Some Thoughts on the Second Update (Ongoing)

[SimuLord]

I'm 10 hours into a new save started when the second update came out; this is a running diary (and will be updated) of my thoughts on the new content compared to my previous full playthroughs both on the initial August release and the November update.

Without further ado:

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM: TIME SCALE

The game is 25 percent slower on Longest compared to Standard (1:60 timescale as opposed to 1:80.) This is more like Roots of Pacha's 33 percent slowdown (also to 1:60 on its longest setting) than, say, My Time at Sandrock or Coral Island, both of which can be massively slowed down to...not sure of the math offhand but I'd swear it's 1:30 or even slower than that.

And like Roots of Pacha, Mistria _absolutely_ plays like "this should've been the default setting from the jump" in terms of maintaining a brisk, waste-no-time pace without feeling overwhelming. I say this as someone who's got 700 hours in Stardew Valley. A game in this genre can decide to go in a couple of different directions, and Mistria's clearly chosen the Stardew lane; "choose a focus and stick with it for a day's worth of the gameplay loop." (a mining day, a fishing day, a gifting day, etc.)

There are other games (Coral Island and the My Time games) where the vibe is much slower, and it's not a bad thing; it's just not part of Mistria's design. And I'm OK with that. I just wanted the game to be better than "too frantic to be any fun," which was my main reason for putting the game down in November after just 20 hours of what felt like a forced speedrun.

SUBTLE REBALANCES

Call me crazy, but I swear the devs fixed the little gremlins in the code that made certain items seemingly refuse to spawn—I never lacked for lantern moths in the first 20 levels of the mine, for example. I was able to donate one and have another available by the time I hit level 20. Likewise, in general, it seems like if I needed to go to a section of the map and find something, I didn't have to grind for hours for it. Others have mentioned this being a problem in the Deep Woods; I'm not there yet (my nine-to-five means I have to wait until tonight as of this writing to make progress in that direction.)

But overall, the game seems a bit more like they've tightened some of the loose screws, at least in the previously existing content.

QUEST DESIGN

The game seems to be pushing the player more toward acquiring everything early as development goes on. I've got some open quests for items I don't have the buildings for yet, specifically relating to farm animals, something that in my first two playthroughs I only got cracking on after I'd maxed out the tool values from the mines and gotten the main-quest demand for eggs and cheese from that mission.

It seems much earlier in the process that the game's now expecting that to be done, and I like the "hey, player, please engage with all the systems" element to that. It's mechanically interesting in a genre that seems to have lost the plot on actually challenging the player (more on this in a bit.)

Of course, the main quest itself remains a nice Portal-like "the whole game is an extended tutorial in a lot of ways" as it merges increasing complexity with the game's narrative. Any developer who's not cribbing heavily from Valve missed an important lesson in game design, but I'll leave that for the YouTubers like JM8 of Second Wind and Mark Brown of Game Maker's Toolkit to discuss in further detail.

OVERALL VIBE

I haven't reached a point yet where this is any different from how it was before; I haven't seen any content beyond four hearts for any of the major NPCs because I'm only 10 hours into a playthrough—FWIW, Celine is my waifu of choice in this game, so you'll be hearing more of my thoughts on her as this player-diary gets updates.

DISCLAIMER

I come into this game as someone whose gaming style is "mastery of mechanics". On Bartle's Taxonomy of Gamer Types, I'm an Opportunist Achiever/Scientist Explorer hybrid; I like taking games apart to see what makes them tick and then using that knowledge to master them. Put another way, I like Cities: Skylines a lot more than I like Dorf Romantik.

And I have less than zero interest in the "cozy" elements like decorating a farm or getting pretty-color animals unless those things contribute in some way to mechanical power. Likewise, the social elements of these games, while certainly driven in part by personal taste and by how I connect with the writing (looking at you, Leah in Stardew Valley and Mi-an in Sandrock), are way down my list of concerns.

SO WOT...DO YOU THINK?

Stealing a line from JM8. How is this update connecting with you in terms of your playstyle and how well it matches what you're looking for from this kind of game? I'm always interested to hear perspectives radically different from my own especially.

[Shiya64]

The speedrunner-time scale is the worst aspect of this game imo and is the main reason I haven't touched it since. Was so excited for this update too. What a letdown.

EDIT: nvm, I got the time mod to work, finally. Can finally have fun again. :D

[Jinx]

Originally posted by Shiya64:

The speedrunner-time scale is the worst aspect of this game imo and is the main reason I haven't touched it since. Was so excited for this update too. What a letdown.

It sounds like it's significantly better now, though? Why are you let down? I was a bit frustrated with the days being too short, too, but 25% slower sounds just about right.

[TamanduaGirl]

Originally posted by Jinx:

Originally posted by Shiya64:

The speedrunner-time scale is the worst aspect of this game imo and is the main reason I haven't touched it since. Was so excited for this update too. What a letdown.

It sounds like it's significantly better now, though? Why are you let down? I was a bit frustrated with the days being too short, too, but 25% slower sounds just about right.

The base was 12.5 before, the base is now 14.5, the max being 18 or so. That actually makes the max more then 25% slower than before.

People wont be happy unless they have 40 minute days as an option. And before someone says, I don't want 40 minute days, okay, but some do and some games do have sliders that go that high. And there would still be complaints till they get it.

And to be totally fair people complaining about the time are the minority even though very vocal. Research has actually been done and the vast majority of players will play a game at the standard speed no matter how absurdly slow or fast it may be and never touch the settings.

Now I would have trouble getting home in time from the mine after doing 5 levels in this before getting the horse so I think upping the base time a bit was a good move to make early game better. Time was moving faster than I would expect based on say traveling a similar distance in stardew or other games. But other than that it didn't effect me so I'll probably still play at base time, especially since the horse makes getting around super fast.

Also making the game too slow will make other earns later, like teleportation or the horse not mean much, if you could already get everything done in one day.

[SimuLord]

Originally posted by TamanduaGirl:

The base was 12.5 before, the base is now 14.5, the max being 18 or so. That actually makes the max more then 25% slower than before.

Nice catch, I didn't realize they'd also rebalanced the default speed. I do think 18 is a very nice sweet spot.

And 40-minute days are nice in Sandrock. But one could make the argument that My Time games aren't even in the same genre as Stardew-likes; they play more like an action RPG in reverse (games like Fallout 4 and Ubisoft's body of work have action as the primary gameplay loop and crafting as the secondary, while Sandrock especially is the other way round, but it's the same overall experience.) An action RPG is by necessity going to require a different approach to design than a farming/life sim game.

[SimuLord]

OK, I've completed the new content and reached the dead-end at about the 30-hour mark (late Fall, year 1.) And I gotta say, I have the same problem with the game that I had the first two times I played through it, namely that the game leaves me cold once it's not railroading me through a story. If I'd played from an old save, it would've been over in an evening's play at most, and I kinda feel like I burned 30 hours on something that's good but simply not as good as or not worth my time compared to other games both in this genre and elsewhere.

I'm not so sure I'm going to want to pick this up again in later updates. The game just feels like there's nothing propping it up beyond wanting to see what happens next, and once you see that, it loses its hook.

And it isn't even a case of the day length still being too short; I'm progressing through the content at the same rate whether it's a 12.5 minute day or an 18 minute one, I'm just feeling less rushed at the slower speed to do content that's gated more behind the passing of days than the passing of time within a day (complete one quest, wait to be given the next while gathering new resources.)

Caldarus is a bore in his human form, none of the romance options jump out at me, and "ooh pretty colors" is a poor reason to engage with the animal breeding (especially once I figured out I could buy milk and skip the cheesemaking delay.)

I'd rate this game a 7/10 right now.