Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Mega-threads and Guides Day/Night Cycle

Mm, I really really really hope they changed their mind. It is something they did before and feels like it'd go against one of the cores of BG as a franchise, or one of the cores to me.

On the main topic, Exhaustion should be a completely optional mechanic among other optional survival mechanics. Some would love it, some would hate it. Please everyone and make it an option but not something forced wither way.

BG3 should be pleasure to play, I don't think it would be much fun to constantly feed your characters food every three hours and take naps etc or else you would collapse. This is a pc game, it's not supposed to be real life. Would it be fun if your characters would have to take a bathroom break and eat every couple of hours, brush their teeth morning and night, sleep for 6-8 hours and while they sleep you can't play. Yeah, sounds really inviting.

Everyone is getting this wrong.
Why does day/night cycles and time MUST serve a useful purpose? Its just AMAZING atmosphere for you RPG. Thats all. Just like customized portraits and faces. No purpose just gets you in the game. Thats the basic stuff RPGs do.

Picture is from Poe2 Deadfire. Right now having tons of fun with it. Playing a 2 swords wielding chanter skald/barbarian <Howler> class. Arriving in town, nighttime, raining, sets the mood so nicely...Ill check out the Inn, next to a warm fire and talk to newly joined Cleric NPC...

Or how about when some characters eat cheese or don't wash their face they get acne and then their charisma score starts to drop.

Larian demographic right there.

Quit the insulting snarkiness. I would have hoped you'd have learned a lesson by now.

I apologize for my snarkiness.

I was making a constructive valid point regarding the thread topic:
<Why does day/night cycles and time MUST serve a useful purpose? Its just AMAZING atmosphere for you RPG. Thats all. Just like customized portraits and faces. No purpose just gets you in the game. Thats the basic stuff RPGs do.>
Further making my point with an example of day/night cyles in Deadire on how it adds so much atmosphere.

and get a childish <smart constructive> silly answer:
<Or how about when some characters eat cheese or don't wash their face they get acne and then their charisma score starts to drop.>

+1 although sad but true.

I can only assume that, given you must have seen my warning to mr_planescapist about being insulting, that you have deliberately chosen to be aggravating here.

Well, congratulations because I am aggravated, and you are suspended for 3 days.

We already discussed this a lot in many threads but here is (another) poll about D/N cycle on reddit.

https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGat..._medium=android_app&utm_source=share

Considering it was a 1.000.000$ goal for DoS's kickstarter campaign.
Considering they sold 1.000.000 * 60$ copy of BG3 the first week of EA.

Should we still hope for D/N ? They said during the pre-release AMA that they won't add D/N cycle in the game but it looks they didn't really realise the hype arround BG3.

Does BG3 deserve a D/N cycle ?
Does Larian's games deserve a D/N cycle ?

Looks like more than 70% of fans think the game would be even more amazing with this feature.

Message to Larian : no one care following NPCs from their usual spot to their bed ! D/N doens't mean a "real time" life for everyone.

I'am almost 45 years old, from lot of threads I assume an high percent of users have played the BG games when they were released, or slightly, later thus I'm pretty sure the Larian demographic is not that stereotyped as depicted from the "Larian demographic" comment.


Said that, time management is an issue in a lot of games. In BG3 we have the standard 2 short rests and 1 long rest per die and it's up to the player to decide on their own if they want to exploit it or not (just like the use of barrels, the use of height and so on) if you decide to abuse it because you see the opportunity that is your issue not an issue of the game.

On topic, the lack of a night time deprives games of a ton of narrative oportunities, this is a medieval set that would imply that in the night the gates to cities would be closed, that taverns would be, obviously in function of how late in the night, more crowed than the day, that shops would be close while fencers could be open, usually night is the time when some kind of criminals are out to do their business.

Nevertheless I admit that it is difficult, and probably resource consuming, to set something like that. Daggerfall had quests that could be done only by night, after the sun set you city gates were closed, but if you got infected with vampirism you have to move in the dark, very fun, but the graphic it used, even if it required powerful computers, were less resource consuming than the one we are used to.

Indeed in almost all the games I play there's a complete lack of night or day time, some games alternate pieces of narrative are in the day, other are in the night.

In my opinion the problem is the conflict between the need and want of players to finish all quest, and the fact that a realistic time arrow would completely break the suspension of skepticism because it would became obvious the lack of time limits to solve the quests.

This, day/night cycle, rain, cloudy days, snow, ect. Environment changes adds to making the world more alive.

Which games do you have in mind ?

I probably forgot a lot but the only RPG I think about that lacks D/N cycle are Wasteland and Dragon Age.

The only TT based video game I remember that have a D/N cycle based on specific quest is Drakensang. But feel free to correct me, my memory is not so good.

According to me the lack of time to solve quest wouldn't be better/worst with or without D/N.

Is that something that really bother you even in games like in TW3 or TES ? Was it in the old IE games or their modern "sucessors" ?

Owlcat try to add time limits for quest and I think it's one of the most hated thing about it.
On the other hand, BG3 has a sense of urgency, no D/N cycle and we can rest forever without consequences.

I'm 100% fine with the lack of timers for quests. It's a bit immersion breaking in all game (that have D/N or not) but it's definitely convenient.

This is more about story or side quests content than visual effects according to me.

I really think it could be interresting if the D/N cycle tied to the rest mechanic.

1) Start playing during the day.
2) Clic the short rest button show us a short cinematic.
2.1) Gameplay after the first short rest when the sun is going down.
3) clic the shortrest button show us a short cinematic
3.1) playing at night after 2 shortrests
4) Clic the longrest button
4.1) Players walking to camp at night during long rest.
5) Clic the bed and back to 1.

With weather effects appearing randomly during these 3 "atmospheres" it would be really awesome.

Day and night cycles could certainly serve a purpose, but I am not entirely sure the story is adapted towards that? I mean, some "missions" would ideally take place in the evening or night, like stealth quests in the city or something, but other than that I guess it's mostly an atmospheric thing?

I mean, until the feature is there you can't even begin to tailor content specifically around it, but the possibilities it open aren't exactly negligible.
There are entire categories of monsters that are supposed to roam mostly or at times even exclusively during night or daytime, for a start.
And that's without even going into urban encounters with NPCs of all sorts on the streets of the city.

Yea and whatever it's used or not for the story, the quests or the creatures on the road... Even a "cosmetic" (not only because it would have an impact on stealth) D/N cycle would add a lot of immersion and another layer to increase the variety of environment.

In such a game it would definitely be a great feature.
We're not talking about Wasteland 3 here (which is a game I love), we're talking about Baldur's Gate 3.

Implementing a day/night cycle is not that difficult. They just need the following things:

1. All NPCs will have two places where they can be found. One during the day and one at night. Most of them will be sleeping in their homes/beds/sleeping bags at night, but you can talk to them (maybe some may complain, but talk to you in the same way).
2. Entrances to some places/buildings will be closed at night.
3. For cosmetic matters, the days will be divided into three cycles: day (a), evening/sunset (b), and night (c). When you click on the short rest button you go from one to the other. After some time playing (something like 30 min) the time jumps from one of these cycles to the other (a to b, b to c, c to a).
4. If the characters spend a day without resting, they need to go camping to sleep, or they will win two Exhaustion levels (PHB, p. 291), per day.
5. When sleeping in the camp the time skips two cycles. Example: from day (a) to night (c).

In the EA...


Otherwise being able to explore during night time is just generally amazing for atmosphere. Selune and Shar are present in BG3. Darkness, Moon, Moonrise Towers, hello? =)

There are many shady things, and vampire things, that simply require a night time scene. The city of Baldur's Gate in BG1 comes alive on another level when you can walk the streets at night and the music and ambience changes. Add some criminals and thugs in the mix to make night time more dangerous. (note: I don't want to see level scaled level 10 Thugs in BG3 when we reach the city just to get a challenging encounter. But maybe if the PC is alone at night, you could be attacked by 5 level 2 Thugs. The party doesn't have to do everything together.)

Dear developers, it would be great if game had a change of day and night.
This opens up additional possibilities for gameplay:
With coming of night some additional monsters or bandits could appear in open world. It would be easier to kill someone.
Well, and it would make more sense to take elves to play with their ability to see in dark.

They have already openly said that they will not do this. Why raise the issue again and again if it clearly won't change their minds.