BitCraft Dev Blog discusses the lengths that the developers are taking to make you truly part of their player-driven world.
BitCraft Dev Blog Discusses How Players Can Claim Their Own Corner of the World
The developers of the upcoming MMO, BitCraft, have defined what it will take for players to lay claim to their own corners of the world. BitCraft is an MMO that is purely about putting players into a wide and open sandbox, where they can influence the lay of the land.
Citizens of BitCraft will be tasked with creating their own civilizations in a procedurally generated world.
Crafting the Bits
To create grandeur and wonder, players will need to have their own physical space in the world they call their own. Thus the developers need to ensure that any “claimed” land is permanent, and will not be phased due to the game’s procedural nature. One way that they did this in BitCraft was the creation of buildings and smaller settlements. Early on in the game’s development, plopping down your own structures was enough for a smaller in-game population.
However, as the population grew, as so did the individual players’ cities and creations, this became more of a problem. Not everyone can agree on creating a utopia, as clearly evidenced by peoples’ desires to make something their own. This system had the opposite effect in the sense that players actually built away from each other, leaving little interactions in between.
The ideal vision of BitCraft is to create a massive interconnected world where the entire population strives for a unified goal: to rebuild civilization one block at a time. BitCraft’s game systems were thus changed to reflect this ideal version of the world.
Dependent Dependencies
One motivation for cooperation is dependency. Earlier iterations of BitCraft seem to allow players to bring up entire cities on their own, as they are masters of every crafting profession. This time around, they created an “interconnected dependency chain” that will have certain characters specialize in specific core skills which will make them more desirable to have around. No specifics were handed out, but we can safely assume that there are archetypes of characters more suited to gathering wood, processing raw materials, or performing the actual building and crafting.
The resulting system is a true “community” in the grandest sense of the word. Since you will rely on the output of other characters, you will be forced to go together toward your goals.
But larger communities also created their own problems. Since materials and spaces ultimately became “shared” across different people, they had to do exactly that – share. Not everyone is willing to allow hundreds of players (the BitCraft dev’s ideal population per mega city) access to their own personal belongings. The fix? Personal housing.
The BitCraft Housing Crisis
So now players have access to their own homes. This still makes players feel the pride of having made their mark on the world, while also still being part of a larger community. Naturally, players will also be able to customize their homes and create their own unique designs.
The BitCraft developers also quickly gloss over the housing systems that other MMOs adopt. They cite that most games have “phased” or “instanced” houses or even entire neighborhoods, allowing these districts to be as large as possible. The downside of the system is that these can often feel isolated, or at times can become “disconnected” from the world. Our BitCraft devs won’t have that, as they want to create a massive land that can be explored and populated by many.
Homes in BitCraft will be physically part of the world, making sure you’re still “connected” to everyone. At least the exteriors will be. Your own rooms will still be phased, allowing players to create spaces that are much larger than they are in the physical outer world. Talk about living in a Bag of Holding.
Alpha-Bits
BitCraft is a game that combines sandbox, RPG, and MMO elements to create a unique and immersive experience. Some of the features of BitCraft include the procedurally generated world, an integrated and cooperative crafting system, deep player-run trade and economies, massive player-driven towns and cities, and exploration with a side of adventure.
There is no specific release date just yet, but an Alpha will be available in “Early 2024” (hopefully not in conflict with the Elden Ring DLC).
In other news, check out King Arthur: Knight’s Tale Legion IX Expansion Lets You Play as the Romans, and Throne and Liberty Shows Weapons and Letter from the Producer Ahead of Korean Release.
