Improvement suggestions for the Alarm feature..

[Vivienette]

I was so happy to see this feature implemented.
While it is certainly useful for many purposes, especially for craft/gatherers, I found couple things that can be improved.

• EDIT: The sound notification issues in type of the sound it's categorized in for Sound Settings.
  I actually found out what was blocking the notification sound.
  I've been playing with my BGM muted for awhile now but rest of my sounds are on in game, and tonight I was doing some MSQ and decided to turn the BGM back on.
  All of sudden in the middle of the cutscene I heard a bell ringing in game along with the Alarm's message in the center of the screen.
  I'm not sure why the sound notification for the Alarm is put together with BGM...but if you turn off the BGM, you don't hear your Alarm ringing at all.
  This should be separated into its own sound bar or put together with System Sounds.
  
  
• A little bit of clarification for the "Reminder (Minutes)" option.
  It's awesome that we can set the Alarm times in Eorzean Time & Local Time, but I wasn't sure if the time for Reminder was based on ET or LT. It made me to think that it could be based on whatever time you select for the Alarm but when I saved it as 10 mins Reminder and Alarm time set for ET, it was way off.
  I eventually found out that it's based on LT after hovering my mouse over the set Alarm times from the List of Alarms I have saved...but it had me confused for awhile >.<

Not sure what else for now but anything else anyone can think of? O:

[Hypnotic13371337]

Anyone else find it crazy it took 2 expansions and like, 4 years for a feature like this to come around?

A sound notification for an upcoming Alarm.
You get an in game text notification of an upcoming Alarm in the center of the screen and also in your chat log. However, it would be more efficient to hear the notification sound as well to give you a heads up if you happen to be AFK for the time being.
Not much of an alarm if it's not really getting your attention D:

This would be a nice addition for the feature. Garland Tools has this and its helped me catch the alarm a few times.

[Vivienette]

Anyone else find it crazy it took 2 expansions and like, 4 years for a feature like this to come around?



This would be a nice addition for the feature. Garland Tools has this and its helped me catch the alarm a few times.

Right? It's been long overdue! xD
And yeah I've used Garland Tools for a long time as well, it's been so useful.
Now we have an in-game Alarm with similar function....without the sound lol

[Vivienette]

EDIT: The sound notification issues in type of the sound it's categorized in for Sound Settings.
I actually found out what was blocking the notification sound.
I've been playing with my BGM muted for awhile now but rest of my sounds are on in game, and tonight I was doing some MSQ and decided to turn the BGM back on.
All of sudden in the middle of the cutscene I heard a bell ringing in game along with the Alarm's message in the center of the screen.
I'm not sure why the sound notification for the Alarm is put together with BGM...but if you turn off the BGM, you don't hear your Alarm ringing at all.
This should be separated into its own sound bar or put together with System Sounds.

[Kirsten_Rev]

Changes I'd like to see:

(1) Hotkey functionality and a better menu location. The odds of me finding this without the patch notes handy are quite low, and for people coming into the game later, they may likely never discover the system exists.
(2) Permanence. I do appreciate the macro command presented to us, and I realize that macros can set the alarms back up, but this is far less convenient than running Garland Tools in the background.
(3) Alarm 'sets' allowing us to turn groups of alarms on or off quickly and easily. Again, I point to Garland, where one can create a series of tabs, and only the alarms on the current tab are active.
(4) The ability to set multiple times for the same alarm. Most Gathering nodes, as well as Gold Saucer GATEs and the like, occur multiple times per hour. Right now I'd have to create three separate alarms to cover the Gold Saucer GATEs. I should be able to create one, and have it repeat on adjustable increments rather than just hourly.
(5) Higher number of alarms permitted. Honestly this entire system should be running client-side with the game simply providing an interface; given that, we should be able to set as many alarms as we'd like, since the servers should have no role to play.

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It's a good start, to be sure, and a particular boon for console players. For PC players, however, it's still a poor imitation of the alarm systems offered currently by third-party sites and databases. Adding in those changes I suggested would be a good start toward bridging the gap. There are still certain aspects missing that may or may not be feasible to implement in-game, but at the very least, SE should work toward building some of the more fine-grained functionality offered by common reminder systems.

[Vivienette]

Very good points!
I also had to look through the patch notes to find how to even find the Alarm function at the beginning.
I had expected to see it under Main Menu -> Logs or something like that but I couldn't find it anywhere from the Main Menu options, I didn't think it'd be only under Actions & Traits...>_>;
It's a start now but I'd love to see the number of Alarms to be expanded in the future as well.
Right now it has just the enough amounts to get me notified for the new gathering nodes but they're all available on AM / PM so it's taking up all 10/10 Alarm spaces x_x