Changing how alarms work

[Genitive]

Hello, here I would like to present my idea how to change the alarm system to hopefully make missions more interesting.

Currently, alarms don’t do much apart from sporadic lockdown or a bursa. So I thought that the Orb Vallis threat system could be adapted to other missions.

When an alarm is triggered players would get 1 wanted star for each squad member, maximum of 4. If player number is fewer than 4, the stars would simply increase over time. When alarms are on, enemies on the map would be always alerted, know player’s location, and actively seek them out (of course, they still wouldn't be able to detect invisible frames). This eliminates sneaky gameplay, so turning alarms off is required to get back to stealth.  Additionally, each star increases enemy spawns for additional pressure.

There is more. Active alarms would also make some missions more tricky. For example, when alarm is on in a capture mission, the target would start escaping immediately, regardless whether they saw us or not. For rescue or spy, entering the prison/vault would trigger a countdown. So players would have to pay attention to alarm if they don’t want to hurry.

For endless mission this mechanic can have a use as well. In reverse. Since enemies are alerted all the time, a console could be used to increase our threat level. For those who get bored because of low enemy spawns, they could bump the numbers up.

I imagine changes like that might be somewhat disruptive, so here are some countermeasures. First of all, enemies that are going to trigger an alarm are marked and players get a notification that an alarm/lockdown is about to be triggered. The time it takes to trigger an alarm can also be increased to give players more time to react. Next, there is a 30 seconds cooldown between alarm attempts, so players are not bombarded with notifications, and 1 minute cooldown after turning off an alarm, before another one can be triggered.

And that’s it.

[Tiltskillet]

9 minutes ago, Genitive said:

When alarms are on, enemies on the map would be always alerted, know player’s location, and actively seek them out (which they currently don’t really do). This eliminates sneaky gameplay, so turning alarms off is required to get back to stealth. Additionally, each star increases enemy spawns for additional pressure.

It sounds like this is actively encouraging people to trigger alarms, even if it's at the cost of screwing over invisibility frames in the squad.

[(XBOX)Rez090]

19 minutes ago, Genitive said:

When an alarm is triggered players would get 1 wanted star for each squad member, maximum of 4. If player number is fewer than 4, the stars would simply increase over time.

what is this, gta? we don't need no star alarms.

[Genitive]

2 minutes ago, (XBOX)Rez090 said:

what is this, gta? we don't need no star alarms.

We don't need no stars, a double negative, so that means we do. And we already have them in Orb Vallis.

10 minutes ago, Tiltskillet said:

It sounds like this is actively encouraging people to trigger alarms, even if it's at the cost of screwing over invisibility frames in the squad.

I don't play in squads, so I wouldn't know, but do people in squads rely on stealth multiplayers at all? Is this going to make squad gameplay any different?

Unless you mean that enemies would know the location of invisible frames. They wouldn't, I don't want to make invisibility obsolete.

[Tiltskillet]

11 minutes ago, Genitive said:

Unless you mean that enemies would know the location of invisible frames. They wouldn't, I don't want to make invisibility obsolete.

Sorry that's just how I interpreted "When alarms are on, enemies on the map would be always alerted, know player’s location, and actively seek them out".

[Genitive]

I edited the post to make it clearer.