Day and Night Cycle - yes or no?

[kirbwarrior]

So there's this new rpg that came out recently that I feel solved the problems of day/night very simply; The player pushes a button to change the time. Literally that simple. I was worried when I saw the game had a day/night system but so far they don't lock any of the important things behind it (shops, bars, etc) and it switches over very quickly and it's pretty pleasing to watch.

I'm not saying this has changed my opinion on whether or not a game should have it, but removing the inconvenience (and more generally, the negatives) of a system goes a long way to letting the positives shine.

 

[fatalis357]

So there's this new rpg that came out recently that I feel solved the problems of day/night very simply; The player pushes a button to change the time. Literally that simple. I was worried when I saw the game had a day/night system but so far they don't lock any of the important things behind it (shops, bars, etc) and it switches over very quickly and it's pretty pleasing to watch.

I'm not saying this has changed my opinion on whether or not a game should have it, but removing the inconvenience (and more generally, the negatives) of a system goes a long way to letting the positives shine.

Agreed, Ive played a few games where time doesn't move until you decide to "sleep/rest" and that advances the time to night or day depending.

 

[sabao]

Day-night cycles are wonderful for immersion and visually appealing, but from a gameplay perspective, you'll want to be more considerate about whether or not it contributes positively to the experience you're attempting to build.

Personally, the only game I currently think a persistent day-night cycle works well with might be for the Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons/Stardew Valley-type farm sims, and only for these reasons:

• These games focus heavily on time management. Time's a finite resource, and players are tasked with planning how to best optimize each day to get the most out of each of them (Maintaining your farm, yielding produce for profit, meeting & socializing with the locals).
  
  
• Keeping the play space concise. Keeping proceedings limited to a single village makes the mental task of keeping track of daily and hourly schedules manageable for players. It plays well together with point one: Players are better able to create more meaningful approaches to play when they're aware of the cards they have in hand.

Off the top of my head, there are a few main examples of major games with day-night cycles integrated that I may not have had issues with then, but do have some quibbles with now:

• Brave Fencer Musashi/Radiata Stories: The cycle exists as a mechanic, but only when convenient to the designer. The day-night cycle to both these games I feel created a setting that felt so lived-in and immersive that I will still go to bat for both these games as my favorite settings in any JRPG ever. And then you're snapped out of it when you have to put Musashi on an 8 hour nap out on the streets because you just missed the local grocery's store hours. Some mechanics may not play well with others. The passage of time in both these JRPGs is irrelevant until the game decides they're aren't. Not only were they immersion breaking, but they also killed a lot of moment to moment momentum between game and story beats.
  
  
• Skyrim/Animal Crossing New Horizons: The cycle exists, mainly just for the vibes. I truly can't remember of Skyrim in particular did anything special with its cycle, so I'm considering it purely cosmetic in this case. AC has NPCs following a daily schedule, but as far as I know, none of it really play into game progression. I have no particular feelings toward the matter as they don't really directly affect how I play, except maybe for the fact that because AC follows a real life clock, so I'm almost always playing on evenings in-game.

 

[kirbwarrior]

I truly can't remember of Skyrim in particular did anything special with its cycle, so I'm considering it purely cosmetic in this case.

Skyrim definitely had used it mostly for inconvenience. Being locked out of stores, making vampire a trap choice, time was basically there to make your life more annoying.

 

[JohnDoeNews]

Skyrim definitely had used it mostly for inconvenience. Being locked out of stores, making vampire a trap choice, time was basically there to make your life more annoying.

Sleeping is a thing in skyrim too. It gives you +10% experience for 8 hours. This is encouraged by the day/night cycle.

 

[Dark_Ansem]

As is in Cyberpunk 2077, where, irritatingly enough, some quests are hour-locked. In Pathfinder WOTR, the secret ending is month-locked, but not year-locked, so in that sense the passage of time is very incisive.

 

[kirbwarrior]

Sleeping is a thing in skyrim too. It gives you +10% experience for 8 hours. This is encouraged by the day/night cycle.

Oh yeah, that was super annoying, too. It wasn't even done in regular time like most effects which means no handy timer to know when it ends. And it's one of those "necessary" effects (think about how important exp up accessories can be compared to any other accessory), so the player really wants to do it. Plus it only lasts 8 hours, which gives a weird timing to "when" you should sleep.

Plus, it was varied. Any bed is 5%, owned beds are 10% (and you might need to sleep longer than an hour for the 10%, I remember getting confused why I sometimes still got 5%), and sleeping with a spouse is 15%. Which gave a weird incentive to both get married and specifically to a follower because then you can keep the +15% almost anywhere due to the number of random beds around.

Now, it's not a terrible concept, just poor execution. Replace "bonus exp" with something like maybe "higher regen" (because rest is good for recovery) would help make it less "required" to do. Give it an actual timer you can plan for helps further so you aren't checking your menu constantly to make sure it's still there. And make it so anyone you marry ends up working as a follower helps with the Lover's Comfort oddity.

To tie that into a day/night system that isn't time-based, sleep could be a buff that lasts X amount of exp gains. That could be a number of battles, quests, minor actions (like pickpocketing), all depending on how other parts of your game work. Or it just lasts a number of map changes (to call back to my original post here) and other effects that move time forward.

 

[LuxioCatto]

If a D/N cycle is implemented in a game, an interesting thing to do would be give it weight to the time moving on. Harvest Moon had its seasons and calendar dynamic, and it made sense to have a D/N cycle there... but then, when it becomes too "realistic", the frustration of having to wait for a shop to open hits really hard xd

The way I see it, there's 2 ways to meaningfully implement the D/N cycle:

day and night on a timer - Pressures the player to do actions under a timer (the shop that closes at night, the enemies that become stronger, the EXP you get as bonus), but this pressure is literally fueled by anxiety

OR

day and night on a game loop - There's things you can do in the day (shop simulator where you sell items found in the Dungeons) and there's things you can do in the night (crawl on Dungeons to get items for your shop), and time will move forward ONLY when you complete the tasks tied to the time of day or you choose to skip it. These examples come from the game Moonlighter by Digital Sun, btw

These are the only 2 instances of like actual meaningful D/N cycles.
The first sucks imo cause how it's usually done, there's 0 sense of progress of time whatsoever, its just a "What a Terrible Night to have a Curse" sort of deal. Where the other makes you completely think 2 different gameplay instances in 1 game.