Poll of the Day > Games with day/night cycles. What method do you prefer?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I like real time the most. My night is night in the game.

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It really depends on the type of game. If it's a solo-player game where the differences are few enough that I can manipulate the clock to get the hours I need, then "real time" is good. If it's an online game like FFXIV, I like having a game day within a reasonable amount of time (70 earth minutes to an eorzean day, for instance).

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I never really liked the shorter day cycles. that being said, I don't like games where stuff happens on particular days of the week.

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To where I don't notice it too much. I don't want the day and night to fly by. Maybe 5 seconds to 1 in game minute. But I've long since learned that game worlds are very compressed and how you see the world isn't really how the characters see the world.

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I think the best application of this is harvest moon/stardew valley's day/night cycle as a measure of progress in game. Its pretty superflous in games like Ocarina of time where it might make some minor difference in what you can access (skulltulas), and having to change the clock or wait until later in games like animal crossing is a mild annoyance.


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Strongly depends on the game, but I generally like 2 hour cycles.

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Real time.

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Entity13 posted...

It really depends on the type of game.

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It depends on the game. Something like having to wait for day/night in Pokemon can become extremely frustrating if your play window is limited. Like, if there's a pokemon who only comes out in the day but you're at work/traveling for almost the entire day you could end up struggling to get that mon simply because of the cycle. So I don't feel like real time is a good solution if there's important content timelocked. However in other games it's either largely meaningless or only has minor effects.

I feel like the best way to do it is have it operate on a 2-1 cycle (2 hours day, 1 hour night) with the ability to change between if there's some form of missable content.

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Reverse time

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PyroBlade1985 posted...

There's a game on PS2 called Radiata Stories that had a great day/night cycle.
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I always wanted to play that one

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It really depends how significant it is to the gameplay and whether or not there are ways to manipulate it. If it's purely an aesthetic thing, it should be long enough to be possible to ignore as background (changing every few seconds would be pretty jarring, after all), but short enough that you can reasonably expect to see at least 1-2 full cycles in each zone. Generally, 1-2 minutes is pretty reasonable for that. If it affects what things are available, then the cycle should be longer to help avoid missing important windows, but there should be options to manipulate it. Xenoblade Chronicles did this quite well, where NPC's follow schedules throughout the day (helping the world to feel more organic) that affect sidequest availability, and time progresses slowly enough that you generally won't have to stick around for an extra day to catch ones you missed in a given time slot, but you're given the ability to adjust time to the hour at will so you can quickly check every time block if desired.

Now, some games rely on day/night cycles as an essential part of their gameplay. The obvious example here is Harvest Moon. In that case, day length is a question of game balance, where you want to make sure days are long enough to let people get done what they need to do, but not so long that they don't have to make time management decisions (since that's the central gameplay feature) or run out of things to do. In addition to that, you need to keep the cock moving fast enough to feel like you're making progress through the game. Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life failed at this last point, with really long days that just killed the pacing of the game (months were only 10 days long to compensate, but I still got bored and drifted away in less than 2 years). That last point aside, though, there's a fair amount of flexibility here, since the ideal length for a day depends on what the player is expected to do.

And then there's stuff like Animal Crossing whose central gimmick relies on real time. I don't really count that as having a day/night cycle per se, since the passage of time is the entire game, not simply a feature. In that case, it can be a bit frustrating to have to wait for stuff to happen, but that's more a consequence of approaching the game wrong (that is, like it's a regular game that you can binge, which I'm quite guilty of) instead of something you pop into once every day or two to see what's going on. It's simply not a game that's designed for "normal gaming."

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I tend to play at the same times so matching it to real time just means the game only takes place at either night or day. Much prefer micro cycle preferably not even tied to real time but to something like zone changes.

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As long as it's easy to control, I don't mind it. It can lead to some frustration, but it can also add some depth to levels.
It's when you're spending time just doing nothing for a specific time that gets to me. It starts to feel less like a game.
End of the day, it's never a feature that sells me. I'd rather have different levels than times of the day.
Shenmue is really cool and all, but it gets slow. It's quite immersive, but sometimes I don't want that.

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Metalsonic66 posted...

I always wanted to play that one

You should, it's really fun.

Abridged cycles with a rest method to trigger the time change. Actual time is a pain in the ass because if content was tied to daylight, I wouldn't be able to access it on weekdays (well, *most* of the time). I guess the other option is just controllable time when you can shift forward to the next cycle and it always stays either morning, midday, evening, or night depending on your choice.

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