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 think the idea of a largely cosmetic day/night cycle (which should alter the lighting and stealth mechanics) isn't a bad one. It would be a simpler idea of limiting long rests than my proposed mechanic. Having the clock pause if anyone at all is in combat seems like a reasonable idea too.



The only laziness here is in your thinking, because you are not the one who would have to design, code, implement, test, debug, re-design, re-test the system, nor are you the one who has to decide what fraction of the game budget will be assigned to that task.

So tired of seeing the lazy "the developers are lazy" argument keep coming up.

I have noticed that when loading, sometimes the lighting does move as the sun would move through the sky and there is night in the game already. I really hope it is something that was not ready for EA, I fully expect there to be a day/night cycle.

Don't you play co-op together? so the time of day would be the same?

Also, again, I'd like to mention that fire looks great at night and Larian is really missing out on fire if they miss out on fire at night. Just gonna leave that here...

At very least it would work at the most basic level and it would set the groundwork to endorse a lot of modding in that sense.
Also, it would spare Larian from the issue of "having to add way more beds into the game world". Not that many would care that much, honestly.

Still, when you really think about it, it's a bit jarring that some standards set 30 years ago by Ultima VII in terms of scheduling and dynamic behavior have yet to be matched in any modern production.


Already said it in the other more generic "mega-thread", but imagine the disappointment of finally reaching Baldur's Gate, start exploring its quartiers and streets... and outside of a (possible) handful of scripted events being forced to roam the city only in midday light.
Without experiencing the scenery at night, without all the street lights turned on, with no "nocturnal street encounter" whatsoever, etc.

I have almost a hard time understanding people (admittedly not many) who keep dismissing this sort of "flavor" as something they don't care about, frankly.
And this is without going too much into the potential impact on the mechanical side of things.

Ok, that's it. You've been bringing up Ultima VII time and time again. I'm adding it to my queue. I'll need to conquer my "old game limit" of mid-late '90s. :P



Visiting BG only during the day would be like ignoring half of the city. Or even worse, because when you see a location during both day and night, you start to see it in a different light (not just literally). A boring street becomes the street where the fence comes at night. The peaceful square may become the place of violent guild conflicts.

And I'd be very sad to not be able to creep through the city at night. Or in any location really. I usually play rogues. Rogues need night!

In general, I'm just getting sadder and sadder as people bring up all the things we're going to miss without day/night cycle (and possibly dynamic weather). Even small, stupid things like those street lights.

Completely agree, some encounters could only be had at night, some merchants appear or disappear at night and vampire characters (really liked the enhanced edition characters) become stronger or are only met at these times. A more DnD answer to Astarions problem would have been to steal his masters cloak for instance.

The thiefs guild missions are usually at night, there are loads of nocturnal creatures or mechanics around night/darkness in general, just missing out on these would be too much of a missed chance to have a more serious world in their rpg, not just bloody

In short, I'm sure Larian hasn't implemented it yet but they are working on it.

I think your ideas suck and i dont like them.

That is what you sign up for when you decide to do AAA game that is a sequel to a established franchise. This has been standard for >20 years.

Of course you could opt to recycle ideas from prior games like speaking to animals and dead and waste a lot of resources.

Not to pass on driving the nail in all the way....








What goes around.... comes around.


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So you’re just being petty and childish as revenge for some unflattering but honest comment you got weeks ago.
This while wasting everyone’s time with your pity forum drama and derailing a thread in the process.

Got it.

Nope - great to see you think your behavior is petty and childish. It is.

I see you are a bit slow in the head. But the "funny" part is you did exactly what you ask others not to do.

Isn't the only real argument against day/night cycle multiplayer? If players are not in the same party hence time can't flow differently for them if one party rests?

Why would you even play BG3 like that? It's a classic D&D one party game.

If it's a choice between day/night cycle and allowing separate parties the choice is pretty clear imo. Force a single party.

Night time adds so much atmosphere and immersion to the game world. And I don't mean scripted night time, but the ability to visit the same locations during day and night and experience them differently.

Same for weather. Rain and thunderstorms please. Rain would even have mechanical implications in BG3 because of all the fire and ice surface stuff. (sidenote: it's odd the fire in Waukeen's Rest never dies) So would darkness.

Are you really saying that while Selûne, the Moonmaiden is a player in BG3, we will not have night time and scenes with the moon? Moonrise towers?

Shar, the Mistress of the Night.

There's a whole Vampire plot, but no night time?

Come on now.

Well, that would be precisely what we were attempting to discuss (occasional petty interferences aside): the best possible compromise to make this work without giving up on a feature Larian seems to care about a lot.

It's not reasonable to expect for them to completely cripple the co-op aspect of the game, so the idea is to conceive a compromise that can work without giving up on what they want.
That COULD eventually allow us to pressure them into implementing a day/night cycle as a broadly requested feature, without asking from their part an unreasonable trade-off, harmful to the amount of work they already did.

Obviously this is all speculative talk at this point. Unless Larian expresses any interest and an opening in "re-negotiate" their position, chances are not even the most brilliant design in the world and the most cost-effective solution would change their mind.

From the 15 minutes of multiplayer I've played, it seems to already be in the game.

You can't rest unless everyone in the party agrees to camp. I don't see the need for compromise. Unless they want to add some kind of competitive multiplayer which would just be silly to begin with.

Personally, I would be totally okay with a largely cosmetic day/night cycle as a compromise which in coop works similar as resting: all players need to agree to the change. as others said, night is already in the game (though i understand even a cosmetic day/night cycle can be a lot of work due to several factors), it would endorse modding and make more use of the already cool light/dark system, plus the immersion bonus (hey guys let's attack the enemy camp at night would be something cool to be able to opt for)

Not sure I won't say something stupid...
But is it complicated to create a cosmetic D&N cycle which follows the number of rests ?

Long rests are always at night so...
After a long rest => it's always the day
You take a short rest => it's always the day
You take another short rest => it's always the night
You take your long rest => new cycle

This mean 2 short rests per long rests.

I guess you can "easily" add random weather effects to those N/D cosmetic cycle.
And that way you never "see" people moving to their bed or their night activity. It's a single map with 2 different and "static" ambiances.

Of course it's going to be strange for those that will "spam" short rest... but I guess the entire rest mechanics is another problem to solve / to balance.

It's not that it's stupid", as much that it would miss the point of what's the supposed "design goal".

The goal would be precisely to NOT have a rest that is always at night, but to have a dynamic passing of time.
Also, unless you go for "grit realism" optional rule (a long rest is a week and a short rest 8 hours) the basic ruleset predicts a long rest to be 8 hours and short rest to be 1. Which makes pretty damn weird to have night and day cycling at any single use of the latter.

Not to mention unnecessary, when you would have an option to "wait" for a certain amount of time anyway.

I agree that a dynamic D/N cycle would be far better...
but on ther other hand I think I would prefer a cheap solution rather than nothing at all... If I had to choose.

Maybe Larian is planning a wonderful gift for us... who knows ?

Despise the borderline unhealthy amount of effort I'm putting recently into promoting improvements in the areas I care about the most, I tend to stick to the golden rule to avoid disappointment: "Always hope for the best and expect the worst".

I'm open to being corrected by someone more knowledgeable on the subject, but I don't think a basic day/night cycle in a simple version would be ludicrously expensive. Especially with Larian's budget. The most problematic thing I could see would be NPC schedules, but afaik these aren't very robust right know (if any schedules exist?).

So you could just do a simpler version of BG2:
- day with NPCs placed as they are now
- evening comes -> simple animation of sunset or whatever
- map transformed to the night version with appropriate cosmetics and some NPCs changed up (a vendor disappears - "went to sleep", creepy night creatures appear in the woods)
- morning comes -> sunrise animation
- rinse and repeat

Sure it would be some work, maybe not an insignificant amount, but I don't think the cost of this would be prohibitive. Imo it's more a matter of Larian willing to do this or not.

(Of course, something more advanced would be very welcome...)