Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Time

OK. I have to start a new post about this one. It is kinda, sorta related to Day/Night Cycles and posts about Long Rests and Time Sensitive Events and Dialogue at Camps and all that jazz.

I played straight through, no Long Rests, all the way up through the entire Druid's Grove, Harpies battle and all and the Druid Tunnels and all. Spoke to Nettie and Kahga and Zevlor and did all the things. After the Harpies, I decided my party had had enough. They were out of spells and short rests and the Harpies had left them in pretty bad shape. I no longer could put off the Long Rest.

Finding the camp dialogue was triggered. Then Raphael. Then I spoke to my companions and did all the aftermath of Raphael's meeting dialogues. I had done some tadpole things, so after all this, the first tadpole moment was triggered. "Where are you?"

I woke up and checked my Dialogue Log. Day 1 had ended at some point when I had been in the Druid's Grove main headquarters after confronting Kahga for the first time. After speaking with Rath and Kahga where Kahga says, "Admit it. You think I'm a monster" Day 1 ended according to the Log. I did not Long Rest at all, but Day 1, according to the Log, ended anyway. Day 2 started with some random convo with one of the guys in the main headquarters who said something about having too many outsiders and I should leave asap.

I also left Lae'zel behind at the cage, not letting her out. Next day, she was gone. I encountered Ed and his siblings, but I didn't trigger their dialogue immediately but ran about doing other things. By the time I got back to them, they were gone. No dialogue occurred and they were simply altogether gone. The parasite scene still occurred when I searched Ed, but not the siblings.

So my theories:

1. Larian is going to implement some semblance of time via the Dialogue Log and via Long Rests. So there may be time sensitive events that they just haven't developed all the way through yet. Looks like they might be developing something, though, already.

2. The Dialogue Log does not sync up with your Long Rests, but they may fix that later.

3. The Dialogue Log is not minute for minute between RL and Faerun. I pulled up the Day 1 log and found that at 8:40, Myrnath, Psionic Presence, Vexir, Narrator dialogue occurred on the nautiloid. 9:02, met Lae'zel. 9:48, encountered Shadowheart trapped in her pod. Skip down, crashed on the beach at 11:01. From the time I landed on the beach to the time I met Astarion, over an hour and 17 minutes of time in Faerun transpired. So what took me maybe 10 minutes to play supposedly took an hour and 17 minutes in the game world.

So, Larian, you already have a clock system in place. All you need to do is fix it. Every minute I'm running around on the world map should be 1 minutes in Faerun. When in combat, time should virtually stop. 10 rounds should roughly be a minute of time. Short rest should push the clock forward 1 hour. End Day just fast forwards you to camp that night, say 20:00.

Also, if you are going to make it so that the crash on the beach scene is just at the break of dawn, the Dialogue Log should not say 11:01. It should be more like 6:01 or something like that so that as I'm crashing on the beach the sun is just rising.

If you don't want to implement Nighttime play, you can't have your clock moving as fast as it does now. I was in the Dank Crypt by 15:33 of Day 1 and at the Druid's Grove by 20:00. Just after speaking with Kahga, I was at 24:00. So if the clock on the Dialogue Log is correct, then it should have been nighttime the entire time I was roaming through the Grove talking to people. I also didn't spend 4 hours in the Grove talking to people.

This said, these are REALLY minor details that few will notice. Still, all the elements of there, and that gives me hope that Larian has something planned to give players like me what we're asking for: A Real Time Clock and maybe some semblance of time and time sensitive events.

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day.

OK. Did a timing study. Starting over with a new character. Here is my timing results using a stop watch, pausing during combat since that is supposed to be only 6ish seconds per round and pausing during loading scenes. Timing cutscenes and moving around the map. Below is my log according to the stopwatch, what the Dialogue Log says, and what I would assume should be the correct time based on the time of day when you arrive on Faerun:

Stopwatch Dialogue Log Time What Time Should Be Based on Dawn being landing on the Beach
0:00 - Escape Pod 6:43 in the morning
2:45 - Talk to Myrnath 8:51 in the morning 6:45 in the morning
5:45 - Meet Lae'zel 9:11 in the morning 6:48 in the morning
9:15 - Dragon scene 9:52 in the morning 6:52 in the morning
10:00 - Talk to Baker (10 red rats) 9:56 in the morning 6:53 in the morning
11:00 - I'm a bit piqued mum guy 10:02 in the morning 6:54 in the morning
12:20 - Talk to Shadowheart in pod 10:08 in the morning 6:55 in the morning
13:50 - Woman in pod 10:15 in the morning 6:56 in the morning
15:18 - Enter Bridge scene 10:23 in the morning 6:58 in the morning
16:01 - Get past Demon/Flayer 10:48 in the morning 6:59 in the morning
16:10 - Transponder, you made it 11:03 in the morning 6:59 in the morning
17:20 - Ship arrives on Faerun scene 11:08 in the morning 7:00 in the morning, just before sunrise at 7:15 in the morning

At this point, let's say maybe an hour goes by after the landing on the beach, since in the game it goes from almost totally pitch black to bright sunny morning with the sun fully out. The character has been unconscious on the beach all that time. After all, by the time the character wakes up, the nautiloid has already crashed on the beach all around her, so some time must have passed between the main character's landing, the nautiloid crashing, and the main character waking up on the beach. So let's say it is now 8:00 in the morning; or rather it should be 8:00 in the morning.

03:34 - Meet Shadowheart 11:24 in the morning 8:03 in the morning
07:02 - Devourer fight Tutorial End Day 11:46 in the morning 8:07 in the morning

I did, in fact, end day. So essentially, after running about and fighting a few times on the nautiloid for 17 minutes, I slept for 1 hour on the beach. Then I ran about for 7 minutes and the game is telling me to Long Rest. So now I End Day and trigger Shadowheart's Not a Good Idea dialogue.

As you can see, the Dialogue Log Time is TOTALLY off. There is no way more than 2 hours would have transpired on that nautiloid that was blazing through the hells with dragons and imps and mind flayers duking it out and me escaping. It took me only 17 minutes to get to the helm transponder and crash on Faerun, and I did search the boxes and picked up a lot of items; maybe not all, but most.

So I think Larian should line the Dialogue Log Time up more with what the player is actually doing in the game and set the time earlier if they are going to keep that crashing on the beach scene at night. I don't even mind if, once Day 1 actually starts if they set the time later in the day. Your character could be unconscious for hours on the beach, so instead of something like 8:00 when you wake on the beach, maybe it's 12:00, or something like that. Either way, it would make more sense and provide players more of a sense of how much time is passing if this Dialogue Log Time was more attuned with what players are actually doing timewise in the game; 1 minute playing the game is 1 minute in Faerun time. If I step away and go AFK, the clock still keeps ticking for maybe 10 minutes before the game auto-pauses so that time is no longer ticking away. That way, players don't go AFK for so long that hours go by in the Dialogue Log.

After End Day, have the characters return to where they left off at say 9:00 in the morning, or something like that. Basically, it took them some time to wake up, have breakfast, etc. and get back to where they were. Every time you do a short rest, 1 hour passes on the Dialogue Log Time clock. If Larian does this, they should never have the Dialogue Log Time get to a time when it would be night out. Thus, they would be able to stick to their stance that they are not going to implement a Day/Night cycle, and it would still make sense.

I don't necessarily agree that game/dialogue time should match 1:1 with real time.

Like, you can walk across the whole map in <5(?) minutes. However, it's obvious that the goblins aren't actually only 5 minutes away from the grove or they would have found it already. This is just a result of Larian's decision to put many areas on the same map. Let's say the Goblin Camp is actually a 3 hour journey from the Grove, and it takes 3 minutes to walk there in game. Thus, there is an effective time speed up of ~60x, where 1 minute of real time is actually 1 hour of game time.

However, this speed up only holds true for traveling between places, and not during dialogue or combat. In dialogue, 1 minute of game time corresponds to ~1 minute of real world time. In combat, 1 minute of game time probably takes more like 10 minutes of real time.

So, we take a average of these three, and find a compromise of: 24 game-world-hours corresponding to 1.2 real-world hours, an effective speedup of ~20x

The above calculation was done entirely without considering your findings, so let's compare:
-You played for ~25 minutes, and ~5 in-game hours passed. This converts to: 24 game-world-hours equaling 2 real-world-hours, an effective speedup of 12x. Not too far off from my estimate.

I have no problem with what you are saying in games where it is clear that the map you are on is a world map. This map is not. Everything as to scale, so it makes no sense.

I will say that it could be explained in a way that it is assumed every time you open a chest or crate it takes you more time to search it than it seems, and other actions besides. For the sake of not boring players with too much reality, they don't animate out five minutes of searching a bunch of crates or whatever.

There are 2 common types of world maps:
1.) Where the entire world is a single map (open world games), and distances between things (villages, etc) are appropriate. In this, it's ~reasonable for time to pass at a 1:1 rate.
2.) Where there are many specifically instanced areas, containing a few things of note (e.g., one map contains a single village and adjacent forest), all connected by some sort of fast travel. In these, time in instanced areas should pass at a 1:1 rate whereas fast travel should obviously speed up game time.

Larian maps are the 3rd type. Larian maps are commonly referred to as amusement park maps, where way too many things are crammed together, much closer then they would be in a real world. Again I'll point to the goblin camp: it is beyond belief that the goblins couldn't find the grove if the Goblin Camp was actually a <5 minute walk from it. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as it prevents needing to enter loading screens, spend time fast traveling, and/or having to physically travel dozens+ of minutes to reach new things. But it does physically compress things.

I don't know. Maybe. I know it's a video game and all, and other games have done what you are saying. I guess it is just that this game world really feels like you are in it, so if seems like time should pass minute for minute.

But it does seem the blighted village is too small and the gobbo base too close. That is true.

I just did a quick 5 min RL time test.
I talked to one npc and the dialogue time said 5:36. Then I waited for 5 minutes(on my clock not a stopwatch so roughly 5 minutes) and talked to 3 other npcs right beside. The new times were 5:59, 5:59 and 6:01. This was in the grove. It appears that 5 minutes IRL is roughly 30 minutes in game out of combat.

That's ultimately what I mean. 5 minutes IRL should not mean 30 minutes in the game. I'm also referring to how if you use this method of time management then you get results like what I mentioned where a day ends while you're having a conversation with someone and there's no transition from day to night or nothing. I didn't sleep or anything, but a new day has started. Either implement a true Day/Night cycle or you have to fix the timing issue here. It shouldn't be broad daylight outside if on my Dialogue Log it says its 22:00.

I'm just saying. I get what mrfuji3 is saying about how the goblin camp is a bit close to the grove for them to not find it, but I ultimately disagree. For starters, it isn't actually THAT close. The goblin base is a good hike away. You have to get through the forest, the blighted village, and then there's still more beyond. You could technically reach it in 5 minutes, but only IF you know where it truly is and you run there.

I think you are also thinking in terms of video game world with limited pathways as opposed to if the world was indeed real. Just because in the game we don't have the options to go that far north, south or west of the goblin camp doesn't mean that in the world of Faerun the goblins can't do this. So it would be easy for them to not be able to find the grove if they didn't know where it was. The grove could be 5 minutes away, but there's a lot of directions the grove could be in. Goblins could spread out and wander about trying to find it in ALL directions from the base camp. If a patrol gets too close to the grove entrance and starts to climb the vines to get over the wall or gate, BAM! Dead patrol. Druids kill them. Toss their bodies far enough away where they won't have a clue that the grove is there. I think Larian did a pretty good job at making the grove entrances look hidden enough that goblins wouldn't find them even from a 5 minute jog away.

And I still think the game is designed to make you feel like you are smack dab in the world. It isn't designed like a world map type exploration where every step is like taking a mile hike. It's more of a dungeon type exploration where every minute in real life should equal every minute in Faerun. That's what it looks like to me.

The nautiloid, for example, isn't so massive that it would have taken me 2 hours to traverse it. It literally took me 16-17 minutes to get from the pod to the helm with dialogue and everything excluding combat. My character didn't look like he was running through some overly massive vessel. So 2 hours of time should not have passed by the time I got there. If you factor in maybe each box and body that I searched being at the most an extra 1-2 minutes of time, assuming that it takes more than a few seconds to search a body and/or chest, it still wouldn't have equaled 2 hours.

I just want Larian to implement some sort of more realistic time system. They have the elements there to be able to do this. They just need to do it. The game would be so much more immersive with a more realistic time mechanic.

The golblins are in the blighted village too and there's something like 300m between the village and the grove.
If you were trying to explain it to someone you woud probably say : cross the bridge and follow the road, you'll see the massive gate and walls on your left.

But the walls and agate on your left are hidden and obscured by rock walls and vines. The idea is that the grove might be right in front if you but you don't see it because it is a hidden area. If someone were to climb them, they would be attacked and killed.

Either way, they need to fix time. 5 minutes of dialogue should not equal 30 minutes on Faerun. 16 minutes on a nautiloid should not equal 2 hours.

Im just curious. Why are some people so resistant to Larian implementing more accurate time mechanics? It is obviously important to lots of people. So if it doesn't affect you, why do you care? Legitimately wondering. Not trying to argue.

It's simple I don't want stupid time limits.
I prefer to play at my own pace, looking under each stone.

If the grove was well hidden it could be ok but it's definitely not. The hidden entrance is hidden. The main door isn't and "the idea" doesn't work at all from a roleplaying and an immersion point of view.

I have to admit that I don't really understand what you ask... Larian's games aren't designed to manage time properly so they have to find tricks.

1:1 time would be ridiculous for many reasons especially if they implement a D/N cycle that works arround their clock (which is not the only solution- I still hope).

It does affect me(us) though. It directly affects the believability of the world. If I can walk from the Grove -> a forest -> Blighted Village -> a swamp -> Goblin Camp, and the game says this only took an ~10 minutes, then my (slight) immersion will be even further shattered.

A compromise solution is that the game stays in real time except when your character is moving. So if you're in dialogue or just waiting in one spot, time passes normally. But if you're walking (say, from the Grove to the Goblin Camp), time passes faster to represent the distorted distances. I'd be fine with that.

And finally, sped up time is kind of necessary for a realistic long rest system. Unless you want to play the game for ~12 hours (probably more like 20 hours, because combats take much longer in real time than they do in game-time) before its reasonable for your characters to long rest?
Even in your 2-long-rest-per-day system, each day would still require ~10+ real life hours of gameplay (accounting for combats).

@Rhobar, Im not talking about time limits on this post. Im talking more about just aligning Dialogue time with actual time.

@Maximuuus, but I think based on dialogue the main entrance is supposed to also be hidden. It is overgrown by vines, etc. I think the point made by Zevlor is that Aradin led the goblins to the grove, and the halfling druid in the tunnels did too. Before these events, the grove was not found because it was well hidden.

The main ask is to align time more accurately. Have better measurements of time. I should not be able to play the game for 2 hours without a single Long Rest and have the game transition to Day 2 without any shift from day to night and without using a Long Rest.

That's what happened to me. I played straight through to the Grove, and right after meeting Kahga, according to the Log, Day 2 started. I didn't long rest until about 20 minutes later. When I checked the log, it said that my first convo for Day 2 was one I triggered right after talking to Kahga, but I never long rested.

So the reason this happened is because the log records events inaccurately. While I maybe have a 2 minute convo with someone, 10 minutes goes by in Faerun.

You guys talk about immersion, but things like this ruin immersion for me. I get that it's video game. Total, absolute realism drags down the game. I don't want that either.

But if in combat I can run 18 meters in blighted village, measuring out the literal distance, then that tells me that it is literally 18 meters from one place to another. It is not a vague distance. So if I can traverse from one end of a building to another in one round, that means that it takes roughly 6 seconds to run from one end of a building in Bilghted Village to another. It is therefore, feasible to think that the entire map is measured meter for meter. Therefore, it is feasible to think that time should also be measured out minute for minute.

I understand where you are coming from about distance and how it hurts your immersion. Blighted Village is a truly small village if those are the only buildings in it. However, in a game where they have literally measured everything out meter for meter because you can literally play the entire thing in turn-based mode and move about meter for meter, you can't use the logic that every step you take is actually 5 and that distances are far greater than they appear to be.

This is why I say that each minute should be recorded as a minute. You can maybe tack on extra time for every body or crate you search, assuming you take more than 30 seconds to search something, but that still doesn't amount to how they are recording time now.

And as far as rests goes, that's a different story. By clicking on rest, you are essentially agreeing to fast forward time by a specific amount. 1 short rest fast forwards 1 hour. 1 Long Rest ends day. So regardless of how much time you spent running around, if you End Day then you spend the rest of the day doing mundane things in camp resting and recovering and so forth.

And that's ultimately my point. It should create greater immersion to record time correctly. I should escape the nautiloid in less than 20 minutes unless I take my time and explore around and experiment with things. It shouldn't take 2 hours. Meeting Astarion and Shadowheart and so forth should take maybe another 10-15 minutes of the day. If I short rest after fighting the fishermen with the mind flayer, an hour of time goes by. So I adventured maybe 15 minutes and rested an hour. The log should reflect that only that much time has gone by when I meet Gale and have my convo with him. If I go the entire time until I reach the Grove and Nettie and so forth without Long Resting, the Dialogue Log should not say that I started a new day at some random point during any of that time. It should tell me that I'm still on Day 1 because I never Long Rested.

Then, when I Long Rest, any campfire conversations should be logged as Day 1 convos because I haven't gone to bed yet. They should be triggered at like 20:00 or something like that. Then, any cutscenes like Raphael's should be logged as Day 2 at like 01:00 or something like that, showing that it is in the middle of the night, after midnight, or whatever.

This creates a more accurate time management system that still allows Larian to not have to implement Day/Night cycle, and it creates immersion for those players like me who struggle with how the current system has been built.

I understand the idea but the facts are that visually this entrance is not well hidden at all. Anyway.


You could definitely be able to play the game for 2 real time hours without a single long rest IF exhaustion is not implemented (something I'd like a lot).

But you shouldn't have the transition to day 2 without any shift from day to night. I agree.

On the other hand I have to admit that at the moment, I just don't care about time in the log and I don't really understand anyone could care about because...

...Time doesn't mean anything in this game.

It should, but it doesn't.

Right now an accurate 1:1 time in the log wouldn't solve anything related to the lack of D/N cycle, the lack of exhaustion, the broken rest mechanic, the feeling of a static world etc...

I think it could even create more issues when things will be better implemented (whatever they are) and it would increase the feeling that the world is totally inconsistent.

This I totally agree with you on. I also would love an exhaustion system and food and water are required to stave them off as opposed to healing HP. After even an hour of running around, a Short Rest should also be required or exhaustion starts to kick in to some degree. SOMETHING like that would be awesome. That would make food and drinks and Short Rests SO much more meaningful.

I guess, ultimately, you have helped me to realize that my issue isn't so much that there isn't an exact Realtime clock with minute to minute ratios. My true issue is that there is no cohesive measure of time at all in this game. It's all messed up and it messes with my head a lot, which is obvious because 99% of my posts have to do with this. I'm still going to play the game a lot if they don't fix this, but it does affect my overall perception of just how good the game is.

I don't mind a vague time system. I'd actually prefer that, really. That was why I wanted them to stop having characters say they needed to End Day just for dialogue purposes. They shouldn't be tired and needing to End Day just because they want to tell me something.

I guess in the end, I just want them to implement SOME sort of cohesive time management system that makes sense. Don't give me a Dialogue Log and tell me that a 5 minute dialogue was 30 minutes long. That totally destroys the immersion for me. So I agree. I'd probably prefer them to just remove the timing aspect of the log entirely rather than make it more accurate. Just label the Dialogue scenes and remove the time.

I'm totally fine with time being managed by Long Rests. You can do whatever you want and it is still 1 day as long as you don't Long Rest. I'd prefer it, actually. It's a good idea to give me, the player, full control over when I think a day should end. Then everybody is happy with how many times they end day.

The problem that I guess I have, then, is that we just need time to align with the other elements of the game, which has to do with my other posts so I won't go into it here AGAIN.

So thank you for talking this through with me and being patient about it. Much appreciated!