Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General World Time and Weather in TB?

While I haven't been wholeheartedly supporting RTWP over TB, there is one factor that makes me lean toward RTWP: World Time. I mean day-night cycle. And weather.

In DOS games there is no day-night cycle - actually, there's no "time" at all - which is kind of a shame. Why a shame? Because in an RPG, day-night cycle is a big factor in designing story events. It also helps make the world feel alive. When I was playing the first DOS, I was always bugged by the fact that some regions are eternally day, while others are eternally night, with eternal rain.

A RTWP game doesn't have to have day-night cycle. The Dragon Age games don't. Now my question is, can a game with TB combat have day-night cycle? Real time when not in combat is easy, but what happens once combat starts? "Time" basically stands still in TB combat. Even if you implement something like each turn advances time by a certain amount, it still just doesn't feel the same.

And removing day-night cycle from a BG game would be a huge bummer. In both BG games many quests and events are tied to time of day, how many days have passed, and so on. You are told your party are poisoned and have exactly ten days to live. After ten days, if you haven't cured the poison, your party die. Or, two weeks after being infected with lycanthropy, all your party members transform into werewolves and game is over. All such events can totally happen during combat, as soon as the ten days or two weeks mark is reached. Vampires have specific behaviors related to whether it is daytime or nighttime. In both BG games, many NPC's and shops are only active during certain time windows. Normal shops active during the day, some black market shops only at night, and so on.

Also, weather. As in, sometimes it would rain for a while. With a chance of lightning. Then sometimes it would snow. NOT eternal rain accompanying eternal night like in DOS.

So either we somehow perfectly implement all these things in a TB-combat game, or we forgo all these things altogether?

EDIT: After making this post, I see it more clearly that, it just CAN'T be a BALDUR'S GATE game if it doesn't have real world time.

is good larien listen this requests ,is a true step foward to we have a bg 3 indeed.

i dont see how world time would affect TB vs RTWP honestly.
Your RTWP argument can be summed up with this:
Does world time move in RTWP while the game is paused? No. Likewise, in a turn based game , the world time would only move when turns are executed, not when moves are planned.
Unless we are going with an OS like System where time moves normal out of combat, in that case yes, time would move during combat, but this is not supported by DnD5E rules so i dont think that theyd go there.
not to mention that im still thinking well get neither TB nor RTWP

but having time and weather would be nice.

I understand why OS2 didnt have it.
Not having daytimes has the big advantage that you can create unique lighting for any given situation, this leads to stuff like the spooky atmosphere in the Wolf abombination fight, or the sudden rainstorm in the paladins encampment.

Still, having properly running time, especialy with events that only happen at certain daytiems would be nice and especialy a feature id like in NWN style peresistant worlds

The passage of time marked by the cycle of day and night, the months passing, weather changes... these things definitely increase immersion. I really hope Larian does include them in BG3.

I wanted to post in support of this notion... I noticed this thread after I posted my own on (nearly) the same subject. Though I focused on how time interacts with 5e's rest options and ability/power management, having weather and day/night cycles are all important parts of creating an immersive RPG experience.

I feel confident that they can greatly improve on DOS2 in this regard and look forward to seeing what they come up with.

There are interesting mechanics in 5e that I found interesting to use in a future BG game: The landscape-related ones. "Difficult terrain" and "Cover"
https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/5e_SRD:Cover
https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Movement#toc_3 Difficult terrain is related to weather.

Since in DoS games you are able to use the terrain and weather as a weapon, it would be cool if they implement those.

Cover was also used in RT strategy games like Warhammer 40K so it would be no problem to use it in RTwP or TB. Games like Pathfinder used the difficult terrain feature and some cool weather effects that give penalties.

Larian does not have those features confirmed in any interview I know of. We have to wait until the next interview with Swen "Spoiler-free" Vincke, but sign me in for this.

originally OS2 was supposed to have a cover system simmilar to XCOM but they never implemented it