Not quite getting this yet with a bit of wtf added...

[Harmor]

So, first play and I have to say (ofc ofc, early access and all) I am so far a little disappointed. It randomly creates levels, so far so good, but why does the game generate a level for me that my starting guys can only and solely try and escape from? Second mission, it told I have to use Incognito for hacking some terminal - like what? That's a guy I have to unlock I guess but newsflash - he is not yet unlocked. So with my starting two I can't do anything on that map but try to escape - oh yeah, they also have NO means to open locked doors. But there ARE locked doors. Wtf?

 

Okay I understand this is early access as I said before but also, this is absolutely nonsensical to me right now. Pacing seems completely out of whack at this point in time which to me is quite unusual far as Klei games go. 

 

Edit: Oh btw, why does the alarm keep going up when I do not CAUSE an alarm? To me, and I am sorry to say this, it's absolutely bloody stupid - I'd understand raising alarms if I cause it, but alarms being raised one step by default with each turn to me is just simply put bad game design. 

[Mojo1094]

Incognito is not an agent, it's a program your agents use to hack electronic systems in the levels. Press spacebar to enter Incognito. 

 

For locked doors you are going to need a passkey, you get that off a guard so you will first have to find the guard to get through those locked doors. 

 

The alert level goes up as a timer in the game to speed the pace along, it's a game mechanic. You could think of it like this: The doors opened and the guards are now looking for why. The way's that these offices are connected they would have some idea that someone was there that shouldn't be, so they are looking for the cause and until they find it they are going to escalate their efforts until they do. 

 

Does that help at all?

[Harmor]

Ah right, got that Incognito and locked doors thing, very helpful of you indeed. And although I do understand what you mean with that whole alert level rising, I'm still not a fan of it. It's imo a little too gamey and an arbitrary way to escalate difficulty levels which could be solved much more elegantly - it's not like there are so few opportunities to screw up while playing. Hell, I've seen this (once again arbitrary in my book) escalation of difficulty in games when I started playing in the mid 1980s - didn't like it then, don't like it now. 

[Fledgeling]

Bottom line, you wasted $15.99. I understand where your frustration come from, and I respect your opinion though some of them aren't justifiable. 

 

I've played roughly 15 hours since I purchased the game. (Nice feature you can track your gaming hours on steam) Here's my take and hopefully my little experience can address your issues.

 

If you notice, the game is not randomly creating levels. From what I've been playing, they have 4 levels through Day 4. I have not finish all the missions yet, but you basically start at Guarded Level Mission, then Very Guarded Level, Heavily Guarded, and Extremely Guarded. Before I read your post, I read somewhere in this forum where there are 2 players have already completed all missions. These missions are possible, you just have to learn and master mechanics and learn from your mistakes.

 

One tip, try not to be too greedy and enter every room. There is more than one occasions where you have to leave the safe and money behind. Your FIRST priority is to find the elevator at the very beginning, then grab as much as you can along the way. Try not to go over level 3 alarm, but there is one time I just have to because I can't find the elevator. 

 

In order to unlock characters, you need more XP. Isn't this reasonable? Look, games like this REQUIRES patience. For locked doors, you need a Pass Card. Locked doors are implemented for a reason, it has the same idea that you need CPUs to unlock a safe. But you are not questioning what the heck, why I need CPUs to hack?

 

Personally, I really liked they raise an alarm level every turn.This is a turn-based strategy game which you have to make quick and smart decisions because you are BREAKING into a corporation!! Sir, no offense, but when you breaking in a bank, house, office, and corporation in this case, you want to be quick and stealth and get out clean. This is the ideology the game designer want us to achieve as we play the game. And this is why they called this a game for real spy. And you are asking for infinite time? If they don't control the time of this game, what is the point of playing safe? There is no way as a player I need to make quick and smart decisions when I have unlimited time.

[Harmor]

Well, when it comes to strategy games I infinitely prefer turn based over real time. That isn't my point however. I've gotten more accustomed to playing this game after I started understanding the mechanics. but once again, the raised alarm stuff is just stupid in my book. And I will tell you why this is arbitrary far as I'm concerned - with your comparison there, you break into a bank/corporation/whatever, you START the mission having broken into the facility already and very apparently, no guard is coming for you. So you entered undetected - why does the alarm keep raising?

 

This just makes no sense and is arbitrary to me - the game has mechanics galore to raise the alarm when you screw up. Why is this not used instead? This has little to do with the fact I can't take these mechanics as a player, this has everything to do with the fact its gamey and just there to add difficulty without the player's need to screw up. Why not add a whole level of alarm (or two) when you get spotted by a guard for example? Would be FAR more based on actually playing the game and a far more elegant solution. Once again I will say, to me this is bad game design - it's not like I totally dislike the game now that I've understood how it works, but I'd expect better from Klei tbh...

[cipherov]

I think at the moment the game is much harder than it will be when released. For various reasons. 

• There is not enough content to play with at the moment. Tutorial, 3 days of random missions and final mission on day 4. 
• Most likely some features which could make game easier are not yet implemented/released.  
• Bugs.

It is true that the game doesn't worth to buy at the moment. But I don't think you should expect much of early access. It is just an opportunity to look into and may be influence game development process. You cold consider the purchase as a pre-order  and just get back to it, when the game is done.

[Mojo1094]

You didn't waste your money, you paid for an evaluation and you certainly are giving the game and Klei just that. Let them know that you would like a purpose behind the countdown. 

 

For me it was unexpected and I had to justify it in my head  as to why there is a countdown. 

It's not my favorite feature of the game that's for sure, and yeah I think they could do it a lot differently and because this is early access, it may change. Who knows?

 

 

[Fledgeling]

Well, no game is perfect. Klei can only do so much, and for sure they can't satisfy 100% of players. Yes, even I dislike some of the aspects of this game. But I can live with these flaws, and at current state the game is decent imo. Goodluck!

[jamesl]

Re: Alarm

 

At the basic level, this kind of thing does often just boil down to taste, but let me see if I can give you some insight into why we made the alarm go up each turn the way we did. 

 

We've played (and loved) the new X-COM quite a bit and it's definitely inspired some elements in Invisible. One of the things we were frustrated by in the new X-COM was that there was no incentive (in the basic missions) to keep moving forward. The strongest and safest strategy was to inch forward very slowly, never revealing too much of the map, until you found a group of aliens and were still in a great position to take care of them. The problem was, this was a very boring, very safe and unfortunately very optimal way to play the game. Even the X-COM developers realized this was a problem, which is why they put in time-depleting Meld containers in Enemy Within to alleviate it somewhat. 

 

When the alarm was going up on only player mistakes, Invisible had a similar problem. There was no reason ever to enter a room without absolutely full AP. No reason to do anything other than end turn over and over again to make sure you had as much PWR as possible and every single item off cooldown. That was the optimal way to play, and we found that it wasn't super fun to play that way, but players would still gravitate towards it because it was so strong.

 

The other thing is that the turn pressure of the alarm has led to some of our favorite and most exciting moments while playing the game. Some of the moments that feel most like a spy movie are from the alarm's constant pressure. This is the heart of the game -- the difficult choices that spies make. Do I hurry up and risk getting caught, or play careful and risk taking too long? Do I leave without my main objective or do I continue and risk everything? These are the sort of choices that make us love spy movies and fiction, and the kind of choices we wanted to make sure our game had in it. 

 

That said, I agree with you that we could do a better job justifying the alarm within the context of the world. The current idea is that the corporations are tracking your use of Incognita and slowly pinpointing you as you stay longer in their buildings, but that's not being communicated adequately at the moment.

 

Thanks for the feedback!

[Fledgeling]

The other thing is that the turn pressure of the alarm has led to some of our favorite and most exciting moments while playing the game. Some of the moments that feel most like a spy movie are from the alarm's constant pressure. This is the heart of the game -- the difficult choices that spies make. Do I hurry up and risk getting caught, or play careful and risk taking too long? Do I leave without my main objective or do I continue and risk everything? These are the sort of choices that make us love spy movies and fiction, and the kind of choices we wanted to make sure our game had in it. 

 

I can't agree more. The alarm level definitely make the game more intense and rewarding at the same time. I enjoyed the fact that I have to constantly make choices and move forward. The only dislike would be no fallback point which I believe you guys did it on purpose to make players take more time to beat the game since this game still in development.

 

I'm on day 3 again, and this is my 4th or 5th try to beat the game! I was hiding from the drones. Drones OP please nerf! I mean Drones 1.0 is fine, but Drones 2.0 is too ugly...

[Tarean]

It is essentially the same reason roguelikes have hunger clocks. There was some podcast episode that made some pretty interesting points on them, gonna try to find it.

 

First hit on 'hunger clock podcast'. Uuuuuups...

[Savon]

Hi,

 

I agree with the alarm system, and you really get the feeling of being caught, slowly, when you can't advance because of the guards (because you did a mistake somewhere) and the alarm keeps raising and adding more guards, all converging to your spy, hiding under the desk hoping they won't find him... And he's surrounded by red areas, and you know it's over x)

 

After that explaination, I understand more why it was implemented, and even if I kind of like taking my time in some tactical games, this gives a refreshing pace to that sort of games, and I like it.

 

My only wish is that it wouldn't begin so fast, I find it kind of frustrating and annoying that at levels where you begin in a huge hall, with a lot of doors, you loose two or three turns of the alarm just trying to find a door, or trying to see if there are several doors leading to some ways that could be more interesting than the one you find first.

It forces you to rush the first door you find and hope it will lead you in an interesting direction, where spies would rather study each path available before to choose the one they feel is the best.

 

I think that trigerring the alarm after the first door you open would be an interesting upgrade to the system:

It would allow you to discover the different ways that you could take, and add some interesting strategy in the choice you make, and remove that impression of rushing without any reason just because some countdown began before you even begun to think of stealing the corporation.

 

[Fledgeling]

My only wish is that it wouldn't begin so fast, I find it kind of frustrating and annoying that at levels where you begin in a huge hall, with a lot of doors, you loose two or three turns of the alarm just trying to find a door, or trying to see if there are several doors leading to some ways that could be more interesting than the one you find first.

 

I have a solution for you, try to use peak at corners so you can have a whole map in 1 turn! I know which map you are talking about, and usually what I do is if I start at the large room, I would split my agent in opposite directions and peak at the corner to reveal the map. Let me know if it works, because that's what I did. Don't command your agent to explore area by walking, that's bad.

[Savon]

Thanks for the tip, I'll try it asap

 

And you remind me that I always forget the buttons at the left bottom corner of my screen >.>

 

[GoldenBoy99]

That said, I agree with you that we could do a better job justifying the alarm within the context of the world. The current idea is that the corporations are tracking your use of Incognita and slowly pinpointing you as you stay longer in their buildings, but that's not being communicated adequately at the moment.

 

 

Thanks for that! I love when in game things are explained by the fiction. It really helps me get immersed. I don't know how I would've found this out if you hadn't told me.

[the truthseeker]

You infiltrate, the intrusion alarm goes off, but they can't pinpoint you...yet. Of COURSE there's going to be an increased alarm! 

[Harmor]

You infiltrate, the intrusion alarm goes off, but they can't pinpoint you...yet. Of COURSE there's going to be an increased alarm! 

 

Still a far too gamey method to me - I don't get spotted through the entire game yet somehow before the level starts, my guys managed to trigger intrusion alert? Seriously? 

 

Thanks for the dev response - I really don't want to come off as unnessecarily rude, and I DO understand that you guys want to do it differently. The way you replied to this thread really shows you care for players of your games and your games themselves, so thumbs up to the entire team at Klei (also for making Mark of the Ninja which is my favorite stealth game of all time). I'm just someone who has been playing turn based strategy games since ages, games like Jagged Alliance 1 and 2, Silent Storm, old XCom games etc what have you - none of them forced you to rush yet they were actually QUITE challenging. And yes, the new XCom game does have some design issues indeed, tho the whole melt collection thing isn't really a big deal to me and is actually fun.

 

I guess what I was getting at the whole time is that I may just very well be a little too old school when it comes to TBS and what I personally expect out of the genre. I know you guys are trying something new and I like a whole bunch of your ideas in the game, I just can't ever see myself coming to terms with the alarm going up just because it has to go up for gameplay reasons. 

 

I'll also totally will continue playing this game down the line once more content is in, its not like it's an overall bad game and I'm sorry if what I said made anybody think so. I just don't really like the idea of being forced to rush through levels in a turn based game when a whole lot of turn based games, old and new, are out there with proof that no gamey reasons to keep players on their toes are needed. 

 

That's at least my take on it for now and @ Klei - thanks for caring.

[obliviondoll]

I've been thinking about this a lot, and I have a suggestion.

 

Don't have the alarm counter active at the beginning of every mission.

 

When you enter a building, there's a chance of an undetected infiltration, where no alert is sounded on the way in. No matter what, you get into the building, and security don't know where in the building you are. But sometimes, there will be a telltale sign left behind that makes them realise someone is here. If there's no alarm level, any use of Incognita will trigger the alarm. Anything that raises a guard's alert level (including waking up after being KOed) should also trigger it. Obviously, so would killing a guard, and that would ALSO raise the alarm level to 2 immediately.

 

This would not only justify the alarm counter, but also the progressive arrival of new enemies. Triggering the alarm with semi-high-profile actions would be justified by the guards' heartbeat monitors, which could be tracked by the alarm system in more detail than by the human security. This could potentially be used to justify triggering the alarm when the agent is KOed, since most stun weapons are electrical, and a shock would cause a sharp change to heartrate for a moment. Fluctuations would raise a flag and have the system begin investigations. Thus, the first step of activating powered-down cameras is justified, as is the tightening of firewalls soon after. As time progresses with further evidence of a breach, the system narrows down the search to a few floors, sending extra guards into those areas, before launching an all-out invasion on the level of the building you're in once the specific floor of the infiltration is confirmed.

 

An interesting counter to that would be the idea that you can hide long enough to have the automated alarm setup lose track of you. Maybe if you go 10 turns (2 alarm levels - good luck!) without triggering any kind of alert state, it would reset. This means no Incognita use, no takedowns (melee or ranged) on any guards, and no guard or camera so much as catches a glimpse of your agents.

 

In later, tougher missions, the security systems would be more advanced, and simply having Incognita accessing their system would be enough to cause the alarm level to rise. But in the early stages, you could give players that small window of freedom before the storm hits.

[Palpetinus]

I've been thinking about this a lot, and I have a suggestion.

 

Don't have the alarm counter active at the beginning of every mission.

 

When you enter a building, there's a chance of an undetected infiltration, where no alert is sounded on the way in. No matter what, you get into the building, and security don't know where in the building you are. But sometimes, there will be a telltale sign left behind that makes them realise someone is here. If there's no alarm level, any use of Incognita will trigger the alarm. Anything that raises a guard's alert level (including waking up after being KOed) should also trigger it. Obviously, so would killing a guard, and that would ALSO raise the alarm level to 2 immediately.

 

This would not only justify the alarm counter, but also the progressive arrival of new enemies. Triggering the alarm with semi-high-profile actions would be justified by the guards' heartbeat monitors, which could be tracked by the alarm system in more detail than by the human security. This could potentially be used to justify triggering the alarm when the agent is KOed, since most stun weapons are electrical, and a shock would cause a sharp change to heartrate for a moment. Fluctuations would raise a flag and have the system begin investigations. Thus, the first step of activating powered-down cameras is justified, as is the tightening of firewalls soon after. As time progresses with further evidence of a breach, the system narrows down the search to a few floors, sending extra guards into those areas, before launching an all-out invasion on the level of the building you're in once the specific floor of the infiltration is confirmed.

 

An interesting counter to that would be the idea that you can hide long enough to have the automated alarm setup lose track of you. Maybe if you go 10 turns (2 alarm levels - good luck!) without triggering any kind of alert state, it would reset. This means no Incognita use, no takedowns (melee or ranged) on any guards, and no guard or camera so much as catches a glimpse of your agents.

 

In later, tougher missions, the security systems would be more advanced, and simply having Incognita accessing their system would be enough to cause the alarm level to rise. But in the early stages, you could give players that small window of freedom before the storm hits.

 

This would mean that the entire first few minutes of a mission is simple recon and nothing else, and the power drip - parasite combo would be OP. Simply wait until you have 20 energy and then infect the whole system at once, in two turns everything is yours.

 

Basically I would find playing without the constant 1 alarm / round very boring.

[obliviondoll]

This would mean that the entire first few minutes of a mission is simple recon and nothing else, and the power drip - parasite combo would be OP. Simply wait until you have 20 energy and then infect the whole system at once, in two turns everything is yours.

 

Basically I would find playing without the constant 1 alarm / round very boring.

 

You have to consider how far you can recon before hitting a camera, a guard, or any other kind of obstacle that requires even indirectly alerting a guard. Open a door that's visible, the nearby guard gets suspicious, and his heartbeat increases enough to trigger an alert. As soon as you need to do ANYTHING, the map wakes up.

 

You're also assuming this would be the standard rule, when I explicitly said otherwise - I'm suggesting that in early missions, you could occasionally break in undetected, but as the difficulty ramps up, it becomes less common and is phased out entirely for the highest security level missions.

[Palpetinus]

You have to consider how far you can recon before hitting a camera, a guard, or any other kind of obstacle that requires even indirectly alerting a guard. Open a door that's visible, the nearby guard gets suspicious, and his heartbeat increases enough to trigger an alert. As soon as you need to do ANYTHING, the map wakes up.

 

You're also assuming this would be the standard rule, when I explicitly said otherwise - I'm suggesting that in early missions, you could occasionally break in undetected, but as the difficulty ramps up, it becomes less common and is phased out entirely for the highest security level missions.

 

I'm paranoid when it comes to doors though. If there's red behind them and it's not a camera (which can be seen rather easily), I'm not opening that door until I really have to. I'm sure that if I never had to actually hurry, I would very very rarely get detected. I could just wait out guard patrols, peek around every little corner, and so on. It's basically infinite AP mode.

At the start of such a mission, first think I would do is wait until I have all my 20 power filled up.

 

And yeah, I do understand that it's optional. I mentioned the program combo since I already use it and noticed how situationally OP it would be.

[obliviondoll]

I'm actually a lot like you in many regards - although after experimenting with Drip/Parasite, I've gone back to the default hack programs. I find that waiting an extra turn (or 2) can sometimes be a little too long, and also that the overabundance of power doesn't make up for the slower hack progress.

When you're cautious, sure, you can build up PWR easily, but Drip/Parasite already allows for that. And sure, you can choose to only explore up to the point where you're blocked by red, but that just plays into the limiting mechanic. There will - usually quite quickly - come a point where you EITHER need to trigger the alarms by alerting or taking down a guard, OR trigger them by hacking something, and as soon as you do, the clock starts running.

[Harmor]

Those are some very nice suggestions there obliviondoll, certainly suggestions that'd enable me to like this game better than I do right now. Thumbs up to your ideas!

[OneHitPoint]

I like your line of thought too obliviion-doll, perhaps the growing alert system is inevitable but there is a pre-alert phase that players can skillfully use to gain more information.

 

In terms of gameplay though I actually enjoy the immediate timer, but I haven't experienced the other method yet.

[Selenthys]

 There will - usually quite quickly - come a point where you EITHER need to trigger the alarms by alerting or taking down a guard, OR trigger them by hacking something, and as soon as you do, the clock starts running.

 

If you play with Deckard you will never run into that problem... A soon as there is a camera or a guard, you just have to cloak, go to a safe location, pass your turns until it is ready again, rinse and repeat.

 

This isn't a bad idea, and I would like to have a bit of influence over the alarm level too, but in the current state of the game, taking your idea and implementing right now give every player choosing Deckard 100% map discovery in every level even before the alarm starts.