Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback The issue with day/night cycle and how it can be addressed.

Just like the rest of your post...its all your opinion and I have a different one. Its sad to me that people want Larian to spend resources on things I dont want when modders can add it.

Not my opinion, don't promise something you can't deliver. Funny you finish your comment with "me, myself and I" so just like my opinion to you, yours means less to me. Romance options and "origin stories" are less relevant than gameplay mechanics and coherent stories. Just take the example of...well BG1&2, a two decade old game that could be arsed.

What's bothering you in history? So far, what is available in EA is good (it's not even 1 act in full).
That the tadpole is an important plot point, what does it matter?

People, not to play the role of backseat moderator, but any chance we could try to stick to the topic?

Because all the rambling about the narrative and writing, what modders can or can't do and how much you may be "saddened" by the way Larian spend money could ideally be argued elsewhere.
And as we are on it I'll say preventively that I don't particularly give a shit about the "evil path" either.

This discussion was supposed to be strictly about the technical feasibility of a specific feature: day/night cycle.

I hear you. Lots of laziness from Larian's side indeed. This is the true reason why we don't have D/N cycle.

There are plenty of solutions.

I think option 3 is a realistic implementable option for day-night cycles

I completely disagree with your premise. There is nothing lazy about it. It's a question of resource allocation. Someone made the choice to spend the resources that it would take to implement a day/night cycle on other aspects of the game. And I thank them for it. And while my opinion is no more important than yours, it is no less important either.

So since they allocated the resources they did to get us to where we are, what would you cut out of the current game to reallocate for a day/night system? Same goes for people who don't want a static camp or want 6 party members. What are you willing to give up for that? I think a day/night system like #3 would be cool. I think a dynamic camp would be cool. I think 6 party members would be cool. But at what cost? Would I rather see those and only have 4 classes right now? Maybe no subclasses? I don't know what is an apples to apples comparison of resources. But to call it lazy as opposed to a deliberate choice of how to allocate a finite set of resources is absurd.

I swear, sometime I get almost the impression some you people take genuine enjoyment in shitting on someone else's thread and purposefully derail it away from what's the explicitly stated purpose.
This is all stuff we already discussed elsewhere and that I made perfectly clear in the opening post I didn't wish to repeat here.

BUT since there seems to be no way around it, and since you are asking: there's a shitload I'd gladly "give away" for some of these features (even pretending to ignore the disingenuous attempt to suggest that raising the party limit to six would be a massive undertaking).

First of all? A feature that arguable takes more work of all these things combined while adding a lot less: "playable origin characters".
I genuinely don't give a shit about them and the effort necessary to implement each one of these could have been better used to not make the world feel like a (pretty!) crampled cardboard setpiece frozen in a single instant in time and where everything is three steps away from another thing.

Every origin story playable both in third -as companion- and first person perspective - as protagonist- plus the eventuality that each one of them may be fully voiced in the end? Talk about wasteful. I could appreciate something like this as a fanciful bonus on top of a game that already nailed its core set of feature, not on one that is giving up most of what makes an adventure feel immersive.

3. would be great and already make the game feel very different being able to move at night. I think the way you worded "static moment in time world" was a very accurate "feel" of how the world is. I made very similar thread a week ago although I didn't add solutions as it was more a question of why not. I got the replies saying Larian have already said this will never be implemented because "reasons". I don't accept that as you said they are willing to write away god knows how many man hours writing and voicing 5-6? origin stories.

I actually can't think of another way of implementing day/night cycles other than a wait slider and a time relative changing light source. A static one button click to night would involve changing something from 1 to 0 in a script lol. Too much work right . I understand Larian may be thinking they need to add a bunch of assets that effect the entire world but if the world is static anyway what difference would it make?

The schedules for the various NPCs and different lighting with candles etc. would be quite a lot of effort. If the resources are there I would welcome it. I remember that even the somewhat primitive implementation in Gothic added a lot of Atmosphere. The nights were so dark that it was unwise to take a long walk late on the day because one could get lost easily. NPCs sleeping and shifts of guards etc. would also make sneaking into the goblin camp and other locations easier and therefore various playstyles would benefit from adapting to the Schedules of potential targets. I would also welcome the NPCs doing a bit more than just standing on their spot all day and wander a few meters around like they did in Morrowind. Of course that does make quest design more difficult and it is already easy to miss some quests without the NPCs moving.

Gothic is already a case of having a fairly complex day/night cycle, in general.
Especially since NPCs in all Piranha Bytes games don't "teleport around". When you follow them they actually walk every step of their journey from one place to the other, even when they move half world map away.

I wouldn't even dream to ask anything of that complexity in BG3.
Hell, for a start I wouldn't ask or expect anything at all. At the most basic level I'd be fine even with "signpost NPCs" staying where they are day and night but STILL have passing hours, light/dark cycle, tiredness/fatigue/exhaustion and so on...
Everything on top of this absolutely bare-boned implementation would be welcomed but not expected, let alone "demanded".

I'd vote for 3rd solution with time paused in battles.

But what would you say about another one I had in mind:
The time wouldn't pass on it's own but it'll take it's own turns after fights, events, progressing in quests e.t.c. After some amount of time-turns it's late evening and day-time NPC go to sleep, night-time NPC come out to play. And we will have something like 2 time-turns to interact with night state of world, before our characters will simply tell that they are exhausted and refuse to do anything but going to sleep. After sleeping we are as always at early morning state. If we would ever get wholly night quest (or our vampire will loose his tadpole) we should be able to skip a day to switch to night life and vice versa.

In multiplayer considering how we can split party and do talking or fighting in 2 different places it could be made into 1 time-turn for 2 simultaneous interactions.

I'm expecting that to both add the cycle without making players feel urged by short digital day and force players to go to camp for those story bits in more controllable way, and even allow Larian to skip some work on NPC schedules.

+1 this game needs day/light system of any sort implemented as for all the many reasons already mentioned here and in the other threads and boards...

Tuco :
" Solution 3 - We have a day/night cycle AND the option to alter its speed (wait/rest) like in most games of this type, but ONE player, presumably the host of the multiplayer session, needs to be in charge of it and everyone else willing to accept what he decides about resting or skipping time."

Right now anyone can request a rest and other players have to accept. Theoratically it doesn't change much but it's a huge QoL in MP. MP is the only way i played dos 2 and bg3 so after a couple of hundred of hours i can tell you it's quite important that any player can start the process. The time management being built around the host or not really is a technical question only Larian can answer. The QoL doesn't need to be dropped due to this cycle from our perspective. Or at least shouldn't after me.

Putting aside the argument around immersion, gameplay wise:
1) It could change a lot with different possible approaches to quests[Some enemies being setup differently at night, maybe you can discover something during the night that you couldn't during the day and vice verse.
2) More content from replayability perspective due to the above possibility.
3) Sneaking could be impacted by it too unless you're fighting enemies with infravision in which case your approach would need to be different. More spells usage and combinations during fights.




Issues with it?

Immersion breaking+you might be missing on content.
1) You need to speak with someone at night and it's one of the last quests you have to do in this zone so you ....wait. For a whole day. Only to speak with this one guy.
2) If you need to do some quests at night and you have a timed quest to do on the same time you will have to drop one of them sometimes. In the above example for instance you won't be able to wait for the guy if you have to hurry somewhere else. (Like the tadpole, we don't know how it will play out in the end. NO SPOILERS but I've seen things I can't unsee in the data mining thread.


Right now a day passes every time you go to sleep( night visible at camp). The benefit of it is the player controls how time moves onward. It's a way more controllable environment from story building perspective. Otherwise the main quest has to be detached from how time elapses OR you end up with" Pathfinder".





As many on the forum I love the idea of Day/night cycle and I think any D&D and RPG fan can list how night can impact the gameplay for hours. BUT on the very same time how it impacts the credibility of a story where " Every minute count!". Yeah it does, let me wait a couple of days until the merchant gets new items to buy. First things first. My point is in BG3 we don't have a couple of things I considered silly in every single game with dynamic day/night system.

Do the few simple gameplay mechanics listed above or in other posts here outweights how Larian solved this in BG3? Based on EA 100% after me.
BG3 in it's current form, even with NPC's acting in the exact same way during the day as during the night would simply look better. But it would mean the whole " tadpole " thing would need to be solved differently. Otherwise the main quest wants you to hurry, you want to wait a couple more hours to see your merchant. If you can see him anyway during the night then why did we implement the cycle to begin with?

I think my last paragraph here is one of the reasons we won't see day/night cycle in BG3 tbh^^ They already made a choice and designed the game around no day/night cycle. Right now a day night cycle could impact combat and visuals. Is it enought to justify it? Well... Only Larian will tell

I mean, these are all "issues" that boil down to "have sensible quest design, especially IF you put a time limit on it", more than anything.
Obviously if you have a timed quest that requires interaction with an NPC you should make it possible to reach that NPC at any point before the deadline is reached. Otherwise you are just being unfair to the player.



He does. To an almost artificial degree in fact. I played across the almost entirely of the EA content without a single rest. After a while characters started assuming that we were "days" into our adventure in their conversation, when I had yet to experience my first night.


You say that as if it was a bad thing. For all its occasional small shortcomings, there is a lot that Pathfinder nailed better than BG3 so far despise having a small fragment of Larian's budget.


I have to ask... In what part of this story every minute counts? You learn pretty quickly that even the "tadpole urgency" is not so urgent after all and characters never stop pointing that out (to the point it's almost redundant how much they stress to you that "you should have transformed already").

By the moment they pretty much designed the game as if the cycle exists. NPC and our own characters are referring to days passing, imagine how surprised I was without resting even once, when my character could sincerely say to an NPC "I'm fine. There are a few days passed with no signs of turning". It was day 1 still going for me. And without going to rest often enough you're skipping content.
Someones decision to wait for the merchant is their stupid decision to wait for the merchant. Larian showed more than once in their games (including this one) that they are ready to give players the opportunity to act stupid and then punish for that in making sense way. So it would be only consistent for them to do the same here.

@Taco:

Regarding the quest urgency: It's often pointed out that " it's not a big deal" but on the other hand it starts with " we must hurry " and goes to " maybe it's not so much of a problem". At this point if they were mistaken once they can be making a mistake again. Personally BG3 made me not trust any NPC i find in the game.

Regarding not using rest: I had the same issue. It could be solved by dialogues being based on how many rests were taken up to this point. Right now the whole game assumes I won't be able to beat all of the first encounters without sleeping even once. The fact you didn't rest so much though means they achieved their goal to some extent. See below for what I mean.

Regarding the comparison to pathfinder: I took it just as a comparison of how "timed quests" can be approached. Personally, I felt more engaged in the quest knowing I have a given amount of time to fulfill it than with how Larian approached it in BG3. But it's an intresting way too.



It looks like we deviate from the subject of " The issue with day/night cycle and how it can be addressed. " but in fact, we don't. Day/Night cycle impacts how time elapses in the game.

A dynamic night/day cycle puts the time passage out of player controls. In BG3 you are the one controlling when a day elapse. While it's 100% artificial( as you pointed out above) it's a quite interesting take at time management in a game.

What we have right now in BG3:
1)If you know how the game mechanic work, if you explore (aka find food, potions etc) you can rest very little. This way preventing time progress in the game. In your posts above you pointed out the possible issues with this fact(Characters pointing out few days past while...well...they didn't ^^).

2)On the other hand if you rest very often you get mind flayer powers, your characters point out at one point " they don't feel too well ". Despite the tadpole being in stasis you have reasons to think it's not a good idea to fuck around.

I feel in BG3 they wanted to create a timed quest without creating a hard limit for " game over".



3)If you rest too much you will probably get consequences due to this fact. But it won't be " you lost". Rather getting closer to the end of ceramorphosis process.
Good sides?
- You're not punished for exploring( you won't meet the nightfall while looking for hidden chests around the map).
- You're not punished for talking to NPC and taking your time[time can be paused during dialogues as a solution if we have dynamic day/night cycle].
- You're "punished" only if you rest too much but that's admitting gaining new skills is a punishment.


Downsides?
-Visuals[ Druid grove at night *.*]
-Immersion ( Some will agree, others won't. But if if the player is the "time master" then it totally goes against immersion).
-Combat mechanics are a bit more limited.
-Quests linked to "nightfall" are out of the question for obvious reasons.

Everything I wrote above looks like a system planned around dealing with consequences of the fact of NOT implementing a day/night cycle more than a good reason for not doing it. Doesn't it?

I think the main way of addressing this issue in BG3 is ask ourselves is it really that important for time to be under our control? Wouldn't it be better for a story where you fight against time to give you that feeling that the game won't wait for you ? Time goes onward regardless of your choices and EVEN if a day/night cycle would also be 100% artificial ( i don't think Larian wants to implement an in-game time to complete the main quest, not really their way of doing things) it would still make the world more believable wouldn't it. Even if it doesn't have impact on NPC scripts for the sake of simplicity.

I am totally for day and night cycles, given how atmospheric it can be and also adding interesting concepts like shadows for stealth, dakvision, encounter strength /effects on initiative and so forth.
So my suggestion here to cater for MP is as following:

1 - Whomever puts the game into Turn Based slows the world clock accordingly, for everyone. Do I "need" the clock moving if I am not involved? What benefit do I get / what limitations do I have from the clock moving slower (given currently it doesn't move at all)?

2 - If I am concerned about catering for randoms "spamming" TB and preventing the Worl Clock from moving forward, then either assign a set number of times that an individual can enter TB outside of the group , or allow host to override. Frankly given the nature of this type of game, if someone does anything you don't like, you quit or boot said player. I can't see many people playing MP with randoms, but maybe I am wrong on that count.

I suppose the issue with D/N cycles is schedules of NPC's. Currently it's a non-issue because it's always day, so night only happens when you define it and as such you don't need to worry what anyone else is doing. Add day and night and all of a sudden you have immersion issues regarding what the NPC's are doing.

As someone who honestly doesn't care at all about day/night cycles (seriously, to me it all feels like complexity for complexitys sake) I think option 3 would be best for those who want the feature.

Personally I would honestly prefer it to stay the way it is, but I know I'm in the minority in this.

1: Right now if let's say an hour of gameplay is a day then is a turn like a minute? That would mean in game a fight with 20 turns is already a their of the day elapsing.Right now, assuming there are no consequences to time elapsing this shouldn't be a problem in anyway.
2: Randoms spamming TB in MP would be the equivalent of randoms suiciding your characters in DOS2 or BG2. I don't think the influence of random players hoping in is an issue.
3: Schedules of NPC's : Right now the general vibe seems to be to ignore that aspect if needed for the sake of nightfall. Well... Mr.X will be selling swords at 2AM. At 2PM. 24 hours basically. It is an aspect that comes with it's own set of issues with existing solutions from other titles( a note saying " brb in Y hours" etc). That isn't an conceptual issue, multiple solutions can be found. Quest would need to be aligned to take those schedules under consideration if such schedules would be implemented.