44 réponses à ce sujet

[Bayonet Hipshot]

It is rather odd that Bioware would go out of their way to make a semi open next gen world and then not add day-night cycle or proper weather seasons. 

 

Yet they say they want to make believable worlds...

 

Biowerpls...

[Sarielle]

The only way to get this right without requiring players to actually use IRL timespans is to use a rush clock. But when everyone moves at the same speed as in IRL but the clock moves 500% times faster, at least for me, that hurts the verisimilitude of the world a great deal. 

 

If you're talking about default Skyrim timescale, I agree. There's a reason I slow theirs down by half or more. There's a happy medium, imo -- faster than RL time, but not so fast as you talk to a merchant and 6 hours has gone by.

[Saphiron123]

Day/Night cycles do not add that much to a game unless the world you're lighting is affected by those cycles.
DAI isn't.
NPCs are static.
There are no crafted torches or light spells.
There are no different mobs/critters that roam/attack/emerge due to day/night.

There's just no benefit unless they wanted to change a lot of the parts of the game.

It's still pretty basic, and it'd change things up a little during the tedious fetch questing (which isn't that fun, so i'll take what i can get...)

[AlexMBrennan]

Money, dear boy. Adding extra features either means hiring more staff (and I don't see you volunteering to pay an extra $10 for day night cycle) or cutting something else

[DuckTheSecond]

In my opinion it's not really necessary.

 

I'd rather have less RNG and cinematic conversations again.

[thats1evildude]

In my experience, day-night cycles don't make the world more immersive. If anything, they make them less immersive, because games can't actually follow a 24-hour clock. So you end up spending five in-game hours strolling down the street because in-game days are generally over an hour long.

Oh, and then you always end up having to wait for something, whether it's for the shops to re-open or for X creature to come out at night. And if you miss your window, you have to wait some more.

I can't say I've played a single game with a day/night cycle where I really felt it added much. If anything, they're a detriment.

[tklivory]

In my experience, day-night cycles don't make the world more immersive. If anything, they make them less immersive, because games can't actually follow a 24-hour clock. So you end up spending five in-game hours strolling down the street because in-game days are generally over an hour long.

Oh, and then you always end up having to wait for something, whether it's for the shops to re-open or for X creature to come out at night. And if you miss your window, you have to wait some more.

I can't say I've played a single game with a day/night cycle where I really felt it added much. If anything, they're a detriment.

 

I can think of two games where I thought day/light worked decently, if not well, but they're both so laughably old that they're hardly relevant to modern game design. In honest truth, in modern games, I personally have found day/night cycles to add simple seemingly unnecessary annoyances (like stores closing and other game mechanic-y concepts) or introduce unrealistic elements while trying to add realism (like having shops in a tiny village open 24 hours a day so the store doesn't close).

 

Perhaps there has been a game that has added it so well it felt good, but I have not played it. But in general, I've not yet played a modern game where the day/light cycle made the world feel more immersive or bigger or better. I've played games where such a cycle was unobtrusive, but even then I wouldn't call it an enhancement. More substantial changes effected by the PC (such as

Spoiler

Crestwood before and after closing the main plot rift

are much better for me at creating the feeling of a dynamic environment than an arbitrary cycle.

[Sidney]

Day Night is more annoying than immersive. The cycles are so fast it never feels right. If they are slower then it gets annoying because if you need to X and X happens at night or in the day then you are SOL if you are at the wrong cycle. Toss in that your character doesn't sleep so you are aware you are awake to several "days" in a row - and no adding a need to sleep feature isn't good either. Plus, day and night really make no difference in terms of play - maybe different monsters spawn at night but frankly rather it is a wolf or a bandit that attacks me doesn't much matter,

[AlleluiaElizabeth]

I liked DA2's system with day and night in Kirkwall, personally. Being able to manually switch btwn the two let you see the town in both settings, let you avoid the problem of having to wait for x mob to spawn and missing it accidentally, and the fact it was under player control let you headcanon it was any time at night you wanted, from early evening to 3 am. Thus, the hanged man and shops could still be believably open or you can perform a "midnight" raid on a bandit warehouse and it worked either way. Also, you don't have the in your face immersion break of your character never sleeping.

[Rawgrim]

Bio devs talked about this when DA:O was in development. My understanding is that they don't think the feature is worth the development time.

 

Have to agree with that one. There are plenty other features I'd say would be more important to add before a day/night cycle.

 

 

See? We DO agree sometimes!

[AlanC9]

I can think of two games where I thought day/light worked decently, if not well, but they're both so laughably old that they're hardly relevant to modern game design.

Nevertheless, what are they?

[Hexoduen]

I'd always welcome a day/night cycle    I love the day/night cycles in Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, Baldur's Gate I, Baldur's Gate II... and so on, because it makes the world feel more alive and immersive.

 

With that said, there are other features on my 'list' I'd rather see implemented in Inquisition, such as customizable tactics

[Rawgrim]

Nevertheless, what are they?

 

It worked really well in Ultima 7, I remember. And to some extent Baldur's Gate 2.

[nici2412]

Day/Night cycles do not add that much to a game unless the world you're lighting is affected by those cycles.
DAI isn't.
NPCs are static.
There are no crafted torches or light spells.
There are no different mobs/critters that roam/attack/emerge due to day/night.

There's just no benefit unless they wanted to change a lot of the parts of the game.

I agree with this. I think if you decide to make a living and breathing world, you have to go all the way. Implanting only a day/night cycle wouldn't really help to create a better atmopshere.

Day/night circle, npcs who have a daily routine and react to whatever yor character does and changing weather effects would have been needed.

Bioware decided it's not worth to create a living world and didn't incldude anything of this. That's why the world feels completely dead and has zero atmosphere imo.They decided to rather spent their ressources in developing 10? romances and 20 different mounts.

[Endurium]

Besides Bethesda and Rockstar titles, the Assassin's Creed games, Dragon's Dogma, Sleeping Dogs, Watch Dogs, Shadow of Mordor, The Witcher 2 & 3, Kingdoms of Amalur, Saint's Row 2 and the Way of the Samurai games all have a day/night cycle too. If you're going to have a vast open world to explore, you have to make it feel alive. It can't be just a big space you can walk around in.

 

A day/night cycle is one of the things that can help bring these worlds to life, as can dynamic weather effects that can change, larger towns or cities bustling with life, and inhabitants that actually DO something instead of just stand stationary their whole lives.

 

Inquisition has none of these, which is why the maps feel hollow and barren. They look pretty, but they don't feel like they have a living, evolving ecosystem when compared to other modern open world games.

 

Ultima V, VI, VII and IX also have day/night cycles, so this feature goes back to the early days of digital gaming. FPS like Half Life 2 didn't have a dynamic cycle, but daylight progressed into night and back into daylight as you progressed through the game along a believable timeline. Heck, even MMO tend to have day/night cycles (WoW's is tied to server real time).

 

I suspect there are things Bioware's coders struggle with so they decide those things aren't worth implementing. Look how many years it took to get bow strings.

 

While I enjoy what a day/night cycle does for a game, I don't like short day/night cycles like in Bethesda's games; always end up using a console command, when available, to increase the length of the cycle to something more reasonable. A full night should not pass before I can finish looting someone's house.

[Deebo305]

Pretty funny though, I won't say its easy but seeing as Orcarina of Time had back in the N64 days it does raise some eyebrows as to why most open areas don't have it

But I suppose you'd have to rework how the world would gradually change as time goes by. Who stays open at night and what npcs are still running around. As well as what creatures prefer the night as opposed to the day

I imagine coding all that for several different hubs would take considerable time. Doubt anyone wanted further delays to Inquisition, I know I didn't.

[AlanC9]

Ultima V, VI, VII and IX also have day/night cycles, so this feature goes back to the early days of digital gaming. FPS like Half Life 2 didn't have a dynamic cycle, but daylight progressed into night and back into daylight as you progressed through the game along a believable timeline. Heck, even MMO tend to have day/night cycles (WoW's is tied to server real time).

Remember that these are very different approaches. Using different static lighting in different areas to indicate different times of day is one thing, using dynamic lighting to let every outdoor area look like every time of the day is quite another. And of course, the earlier games didn't even have to do that much; just a palette swap or map swap.

[tklivory]

Nevertheless, what are they?

 

Might & Magic VI - VI being the best iteration out of that series for use of D/N cycle , and NOT Heroes, I'm talking the original RPGs - and King's Quest IV. 

 

Now, it's true that MM6 probably had a D/N cycle similar to other games, but for whatever reason I felt that the balance was well kept in MM6 between 'game mechanic' and 'useful addition to gameplay'. There were different monsters, different guard rhythms, different stores &c - but it felt organic, and the timing of the overall cycle was juuuust long enough and just short enough that I felt it complemented the style of the game. 

 

For King's Quest IV it worked because the game had a hard cap of how many in-game days you had to finish all the tasks of your main character, and some tasks had to be done in the day, and some at night (like the haunted house had to be visited at night). It was a lovely example of D/N cycle, I thought.

 

One reason the D/N cycle doesn't work for DAI is because the sense of time flow is VERY fluid and non-emphasized. Sleeping in a game that tracks time (like MM6) means something because so many quests/events were tied to specific calendar events, months, even days. In Dragon Age no one knows how long ANYTHING takes. Finally they said that DAO events take about a year to finish, and of course there are the infamous 3 year jumps in DA2, but I have absolutely no idea how long the events in DAI take. How long does it take to travel from the Storm Coast to the Forbidden Oasis? How long does it take to go from Val Royeaux to Skyhold? They would have to COMPLETELY revamp certain aspects of the gameplay to allow a D/N cycle in DAI, and from a dev's standpoint, it makes little sense to shoe-horn it in. In DA2, it felt a bit clumsy and pointless. In DAI, the effect would be even worse.

 

My opinions, of course, but I agree with their decision to work D/N in as set events rather than as a cycle.

[tklivory]

I agree with this. I think if you decide to make a living and breathing world, you have to go all the way. Implanting only a day/night cycle wouldn't really help to create a better atmopshere.

Day/night circle, npcs who have a daily routine and react to whatever yor character does and changing weather effects would have been needed.

Bioware decided it's not worth to create a living world and didn't incldude anything of this. That's why the world feels completely dead and has zero atmosphere imo.They decided to rather spent their ressources in developing 10? romances and 20 different mounts.

 

And for some people, it is the characters and romance which make the world come alive. Everyone has different tastes in games. What matters to you, or what matters to me, are personal preferences. The devs also have preferences, and the game reflects those as much as it reflects the budget/dev time cycle/&c. My personal impression of the world is that it is indeed a living world, even without the elements you think it would need. That mainly means our opinions differ on what makes a game world dynamic. Bioware decided that it wanted to focus resources on other things because there were customers who wanted those things more than the aspects you listed. That's why there is such a variety of games available on the market, though it is a narrow spectrum still compared to other mediums (particularly when discussing AAA titles).

[In Exile]

You mean you didn't like Skyrim being four miles wide?

I tend to prefer my countries to be slightly more than half of Manhattan.