I see why people might be annoyed, but to me the fact that they dropped this feature is not a bad thing nor was it a surprise. There was no way they were gonna create a vast world with schedules when even Bethesda half failed doing it properly in Oblivion with FAR less interactivity and that had a budget nearly 100 times higher. Let's not forget that schedules mean creating systems and functions to cope with interruptions and NPC deaths / attacks, or coping with players putting giant boxes in front of doors so the guards would be trapped
Proper schedules would require a fully developed system and concept of towns and governance. Including fail-saves so that players can't kill an entire town and never be blamed for it. If there are actions without consequences in a game, then they are sandbox gameplay, not RPG gameplay.
When it comes down to it, I am neither a fan of killable quest-givers nor of day and night SCHEDULES. But I hope this does not mean the engine can't handle dynamic day and night cycles. For mods particular this is an important feature.
I just hope the AI personalities for the 2nd character are done PROPERLY. Because to me that is the biggest part of immersion in an RPG. If personalities develop properly depending on how we interact with them or if they are just "stupid scripts" basically a default setting for each choice, with no logic or individuality behind it.... I hope Larian realizes that this single feature makes up 33% of what I want out of this game. (The other 66% is good writing and proper crafting/character building).
It worries me greatly that literally not a single mention of this feature was made related to the beta. It IS in the beta, right?
