Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General The elephant in the room that nobody is talking about

Claiming that the only thing a day/night cycle added was "getting tired after a long travel and waiting for shops to open" *IS* dismissive and condescending. Not to mention oblivious to reality.

I would request that you re-read my post.
I never claimed it was the only thing that the Day/Night cycle added.
I supplied you with the reasons BioWare gave for getting rid of it.

The last installment of the Baldur's Gate Series did not have a Day/Night cycle because the developers of the game decided the feature did not positively effect gameplay.
You may not agree with that decision but that is how the Baldur's Gate series has evolved.

That is absolutely what these forums are for.
I would never object to anyone expressing their opinion.

The only reason I was commenting in this thread is that folks were stating that Larian had removed the Day/Night cycle from Baldur's Gate series and that's simply not true.

Who was stating that "Larian had removed the Day/Night cycle from Baldur's Gate"?

As far as I can see, people are saying that the original Baldur's gate games had night and day and that DoS2 didn't and BG3 doesn't and that they'd like it to.

Huh? Saradush had day & night cycles, you can even see it on YouTube videos. Night enables many unique things ... infravision, enhanced stealth, Ring of Shooting Stars, will-o-wisps, glowing potion bottles, peeping frogs, ladies/gentlemen of the evening, shadows, etc. Back to the original topic, Baldur's Gate is really two different cities, one under the sun and one under the stars. I do hope we get to see both!

Removing something that adds immensely to world immersion and gameplay can hardly be called 'evolved'.

May be ...
But that is one of problems with sequels, if developer say "this changes now", it simply "changes now".

It was also huge part of Star Wars, that you were not able to track ships in hyperspace, or jump into hyperspace within gravity well of planet ... until in last movie they was litteraly jumping from planet SURFACE to planet SURFACE ... followed by so unequipped Tie-fighter that they dont even have shields, yet somehow they manage to implement technology that in last movie required computer of the size of Dreadnought ...
And why? Bcs director said "this changes now" ... and it did. :-/

Swen talked about it one of his interviews. Didn't he?

I completely agree with this criticism. However, there are some better ways to implement day/night circles.

Well, quite. I didn't see it as condescension, just preference, though my personal preference is for a day/night cycle even if it is sometimes (or often) inconvenient; though there're plenty of games where the day/night cycle is only cosmetic or makes only a few differences to spawns but where shops stay open 24 hours a day.

I still prefer it even if it is purely cosmetic. Though I don't object to the way Divinity 2 and Bioware do it where various places are stuck at one particular time of day (even if it does seem to vary as you wander about in D2) I'd much prefer proper day and night.

How could you compare the old games with this new one and use the TOB argument ?

In the old games you HAVE to go to the merchants all the time, just to buy arrows and to sell things because your inventory is very limited.
And waiting is tedious because "you cannot rest here" or because "I serve the Flaming Fist".

In BG3 you never have to go to the merchant except to buy a better armor or a better weapon a few times.

How could it be a problem to wait for a shop to open in a game where shop is something you just don't really need and/or in which you can easily wait.
Was that a complaint in games like Kingdom Come Deliverance or the Witcher 3 ? I don't think so... and it also wasn't only cosmetic...

As for the witcher 3, I don't even remember if it was really a cosmetic. Time probably didn't matter in general there. What did it matter if you could change your time freely at any time.
Kingdom Come is a slightly different story, the game was primarily realism (to exaggeration) for which it was also heavily criticized.

I never heard anyone complaning about merchants that are closed at night which is the only argument brought here against D/N cycle.

It was even something a lot of players liked in KCD because you could stealth and picking locks to enter their shop and stole them.
I could compare with the "very interreting" stealing merchants mechanic in BG3... but I won't

I dont think so ...
There was many monsters you could meet only in night time, some quests required specific hour, there was potions and stuff for dealing with low light etc.

I found a screenshot showing that Throne of Bhaal did have day & night ... here is Saradush:



you can see the little time pendulum in the lower left corner, with the night moon waning and the sun coming up soon.

lol
IIRC, extended cycles and weather are flags you enable/disable in the area file processed by the Infinity Engine used in the Baldur's Gate games. I think people just get confused because there are a few areas with a preset time (when the scenario dictates such a behaviour).
The very same engine in the same game instance runs both Shadows of Amn and Throne of Bhaal, obviously it can deliver day/night cycles (and there are day night cycles in ToB).

This being said, imho, in BG3 we should first get a proper, accessible clock and calendar in the game before envisionning the implementation of day/night cycles.
The absence of a visible time reference is a flaw in any game claiming to be a RPG.

Back to the OP, yes playing in a 3D Baldur's Gate city is an old dream of mine, the primary drive to buy this game.

Well, the two things are strictly correlated and the lack of the latter is most likely one of the very causes we are missing the former.

The game doesn't mark the passing of time clearly because that would force it to acknowledge that currently everything that is shown to us is frozen in a single moment of the day.
Then again they could AT LEAST keep count of the number of long rests we do and mark each one as a full day passed.

Also, to this day I'm still not sure if when characters complain that "they are tired and need to rest" there's any actual effect on their capabilities. In my experience it doesn't seem to be the case (otherwise I would have played half of the current build with an unknown handicap, I guess?) but it's hard to tell if they are hiding some numbers.

yes,
and perhaps also because their core engine (warning: it's highly speculative) does not require an internal core clock.
Turn Based + countdown timers + flags may be seen as a sufficient way to get the job done.
The reason I am mentionning this off-topic point is that this would explain the quite chaotic way the characters (or your multiplayer friends) enter the combat mode, especially if a dialog is involved. The transition between the game modes seems to be managed with spatial parameters, no timing consideration. Depending on the conditions, you may have a character able to run kilometers long before the first cycle is over or be locked.
More generally, how/when/where a clock/timer is used is not just a cosmetic matter.

What y'all didn't realize is that there is no day/night cycle because the DOS engine doesn't have it and it might be too much work to implement it.

"The engine doesn't have it" is a poor excuse, because no engine comes with the "day/night cycle button" and it's always a matter of implementing it.

It should also be none of our business to worry about how much work it can be to implement standard features in the genre, but that's another topic for another day.