Reworking the Alarm System and Burglaries

[99]

Spending $750,000 for an alarm that has a small chance of not even going off? Seems like that initial $200,000 isn’t going to buy much these days. This is crazy.

[Nervous]

We have to take into account that IRL, the alarm can be disabled. Ingame now? It can't, and if we give everyone the script ability to, they will which will be unbalanced.

 I like the suggestion, but I don't like the price. I'm more in favor of a paycheck price to pay for your alarm. You want a great alarm? It'll cost you from $500 to $2000 per paycheck for example, which is a huge price if you take into account how long someone will play with the alarm, but way more realistic than the huge buyout cost suggested here.

[Resick]

im up for anything that involves alarms rework

 

 

current system's hideous

[Fenris]

3 minutes ago, Nervous said:

We have to take into account that IRL, the alarm can be disabled. Ingame now? It can't, and if we give everyone the script ability to, they will which will be unbalanced.

 I like the suggestion, but I don't like the price. I'm more in favor of a paycheck price to pay for your alarm. You want a great alarm? It'll cost you from $500 to $2000 per paycheck for example, which is a huge price if you take into account how long someone will play with the alarm, but way more realistic than the huge buyout cost suggested here.

 

This would be good, can just RP it as you paying a service fee every week for maintenance on the alarm and so on. +1

[knppel]

2 hours ago, Bospy said:

One issue that has plagued the server for a long time is the house alarm system which dissuades any serious burglaries or burglary roleplayers.

The actual plague is that so many people want to roleplay burglars and they all expect exceptional bounty and ideally to get away with it.

 

I'll not even comment on the prices, you have to be kidding.

[Timzii]

18 minutes ago, Nervous said:

We have to take into account that IRL, the alarm can be disabled. Ingame now? It can't, and if we give everyone the script ability to, they will which will be unbalanced.

 I like the suggestion, but I don't like the price. I'm more in favor of a paycheck price to pay for your alarm. You want a great alarm? It'll cost you from $500 to $2000 per paycheck for example, which is a huge price if you take into account how long someone will play with the alarm, but way more realistic than the huge buyout cost suggested here.

What if someone is offline and they got an alarm? Will they also be charged or not?

[Keane]

I think everyone can agree that alarms in their current form are too powerful but the proposed changes shift the balance way too far towards those breaking in. There's a bunch of factors that were considered at the time of the alarms being implemented that were used to make them as powerful as they are.

One of the biggest factors was the fact that people spend a lot of time in their homes. Naturally nobody can play 24 hours a day (though some of you guys do...) so that leaves houses essentially defenseless when you're not online. There is also the fact that players can wait until the owner logs off. I myself experienced this. After being followed home, I stayed on for about an hour. Within an hour of me logging off, the house was broken into. Realistically my character could have reacted to the break in seeing as they brute forced their way through a solid front door to get in but since I logged off, I did not get a chance to. The second property on the same character (which was never used and was awaiting a mapper) was broken into within 24 hours while I was offline too which added to my suspicion that something was off. These were, and still are, the only two times my properties have been broken into also. Making it so alarms can be completely mitigated completely removes the ability to counter this and isn't how we should go about nerfing alarms. 

 

There's also the fact that break ins are not conducted realistically. Rather than stealing expensive items like electronics or checking bedrooms for things like jewelry, break in crews will completely ignore anything out in the open and seek guns and drugs. There should be ways to make money from stealing non-scripted items. Players should be able to get laptops, tablets, TVs etc. and be able to sell them on. It would likely have to be an NPC as the demand for electronics is much lower in-game because they're one command away from being added from an interior. 

 

Any methods of fighting against alarms should be only a delaying action to help promote more realistic RP and prevent houses from being absolutely cleaned out an hour after the owner logs off. The burglary system unfortunately has many players who use it maliciously. Between my own personal experience, seeing break ins myself (people breaking into banned players houses right after they get banned for example) and reports of players metagaming faction threads to hit properties, there is a strong need to have a big degree of protection from houses being cleared completely by players who will search every single inch of the property for items based on OOC information. I'm fully behind giving players more time inside a property to let proper RP occur. There just has to be some sort of alarm go off or other police notification. 

 

False positives should really become a thing to prevent a bunch of cops showing up to every break in. Have the notification specify that there's potentially a break in occurring. While it won't make too much of a difference during the quiet times, it will help reduce the amount of responding units when there's other calls going on. Right now the protocol is to surround the house and move in when there's enough backup because it's a guarantee that someone broke in or at least attempted to. One other thing to consider though is the type of people that break in. Burglars being armed and willing to shoot at cops who respond to break ins have become a lot more common so it's resulting in a bigger police response. I've dealt with such a situation myself. There was enough people with guns to warrant a tactical team response to handle a break in. In fact, on that call there was more guns than people inside. If we want a situation where only one or two units will be the initial response to an alarm, then there needs to be a lot less guns involved. Combine that with false positives and a push from LFM to have factions moderate the responses to property alarms and we'll have a big improvement. To clarify, by moderating the response to property alarms I mean mandating a non-emergency response unless there's a good reason to believe there's someone inside and limiting the amount of units that respond to the initial report. 

 

The idea of restricting higher end alarms to more expensive properties is something I can support. The market price of a property should determine what level of alarm can be given to the property. This prevents cheap apartments from having high end security. Alarms should have a weekly upkeep cost. If it's not paid, then the alarm doesn't function. A regular upkeep cost is better than huge upfront fees. It also makes more sense. 

 

The fact that those inside are notified of the alarm going off AFTER the cops are needs to be changed. At the minimum the cops and those inside should be notified at the same time to allow some sort of risk to breaking in. Response times within the city are less than a minute when there's units available and are never more than three or four minutes when it's busy unless every unit is doing something. As a result, the notification happening at the same time is a lot more balanced.

 

I would like to again stress the point that alarms should never be disabled completely to keep the gameplay balance. Break ins have the potential to really make the property owner take a massive loss so there has to be away to counter them. Making it easier to escape, increasing the amount of time before the alarm goes off to allow RP to occur and allowing players to make money through non-script items is a lot more balanced than what's been suggested here.

[Shokkoth]

Let me sell my house so i can buy a house alarm.

 

No.

[99]

6 minutes ago, Keane said:

I think everyone can agree that alarms in their current form are too powerful but the proposed changes shift the balance way too far towards those breaking in. There's a bunch of factors that were considered at the time of the alarms being implemented that were used to make them as powerful as they are.

One of the biggest factors was the fact that people spend a lot of time in their homes. Naturally nobody can play 24 hours a day (though some of you guys do...) so that leaves houses essentially defenseless when you're not online. There is also the fact that players can wait until the owner logs off. I myself experienced this. After being followed home, I stayed on for about an hour. Within an hour of me logging off, the house was broken into. Realistically my character could have reacted to the break in seeing as they brute forced their way through a solid front door to get in but since I logged off, I did not get a chance to. The second property on the same character (which was never used and was awaiting a mapper) was broken into within 24 hours while I was offline too which added to my suspicion that something was off. These were, and still are, the only two times my properties have been broken into also. Making it so alarms can be completely mitigated completely removes the ability to counter this and isn't how we should go about nerfing alarms. 

 

There's also the fact that break ins are not conducted realistically. Rather than stealing expensive items like electronics or checking bedrooms for things like jewelry, break in crews will completely ignore anything out in the open and seek guns and drugs. There should be ways to make money from stealing non-scripted items. Players should be able to get laptops, tablets, TVs etc. and be able to sell them on. It would likely have to be an NPC as the demand for electronics is much lower in-game because they're one command away from being added from an interior. 

 

Any methods of fighting against alarms should be only a delaying action to help promote more realistic RP and prevent houses from being absolutely cleaned out an hour after the owner logs off. The burglary system unfortunately has many players who use it maliciously. Between my own personal experience, seeing break ins myself (people breaking into banned players houses right after they get banned for example) and reports of players metagaming faction threads to hit properties, there is a strong need to have a big degree of protection from houses being cleared completely by players who will search every single inch of the property for items based on OOC information. I'm fully behind giving players more time inside a property to let proper RP occur. There just has to be some sort of alarm go off or other police notification. 

 

False positives should really become a thing to prevent a bunch of cops showing up to every break in. Have the notification specify that there's potentially a break in occurring. While it won't make too much of a difference during the quiet times, it will help reduce the amount of responding units when there's other calls going on. Right now the protocol is to surround the house and move in when there's enough backup because it's a guarantee that someone broke in or at least attempted to. One other thing to consider though is the type of people that break in. Burglars being armed and willing to shoot at cops who respond to break ins have become a lot more common so it's resulting in a bigger police response. I've dealt with such a situation myself. There was enough people with guns to warrant a tactical team response to handle a break in. In fact, on that call there was more guns than people inside. If we want a situation where only one or two units will be the initial response to an alarm, then there needs to be a lot less guns involved. Combine that with false positives and a push from LFM to have factions moderate the responses to property alarms and we'll have a big improvement. To clarify, by moderating the response to property alarms I mean mandating a non-emergency response unless there's a good reason to believe there's someone inside and limiting the amount of units that respond to the initial report. 

 

The idea of restricting higher end alarms to more expensive properties is something I can support. The market price of a property should determine what level of alarm can be given to the property. This prevents cheap apartments from having high end security. Alarms should have a weekly upkeep cost. If it's not paid, then the alarm doesn't function. A regular upkeep cost is better than huge upfront fees. It also makes more sense. 

 

The fact that those inside are notified of the alarm going off AFTER the cops are needs to be changed. At the minimum the cops and those inside should be notified at the same time to allow some sort of risk to breaking in. Response times within the city are less than a minute when there's units available and are never more than three or four minutes when it's busy unless every unit is doing something. As a result, the notification happening at the same time is a lot more balanced.

 

I would like to again stress the point that alarms should never be disabled completely to keep the gameplay balance. Break ins have the potential to really make the property owner take a massive loss so there has to be away to counter them. Making it easier to escape, increasing the amount of time before the alarm goes off to allow RP to occur and allowing players to make money through non-script items is a lot more balanced than what's been suggested here.

Much better approach and something I could get behind much better than the original suggestions. 

[Mahitto]

I do like the idea, but I think that the suggested values are blown way out of proportion. $2,000,000 for an alarm? Even for a regular house, $160,000 costs as much as the house itself, if not more. And that's the best case. If someone decides to make such a huge investment, they're still betting 50/50 against losing every single thing in the house. Even if the alarm triggers, in the ~6-7 minutes it will take the police to get there, they'll still lose most of their stuff, unless we'll start seeing people come up will all sorts of funky hidden compartments to prevent such stuff.

 

I also think that basing the delay on minutes is a bad idea, as there are lots of slow typers out there and looting a house requires interacting with the admin, which can also take some time. If I type at 50 WPM and the admin takes a few seconds to respond and doesn't type that fast either, we'll be at a huge disadvantage compared to both a robber and an admin who type at 100 WPM.

 

My biggest issue is this, though - what will stop people from simply not using houses to store their valuables anymore? Why would anyone even bother investing all of their life savings in a house alarm and have a pretty much guaranteed risk of losing everything when they can just create a random stash or even better, buy a cheap $5,000 car, store $3 mil worth of stuff in it and despawn it, with a 100% chance of saving their items? We still would have no robberies, just for a different reason.

 

I would love to see more burglary role-play. I currently role-play with the Sheriff's Department and we barely get any such calls whatsoever. Sure, there's the occasional one, but the current alarms are too OP and always send out every single LEO unit in the city to any random house, immediately. Right now, there's a 0% chance for robbers to succeed if the house has an alarm. However, replacing that with a 100% chance of robbers to succeed is not the way to go. We need a new system, but not this - or at least not with these values. My two cents.