If you are trying to get in the Dauntless open beta since it was launched, well, that must have not been the most pleasant of experience. With the open beta launch, the servers are overloading to the point where players have to queue in to get into the game- which can last for up to an hour or more with at its worst tens of thousands of other players waiting with you.
Not only that, once you’re in and pass through the character creation, the tutorial can have significant performance issues and you may face a camera bug that makes it impossible to play and progress. Like this image below. Quitting out here and restarting the game will have you queue again, and then go through the character creation again. Not the ideal experience.
The good news is, developers Phoenix Labs are on the case since the open beta launch, communicating the current progress of fixes. They have also laid out all the current issues at the moment with a plan to tackle them all, as posted on the official subreddit.
The first commitment is to ensure there is ‘zero queue’, which will include a complete rebuild of the online service in the future. The post explains that goal, as well as how they will be get the game running at a playable state with the current system in place.
“We anticipated 75,000 concurrent Slayers [players] hitting our servers at launch. This number was based on player activity during the Closed Beta and on our previous experience with game launches,” the post reads. It’s a large number, one that can be seen in the top three games played on Steam. “However, an error in our system prevented our online service from working correctly.”
“Our team has been working to solve the resulting issues since launch, working in shifts and overnight to get you playing as soon as possible.”
Phoenix Labs also tried to get more people into the game by ramping up servers from their cloud hosting, but that resulted in worse in-game experience. That’s how the queue system had to be there at the moment. The system will be improved- should you get disconnected after reaching your queue you will not need to queue again in a one hour window, for example.
Several bug fixes has also been identified and fixed for the tutorial section, which many players may have found already.
You can read the full post from the subreddit here.
It is always a bummer to hear that a game relying a lot on online connectivity has server issues, but that’s something you would expect from a public launch. The indie team of veteran developers have a lot on their plate to fix, but give it a bit more time. As long as they continue to communicate the issues and offer progress updates, this should give a good look to the prospecting new players and the veterans that paid to be in the closed beta and committed hours into the game already.
UPDATE 29/5/18: Dauntless servers have doubled in capacity and players should experience zero queues to log in the game now. Phoenix Labs have outlined the next changes to be implemented- bug fixes for those still stuck in the tutorial- on the same post linked above.