Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Day/Night

You're right; I misremembered that one. The nighttime areas were night al the time. Been a while.

You're right to some degree. But even a cosmetic day/night cycle adds to immersion and opportunities for roleplaying. Putting the player in a game world which is perpetually bathed in daylight is about as immersion breaking as you can get. And for those who like to play as thieves, well, no night is a serious issue.

There are, however, some fairly simple ways to add strategic depth and the illusion of NPC schedules to a day/night cycle without having to actually code it in completely. Closing shops at night by simply locking the doors. Making stealth more effective after dark. Making certain monsters appear only at night, and others only during the day. Etcetera.

The Witcher games have day/night cycle with NPC schedules and changes in monster density/behavior/types. Some quests are different if you do it day/night or require a specific time to be carried out.

The Witcher games have been on my playlist for a while. Heck, I only just got around to Skyrim. It's hard being an almost middle-aged gamer. But it does force me to weed out a lot of games which I would have played in my younger days, but which don't offer exactly the kind of gaming experience I want now. I've tried and abandoned so many RPGs in the last few years.

And when you break in the NPC is just there acting like if the store was open, congratulation you found the one thing that is more immersion breaking than no day/night cycles

Oh, come on. There are ways to keep that from happening. Don't be ridiculous. Use your imagination.

That would require coding...

Fun detail; Deus Ex has ONLY nighttime, it's never daylight in it, ever.

Thats not true: You see the sunrise while leaving vandenberg;)

Back to topic: larian makes their points clear during the development. Regarding to the length of the last two release-notes it was the right decision, to cut the "real" dan/night cycle. Hopefully the game is successfully enough (one week Steam #1 sale) to giv'em enough space/time to reevaluate some decisions made in the past

Man, it HAS been a while. I think you're right. Except for that sunrise, of course.

Day/night cycles can't be that important if you can't even remember if a game has them or not

Oh, stop.

I also played that game back when I had time to play every game I could put my hands on. Plus, as a FPS with RPG elements, it's easier to get away with having no day/night cycle. I clearly should not have included it in the first place.

And there's a reason(s) why I still remember Ultima VII so fondly, and the combat ain't it.

the problem with day/night cycles is, it has to be done right, or it get creepy. Remembering child playing at sing while they should sleep or farmers staying on the fields at night ...

Oh... I do recall the naked people wandering the city at night in Oblivion...
What the...?

I'm not sure if I encountered that particular one! Though Oblivion wasn't without its bugs...

Boycotted the last two (Steamworks exclusives) but Morrowind could probably qualify also.
BG2 didn't implement general NPC day/night activity, you just had a few key encounters limited to nighttime.
On the other side of the coin, having a merchant standing out in the open regardless of weather or time of day can be just as immersion breaking (glares at NWN2).
Such additions would be welcome, but can hardly qualify as simple unless you're prepared to accept immersion-breaking shortcuts. In D:OS most shopkeepers have outside stalls, so closing them would mean having to teleport the stalls (or at least the items on them) in lieu of scripting each merchant to pack up. And most merchants don't have homes so they would have to vanish until morning.

In the case of buildings, what happens when closing time occurs while the party is still inside? Unless a "we're closing, out you go"-type script is added to move the party out (and this needs to be individual to each building), then they risk being locked in till morning. Plus each inhabitant would need a nighttime script (a generic "Get stuffed! I'm sleeping! *zzzz*" should suffice in many cases though).
We can hope, but it would mean a lot of re-engineering and re-balancing.