Additional Bounty Hunting Mechanics for Hi-Sec

[LeeWoonJae]

@Knowledgeminer

Well, sorry but you cannot pretend that you should be able to repeatedly keep activating KRs on gankers just because engaging them in the ships they fly doesn’t satisfy you enough…

I gave the reasons for my proposal. I believe you should be able to engage up to the value of the loss mail, that seems balanced to me, and encourages more conflict in high-sec. If you disagree, that’s fine.

@Knowledgeminer

Because it doesn’t take into consideration the reason why the current system only pays 20% of the loss value.

It takes into consideration the point of the proposal. The point of the proposal is to incentivise attacking gankers so that it is more attractive to current and potential pvp players in high-sec.

@Knowledgeminer

Exactly. And I’m saying your proposal does wrong something the current system does right.

Then we disagree. I believe the current system is not attractive enough to pvp pilots, hence the low amount of players using it.

@Knowledgeminer

No. First off, the old system used to pay full bounty value regardless of destroyed value, not 100% of destroyed value.

My mistake. It was a long time ago.

@Knowledgeminer

Second, the current system doesn’t just aim at preventing insurance fraud. It also is the way it is because paying 100% of destroyed value could be abused in other ways in a player driven economy.

Many items don’t have a meaningful production cost and their market value could be manipulated. The only way to protect a bounty payment system from abuse in those cases is to only pay a fraction of the market value.

But you appear to have been told this already here and elsewhere. Why do I have to explain it again to you? WTF.

First off, you should calm down, it’s not good for your health.
Secondly, I have made this point on multiple posts above, so I will be brief:

We are talking about base value, not market value. Base value, which is calculated based on the cost to produce an item, is less susceptible to market manipulation. CCP already use this with insurance values.
For items that are looted from NPC kills (for example) and not produced still have a base value, and is likely based on the reprocessed value (I am not certain of the actual method CCP use to calculate base value on these items, but the point remains. It has a base value controlled by CCP)

What do you mean by "meaningful production value? If an item is sold on the market for less than the value to produce it/reprocess, then you are not exploiting a problem in the base value, you are simply underpaying for an item someone wants to sell quickly. You could just relist it/reprocess it and sell it. This is no more an exploit then a low-ball buy order.

The current system is not the “only” way. It is simply the current way. CCP likely explored other options and may have decided to go with the method they did to keep it simple or reduce the load on the server. Which I accept. I am proposing that the current system doesn’t pay out enough, and if they want to implement changes in high-sec, including with regard to bounty hunting, I am suggesting looking at other ways to pay out bounties.

@Knowledgeminer

So you’re asking for the KR system to be made more complex by making it have to deal with and offer the user two different types of KRs at the same time, some of which would only be available to very few players, right? You don’t see a problem with this, do you? You even have claimed in previous posts that your proposal doesn’t increase the complexity of the KR system…

I have answered this point previously. Complexity is relative. Why doesn’t EVE just give everyone a ship and guns and you all just undock and shoot? After all, fitting ships and travelling between systems is more complex…
It isn’t possible to implement any new features without adding complexity to the system. By definition, addition adds. You may be able to remove something as well and make the whole system less complex, but this is not what “Additional Bounty Hunting Mechanicsfor Hi-Sec” means.

I believe the added complexity is justified to increase content. Whether you agree with that is up to you.

@Knowledgeminer

And who gets paid?

If it’s the bounty hunter who gets paid regardless of who kills the target, then he may simply activate the KR hoping someone else that happens to be around and may not even know what’s going on does the actual work. If nobody does, he may simply try again knowing the KR cannot be cleared…

The bounty payout is split between the ones on the kill mail based on percentage of damage done to the target. If the bounty hunter wants to claim the bounty then they have to fight the guy.

@Knowledgeminer

And you pretend the feature was never intended to be used by suicide gankers, as if this was some oversight CCP hadn’t thought of?

And you pretend this is the case not because you’ve seen CCP say anything to that effect, but because there was never an “intention signalled from CCP” that suicide gankers would be able to benefit from those tags?

I’m not “pretending” anything. I never said that CCP didn’t intend for them to be used by suicide gankers. I said that CCP never intended them to allow suicide gankers to “sit with impunity in highsec”

Let me quote a relevant part from the dev blog you linked:

(quote)
I’m going to list some of the goals that we had when starting this project…"

• Give players a reason to be out in space. In particular, to be out in low-sec space.
  • Add something unique to low-sec that gives residents and visitors a resource worth fighting over
• Add an alternative method of raising security status via the proven market mechanics
  • Provide an alternative way to get back in to high-sec for ‘reformed’ outlaw players. We have had players that would rather stop playing altogether than grind their way back up by killing NPCs
  • But we still need to respect the sandbox!

(end quote)

Specifically notice they used the word “reformed” and mention that they didn’t want players quitting because gaining sec status was so grindy. These were the exact points I made when I was “pretending”.

The forum thread you linked does mention using them for suicide ganking, but that does not mean that they were designed to allow a never-ending supply for use outside trade hubs.
The bit you quoted even says “sometimes”, but that could have been a hint of sarcasm so I’ll let that one slide.

@Knowledgeminer

Not sure what you mean. Of course Crimewatch is meant to make criminal activity have consequences. So what? How does that relate to whether security tags were meant to be used the way gankers use them or not?

Not sure what you’re confused about here, it’s fairly self explanatory. I was talking about security tags allowing someone to buy away consequences for criminal activity. And by consequences I mean other players being able to shoot criminals in highsec.

@Knowledgeminer

The security tags don’t allow the gankers do something they couldn’t already do before. The tags just made it more convenient for them.

Lol pirates didn’t grind for standings, unless they had a really good reason. The dev blog even said they were quitting because it was so bad.
The tags gave them a lot more opportunity. And anyway I’m not sure why you are so fixated on this point? I’m not trying to get security tags changed. I’m trying to get kill rights improved, I don’t care if criminals can fly around highsec, as long as it actually allows for pvp! I don’t care that the police don’t kill them.

@Knowledgeminer

Your proposal, on the other hand, would completely change the battlefield by making it possible to repeatedly generate KRs with no way for the gankers to fix that by ratting like they can do to fix their sec status. This is total ■■■■■■■■.

Bounty hunters don’t generate the kill rights, the gankers generate them by doing something criminal. There is no repeatedly generating kill rights, they are the same kill right. They disappear when they pay out. You think that’s unfair for the gankers, I think it’s balanced. We’ll have to agree to disagree.

Again, how many gankers actually rat do you think? They have the opportunity to remove the bounty kill right by paying restitution if they want to. A lot might not bother though, maybe some will welcome the pvp opportunities.

@Knowledgeminer

LOL. You talk about this as if it was RL and the victim was entitled to a retribution equaling the loss value…

I never mentioned RL, that was you my dude. I said that ISK parity in the bounty kill right makes sense, gives more opportunity for retribution and is balanced.

@Knowledgeminer

Of course the way it currently works is consistent with other areas of the game. How is it not? It’s totally within the spirit of the game.

I provided the example of inconsistency in my previous post.

@Knowledgeminer

What would be against the spirit of EvE is that the more lazy and careless someone is and the more mistakes he makes, the more entitled he would become to cause losses on whoever took advantage of his laziness, carelessness and mistakes…

Someone’s lazy, careless mistakes caused the initial loss. If he wants to put down his loss a second time on each bounty kill right, good on him. Putting his money where his mouth is.
It’s similar to paying for mercenaries. A rich player can simply pay a mercenary corp to gank the people who ganked him.
A bounty kill right just formalises a similar mechanic in smaller scale.

@Knowledgeminer

This is the bottom line and the real motivation for your proposal, right?

It’s not that you want more PvP opportunities in high sec. It’s that you think gankers shouldn’t be able to fix their sec status with tags, and instead of simply asking for that feature to be removed or changed, which you know wouldn’t get you anywhere, you’ve come up with this ■■■■■■■■ of a KR system to “fix” that “problem” in a much more convoluted and broken way instead… As if that might end any better…

I touched on this earlier in the post. I have no problem with security tags, providing there is a readily available way for other players to engage criminals who use them, that provides any tangible benefit to doing so.
In practice, the current kill right system provides almost no reason to do so. The pvper pays to kill a ship and gets nothing in return. Why would anyone do this? They can go to lowsec, and null sec and kill people for free. At least with ganking you get a return for shooting the ship in highsec. I’m just providing a similar incentive to gankers, for anti-gankers.

@Knowledgeminer

Of course the gankers look for soft targets that pay out a lot. What they don’t do is ask for the game mechanics to be changed so they may get more of those… And if they did I would be against that exactly the same I’m against your proposal and for the exact same reason…

You realise a “feature-request” tag is designed for players to request features right?
You’ve been in EVE long enough to know that the game changes all the time. Why are you so vehemently against improving the game you enjoy to play?

Gankers have absolutely every right to advocate for more ganking opportunities, as I am advocating for more anti-ganking opportunities. People offer their suggestions, say their piece and CCP reads the ones in line with their vision for the game.

Because I hate to break it to you, but CCP don’t seem to be finished with the changes yet, so expect more of them. The best we can do is offer our own ideas as to how we would like to see the direction of the game head.

I want to see more pvp ships shooting other pvp ships.

@Knowledgeminer

Man, I really hope you’re being sarcastic here and didn’t take seriously what I said that you’re replying to… If not, then please read what I said again taking into consideration the possibility that I was being sarcastic myself…

I stand by my point, tags were not implemented to allow continuous impunity in highsec for career criminals.

(BTW, your sarcasm is obviously not going to be clear if you write it in exactly the same style you use when writing normally. You used “…” in loads of the sentences in your post, most of which were not sarcastic.)

@Knowledgeminer

Again, retribution here means you get the right to kill when unlawfully killed, not the right to kill for the same value that you lost.

Balance in EvE is not about you being entitled to cause someone killing you a loss of the same value. Get that already.

I know that’s how the current system works. There’s no misunderstanding here, I just don’t agree. Balance in EVE is about balance. You can disagree about how that is achieved as much as you want. I believe the system is imbalanced towards the ganker, hence the proposal.

@Knowledgeminer

So your proposal is nothing more than yet another “balance suicide ganking” thread in disguise, based on a complete misunderstanding of what balance in EvE is about. Why am I not surprised?

Lol get over yourself mate, the reasons for my proposal are in post 1 and 2. There is almost no reason to actually fight gankers in EVE. I think that’s dull and high-sec could do with some more two way shooting.

@Knowledgeminer

They don’t have to. Criminal hunters like me may send a mail asking for KRs and explaining how they work to victims of ganks, so they may make an informed decision how to best use the KRs they now have even if they had never heard of KRs before.

They may then ask around or use other means such as zKill to check whether the pilot or organisation that sent them that mail is reliable or not.

That’s how I get the KRs I need to do what I do. I don’t need the game mechanics to be changed so I may get more KRs with less effort…

Lol you and a handful of other white knights you mean?
A new player has absolutely no reason to trust you with their kill right. Scams in EVE have been so intricately designed that CCP have had to declare them exploits because people thought they were actually bugs in the game (Fabricated Wallet APIs), players are told from the get-go “Never trust anyone”.

I applaud your ingenuity in seeking out kill rights from players personally, but also it highlights how weak the system in the game really is.
If a game feature requires you to actively leave the game, go to a 3rd party website and then link the other people to the 3rd party website in order for it to be viable, then that is clearly a weak feature.
Linking someone to zKill does not account for the current system being poor.

You and a few others’ ability to get kills with the current system (for no tangible gains) does not mean the current system works for the majority of players. The bounty hunting system is way too niche as it stands.

[LeeWoonJae]

Thank you @Brisc_Rubal. I appreciate your response. When CCP discuss with you guys about high-sec shake ups, I would love for bounty hunting proposals such as this and others to be part of the discussions.

[Knowledgeminer]

This is my last reply to you in this thread. Your proposal won’t get anywhere and the only reason for me to reply was so you could understand why. That’s clearly not going to happen and you seem to believe you might convince CCP or the CSM by keep arguing or something, LOL, so no point in me trying to explain any further other than to clarify some things below.

@LeeWoonJae

I have answered this point previously.

You haven’t. You’re missing the point.

@LeeWoonJae

What do you mean by "meaningful production value?

Do you know what’s the production cost of a Gnosis? It’s 1 unit of Tritanium… And valuable items such as faction and deadspace mods have a negligible material cost compared to their market value too… Those items don’t have a material or production cost that could be used to compute a meaningful bounty payment value…

Not to mention that the material or production cost of any item would have to be based on the price of the materials themselves, which is player driven and subject to manipulation too, so basing the bounty payment on that cannot really solve the problem regardless.

It’s amazing how you seem to believe you’ve addressed those issues when everything you say clearly indicates you don’t even understand them…

@LeeWoonJae

Specifically notice they used the word “reformed”

That you would use this to infer suicide tags weren’t meant to be used repeatedly by gankers, as if the current situation was some oversight that CCP hasn’t figured how to “fix” yet is simply hilarious.

@LeeWoonJae

Not sure what you’re confused about here, it’s fairly self explanatory. I was talking about security tags allowing someone to buy away consequences for criminal activity.

You were talking about two things, one of which is necessary for the other to exist, as if they were incompatible, then using that supposed incompatibility to justify your belief that tags weren’t meant to be used repeatedly.

It’s precisely because criminal activity has consequences that those tags were introduced. You may not like the way it works, but you cannot use the fact that criminal actions are supposed to have consequences as “proof” that tags weren’t meant to be used repeatedly. Not only aren’t these two things incompatible, but one is necessary for the other to happen. It’s precisely because criminal actions have consequences that tags are used repeatedly…

@LeeWoonJae

Bounty hunters don’t generate the kill rights, the gankers generate them by doing something criminal.

I didn’t say the bounty hunter generates kill rights. It’s the conversion of a conventional KR into a bounty KR that effectively would, because the effect of such a KR would be the same as being able to generate multiple KRs from the original one by merely paying for the privilege.

You may say there would be just one KR of a different type that remains available until the bounty is fully paid, but the result is exactly the same as if multiple conventional KRs had been generated from the original one for a price…

@LeeWoonJae

I never mentioned RL, that was you my dude.

I didn’t say you mentioned RL. I said you were talking about retribution “balance” as if this was RL, where retribution in value is to be expected.

That you think this kind of “balance” makes any sense in EvE and that a proposal seeking it might get anywhere says a lot about how little you understand what the game is about…

@LeeWoonJae

It’s similar to paying for mercenaries.

No, it isn’t. You’re not merely asking for an alternative way to pay someone do the job. You also pretend that the game mechanics should be changed to make that job easier by being able to keep repeatedly activating KRs that make your target suspect, thus putting him at a clear disadvantage. That one sided approach to “solve” the problem that you claim you’re addressing is what makes your proposal complete ■■■■■■■■.

@LeeWoonJae

In practice, the current kill right system provides almost no reason to do so. The pvper pays to kill a ship and gets nothing in return. Why would anyone do this?

You have an annoying inclination to believe what would be good for you must be good for the game, what seems uninteresting to you can hardly be interesting to others, etc.

Not only are players willing to pay for KRs, but there is a whole class of scams based precisely on that. That should tell you something, don’t you think?

@LeeWoonJae

Why are you so vehemently against improving the game you enjoy to play?

I’m not against changes that improve the game at all. I don’t even have an opinion about most changes. But I’m strongly against players pretending that making their gameplay easier at the expense of their opponents is the same as improving the game. That’s ■■■■■■■■ and I have no respect for that kind of “players”, be they gankers or anti-gankers…

@LeeWoonJae

A new player has absolutely no reason to trust you with their kill right. […] If a game feature requires you to actively leave the game, go to a 3rd party website and then link the other people to the 3rd party website in order for it to be viable, then that is clearly a weak feature.

You don’t know what you’re talking about.

I don’t tell the pilots I ask for KRs to check my KB so they would trust me. The mail I send to them makes no reference to zKill at all. Actually, I don’t even post my kills there to begin with. I used it as an example of something that someone wondering might do, not something I ask them to do…

What I do is is give them the information they need to learn how KRs work, what their options are, how to properly use them if they happen to not want to make their KRs available to me, what the consequences of using them incorrectly would be, etc. The usefulness, accuracy and honesty of the information I provide (which they may verify if they want) is the main reason many of them trust me and make their KRs available to me…

[LeeWoonJae]

@Knowledgeminer

This is my last reply to you in this thread. Your proposal won’t get anywhere and the only reason for me to reply was so you could understand why. That’s clearly not going to happen and you seem to believe you might convince CCP or the CSM by keep arguing or something, LOL, so no point in me trying to explain any further other than to clarify some things below.

Yep, probably best. We disagree.

@Knowledgeminer

You haven’t. You’re missing the point.

I’m not missing the point, I simply don’t agree with the point you are making

@Knowledgeminer

Do you know what’s the production cost of a Gnosis? It’s 1 unit of Tritanium… And valuable items such as faction and deadspace mods have a negligible material cost compared to their market value too… Those items don’t have a material or production cost that could be used to compute a meaningful bounty payment value…

Your point obviously means that these items could not be used for insurance fraud purposes. They would be undervalued based on production values.
So are not exploitable. Another example of these are those with LP cost for the bpcs.

@Knowledgeminer

Not to mention that the material or production cost of any item would have to be based on the price of the materials themselves, which is player driven and subject to manipulation too, so basing the bounty payment on that cannot really solve the problem regardless.

It can and does solve the problem. It’s how insurance works now. If you manipulate the market for all base materials for long enough for it to affect base value, you have not created a situation for insurance fraud, any gains your earn are offset by losses in selling the base elements low.

@Knowledgeminer

It’s amazing how you seem to believe you’ve addressed those issues when everything you say clearly indicates you don’t even understand them…

I understand completely what you’re saying. I’m telling you it makes zero difference to insurance fraud. You have yet to provide any cases where the proposal could be abused for insurance fraud.

@Knowledgeminer

That you would use this to infer suicide tags weren’t meant to be used repeatedly by gankers, as if the current situation was some oversight that CCP hasn’t figured how to “fix” yet is simply hilarious.

Lol ok. I showed you the exact wording of the dev blog and the thread that you quoted supported my notion and you give no other proof except “it’s how they are used so it must be how they were designed to be used”. Eve has a long history of players using features in ways they weren’t intended.

@Knowledgeminer

It’s precisely because criminal activity has consequences that those tags were introduced. You may not like the way it works, but you cannot use the fact that criminal actions are supposed to have consequences as “proof” that tags weren’t meant to be used repeatedly. Not only aren’t these two things incompatible, but one is necessary for the other to happen. It’s precisely because criminal actions have consequences that tags are used repeatedly…

I know. I am saying it has tilted too far the other way. We don’t have to agree on this point.

@Knowledgeminer

It’s the conversion of a conventional KR into a bounty KR that effectively would, because the effect of such a KR would be the same as being able to generate multiple KRs from the original one by merely paying for the privilege.

That is literally the proposal. You think it’s unfair on gankers, I don’t.

@Knowledgeminer

That you think this kind of “balance” makes any sense in EvE and that a proposal seeking it might get anywhere says a lot about how little you understand what the game is about…

Ok. This game is about consequence for everything. I believe gankers have small consequences and that should be improved by incentivising attacks against them.

@Knowledgeminer

No, it isn’t. You’re not merely asking for an alternative way to pay someone do the job. You also pretend that the game mechanics should be changed to make that job easier by being able to keep repeatedly activating KRs that make your target suspect, thus putting him at a clear disadvantage.

Your first point makes no sense. How can it not be similar to paying for mercenaries and at the same time be “an alternative way to pay someone to do the job”?

You should look up what “pretend” means. I propose the game mechanics could be changed to make that job viable. There is already a clear advantage to ganking in high-sec, they gain lots of isk for killing their targets, yet the other side gains very little from killing them. That might be fine for you, but it’s not for most eve players.

@Knowledgeminer

You have an annoying inclination to believe what would be good for you must be good for the game, what seems uninteresting to you can hardly be interesting to others, etc.

Not only are players willing to pay for KRs, but there is a whole class of scams based precisely on that. That should tell you something, don’t you think?

You are doing literally what you are accusing me of. You act as if, because you use kill rights, they must be fine and the whole of eve thinks they are perfect.
@Scipio_Artelius provided some info about ganker kills, which showed recently 235 active gankers and over 5000 kills by them for the single most well known ganking corp and ganks in Jita.

Do you really see hundreds of anti-gankers and kills? If not, where is the balance?

When did I say anti-ganking was uninteresting? I said I think bounty hunting would be a relaly interesting profession in my very first post. I said it has no tangible benefits. It currently makes almost no difference to the amount of ganks taking place and provides tiny material payouts for those involved.

You may be happy whoring on concord killmails, but the fact there is hardly anyone doing it shows that the majority of eve seems to agree, that there is currently no point in doing it.

@Knowledgeminer

But I’m strongly against players pretending that making their gameplay easier at the expense of their opponents is the same as improving the game. That’s ■■■■■■■■ and I have no respect for that kind of “players”, be they gankers or anti-gankers…

My proposal isn’t about making it easier to engage, it’s about making it legal to engage. Bounty hunting as proposed, is more difficult to find targets than now. You are assigned one to hunt, you cant just camp jita with a killright, or fly to the nearest 0.5 sec system on a trade route and shoot the first criminal you see. Or jam him in your pilgrim lol.

The fact you call this difficult gameplay is hilarious.
People don’t ignore it because it’s hard. They ignore it because it’s pointless!

@Knowledgeminer

What I do is is give them the information they need to learn how KRs work, what their options are, how to properly use them if they happen to not want to make their KRs available to me, what the consequences of using them incorrectly would be, etc. The usefulness, accuracy and honesty of the information I provide (which they may verify if they want) is the main reason many of them trust me and make their KRs available to me…

Ah ok. The game has a system that is only viable if you send a tutorial mail to your customers so that they know how to use it and provide you with their kill mails in order to get them, and that is working as intended right?
I don’t doubt that some people trust you. I also don’t doubt that you may have regular customers. I’m saying that your system is not scalable. How does a new player get into the anti-gank game (as ISK doesn’t matter they must just be white knighting. This must mean they’re a nice person…)? They have no reputation and no reason to be trusted.

We do seem to agree on something though, this conversation is going around in circles. So it has probably run it’s course.

Thanks for your contribution to the thread.

[Scipio_Artelius]

@LeeWoonJae

Do you really see hundreds of anti-gankers and kills? If not, where is the balance?

CONCORD kill 100% of ganker ships and they are about as anti-ganker as is possible… That is far more ships than the gankers kill.

[LeeWoonJae]

@Scipio_Artelius

CONCORD kill 100% of ganker ships and they are about as anti-ganker as is possible… That is far more ships than the gankers kill.

Yeah I know. But gankers get the loot still. This is no longer a risk vs reward scenario. It’s just a cost calculation.

It would be an actual risk if there was a chance that other players could interfere with ganks successfully enough to prevent targets from dying, and cause an actual loss to the gankers.

And incentivising that may improve the situation.

[Scipio_Artelius]

@LeeWoonJae

But gankers get the loot still.

That’s totally already controllable by players. Don’t haul so much in value and gankers can’t make the same return.

@LeeWoonJae

It would be an actual risk if there was a chance that other players could interfere with ganks successfully enough to prevent targets from dying, and cause an actual loss to the gankers.

But how does this proposal facilitate that?

I just can’t see how handing out a mission will suddenly make antiganking any different to how it is now.

The whole tying this to gankers is where I think this is limited. It would be better if it was aimed more at encouraging bounty hunters to go after targets outside the current reach of the law (ie. lowsec/nullsec/wh space).

Get killed by a gate camp? Place a bounty mission for someone to go get your revenge.
Get killed by a lowsec pirate? Place a bounty mission for someone to go kill them back.
Someone disrupting your mining or missioning in lowsec or npc null? Place a bounty mission for someone to go remove them.
etc.

I think that just gives the idea far more scope for engagement.

[Gerard_Amatin]

@LeeWoonJae

It would be an actual risk if there was a chance that other players could interfere with ganks successfully enough to prevent targets from dying, and cause an actual loss to the gankers.

And incentivising that may improve the situation.

People can already agress most gankers without CONCORD intervention and an incentive of ‘part of a Catalyst in bounty payout’ is not going to change anything about that.

Your new bounty hunting mechanic will be ineffective at it’s purpose.

[Max_Deveron]

Hey OP, let me tell you how easy it is to manipulate the regional/global price…

For example I and some friends once put up an Upwell structure somewhere…
It had a market module…
At the time anyone with access to the structure and the market could not see certain market orders unless it had a corresponding sell order (this applied to private markets not public).

So something like 1 trit, or 1 compressed arkonor was put up for sale at 1 Billion ISK…

guess what happened…regular players and market bots went totally nuts and chaos ensued in the markets for up to 9 days(i know we watched this).

To confirm this we on purpose did it to several other items…including PLEX, that was a hoot, and freaking awesome payout!!!