Player count collapse? Roadmap? Buddy, we've got bigger problems, Dune: Awakening player decides, making it his life's goal to get the MMO's "useless" melee combat fixed

It's been a wild journey for Dune: Awakening so far, between its player count dropping to promises of long-awaited features like the Base Backup Tool and various patches – but one specific issue has plagued its community now for a while: melee combat.

If you've been out of the loop (or took an extended break from the game post-base demolition like I admittedly did), melee has… well, fallen off a bit, for lack of better words. Put simply, Funcom seemingly attempted to address an issue with melee that saw Crippling Strike and Suspensor Blast a little overpowered, to say the least. The developers did so via nerfs – and a quick look at some older Reddit threads shows they weren't loved by everyone.

One player in particular has been documenting the journey of broken melee, however, and flagging just why the nerfs – albeit initially intended to fix melee combat – resulted in a form of close-range fighting he (and many others, judging by comments) deem "useless." Known online as "Sp1ceRub," the latest of the frustrated fan's videos is Episode 14. In the clip, we see hand-to-hand Dune: Awakening combat in action… and, yeah, it's uneventful.

Melee is useless in DUNE, of all places. Episode 14 REPOST from r/duneawakening

"Melee is useless in DUNE, of all places," reads Sp1ceRub's accompanying post. "We take the rubbish Funcom sends us and put it back under their noses." He also adds some facts on the gameplay footage. In it, he says, "I'm using a level-six character against a high-level character with endgame gear. I've got a T5 powerpack, T5 shield. Very little armor and HP, consistent knee charges or one slowblade would kill me."

The thing is, delivering that kill shot appears to be impossible – and that's the point Sp1ceRub is making. Melee just doesn't work as it should, according to him. He includes a link to a handy YouTube video in which he addresses devs directly on "how to fix melee" in the survival MMO, too. After watching it myself, it boils down to first reverting the nerfs to both Crippling Strike and Suspensor Blast, but that's not all.

Solution to Funcom's Melee issue. - YouTube

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"Remove the function of stacking stamina debuffs," as Sp1ceRub outlines. "Strike cannot stack on itself. Suspensor Blast cannot stack on itself either. But with Strike and Suspensor Blast, you get the crazy stamina debuff. Simply remove the ability for Suspensor Blast and Crippling to stack, and you will have sufficiently solved the problem while retaining the minimum viability for melee." Funcom, according to the player, could do more as well.

"You can even go a little bit further by removing the stamina debuff that Suspensor Blast inflicts," as he concludes. It sounds like a lot to take in, but it's a pretty simple solution – although I'm sure more goes into thinking these things through over at Funcom on a case-by-case basis than we'll ever know as fans. At the least, though, it's a problem that players (including Sp1ceRub) have flagged for attention.

Funcom is hard at work patching up other issues, too, including harder NPCs after what devs called "undocumented changes" to their behavior post-1.2.20.0 and more. The third chapter of Dune: Awakening is underway as well, so here's hoping things only improve.

Be sure to browse through our roundup of the most exciting new games coming this year and beyond for some fresh titles to wishlist.