Larian Studios Forums Divinity General Discussion Will this game FINALLY take world simulation to the next level?

If they do a day-night cycle, I hope they tie it in with event triggers, not with real-time progression. Kind of how Persona 5 had the times of day.

Should Larian keep a short-rest + short-rest + long-rest system. Then before the first short rest could be morning, between the first and second short rest could be afternoon, and after the second short-rest but before long-rest could be evening. Lighting conditions could be different, so planning what to tackle when becomes interesting. Need to take on some vampires? Best take them out in the afternoon when it's sunny. Need to sneak about the enemy camp? Best take that on in the evening when shadows lengthen.

If they want a slightly more complicated system, you could have four times of day: morning, afternoon, evening, and night. And long resting uses up the next time of day from the one you are in. So, it's morning, you long rest, which means sleeping the afternoon away, but then you do have evening and night to sneak about. Each time of day can have slightly different lighting conditions and advantages and disadvantages. Short rests still only progress you to the next time of day. This system would need a way to progress time of day that's not limited to two, so you can manipulate which time of day you will use for long rests, so if they go for this, you can maybe have three short rests but generally are expected to use two before long resting.

All-in-all, event-driven systems are a lot more robust, they avoid the problems stated in this thread, and are less stressful for players. It also fits a turn-based game much better: time to think, time to plan, action only when all considerations have been made, at the control of the player.

Not sure about NPC schedules. If they can build a system for that, sure, but if you have to put all the schedules in manually it seems to me to be A LOT of work for relatively minimal reward. One simple thing they could do for basic NPC schedules is having a sleeping time-of-day for different groups of creatures, so that if you are raiding say, a vampire castle during the afternoon, most of the vampires there are asleep with the exception of the guards. Some creatures would wake up easily on sensing or hearing danger, others not so much. The guards for any locating could either be different creatures (very human vampire thralls, for instance) or simply creatures that are tagged "guard" who have a sleeping-time-of-day offset of two (so vampires normally sleep in the afternoon -> vampire guards sleep at night).

There's a lot of interplay that can happen here. If you're raiding a camp of soldiers at night, maybe they all sleep soundly and don't wake up easily, but the guards can go blare horns or beat drums to wake them all up. Like in the Goblin camp in BG3. They can also shove their comrades awake if need be. A silence sphere spell to keep the commander of the garrison from being woken up also seems useful at that point.

I really enjoyed the resting system in BG3 so I hope they keep it, and a day-night cycle is a good way to expand on that system.