, even while gliding

Equipping a Scout Ornithopter with rocket Pods reduce overall maneuverability and max speed. This will help solidify this module selection as a desire to engage in combat and balance it versus other combat-focused vehicles

Scout Ornithopter rockets to cost slightly more heat to fire, limiting its combat usefulness relative to the Assault Ornithopter while still allowing it to be an aerial threat”

u/Dorrono asked: “Do you plan to add daily and weekly contracts for PvE (solo) players?”

To which Scott Junior replied: “Currently we have the Landsraad to offer weekly content for players to engage with. We have read the feedback about some tasks getting locked early, tasks being too hard for solo players, and feedback on the general rewards. We will make improvements to all of these features to make sure that anyone that wants to engage with the Landsraad can and that they feel like the rewards are worth it.

In addition we will be releasing more PvE content with each major update, and we will have more dynamic encounters in the game that will offer variety and new content for you to discover as you are exploring Arrakis.”

u/Imaginary_Swing_3539 asked: “Right now it seems that the game is heavily tied to vehicular movement. As someone who wants to be a desert wanderer relying heavily on walking the desert, are there any plans to add something like sand walking? Really enjoying the game, fortsett sånn gutta!”

To which Viljar Sommerbakk replied: “We will do walking without rhythm.”

u/LuciusConfucius asked: “Will you add an option for duels?”

To which Viljar Sommerbakk replied: “Yes, we are planning to add the possibility to duel.”

u/Thunder_and_Laughter asked: “Please can we have a door tall enough so that the buggy (with a mining laser) can go through it. My poor buggy is left outside under a bit of a roof most of the time. I’m not a huge fan of the aesthetics that pentashields offer for a base. (Probably a minority here)”

To which Viljar Sommerbakk replied: “Yes, we are planning to add the possibility to duel.”

u/probablyonmobile asked: “Why isn’t the final trial instanced like all the rest? It results in a queue of players lining up, dying of thirst. Players are then pushed to rush through a big story beat so that their peers can get in.”

To which Ole Andreas Hayley replied: “Mostly due to technical and time limitations, we fully understand that this is not optimal. We will look at improving this in the future.”

u/Mysterious_Cress_192 asked: “Are there any plans for procedural/radiant contracts at the outpost boards?”

To which Ole Andreas Hayley replied: “It’s not in our plans right now, but we’re always looking at viable options to add to the game, as long as it fits with Dune.”

u/littlegaryboy asked: “Curious if there will be “boss fights” or Raids or dungeons or any activities like that. By the way, the game is fantastic and you’ve all done such an incredible job!”

To which Ole Andreas Hayley replied: “We will continue to evolve our PvE content, including adding boss encounters as part of future dungeons. Thanks, glad you like it!”

u/littlegaryboy asked: “Can you please add deposit all water option? Thank you :) Please release more color options and swatches. ALSO, LABELS!”

To which Ole Andreas Hayley replied: “Absolutely, and I’m glad to tell you that deposit all water option is coming!”

u/TheSilentOne705 asked: “Will there be a roadmap published soon, like other games such as Satisfactory or Valheim? What kind of QoL plans will there be? Will there be other decoration/building packs released soon?”

To which Kamil Wojtas replied: “Yes, we intend to keep you in the loop on what’s coming and will share our mid to long-term plans soon. However, they may not take the form of a static roadmap asset.”

u/sunaurus asked: “Right now, respeccing seems to remove your starting skill, but does not refund the skill point. So if you respec at level 150, you only get 149 skill points back. I know many players have reported this bug, but it has not been added to #known-issues on Discord yet as far as I can see. What is the threshold for adding issues to known issues? Should we keep encouraging new players to report issues such as this until it gets added to known issues?”

First question received a response from Scott Junior: “Definitely a bug, it will be fixed in an upcoming patch!”

And Kamil Wojtas replied to the second question: “Great question! The list of known issues is not exhaustive and does not capture every bug. We focus on the most common and impactful issues and update the list regularly.

Regardless of whether a bug is on the list, we encourage players to report them. Bug reports provide valuable information that our QA teams use to fix issues and help us determine how many players might be affected.”

u/Stundar- asked: “Will you be adding daily and weekly quests on the mission boards at the trading posts and at the faction representatives?”

To which Ole Andreas Hayley replied: “There are currently no plans to add this to the mission boards, but we’ll consider it for the future. Landsraad does offer weekly tasks that have personal rewards to it. We have some content in the pipeline that might offer some more repeatable quests.”

u/Ouroboros612 asked: “Funcom. Your creative director recently had an interview with CohhCarnage. And talked about how difficult it can be to make games. Because you have to make thousands of decisions. And in the end, hoping they were the right ones. So one would expect that the BIGGER game decisions, are much harder to decide on. Which leaves the DD endgame highly confusing to me if you could elaborate on the following.

First. You craft a super fun, engaging, highly addictive, immersive PvE survival crafting game doing the Dune universe justice. You do everything right! Then, INSTEAD of making a whole other endgame PvE zone like DD, with raid bosses, dungeons, world events, handcrafted POI’s, and additional desert environmental dangers. You make it a forced PvP only zone.

I mean. You’re basically designing the endgame, as if you want 90% of the player base to abandon the game. Did you intend for the endgame to be designed for the extreme niche hardcore PvP minority? Or were you actually hoping, that you’d get a lot of PvE players to join in and learn to like and enjoy PvP too?

Is your actual plan to add a DD like zone for PvE. With world bosses, events, raid bosses, dungeons, POI’s, etc. down the line?

I’m actually hopeful for the future of Dune Awakening. Why? Because I refuse to believe that, in such a long string of doing every decision right, you’d fail so massively just at the finish line.

I apologize for being so blunt here. However I wouldn’t have aired this criticism if I didn’t love the game. I want the game to improve and succeed. Because I love it.

However the design decision to go full PvP endgame is confusing and strange to me. You have a PvE endgame zone plan ace in the sleeve planned for the future right?”

To which Joel Bylos replied: “I appreciate the wording and tone of this compared to some of the other questions about this topic, but because one of the decisions that was made is one that you disagree with doesn’t mean it is the wrong one.

The fact that people continually talk about the endgame and NEVER mention the Landsraad, but are exclusively focused on the Deep Desert is an indicator to me that we have failed to convey the importance of that system to PvE players. We will add more to refine this.

BUT Every person who plays our game is a PvE player. Because 90% of the game is PvE. And then people who want to engage in the Deep Desert are the people who enjoy both PvE and PvP.

But here is the other thing that will either make you happy (or unhappy). We will continue to add PvE content to the game. PvE content is expensive to produce and takes time, but as you have correctly stated we know how to do it well. So it will continue to be added and progression will be added to those areas accordingly.

Whereas the Deep Desert will always be the endgame PvP space. It will always be a loop. While the PvE elements of the game continue to expand and in a few years the overland map might be dotted with dozens of points of interest to explore, the Deep Desert will still be there. With the coriolis storms, the scouting loop and the entire vision of what it is. It will be tweaked, but it will remain the PvP space for the game.

There is a balance between them and it will always be something we work on.”

u/Working_Cranberry826 asked: “Are there plans for map expansion – not saying there’s an issue with the size (the map is quite big) but was purely curious if there are going to be any future map expand“

To which Ole Andreas Hayley replied: “We have many plans to expand the game with additional maps in the future, and the Overland map is one of our vehicles to do so. The Dune universe has a lot of interesting locations and worlds to explore, and we’re looking forward to continuing to build on top of the foundation we have.”

u/Dawson__16 asked: “Is there going to be a PVE only option for people to farm “end game” materials or is it always going to be something you gate behind pvp?“

To which Scott Junior replied: “Our plan is for the Landsraad to be the end game PvE content, so we will continue to make adjustments to that feature until both you and we are happy with it. It should feel rewarding for both solo and guild players, and offer personal rewards in addition to faction wide/map rewards.

In addition we will have new PvE maps and content in the future that will offer alternate ways to progress past the gear that is available in Hagga Basin.”

u/capalex65 asked: “When will you add a PvE version of the Deep Desert?“

To which Viljar Sommerbakk replied: “We have no plans to add a PvE version of the deep desert, but we will continue to expand the game with PvE areas.“

u/Outrageous-Raisin431 asked: “Will they give more options for solo players in the deep desert? Being able to hide in the dunes like a Fremen, or for the exploration orni to be more agile and without rockets, etc. Thanks for being with the community! :)”

To which Viljar Sommerbakk replied: “Fremen secrets are only known to the fremen. We will address what that means some time in the future.

We will make the scout ‘thopter be more maneuverable when specced for that.”

u/Outrageous-Raisin431 asked: “As of right now, backing up as much as possible and starting all over again after taking a break seems really tedious and discouraging, pretty much killing interest in progressing at all in fear of losing too much.
Do you have plans to improve the “come back after a break” mechanics for solo players while keeping the needed “space cleaning” mechanics ?“

To which Ole Andreas Hayley replied: “The game as of now supports you taking a break for almost 4 weeks, if you fuel your base fully with a high tier generator, and before your base gets unpowered for having defaulted on your taxes. For the future, we will also be looking at adding mechanics to support easier recovery for taking an extended break.”

u/Dr4ne asked: “As of right now, backing up as much as possible and starting all over again after taking a break seems really tedious and discouraging, pretty much killing interest in progressing at all in fear of losing too much.
Do you have plans to improve the “come back after a break” mechanics for solo players while keeping the needed “space cleaning” mechanics ?“

To which Ole Andreas Hayley replied: “The game as of now supports you taking a break for almost 4 weeks, if you fuel your base fully with a high tier generator, and before your base gets unpowered for having defaulted on your taxes. For the future, we will also be looking at adding mechanics to support easier recovery for taking an extended break.”

u/Thegoodagent asked: “How difficult was it to balance the alternative timeline you created with the books and how did that influence some decisions in the game and the story moving forward? Only 25 ish hours in and it’s one of the best survival games I have played in a while.”

To which Joel Bylos replied: “It wasn’t particularly difficult once we had figured out the alternate timeline, at that point it was mostly a matter of extrapolating out from the core ideas. The rules of the universe remain the same, so elements like dew reapers or sandworms or spice could easily be built out from their descriptions in the book. It was all very concrete.

The storyline was where we had more freedom to play, but luckily Frank Herbert provided a lot of threads with the concept of the Golden Path and the Bene Gesserit breeding program. For us it was a lot of fun to try and imitate the beats of Herberts stories, but with a different set of characters and a different set of objectives – but with the same ultimate destination.

Frank Herbert was a master of hinting at a lot while saying very little, and our pleasure was in expanding things out based on his teases. Been a lot of fun.”

u/effectiveuncertainty asked: “Lansraad is broken. Tiles being claimed within seconds of going live, worlds are dominated by large guilds and heavily one sided on the faction front no room to even compete. Your left with defecting or just plain quitting. It should be overhauled imo. Control points are scored unrealistically low. Would take days of camping to win a slot meanwhile a mass handoff clears it in no tine. Mechanically unbalanced, dominated by zerg guilds leaving no room for solo players/ small guilds or even large guilds of your on the side with the lower plater base to contribute. This leave players disengaging with the system and sucks the fun out. My question. Are you going to fix it?”

To which Joel Bylos replied: “We will continue to look at the Landsraad and balance things as we go forward. There are multiple activities beyond handing in resources that require people to do things that cannot be “stockpiled”. We’ll continue to add activities.
On servers that are heavily dominated by a single faction, balancing features will begin to kick in – but it has only been two weeks so give this some time to get to work.

Finally, the third faction will change the entire dynamic when it comes online, so we’ll see how that goes :)”

u/Blind0bserver asked: “Since the game has gone live, Funcom has offered various building pieces, murals, and other cosmetics through tie-ins such as purchasing a $35 box from a US only gamer supplement company for a single piece of base decor, or giving Twitch streamers multiple gift subscriptions for an in game social outfit. Given the increasing real world money cost and inconvenience of getting some of these items in game, does Funcom have any plans to make these assets available to players via other means at some point?”

To which Viljar Sommerbakk replied: “We will look at adding them in the future, but not in the short term.”

u/SolidSnake090 asked: “Are there any plans for new tools like an elevator? This gives us the freedom to build anywhere and enables the buggy and bike to be up there . House buffs? Bosses ? Maybe raid bosses ? Expanding the map? New biomes? Transport possibilities? Where you can choose a set of storage boxes to where to transport them (2nd) base with a transport heli that does it for you. More weapons? Buffs etc”

To which Scott Junior replied: “We had plans for suspensor elevators in the Rift to allow people to quickly get out of it with ground vehicles, but had to cut the feature from the launch scope. I’ll check with the building team to see if this is something we can add to player bases in a future update.”

u/Cornik34 asked: “Is there a plan to improve over the current circuit system for storage containers?

Examples:

– Having water circuits to split water consumption and also be able to have a “public water deposit” where strangers could take a sip without emptying my tanks

– Having filters over circuits for containers. Right now, I have all my refineries output set to circuit 2, but I would like to have a container per item instead of only “machine type.””

To which Joel Bylos replied: “We can certainly look into this.”

u/-Shaftoe- asked: “Is the 3rd faction coming to the game, whose purpose was previously described as “to help keep the balance of power between Atreides and Harkonnen”, going to be the House Corrino?”

To which Joel Bylos replied: “It is NOT House Corrino. It is coming.”

u/IchSteheAufOmis asked: “do you plan to enable character transfer to a different server / sietch, mainly of skip the main story and keep the level.”

To which Viljar Sommerbakk replied: “Between sietches coming soon, i.e. full visiting with building rights.

Between worlds will likely be possible in the future, but not in the short term.”

u/theTRueNameLessOne asked: “Two things, Can you make it easier to reach the bank and player sale boards without having to travel all the way to location…and two will there be some type of vehicle insurance or adjustments to rebuilding without going through the extreme process of rebuilding. Thank you. Awesome game so far! Long live the fighters!”

To which Scott Junior replied: “We will look into adding some additional convenience to these features, but it is important for us to have certain features that require you to travel to the social areas/cities.

As for vehicle insurance, we don’t want losing your vehicle to be a catastrophic setback, so we are looking into ways to ease the loss in specific situations. Getting eaten by a sandworm will always come with a hefty cost though!”

Viljar Sommerbakk had this to add: “We want to send players to the social hubs, but we are considering ways to make it more accessible still.

As for dealing with vehicle loss, we are considering several ways to make it more manageable.”

u/JackalHeadGod asked: “Do you have any plans to make endgame more friendly for solo and small-group PvE players? It seems like there’s real wall post Hagga Basin for this type of player (myself included) with the current model.

Bit of a loaded question of course, but I think it’s clear from all the posts on this sub-reddit that the DD doesn’t work as it is for a number of reasons. I expect they already have plans within plans, I’m just hoping that includes more love for the large fraction of the community that are PvE focused.”

To which Scott Junior replied: “We don’t want the endgame to be blocked off to solo players, so we will continue to make improvements to our existing features (Landsraad/Deep Desert) and add additional content and features that solo players can engage with. We will have more information on this in the near future!”

u/BeastMaster1802 asked: “Any plans to remove the sand from the game?”

To which Scott Junior hilariously replied: “It is coarse and rough and gets everywhere. Maybe we will add a map without sand in the future for you Anakin.”

u/Technical_Fact_8578 asked: “Can we expect further improvements to the social aspect of the game? As it stands right now ( outside of doing pvp ) there isn’t much of an incentive to interact with other players or talk to them.

I would love to see more emotes, costumes, towns and cities and social elements being added to further immerse yourself in the world and hopefully by extension encourage others to do the same.”

To which Ole Andreas Hayley replied: “For sure, we will keep adding to and evolving our social features in the game. There are more emotes, costumes on the way, and we’ll keep evolving our exisitng social hubs with additional content and reasons to go there.”

u/orktom asked: “What are your thoughts on adding missions that involve raiding low traveling space ships/freighters or saudukur ships mid flight? Imagine dropping off your pals onto the hull to breach them whilst a few others fend off the enemy escorts.

gotta get in – and get out quickly- too long and the captain may call for reinforcements or scuttle the ship etc”

To which Joel Bylos replied: “If we let you raid a Sardaukar ship with an actual Sardaukar instead of those terrible CHOAM mercs they keep hiring, you’d be killed.

Interesting idea though, we’ll keep it in mind.”

u/LCraighead asked: “What’s been the biggest surprise following the release of the game?”

To which Viljar Sommerbakk replied: “We knew that we had a good game, but we were still overwhelmed by how positive the reception has been. Also, we see that players have looong playsessions, which is great.”

u/LCraighead asked: “Do you plan to add farming-ish features ? Like some greehouse we can see in experimental stations, to grew some fibers, etc”

To which Viljar Sommerbakk replied: “Maybe one day, not in the near future.”

u/OssomSagax asked: “Will SandWalking become a feature, either manually executed or a technique? I know myself and a few friends would love to be able to go full Fremen given the option!”

To which Ole Andreas Hayley replied: “It’s something we did explore during development, but it was a tricky feature to find the fun in. It also did not make sense to add it, since this is something you would learn from the Fremen. We’ll consider it again for the future, I’m sure.”

u/Thunder_and_Laughter asked: “Will you ever implement a mini-map or map overlay so I can navigate easier while driving? I’m finding that I open and close my full screen map repeatedly while trying to dodge quicksand, etc.”

To which Joel Bylos replied: “No, we actually had one for a while and I asked the team to remove it. Minimaps draw the eye away from the world and distact from the experience.

Instead we moved the design to a more intentional focus on world elements – scanning to have resources show in 3d space or hazards (like quicksand) be something that you plan your route around. Vehicle scanners will be your friend when dodging quicksand, but also just learning to recognize it visually will be of great help.”

u/mikehit asked: “Are there any plans to increase rendering distance for vehicles in the deep desert? Vehicles pop in at around 500 meters, which makes it very difficult to react in time.”

To which Kamil Wojtas replied: “We hear you and that is something we are actively investigating internally.”

u/Quirky_Lemon asked: “Are you planning to add a faction chat option? It would be nice to coordinate with another guilds in the same faction on the same server. Maybe allow only guild leaders to post a message there?”

To which Viljar Sommerbakk replied: “This is something we will look into.”

u/Trollripper asked: “Can we get a top down building view?”

To which Viljar Sommerbakk replied: “There are currently no plans to add this.”

u/Thunder_and_Laughter asked: “Will hostile PvE animal types be added to the game to give us a mix of potential threats out in the world?

I’m not clued up on the lore, but fighting something other than a humanoid would be really cool.”

To which Viljar Sommerbakk replied: “We are considering more enemy types – long term.”

u/Erandelax asked: “Final comment on the case of people building bases to block off ground roads between resource areas (Vermillius Gap), quest areas enterances, etc would be nice. To which extend is it supposed to be allowed, when should it be reported and when not, will quest related build-forbidden areas be expanded or not, etc.”

To which Scott Junior replied: “This one is hard to tackle in a way that makes everyone happy. There is a limited amount of buildable space in the game so we don’t want to add building blockers all over the map. We do want to make sure you can access content and points of interest that are unique or required for progression, so we have tried to ensure there is always a viable path to get to trade posts, faction bases, and story content locations. If we missed anything obvious let us know!”

u/Acceptable-School405 asked: “Hello,
Congratulations to the entire team for this excellent, not to say addictive, game.

Could you consider adding a hotkey to change seats in vehicles?
The process for changing from the driver’s seat to buggy’s cutteray is currently tedious and time-consuming.

Thank you for your response and for taking the time to listen to the community.”

To which Scott Junior replied: “Thanks! We are really excited about the game and the future content that is in development.

Changing seats on a hotkey will be added to one of the first patches to the game, so it will come in either July or August.”

u/SirBianisko asked: “Will we have dual daggers soon or the arrival of dual crysknife?”

To which Viljar Sommerbakk replied: “We will add some form of dual wielding, but it will not be possible to mix and match weapons.”

u/AstralFuze asked: “Two questions:

The quests have been a lot of fun and the lore has so much room for exploration. Will you be adding missions and pve story content on a regular basis?”

The building tiles are great for cubes but the triangles lack the ability to fill gaps in basic turns and the roof tiles can only have an inside radius. Will you be expanding building tiles to enable more diversity in structures?”

To which Viljar Sommerbakk replied: “1: We don’t have any concrete plans on expanding individual building sets, but we are continuously assessing needs to improvements.

2: We will definitely add more contracts and PvE story content!”

u/Technical_Fact_8578 asked: “Can you improve the feeling of cities and outposts in the game to be a meeting hub of sorts? Right now I keep running into an issue of not being able to see my friends in Arakeen or Harko village because they are in a different instance then me despite us being together in a group. It defeats the purpose of those cities being anything more then an interactive quest hub and a loading screen.

I would also love to see the ability to toggle walk in cities and outposts like Anvil so we can walk around immersively within them.”

To which Viljar Sommerbakk replied: “It should be rare that you don’t see your friends because they’re in a different instance, as long as you are on the same world.

We will definitely make it possible to toggle walk in cities and outposts!”

u/Technical_Fact_8578 asked: “Will there be more additions to the build menu? Such as half floor pieces? Half verical walls? Decor?

There is so much potential with building with more pieces and tools at our disposal.

To which Viljar Sommerbakk replied: “We will add more building sets over time.”

u/Technical_Fact_8578 asked: “Will there be more additions to the build menu? Such as half floor pieces? Half verical walls? Decor?

There is so much potential with building with more pieces and tools at our disposal.

To which Viljar Sommerbakk replied: “We will add more building sets over time.”