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

I'm not sure how many here remember, but originally DOS 1 -strong of its declared inspiration from the Ultima series- was supposed to have NPC scheduling and a full nday/night cycle.
It was suggested as a stretch goal for the Kickstarter campaign, the goal was reached, the feature was promised... And then late in production canned because too challenging to achieve.

Then we got to DOS 2 and it was more or less the same. The feature was TENTATIVELY promised as something they were trying to accomplish at first, then canned because too expensive and challenging to achieve.

And then it was the time to reveal Baldur's Gate 3. The biggest, most expensive Larian game to date, the follow up of a series that made of the day/night cycle a core feature. One that could occasionally influence gameplay, too, with enemies that showed up just at certain conditions (i.e. vampires were roaming the city roads just at night). One would think that BOTH the increased budget and the legacy of the series would be strong arguments in favor of developing the feature, but NOPE.
We were told pretty early in production (months before the EA even started) that one of the first major design decisions the studio made was to can the feature once again. Too complex and too expensive to realize (no matter that dozen of RPG with budgets that were a FRACTION of BG3 managed just fine for two decades).

Now we are moving to the next Divinity. In their own words their most complex and ambitious RPG to date, built over new and improved technology, over the foundations of everything the studio learned so far from the previous titles....

SO... Should we expect an improvement in this area?
Will we FINALLY be able to get this bare minimum of credible world building this time? Or is the cinematic angle the only side of the production that will cannibalize the overwhelming majority of the budget?

Oh, and just ot be clear I'm fully expecting the answer to be a resounding "NO", but I'm starting the discussion about it just to put the question out there, because I'd like this to be confirmed as soon as possible so I can put my hopes to rest.

I would love this: people are in different places at different times, day/night circle, time actually going by and not doing a quest will autofail it at some point (where it makes sense).

That is one of the things, I miss in BG3: the passing of time. Yes, you can go to camp and sleep and then the next day, a situation is still there (for example the gnolls still threatening the Zhentarim trapped in the cave. Or Orin, who just waits patiently the whole game that you will come to get your comrade.

I would like for things to change, having consequences. There are some few ones, but not a lot. And I really want npcs to have a life and doing stuff.

I remember that one of the "big" things they talked about in their early demo's was, that the party could split up, scatter all over the map and do different things in different places. I don't know if anyone ever used this feature, but combining this with a time system is hard, as you would have to be able to travel back in time when you switch from one patrol to another. I always assumed this was the reason of not having the day cycle.
(Oh, and the ability to throw your boots at an enemy. I remember that one also being promoted as a sign that showed how versatile this game was, in early demo's. )
Maybe these are things to look out for in the upcoming demo's.

It was used, mainly to cheese encounters by dialoge locking enemies and then position the rest of the party and place barrels.

It added nothing to the game, just subtracted from it.

I also remember that we "solved" this design problem with 15 minutes of brainstorming on this very forum:
You just "pause the clock" for everyone when one of the players/split party is entering a turn-based battle and let it progress only when everyone is in real-time mode.
Except the suggestion was never embraced, of course.

I did not see that discussion, but the implication given in the demo's and interviews went further than just battle.
A made up example : You could in principle send a scout to the mountain pass (and discover it was guarded by Githyanki) while at the same time another scouting party went down the ladder to the underdark to see if that path was protected.

Edit : and as said before, I don't know if anyone actually used the feature like this, and Larian never provided a concrete example either, as far as I know.
(Though they did show the boot-throwing feature in a demo )

Yeah, But I'm SPECIFICALLY talking of how this feature (splitting the party and doing different things at the same time) could cohexist with a day/night cycle.
NOT of what you could do when splitting.

To be clear, personally I don't even value co-op and being able to splitting the party that much - and I would gladly trade the feature with a day/night cycle given the choice- but it's pretty clear that Larian considers it a cornerstone of their design and an a valuable feature to offer players, which is why I make an attempt to find a compromise.

I think we're not understanding eachother. I was also referring to day/night cycles and how it is complicated by doing 2 things at the same time. The game must handle both sides being unable to rendez-vous back at the same point at the same time.

If they add a day/night cycle, I hope they actually use it properly.

I've played way too many games where there was a day/night cycle and it meant nothing. Other than the game being slightly more annoying to play half the time (For example, Titan Quest, where night just makes it annoying to see enemies when outside).

This would entail having actual mechanics tied to day and night respectively. Such as NPC behaviours, enemy spawns (Though this is complicated if we have their standard non-respawning enemies and the need to kill EVERYTHING to suck up all the experience points possible... Meaning having different enemies spawns means having to clear out places twice, once to kill all the daytime enemies and once to clear out all the nighttime enemies) and time sensitive interactions (Though this can be very annoying depending on how frequent and/or large the impacts are)

Another thing to consider is stuff like lighting, especially at night.

I found the general lighting behaviours in BG3 really cool. Both how torches worked, but also the ability to ignite candles and braziers in locations to provide more light (Both with interactions, as well as hitting them with fire spells), with this being even more notable for characters who lacked Darkvision and thus had worse accuracy without it. Environments looked rad with the actual mechanics of lighting.

However, such things really gimped you for actually using them. Torches suck and prohibited use of 2 handed weapons, shields and off-hand weapons. Spending spells/turns simply turning on lights was terrible. Playing the like 2 races that don't have Darkvision was also not particularly great...

That and the whole actually needing light also was not a thing. With dark places still being plenty bright enough to see properly. Heck, even the zone where it has another mechanic specifically about light... You immediately get rid of the mechanic because Isobel blessed you and then you instantly were sent to go get the Fairy who then also blesses you and makes the entire mechanic redundant.

I mean, yeah... I just suggested precisely how to solve THIS issue in my previous reply.
You stop the clock for both players/split parties every time one of the two enters in a turn-based mode that could create incongruences. When both players are moving in real time, on the other hand, it simply doesn't matter where they are and what they are doing.

IEh. I'd take a "shallow" day/night cycle over its complete absence any day, anyway.
At very least it would still add a lot of potential flavor (admiring the same scenario in different light conditions, for instance) and set up a foundation modders could expand on.

I really would love a day/ night cycle too. I want to experience the difference if you try to tackle a quest at daytime versus nighttime

A Day/Night cycle in games that pioneered it wasn't simply a feature to consider, naturally.

It was games that, as the title of the thread suggests, aimed for a world simulation. As such, time passing belongs to the general idea. Ultima VII for instance is at least as much of a single-player RPG as it is a world simulation. That said, often even in games where time passing doesn't impact much, I tend to enjoy it. Even in BG1, where they even had specific music for nighttime... wandering the plains when it's dark outside and a thunderstorm hits is different to doing the same on a sunny day. Video games are audiovisual experiences, after all.


Does every game NEED this though? This not. Honestly getting the impression though what Larian /Vincke like about games such as Ultima 7 isn't the full-on world simulation as such, with people "living" their daily lives. Just a portion of it, such as the way you can interact with any object/NPC. And on that front, the more they go "Immersive Sim-Like", the better. People classing this as "cheesing the game" be damned. They don't have a clue anyway.


"The fact that you can do things in so many different ways, it's a big mess of systems, of storytelling. Because on the other side of that, you have games that are very funnelled, very controlled, very safe. You arrive into a place, the doors close around you, boss fight. I can't stand that, because I'm the guy who prefers to come in, and they haven't seen me yet."

Colantonio cites Baldur's Gate 3 as a major step forward in this regard; while that is distinctly an RPG rather than an immersive sim, he says the game "shares a lot of the same values" and has opened many players' eyes to the notion that any given situation may have multiple solutions based on their playstyle and abilities unique to their characters.People appreciate all the choices that they had, they notice all the consequences, or they notice all the permutations of things that can happen. They appreciate that they can cheat the game through the systems by doing some weird stuff that was not planned by the designers. Those are amazing realisations from a gamer standpoint.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/why-raphael-colantonios-next-game-is-and-isnt-like-dishonored

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.

I'm fairly sure they won't.
They clearly half-hated having to implement it in a D&D-based game, where it's supposed to be a core mechanic, and and it feels like they added it to the game almost begrudgingly (not to mention in a form that I can't honestly say I particularly liked, as it felt extremely artificial and disconnected rather than a natural part of adventuring around the world).
That's what happens when you remove the passage of time and a "tiredness" system and tie their absence to a rest that take place in a separate and instanced "pocket dimension".

I can't imagine them wanting to introduce something similar in their own custom ruleset.
Especially since they are already boasting in few interviews that they didn't like having to deal with the tabletop roots of D&D and they want to do something less focused on feeling an adventure and more on feeling "videogamey" (UGH).

It's the same reason for which I have almost absolute confidence their own ruleset won't include anything resembling interrupts/reactions.
We had to basically pry these out of their hands in Bg3.

Considering that Divinity has never been based around "Spell Slots" and "Per X Rest", there would be literally no reason for them to use a rest system at all.

Since that's the primary reason for its existence in D&D, it exists as a method to limit resources. While Divinity has always lacked such a limit (Which is preferable in my view, I've always hated D&D's daily limitations especially when it always makes low level casters feel absolutely awful to play)

At best I could maybe see them shoehorn in a long rest system, if they decide they liked the whole "Camp" thing and wanted to produce a way to trigger interactions again.

Great! Glad not to have per a rest spells!

I did this at Rosymorn Monastery. My Githyanki Tav and Lae'zel went in looking for the Crèche while Gale and Wyll "investigated" the winery.

What made me think that the passage of time was actually planned was seeing how the sun rolls into its afternoon position when you made the loading screen invisible or how many places in Act III have working lights that only make sense after dark. It could have been morning/afternoon/night with 5e's short/long rest system.

I don't personally consider what Divinity "did before" particularly relevant in this case, but even putting that aside, "Spell slots" and vancian magic are not the only reason to have a rest system in your game/ruleset.
Especially if you are going for a coating of "world simulation" (which personally I think every good RPG should at least aspire to, as "immersion/simulation + narrative + engaging gameplay" is what I'd consider the sacred triad of the genre).

You can simply have a fatigue system, for instance. Especially if your game involves a world map, passing time and various forms of long distance traveling.
Plenty of games in the past included one without using the D&D ruleset.

But yeah, as I said I absolutely DO NOT expect Larian to go there. I'd be just happy with the day/night cycle, which is what this thread is supposed to be about.