Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Day/Night Cycle and Dynamic Weather

please Larian, re-think about adding day/night cycle. it is A MUST have for a proper crpg let alone Forgotten Realms game in this day and age.

It'd be really weird if this supposedly big budget game doesn't have features that lots of smaller or older games have. It doesn't even need to be a super complex lighting system with ray tracing or cool weather effects like The Witcher 3 were trees would sway in the wind from a storm, but give us *something* to make the world not feel so static. Perhaps this is something we'll see down the line.

Exactly. Solasta with 17 people was able to do it.

Solasta isn't a good example since its a very liner game and i dont remember the game having any special benefits during night time aside from cosmetic.
Larian could probably do it within a few weeks or less, the big extras are the scripting of 100's of NPC during nights time, than we would expect new events and quests that's why they aren't doing it in my opinion.

Still impressive, plus it even doesn't need full scripts to be nice.

How is a clock, lighting and rain "a huge workload"? If Larian said this is "out of the question" then maybe WotC shouldn't have granted a licence. Half arsed homebrew DOS like BG3 isn't something I would have paid early access for, end of story. I said if before, everytime something is changed, not implemented, homebrewed or removed because Larian can't be arsed, a game based on the D&D lore and rules becomes....well not based on D&D. I understand devs have artistic licence and require some freedoms and I don't want a 1:1 creation of the 5e rules if it doesn't work. However if you don't even bother implementing the rules to begin with how can you argue against it?

If you can make it dark inside why not outside? Implement a moving light source from above over a finite period then.... make it go away, sounds pretty easy to me. I don't even care if everyone just does what they do during the day or sleep on a roll next to their position. This isn't a small feature you can dismiss out of hand especially if it affects so much of the race lore. You will never see Drow in daylight unless dragged kicking and screaming, ever. Nor will they attack a settlement outside the dead of night. Tadpoles are becoming more McGuffin cheese story telling by the day.

Making a McGuffin the apparent cause for all the deviation from D&D is cringey af. The tadpole makes you warp to camp at night and warp back in the morning, the tadpole makes Drow and vampires daytime creatures, the tadpole makes it daytime all the time, the tadpole makes lv 1-3 goblins opaf with 20-30hp, the tadpole makes a 6 inch step a 9th level class advantage, the tadpole gives mages backstab advantages, the tadpole gives piles of specialist ammo and bombs to mundane garbage one hit mobs, the tadpole makes a DOS clone and calls it BG......so on and so forth.

I understand there is a need to please console players and speed runners. They want DOS3, pretty sure you can fudge a few numbers and add it to difficulty settings.

I commented on another thread how much I would love a day/night cycle. Such a missed opportunity.

I also wondered whether an Elder Scrolls style wait system would be well suited, giving the player some control over conditions. For example, waiting to attack at night to facilitate stealth and inhibit non-dark vision races, or waiting for the mist to pass to better search an area.

This could also be tied to the rest system, which is completely flawed at the moment.

The more I think about and play this game, the more I realise how un-immersive it is in so many respects, despite having so much potential.

I've seen some games mange with a running "clock" and when you rest you choose how long you rest for, and in multi player you have to both choose the same amount of time in order to be able to accept the rest. This could also be neat, you carry around a bedroll with you, you can rest anywhere you want, (get in a short rest in a cave for example) but if you rest outside your camp you risk attack.


I think we'd be ok to not have the players in multiplayer need to choose the same amount of rest time since you can already explore relatively independently, maybe just make sure the party members that are chained to you auto unchain when you rest that way the other player can chain them if they want to wake up earlier.

Implementing a day/night cycle like this would end up affecting the long rest spams. currently the long rests do cycle a day through, so technically that could be used for quest time passage, but implementing a day/night mechanic and having the fast travel act like it did in BG1 where different travel jumps take a different amount of time, you would then have to choose "do I take 2 days worth of travel time just to go back to my main camp and lose 6 hours (4 for some) long resting then 2 more days of travel back here" or "do I take the risk of trying to short rest in this cave, maybe alternating watches but ultimately save myself a few days but I may be ambushed"


not suggesting sitting at a bedroll staring for 4 hours on watch either fyi. suggesting having an option available for "watch x hours" or "sleep x hours" and if player a choose to sleep 2 hours while player b chooses to watch 2 hours the game can roll through those two hours almost instantaneously (with background rolls of ambush chance/perception/etc....)

if player a chooses "watch 2 hours" while player b chooses "sleep 4 hours" it could skip through 2 hours worth of time then player a has 2 hours to do whatever while player b is still sleeping. which... that could get weird.... control another party member that's awake then and go do stuff???? idk actually....

I would like to add that day/night is not necessarily mere aesthetics but also carries a potential solution to the many complaints about short/long rest being meaningless.

Hey question for the moderator(s), could this thread be merged with the other Day/night cycle thread that was recently merged ? Thanks

+1

Rethink this Larian. Not asking for AI to begin to simulate proper 24 hour activity cycle. Just a simpler, more elegant representation of the passage of time that should improve immersion, strengthen the storyline (ticking time bombs), as well as work in conjunction with the D&D rest mechanic/balancing.

Imagine how shitty it will feel to reach Baldur's Gate, start moving across its quartiers and streets... And realize how that will also be constantly frozen in a single moment of the day: no night lights, no vampire ambushes in dark corners of the city, no shady thugs hanging out in some alley, etc.
A constant mid-day, across the entire city and its surrounding. For the entire playthrough.

What a bummer that will be.

What if, as a compromise (if they really don't want to program in an actual day/night cycle which changes over time), they just had a "day mode" and a "night mode" of the city, and you can switch between them by going to an inn or something?

Imagine being fine with it and hoping they spend their resources elsewhere.

There are all kind of perverts around.

A DA2-like solution did cross my mind as I was writing my previous post here. It would be better than no night ever, of course... but not the best solution by far. I think the very basic implementation of time of day would be relatively easy to achieve and at the same time have very good pay-off in terms of enriching the game experience. Transitions could be made like in BG1/2 for extra simplicity. Or even simpler, just day/night (BG1/2 had more than two light levels.)

That the day has come when we have to see an AAA game having no day n night cycle I would have never imagined when I first time played Zelda OoT in 1998 and was like "Wow that how it feels to have time changed in 3D games and the different elemenst/events. So immersive. I dont want to miss it ever"
22 years later I have to see that thread here ....

I imagine (seriously hope) they will at least have some scripted night missions. I personally think Goblins vs Druid battle should had been at night.




Exactly. BG3 is a regression in many, many ways unfortunately.

Day/night cycle could be worth addition if there was something behind it. Like bandints and monsters appearing in some parts of the world at nights (not entirely random on the map but ambush in places where it has some tactical sense). Making day/night mechanic just for having it is a waste.

I would deduct 40 % from my review. If it were a 100 % game it would get 60% in the end if there is no day n night cycle