Head over to Steam’s Early Access Survival MMO Last Oasis page and you’ll find an article with the straightforward title “Last Oasis Sucks.” This is not a post on a discussion page written by a disgruntled player, nor is it an opinion piece from his outlet, game media collected by Steam’s news aggregator.
Written by the developers of Last Oasis.
Last Oasis is a nomadic survival MMO in which players build and move through land-crawling fortresses called walkers. We entered early access in March 2020 and immediately experienced some major server issues, and after 3 days went offline and offered a refund. The Last Oasis eventually resurfaced and has gone through many changes over the years, but since then, concurrent player counts have fluctuated between the thousands and hundreds, and Steam reviews remains firmly “mixed”.
But players weren’t the only ones struggling to enjoy MMOs. So did its developer.
Developer chadz wrote, “When I say boring, I mean I haven’t played it in a long time. It’s not as long as other survival games.” July 5th.
“We can have discussions about why The Last Oasis isn’t objectively fun and what needs to be changed to make it a great experience,” Chaz wrote. “To be precise, he did so for four seasons, and while each season removed many problems, he was always left with one underlying problem. Personally, I don’t enjoy playing Last Oasis for long periods of time..”
This is a very refreshing and honest statement for developers. Many developers admit that their games have issues, promise to address negative player feedback, and outline plans for feature changes and improvements, but it’s hard to believe that developers will be able to improve their games. It’s rare to hear them talk openly about their experiences while playing. Especially if their experiences have been negative.
Chadz goes on to say that rather than thinking about what needs to be fixed, the Donkey Team developers have decided to think about what needs to be completely rethought. The restructuring of this issue has resulted in a major overhaul of Last Oasis, which was re-released today.
And it sounds like a lot of things have changed. With this update, Last Oasis’ focus shifted from PvP to almost entirely PvE. Prior to this update chadz said: In the update, players can choose to enter a specific zone and join her in PvP, or avoid it altogether if they want to stick to PvE.
PvE, on the other hand, is much more difficult. “The world is actively trying to kill you in every possible way. The sun makes you struggle constantly to survive. Water is precious. Massive and deadly sandstorms can throw you off guard. Meanwhile, aggressive enemy creatures called Rupus roam the world, launching attacks on players, their structures, and walkers. The main threat used to be other players, but now it’s the world itself.
Speaking of Walkers, the update also had some big changes. In fact, the nomadic nature of Lost Oasis has essentially been erased, which is pretty wild considering that was the game’s main selling point.originally your walker was Your base, a large roaming fort filled with your stuff that you take everywhere. And when it’s destroyed, you usually lose everything in PvP.
Like most other survival games today, players build static bases and use walkers for excursions, exploration, and combat. PvP raids are not enabled, so players don’t currently have to worry about other players destroying your base and taking your stuff. Also, while walkers aren’t as durable as they used to be, it’s easy to build new walkers if they’re destroyed, especially since most of your belongings are safely stored at your base.
Realistically, chadz admits this focus change won’t work for everyone, especially those who liked the PvP focus and enjoyed the idea of betting everything in every combat encounter. Finding degrees is an ongoing process, taking into account player feedback. “There are fun difficulty levels, challenging difficulty levels, and ridiculously intense levels.”
I haven’t played Last Oasis myself. These new changes sound more appealing to me, especially since other players consider it furious-level difficulty to quickly destroy an entire base. also likes harsh PvE, so I might jump in and check it out eventually. As for how the major update fits into Last Oasis’ existing community, it just arrived today after some time on the test server, so we’ll have to wait and see.
