If you visit the Steam page for early access survival MMO Last Oasis, you’ll find an article bluntly titled “Last Oasis Sucks”. It’s not a discussion page post written by a disgruntled player, and it’s not a gaming media outlet op-ed pulled by Steam’s news aggregator.
It was written by the developer of Last Oasis.
You may remember Last Oasis, a nomadic survival MMO in which players build and travel in land-crawling fortresses called walkers. It came into early access in March 2020, immediately experienced some major server issues and three days later went offline and refund offered. Last Oasis eventually resurfaced, and many changes were made over the years, but the concurrent player count has since stayed between a few thousand and a few hundred, and the Steam reviews have remained firmly “mixed”.
But players weren’t the only ones who struggled to enjoy the MMO. So was the developer.
“When I say it sucks, I mean I don’t have fun playing it for long. Not as long as other survival games I like,” developer Chadz wrote. on july 5.
“We could argue back and forth why Last Oasis is objectively not fun and what needs to change to make it a great experience,” chadz wrote. “We actually did – for 4 Seasons, to be exact. And while each season solved tons of problems, there was always that one fundamental problem: Personally I don’t have fun playing Last Oasis for a long time.”
It’s a pretty refreshing, honest statement for a developer to make. Many developers admit when their game has issues, promise to address negative player feedback, and outline plans to change and improve features, but rarely do you hear developers speak candidly about their own experiences playing their own game. Especially if their experiences are negative.
Chadz goes on to say that the Donkey Team developers decided to think less about what needed fixing and more about what needed to be rethought from scratch: “If I were making LO from scratch, what would I do? ” This reformulation of the problem led to the major overhaul of Last Oasis, which was re-released today.
And it sounds like a lot has changed. In this update, the focus of Last Oasis has shifted from PvP to almost entirely PvE. Prior to this update, according to chadz, “The difficulty in Last Oasis used to be non-existent – until you encountered another player, who could destroy everything you owned in less than 3 minutes.” In the update, players can choose whether or not to participate in PvP by entering specific zones or avoid them altogether if they prefer to stick to PvE.
The PvE has become much more difficult in the meantime. “The world is trying to kill you in every possible way. The sun will constantly make you struggle to survive. Water is precious. Huge, deadly sandstorms can overwhelm you.” Meanwhile, aggressive enemy creatures called Rupu roam the world launching attacks on the players, their structures and walkers. While the biggest threat used to be other players, it is now the world itself.
And speaking of walkers, they have also undergone a major change in the update. In fact, the nomadic nature of Lost Oasis has essentially been erased, which is pretty wild considering it was a major selling point of the game. Originally your walker used to be your base, a large wandering fortress full of your stuff that you took with you everywhere. And when it was destroyed, mostly in PvP, you lost everything.
Now, like most other survival games, players will build static bases and use walkers for excursions, exploration, and combat. PvP raids are not enabled, so players currently don’t have to worry about other players destroying their bases and taking their stuff. And while walkers aren’t as durable as they used to be, it’s easier to build a new walker if one is destroyed, especially since most of your belongings are safely stored in your base.
Realistically, chadz admits that this change of focus won’t sit well with everyone, especially those who preferred the PvP focus and enjoyed the idea of risking everything in every battle encounter. Finding the right level of challenge will be an ongoing process and will take player feedback into account. “There’s a fun difficulty, there’s a challenging difficulty, and there’s a ridiculous ragequit difficulty.”
I haven’t played Last Oasis myself, mainly because I consider other players quickly destroying my entire base to be a ragequit-level difficulty, but these new changes sound more appealing to me. I definitely prefer hard PvE over hard PvP, so maybe I’ll finally jump in and check it out. As for how the big update fits into Last Oasis’ existing community, it just arrived today after spending some time on test servers, so we’ll have to wait and see.
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