Any reason why this is sold as a separate game and not as Portia DLC?

[Daonar]

(aside from "early access" disclaimer)

The gameplay is the same. The concept is the same with very minor difference. The UI, resource names, mechanics...everything is the same.

Title is different, characters are somewhat different, setup (town) is different - but that's it.

[Ihateeverybody]

For the same reason you can't convert a Combustion Engine Car to Electric (Well, you probley could but the effort).

The underlying Engine is different (Pretty sure they went with Unreal Engine on Sandrock but I could be misteken).

The simplest answer is they couldn't do what they wanted in the old engine and then they started to get more ideas and things went on from there. I think Adding a Coop Multiplayer thing was the deciding Factor to go with a new engine.

My memory is suspect at best and I know this is has been asked and addressed before. I think it might even be in the FAQ pinned up thread.

Edit: I was right, second entry of the FAQ:

What is the relationship between Sandrock and Portia?
It was supposed to be a downloadable addition to My Time at Portia. But as we delved deeper into game production, we realized that in order to fully express the tale of Sandrock, we needed to start from scratch. We required better graphics, better optimization, more story, and more satisfying gameplay systems: basically, we needed better production values across the board.

[Ihateeverybody]

Just to be clear, if you played and liked Portia. You will most likely love Sandrock (No guarantees but I would bet you would.) Just be aware it is still being worked on and not all planned game mechanics are in currently.

There is a roadmap pinned of the expected timeline to implement things. Multiplayer is not yet IN, but they have had two public tests of a few weeks each as well as some closed betas. Looks promising.

Current content (My personal Estimate) is 50-100 hours (Depending on if you bee line main quest or savour the gameplay).

[Jack]

Aside from the fact that the game is WAY too big to be just DLC, there are a few reasons why.

1: Sandrock is very much unlike in terms of character progression and combat. In Portia, you fight with pretty much anything you get your hands on, including things like a pair of boxing gloves you can find near the beginning. Sandrock limits you to 5 classes of melee weapons (to my knowledge), only 4 of which you can make progression with in your skill tree. That being said, the combat is completely redesigned and improved compared to Portia. And speaking of skill trees, That has completely changed as well, going from a "You have to spend so many points on these three to progress to the next three" to an actual skill tree, where certain skills are locked until you unlock the other skills it depends on.

2: Your character is not the same as MTaP. Your Portia character hails from Barnarock and is pretty talkative while your Sandrock character hails from Highwind and doesn't speak at all.

3: If Sandrock was DLC, people would have to buy Portia AND Sandrock in order to play it. As much as I love MTaP, it admittedly does not have as good of quality as MTaS (MTaS has professional voice actors, a character creator that doesn't look ugly, etc.). Sandrock is able to be played as a standalone game and people who are interested in Sandrock may not be interested in getting it if it was just an add-on to Portia. Plus, imagine if you had gotten Portia on console and wanted to play Sandrock now. You would have to buy Portia AGAIN just to play it.

All in all, it was just the right call to make it it's own game.

[JVC]

There's a lot of similarities but also notable differences. If you liked Portia, you should feel right at home in Sandrock.

The main reason why Sandrock is a stand alone title instead of a dlc is that multiplayer fans had a ton of requests for Portia to get a multiplayer option and that is simply not possible with Portia's code base. The devs have mentioned that Portia's code base was built in a way they wouldn't do again since it gave too many limitations and it was quite hard to port to other platforms. So Sandrock's code base is written differently to allow a multiplayer option and to build a better product than Portia.

An additional benefit of making it a stand-alone title is that Team17 was the distributor for Portia and they take a big cut for that right. Making Sandrock a stand alone title means that Team17 don't have any rights over that product so you save the big cut to the distributor.

[Dronysus]

in my opinion they are very different. i love Sandrock, did not like Portia at all.

[DarknessShallFall]

They had plans on making sandrock a DLC, but changed it due to many reasons, the way they made Portia for example, caused issues, plus they had a chance to add in better graphics, storyline and all that. Personally I love the fact they didn't make it a DLC, they can expand upon the story even further due to it.

I love the story line in Sandrock a lot more that Portia... You didn't even know anything was wrong in Portia until the end, in Sandrock you know something is up near the beginning of the game.

[SimuLord]

The short answer is because the engine for Portia just didn't have the chops for what they wanted to do with Sandrock.

I mean, if Pathea has the know-how and the design budget, it would be pretty cool to design a big expandable game universe like Euro Truck Simulator 2, which started with just an area around Germany plus part of Britain and now stretches from Lisbon to St. Petersburg and Aberdeen to Istanbul.

I'd pay for Atara and Highwind and Walnut Groove and even an updated return to Portia in a My Time in the Free Cities super-game, but that might be just me.

[Daonar]

"The underlying Engine is different (Pretty sure they went with Unreal Engine on Sandrock but I could be misteken)."

Yet the game looks very similar to Portia (and outdated as is). Are you talking about visual engine, or game mechanics? EDIT: yes you are, which pretty much nullifies the comment.

So, it's about 1) multiplayer and 2) not forcing people to pay for Portia first. OK.

But, reusing every single game aspect from Portia is really cheap. Even font at the workshop logo is reused. Conversation prompts. Assembly station (with minor QoL change that should have been in Portia from the scratch anyways). Even kinds of characters in the city look and feel the same - there's a food place owner, research center owner, clinic, barn...you name it. The same.

Oh, and the music feels COMPLETELY out of place. It's annoying to the point you want to turn it off after 5 minutes.

Sad. The only good thing about it, since the game "does not represent final game quality" we're surely good to use payment option that "does not represent final payment amount" - get for free, wait for release, decide if to pay then.

[JVC]

Originally posted by Daonar:

"The underlying Engine is different (Pretty sure they went with Unreal Engine on Sandrock but I could be misteken)."

Yet the game looks very similar to Portia (and outdated as is). Are you talking about visual engine, or game mechanics? EDIT: yes you are, which pretty much nullifies the comment.

So, it's about 1) multiplayer and 2) not forcing people to pay for Portia first. OK.

But, reusing every single game aspect from Portia is really cheap. Even font at the workshop logo is reused. Conversation prompts. Assembly station (with minor QoL change that should have been in Portia from the scratch anyways). Even kinds of characters in the city look and feel the same - there's a food place owner, research center owner, clinic, barn...you name it. The same.

Oh, and the music feels COMPLETELY out of place. It's annoying to the point you want to turn it off after 5 minutes.

Sad. The only good thing about it, since the game "does not represent final game quality" we're surely good to use payment option that "does not represent final payment amount" - get for free, wait for release, decide if to pay then.

Don't know if you're trying to make a case for piracy. in that case that's against Steam's rules. Don't.

The unity engine works fine for the game. It was Portia's spaghetti code that weren't up to scratch. Especially when it comes to allowing ports to other platforms. Portia wasn't designed properly in that respect so that code base couldn't be the basis of everything else.

As for all your "it feels cheap". Cope with the fact that people that played Portia liked what they got so they wanted a second game that built on the same concept but expanded it.

Or don't cope, noone cares. I have 400+ hours in either game and got very good value for money in both cases.

But it is a really good idea that Sandrock isn't a dlc. I think Team17's cut is 30% for Portia's sales and Team17's customer support work was incredibly half-arsed, couldn't be bothered. And they screwed up porting Portia to consoles so that entire work had to be redone from scratch since Team17 didn't even hand over the code to the new team that had to pick up the pieces. That experience cost an arm and a leg.

[Liz-with-a-Smile]

There is zero reason for an entire games worth of content to be made into DLC, just because...they take place in the same universe, but in different towns???

There are other threads that discuss the differences between games, like mining and fishing, and character design, and so many other things being different, but essentially....

Why isn't Final Fantasy 7 just Final Fantasy 6 DLC?
I don't know, maybe cause they are different games, and are consider squeals, not the same game???

I guess in today's culture, people expect games to last forever and be updated forever and to only ever get DLC, but before, games were completed and then squeals were made.

So, I guess I just don't understand or like the "infinite DLC" mindset.

[Molly]

Originally posted by Daonar:

The gameplay is the same. The concept is the same with very minor difference. The UI, resource names, mechanics...everything is the same.

Title is different, characters are somewhat different, setup (town) is different - but that's it.

The same can be said for so many games, but that obviously doesn't stop people from playing and enjoying them. By that logic, what's the point in buying the next Grand Theft Auto? Fallout? Far Cry? The Sims? The sports games that literally come out every single year like FIFA and NBA? Not to mention the seemingly infinite number of battle royale style of games.

How do any of those examples differ so drastically from the last? Are you going to make a case for all the games that use wash, rinse and repeat mechanics? Or is it too far-fetched to believe that some of us simply enjoy familiarity?

Given the amount of content that Sandrock now has, and will continue to get over the next year, I would say it's well beyond the realm of DLC. It's also nowhere near as expensive as some of the prices that AAA studios will happily charge for their games.

TL;DR: If you don't like the game, that's fine. But if you have such a problem with reoccurring features in a game series, then the My Time games are not gonna be for you.

[SimuLord]

Originally posted by Liz-with-a-Smile:

There is zero reason for an entire games worth of content to be made into DLC, just because...they take place in the same universe, but in different towns???

There are other threads that discuss the differences between games, like mining and fishing, and character design, and so many other things being different, but essentially....

Why isn't Final Fantasy 7 just Final Fantasy 6 DLC?
I don't know, maybe cause they are different games, and are consider squeals, not the same game???

I guess in today's culture, people expect games to last forever and be updated forever and to only ever get DLC, but before, games were completed and then squeals were made.

So, I guess I just don't understand or like the "infinite DLC" mindset.

There are certain kinds of games where "infinite DLC" makes sense. Live service games (for better or worse) are the most obvious example, although personally I find those to be nothing more than manipulative, evil Skinner boxes.

But plenty of companies have done cool things in the "forever game" subgenre, whether it's Paradox Interactive (Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis), SCS Software (Euro Truck Simulator 2 and American Truck Simulator), even big-daddy EA (The Sims 4.) I have over 1600 hours in ATS and can't wait for Oklahoma and Kansas to come out this year (and that's just what SCS has already announced.) I spent $5 on the basegame on sale and have put over $100 into the DLC since 2018.

And as I mentioned upthread, if Pathea wanted to have a go at creating a giant interconnected My Time-themed game spanning the entire Free Cities, I'd certainly buy the basegame and get into the Walnut Groove and Atara and Highwind and "conflict with Duvos" DLC or whatever else they cooked up if the game was good enough.

Of course, all of the above having been said, My Time at Sandrock (and MTaP before it) is not that game! It's not designed that way and it'd take a lot of time and a lot of completely redesiging systems to make it that way and that's OK—not every game has to be a live service or a forever game.

[GamingWithSilvertail]

? I dont get your fuzz.

You state weird things like 'Graphics look the same'.

So? Your point?

BF3 and 4 look etxactly the same. Yet are on a different engine o.O

Also, Some games have unique artstyle. You cant magically improve an artstyle :P

[Piperbird]

Originally posted by Daonar:

But, reusing every single game aspect from Portia is really cheap. Even font at the workshop logo is reused. Conversation prompts. Assembly station (with minor QoL change that should have been in Portia from the scratch anyways). Even kinds of characters in the city look and feel the same - there's a food place owner, research center owner, clinic, barn...you name it. The same.

Oh, and the music feels COMPLETELY out of place. It's annoying to the point you want to turn it off after 5 minutes.

This is the WEIRDEST argument. Every farming game has the same buildings, is this your first time playing something like this? EVERY game has a shop, a restaurant, a doctor or lab, a rancher, a seed seller, that's literally just how these games work. How would you play the game without those features?

Most people love the music. Just turn it off if it's so bad for you, the rest of us like it.

[DarknessShallFall]

Heh, yeah Piperbird is right... You can't have very much of a town without those things... Now if you want new type of shops, come up with idea's for them...