Don't get too used to all of Hytale's helpful changes: "The way you play today is going to look very different a year from now"

Hytale early access is humming along tremendously well, and I find myself frequently pulled back in to toy around with the new sandbox game born of Minecraft modders, despite fully intending to save my playtime for its 1.0 release. Hypixel founder Simon Collins-Laflamme and his team have been pumping out regular updates with a wealth of improvements one after another, including plenty of welcome quality-of-life changes. However, the Hytale boss warns that some of these additions are designed to act as quick, temporary fixes, and that you shouldn't get too comfortable with the likes of infinite water when it arrives.

"We're currently working on many changes, and thanks to all your feedback and suggestions, we have a much better ideal of where to prioritize," Collins-Laflamme writes. The developer, who returned to save Hytale after its cancellation by former publisher Riot Games, explains that Hypixel intends to ship some changes to the current build that are "quick ones that solve real pain points today, even when we know they aren't the long-term answer."

As one example, Collins-Laflamme says, "Infinite water is likely to be added in an upcoming update. Hauling buckets back and forth just to fill a pond is tedious, and draining rivers and lakes doesn't look great either. However, water might become a meaningful resource in future systems, so infinite water may not stick forever - but right now, it'll make your life a lot easier."

"The way you play today is going to look very different a year from now." Collins-Laflamme says that Hypixel is weighing how it approaches each quality-of-life consideration against its future plans. "A lot of the manual work you're doing right now is meant to be solved through deeper, interconnected game systems over time."

Putting those systems together is a longer process, however, and Collins-Laflamme is aware that having to do all that digital manual labor remains a frustration in the meantime. "We're not going to let you struggle with the basics while we develop it all. Some upcoming quality-of-life changes in early access will be temporary by design, and we'll do our best to communicate that as we go."

"As the game's systems get deeper, some of those early quality-of-life [additions] will need to change, and when they do, we'll always aim to replace them with something equal or better through real gameplay." The result of this is a faster rollout of meaningful improvements, Collins-Laflamme concludes, "as long as everyone understands that some of it may change down the road when better systems take its place."