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.

I'm not a game designer, but I believe this can be solved with degrees of complexity, implementing one step at a time.

Step 1 - Only Cosmetic Change: Place two instances, day and night, in the map, adjusting the position of the light for each one. Everything else remains the same. Short rest doesn't make time pass.

Step 2 - The Basic: Set two positions for each NPC – one for the day (a) and one for the night (b). You can talk to them normally. Applies lighting-based stealth modifiers, with the ability to extinguish torches for better modifiers. Short rest doesn't make time pass.

Step 3 - Extra Dialogues: NPCs approached at night, if they are sleeping, will speak a line of dialogue complaining, but after that, they speak normally with the characters. Sellers may refuse to sell items before dawn. Open doors at day can be closed at night. When you sleep in the camp, the game asks if you want to wake up during the day or at night.

Step 4 - Dangers of the Night: Some enemies and new creatures appear during the night (like worgs or skeletons).

Step 5 - Four Stages: Adds four stages of the day. Morning (a), Afternoon (b), Evening (c), and Night (d). NPCs can now have four different positions instead of just two (day and night). When you press short rest the game asks if you want to wait until the next stage.

Step 6 - Gradual Time Passage: Now just let time pass naturally, from one stage to another. NPCs will walk to their next location when the switch happening.

Extra: Multiplayer
- When a player asks for time to pass (by pressing the short rest button) the other players must agree. Simple.

A fairly good summary, Gustavo.
Incidentally we were just going back to this specific topic in another thread ( https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=774374 )
and some of us were making very similar points.

Somehow despise the feature being more or less a standard in the genre across dozen of games of every tier and budget, Larian seems to think it's too much to ask even when doing a bona fide blockbuster.

P.S. I quoted your post in that thread, if you don't mind.

this sounds really good!

+1

I'd be satisfied with Larian only going up to step #2 or #3. Happy with them implementing up to Step 4. And ecstatic with step 6.

That's the beauty of it, isn't it? You can choose how much to invest in it.
And the sky is the limit. 30 years later I'm still waiting for a RPG doing day/night NPC scheduling better than Ultima VII.

I posted this in the mega thread, but I feel like that one has died down quite a while ago, so I'm posting it here again (I hope thats ok)


Edit: One thing I want to add is that this system has another advantage over the progression of time in real-time (other than being simpler): I don't know about you, but I always feel stressed when I know there is a clock ticking in the background. And I don't want to feel stressed when I'm playing; it makes me explore less and generally reduces my enjoyment. If time would progress only when a short rest is done, I could 'waste time' as much as I want; for exploration, conversations etc., without feeling stressed.

Frankly? I think your system is a bit too elaborate.
It could work, but it's absolutely unthinkable to suggest to the same Larian which doesn't even want to implement far more basic solutions.

The point here would ideally be to come up with the most simple, cost-effective and efficient form of implementation to suggest to them (reality check: "only to watch them ignore it anyway").
They won't give as a binary, mostly-cosmetic solution, let alone a multi-phase fragmentation of the daily cycle.

If the point was to come up with with the most fanciful and elaborate form of D/N cycle ever made we could have just wrote "Do what Ultima VII did but way better!!!" with dozens of exclamation marks.

Also, on a side note: I think it's worth to stress that players ALREADY need to agree on rest now. It's important, because it needs to be clear that it's not "a complication" the D/N cycle would introduce.

How is this more elaborate than an actual clock ticking in the background? If daytime is dictated by resting, all of the multiplayer-realtime-turnbased problems aren't even an issue anymore. And as you said, agreeing on a rest is already in the game. So you wouln't even need to add that, it's already there.

I know Larian has said they won't do it. But I will voice my opinion on the issue anyway because if I don't, I have no right to complain afterwards.

Because it’s a multi-phase state of the day that you are suggesting?

Possibly with multiple intermediate changes involved.

I’m not sure how it could even be argued that it would be simpler than just having your standard, videogame-y “A day/night loop lasts X hours”.

And frankly sounds even a bit too exploitable. A short rest for each few hours passing? I could probably finish most of the EA content without having a single full day passing with that type of dynamic. Even if it amounted on 30 plus hours of in-game exploration.

Last but not least I’m honestly not sure what would you find so stressful about having an in-game day passing while minding your own business. We aren’t exactly being haunted by pressing deadlines, regardless of how many days you wasted.

It's only really an exploit if you gain something from it. Sure you can do that, but you gain no benefit from doing so (which brings me again to the fact that we're supposed to believe that we have a major problem stuck in our heads, but we can waste as much time as we want; although that's a different discussion altogether)

As I understand it, the idea is that a long rest involves camping for the night, so it is automatically the next morning after a long rest. If you don't use any short rests, it goes from morning to the next morning when you long rest. If you use one short rest it goes from afternoon to the next morning, and if you use two short rests it goes from evening to the next morning.

I suppose you could never use any rests ever, and thus complete the game on the first morning. Unless of course there are mandatory rest cutscenes as the story progresses. But what would you gain from that? Maybe they can have a Steam Achievement called "No Rest for the Wicked" when you make it through the game without using the rest button. I don't see how it can be exploited though.

As a general self imposed rule I tend to rest as little as necessary when playing these games. I like managing the scarcity of spells and be careful of when to use them and I also don't like exploiting the convenience of "rest as much as you want after every fight".
Even in the old BG games my standard is that I used to rest only when my party was tired and that I conceded myself ONE long rest for each big dungeon if necessary.
Even playing this EA before I went through the entirety of it twice mostly doing two long rests at top.

The only time I did more is when I was deliberately testing companion dialogue progression.


But fine. My personal idiosyncrasies about wasting time aside, I'm still not fond in principle of a system that allows you to go on for unlimited time without a single day passing as long as you don't push a button. Even when you are spending 30 or more hours roaming.
Also, what you are suggesting would basically maintain a trait I already dislike a lot about the current system : the implication that almost all the action happens at daytime and the night is just for instanced resting.

If the last time-phase is evening/night, then you can adventure in the night as well. Only when you then long rest, you progress to morning of the next day. There is no time-phase in which you could only sleep and do nothing else. Maybe we misunderstand each other?

But anyway, we have different opinions on how a day/night cycle is best introduced, and that's ok.

Yeah, but my initial objection to your initial solution isn't really about "liking different things". I wouldn't have particular problems with your solution (aside from absolutely NOT SHARING your worry for "real time passing in the background". i can hardly even imagine what's that even about).

To use a friend's words you are asking to someone who doesn't want to concede you an inch (the most basic, binary D/N system conceivable) to give you a mile (a multi-step solution with several phases of the day and "hard roadblocks" to pass manually between them).

Every current suggestion on a D/N cycle (something that, let me remind you, LARIAN ALREADY SAID DOESN'T WANT TO DO) should be some sort of bargain. An attempt to offer them the most simple and convenient possible solution while still getting the feature implemented to some degree.

Increasing the complexity of the system suggested just because "wouldn't that be cool?" is not going to do any of us any favor. At most just give Larian more arguments in favor of "See? If you give them a bit they'll want more. It's better to not do it at all".

That's why I said Gustavo's suggestion/summary was excellent: because he starts at the very bottom offering a solution that requires an almost trivial amount of work to be applied to the entire game, and then he goes to suggest small incremental steps as additional options. Until it reaches the last two points where the system starts to become fairly elaborate and expensive to implement (which is is why is NEVER going to happen).

Ah. I see what the problem is. I, from a point of knowing nothing about game development and programming, have assumed that it would be easier to implement phases than a continuous system. If that simply isn't right, then I of course agree that it would be much more complicated than I thought. Maybe somebody with experience in the field could confirm/deny that.

However, the baseline idea of rests progressing the daytime works even if you have only two phases (day/night) and not three.

Thank you very much.

I agree with you that Larian is overthinking about it. A simple solution that vastly improves the atmosphere of the game is far better than many of the mechanics Larian has implemented. Players are requesting a day/night cycle since DOS1. At some point, in some game, they will have to implement this. Why not now?

I will add some more details about resting, in the implementation steps.

It's amazing how much of a break-through that was back then. And I suspect if you were to look at it with a more modern and discerning eye you'd see it was pretty basic... and that something very basic could have been used here to provide a more meaningful effect.

That said, I'm fairly certain that ship has sailed on BG3.