Robben_DuMarsch wrote:I was offered a key by a Whatever Bay resident, but when they confirmed that the game was basically a neutered HnH and may nuke my 4090, I declined. I was told, and watched some twitch gameplay which demonstrated, that the game mimics some of the early game progression of HnH, but replaces systems like mining with basic nodes akin to Runescape or Albion that are more about clicking and waiting than any actual gameplay.
There's no cooking or credos for progression as FEPs and LP have been replaced with a runescape/albion-esque system that you skill up through repetition of basic tasks. Many of the crafting processes have been distilled or simplified down to more common base inputs that you harvest in bulk and render through crafting station progress bars. Even PvE combat against wild animals has been reduced to clicking on them with a bow equipped then pressing the 1, 2, and 3 keys on the keyboard before you start your harvest bar.
They've more or less kept the land claim and base building component of HnH, albeit heavily simplified (especially on the supply side), and removed everything else.
I guess what it would take would be something that actually improves or iterates upon HnH and Albion, rather than being a simplified copy of only incomplete parts of them.
That's fair. I think they are trying to cast a wide net with their gameplay loops to minimise the perceived barrier to entry. Hence the basic point and click gameplay for most of the skills. I hope the complexity picks up a bit in the later game, with skills being more interdependent and having niche utility beyond "this makes you run faster or gives more stamina".
Frankly, half of HnHs systems are so esoteric that very few players even care enough to study it; those who do are drawn like moths to optimization puzzles, so they end up playing 24/7 and becoming absurdly OP (Snail and folks being the most recent example). That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it attracts a very niche playerbase and asking someone to pick up HnH feels like asking them to pick up a course in astrophysics sometimes, so it's no surprise HnH rarely surpasses 1k active players. Whereas Bitcraft is trying to shoot for high population, getting as many people into the game as possible - presumably so they can use it to stress test SpacetimeDB.
With that said I still don't think it's fair to call this game a ripoff or anything more than loosely inspired by HnH, as you say many of the core systems in HnH aren't in Bitcraft.