Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pre-Release Thread

[Immortal]

It's because Swen wants the night to have some gameplay element and not be in just so it can be in. And they don't have the time/money/desire to do it.

Doing only aesthetic would add lot of flavour anyway, much better than nothing. Also the engine is clearly capable of it so it's not the best motivation.

Plenty of 90's games had it

While you are correct - the engine is capable of tuning the time of day / environmental color / fog If Night / Day cycle has no mechanical or game play effects.. leave it out.

Doing Night and Day is a huge amount of effort.. Witcher 3 had to completely redo their Rendering system because areas would look good at one part of the day and horrible the next.
IMO pick the best aesthetic or mood for the area you want and put the dev time else where.

 

[Maggot]

Swen also said, if they do a day/night cycle, that he wanted all NPCs to have a schedule. They explicitly said that they don't want it to be a simple color change/filter. They have a lot of other things to worry about before tackling this issue though.

Shops closing at night and having to go to the inn/tavern to rest is better than nothing in my opinion. With the DM mode you should at least be able to change the time of day for RP purposes.

 

[Zombra]

Keep a pair of sunglasses on your desk and set a timer to go off every 15 minutes. Now put the sunglasses on. Now take them back off. Hooray, such immersion incredible gameplay.

 

[Morality Games]

Still waiting to hear about player created/controlled companions.

The way I understand it your PC is trapped in a sourcerer prison camp at the start of the game. You get to select up to 3 fellow sourcerer companions from a recruitable pool. Each sourcerer has a background and personality that presents different opportunities for role playing at different intervals (ergo having the elf druid companion translates into special opportunities when you are in the forest conclave, etc).

 

[Aenra]

Doing Night and Day is a huge amount of effort.. IMO pick the best aesthetic or mood for the area you want and put the dev time else where.

i) Gothic II says hello. Among others. Time-consuming endeavours are never secondary or even worse, optional. Being a fucking player, even if a retarded one, means you should be sticking to your empirical experience and leaving the rest to the team, results notwithstanding.
ii) Even if you were correct (and you're not), the fact still remains that a KS goal amounting to over one million was never introduced. Careful where and how you make excuses. For others. Bad precedents can lead to even worse.
[* they said they could not do it, not without simplifying everything or cutting systems out. That is a lot different than having retards like you speaking out on their own and saying "it's too time demanding anyway, cut cut cut! We don't need it!"]

You've been told multiple times by.. multiple people that your IT know-how does not instantly entail game design know-how. As always, you strive to neglect that.

Co-op games suck. Trying to do shit while the other players rush to the other side of the map. Even worse in this case since it's not one-shot maps.

PnP games suck too. Sometimes players actually have a fucking thought on their own and want to go further/try things out differently, engage others in ways a GM may not have expected. Sucks! Even worse in this case since others must adapt their strategy. Horrid, horrid, the gift of freedom. We should stick to linearity.

 

[Mazisky]

Yeah, day\night cycle is too demanding:

Baldur's Gate series...oh they had it

Gothic Series...oh, they had it

Elder Scroll Series...oh damn, they had it

Pillars of Eternity.....OMG, had it

Witcher Series...WTF, had it

Indie stuff low budget like Crowntakers or Battle Brothers.....WAT, they have it!


I guess it was not so demanding for all those devs

Honestly i can't remember a single Rpg without cycle

Useless to hide behind a huge amount of excuses that end with a single word: lazy.

Better focusing on super important stuff like controllers support or ubercrap PVP mode

 

[Mustawd]

Useless to hide behind a huge amount of excuses that end with a single word: lazy.

Lazy? As in lazily putting it in with no tie to gameplay lazy? Yes, I agree. Pure laziness.

 

[Mazisky]

Useless to hide behind a huge amount of excuses that end with a single word: lazy.

Lazy? As in lazily putting it in with no tie to gameplay lazy? Yes, I agree. Pure laziness.

So better to not feature anything with no tie to gameplay...

let's cut all the game textures and replace them with green tones taken from microsoft Paint

and let only low settings avaiable in graphic options...no tie to gameplay

why even going with 3d engine...better going dwarf fortress style

 

[Mustawd]

So better to not feature anything with no tie to gameplay...

Isn't that their stated philosophy?

From my understanding it would have probably helped PoE not include the Keep just for the sake of including it.

And it's not just a cosmetic change. To truly do it justice would mean giving npcs schedules, as has been already mentioned. Considering that they're attempting something very ambitious with their GM mode, I think it's best to focus their resources away from day/night cycles. I mean they barely scraped together D:OS due to funding and had to pull resources away from their other title that was being developed in tandem (which actually suffered from bad user reviews iirc).

 

[Mazisky]

So better to not feature anything with no tie to gameplay...

Isn't that their stated philosophy?

From my understanding it would have probably helped PoE not include the Keep just for the sake of including it.

And it's not just a cosmetic change. To truly do it justice would mean giving npcs schedules, as has been already mentioned. Considering that they're attempting something very ambitious with their GM mode, I think it's best to focus their resources away from day/night cycles. I mean they barely scraped together D:OS due to funding and had to pull resources away from their other title that was being developed in tandem (which actually suffered from bad user reviews iirc).

Day\night cycle is a must have for every non-linear Rpg...it's like having character aesthetic options on character creation screen, or having inn\taverns with their music in background...all no-gameplay stuff but compulsory for a proper Rpg atmosphere and setting...so it is more important than it appears. I would preferred that to PVP multiplayer stuff and forcing to "roleplay" in a full daylight world where time does not pass and party can't rest (or if he does, it seems fake)

 

[Lacrymas]

I would be the first person to argue that aesthetics matter, but they have to have a place, either mechanically or thematically. Just randomly throwing ideas in there doesn't say anything. They can easily have a quest/zone which takes place during the night and they can put a color filter over it. Having something because other RPGs have it is dumb and misses the point of creative endeavor.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Day\night cycle is a must have for every non-linear Rpg...

Nope.

 

[Maxwell's Demon]

Day\night cycle is a must have for every non-linear Rpg...it's like having character aesthetic options on character creation screen, or having inn\taverns with their music in background...

None of these things are necessary. No amount of fancy-smancy presentation will make Star Wars: Battlefront a fun game. Stop getting distracted by shiny baubles in front of your face.

 

[Immortal]

Honestly i can't remember a single Rpg without cycle

Mass Effect and Dragon Age.

 

[Lacrymas]

To be fair - Mass Effect is a third person shooter.

 

[Mazisky]

Honestly i can't remember a single Rpg without cycle

Mass Effect and Dragon Age.

Mass Effect is a TPS, Dragon Age 2 had cycle, 1 and 3 had night places at least, lol even simple hack n slashes have night

 

[Mazisky]

Day\night cycle is a must have for every non-linear Rpg...it's like having character aesthetic options on character creation screen, or having inn\taverns with their music in background...

None of these things are necessary. No amount of fancy-smancy presentation will make Star Wars: Battlefront a fun game. Stop getting distracted by shiny baubles in front of your face.

It's not about presentation and graphics but atmosphere, otherwise i wouldn't mention Baldurs'Gate or Battle brothers, unless you consider those "fancy shiny baubles".

And btw Divinity has the most shiny graphic for an isometric rpg out there, i would preferred less shiny graphic but night environments if i had to chose

 

[Roguey]

Divinity Original Sin also has night-time places, e.g. Hunter's Edge.

 

[Efe]

i remember watching a larian stream on twitch.
there was something like codex vs watch fight, i remember one side was dumb looking and other was smt like a cripple/amputee. Chat couldn't stop shitposting during the whole thing.
anyone remember who the users were and which side was codex?

 

[Mustawd]

i remember watching a larian stream on twitch.
there was something like codex vs watch fight, i remember one side was dumb looking and other was smt like a cripple/amputee. Chat couldn't stop shitposting during the whole thing.
anyone remember who the users were and which side was codex?

It was mindx2 and he kicked the RPGwatch nerd's ass. Have some respect, lah.

 

[Kaivokz]

Day\night cycle is a must have for every non-linear Rpg...it's like having character aesthetic options on character creation screen, or having inn\taverns with their music in background...

None of these things are necessary. No amount of fancy-smancy presentation will make Star Wars: Battlefront a fun game. Stop getting distracted by shiny baubles in front of your face.

It's not about presentation and graphics but atmosphere, otherwise i wouldn't mention Baldurs'Gate or Battle brothers, unless you consider those "fancy shiny baubles".

And btw Divinity has the most shiny graphic for an isometric rpg out there, i would preferred less shiny graphic but night environments if i had to chose

It seems to me that having a city shift into night while the crier still stands there crying about the day's tragedies, while the shops remain open, while the kids still run through the streets, and so on, is a very strange way of promoting "atmosphere". If you enjoy atmosphere and have any sense, your preferences ought to be: fully integrated day/night cycle ≿ day/night specific zones ≿ always day or night ≿ non-integrated day/night shader.

 

[Endlösung]

The Watch nerd was a fucking caricature of a pathetic beta, holy fuck. But not only that! He was so incredibly incompetent at the game, Jesus H Christ.

 

[HoboForEternity]

It seems to me that having a city shift into night while the crier still stands there crying about the day's tragedies, while the shops remain open, while the kids still run through the streets, and so on, is a very strange way of promoting "atmosphere". If you enjoy atmosphere and have any sense, your preferences ought to be: fully integrated day/night cycle ≿ day/night specific zones ≿ always day or night ≿ non-integrated day/night shader.

agreed. though i prefer detailed NPC schedules that dynamically changes as in game clock tick, but visual-only day/night system is awkward when not implemented well, as the reason stated above

 

[Infinitron]

I think the people who want day/night cycles would be okay with all street NPCs just vanishing during the night.

 

[Kaivokz]

I think the people who want day/night cycles would be okay with all street NPCs just vanishing during the night.

Partial integration could fall somewhere between full and none if it's done well, but with an expansive and robust game world, presumably with many NPCs and many NPC interactions, I don't imagine it would be as easy to implement as "just have the street NPCs vanish" makes it sound. It would also do little to assist with shops or other in-door locations and the behavior of creatures who reside in them. The more you add in order to make the day/night cycle function, even just in terms of atmosphere, the more work is required (to implement and troubleshoot). Which is the problem in the first place.

I am not against integrated day/night cycles. I would have preferred it to this whole "competitive narrative multiplayer" idea (which I think has a small chance of being fun, and a large chance of being ignored by anyone who plays multiplayer), but given that Larian values implementing other things more, it's not just an easy addition that they're leaving out because they hate day/night cycles.