Bounty overhaul and warrant idea!

EVE Technology and Research Center Player Features & Ideas
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1

So i got into a conversation on the help channel about the current state of bounties…Namely that they are pretty much useless.

So i thought what if we go old west on this problem, namely a WARRANT system that would allow players to bounty hunt in hi sec, low sec, and null sec…Ok i know what you are thinking hold on here. Let me explain the warrant system FIRST.

Warrants are contracts for a specific players head or in this case, cloned meatsicle. It gives the player authorization to track, hunt, and kill whoever the warrant is issued for IN ANY SECURITY SPACE, without concord deleting your ship(or a sec status hit).
Beyond that warrants will be issued by the empire that controlls the space, or by concord in the case of non empire space.

Warrants themselve would be region specific, ei say a warrant for MY corpse is issued by Caldari state, and issued by a agent in jita, it would give the holder rights to attack me in the FORGE only, this will allow a border run scenario (riding into the sunset of lovely mexico) where a player with active warrants can escape it.
Now only a player with a positive security status will be able to get the warrant, a standing requirement could also be added that would have concord or the empire giving the warrants only to players they "trust"
For the empire or concord to issue a warrant, the player the warrant is issued against must have a specific bounty on them, furthermore either a delay from when a player gets the warrant (to when it goes active and able to be acted upon) could be added to prevent insta ganks, OR, warrants will be RANDOMLY assigned against any player currently in region with a bounty on them(again players can only have 1 warrant contract at a time) furthermore, the level system can come to warrants with a level 1 warrant being someone with a low(5-15 million isk) bounty, and level 5 would be the guys with the trillion isk bounties( Hi @gaara’s sniper )

To collect on the warrant you would be required to bring the frozen corpse of the player to the office that issued the warrant. Now when a active warrant is payed out, the rewards will be DOUBLE whatever the bounty payout was when you collected the corpse, so you would get 3/5 the total asset value of the kill.

So…what do you think about this? anyone have any questions? someone more eloquint then me wanna try and translate my gibbly gook?

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Yes, the same question as always when someone thinks they fixed bounty hunting: How do you get the warrant? Can you just issue the warrant for a measly ISK sum against anyone even if that person has not committed any crime that warrants a killright?

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Warrants are issued by a empire or concord agent(empires for empire space, adn concord for nullsec/non empire space), similar to missions, furthermore, the warrant is based on bounties, with certain thresholds, one idea was to make it randomly assign bounties based on bounty total that way players could NOT use it for targeted harassment, with a 1-5 difficulty based on total bounty amount (so @gaara’s sniper with his ~250,000,000,000,000 bounty would be a level 5 bounty, but a newbie with a 100,000 courtesy bounty wouldn’t even have warrants issued on him (i was thinking the threshold for lvl 1 bounties could be the double digit millions))

Furthermore, the players who have a active warrant can get notified of that warrant, something along the lines of evemail something along the lines of “a Warrant for your destruction has been issued by the Caldari Navy in the Forge region”

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So, just because someone gave me a bounty for no legally justifiable reason, I could receive a killright against me? For instance, one of my chars regularly gets bountied for riling up a certain EVE demographic and has accumulated a couple hundred million already. Under your system, the char could easily land on the receiving end of a killright without ever having committed a criminal action that generate the legal justification for killrights.

Or in fewer words: Unless you limit who a bounty can be placed on in order to prevent the above, your system is just as terrible as any of the other suggestions for a rework. However, if you limit who you can place a bounty on, you remove a core principle of the bounty system: Put one on anyone you like.

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The problem with having a bounty system is simple, it can be too heavily exploited.

Option A: You kill someone and get a full reward. This is what we used to have, people login an alt, kill their own character who is probably sitting in a shuttle worth about 20,000isk and walk away with potentially billions in Isk.

Option B: Bounties make people a valid target (like what you suggested), now people can use that as an alternative to war decs. Maybe someone doesn’t like you so they put bounties on you so that people can kill you left right and centre.

This has been a discussion that has come up multiple times, and while I applaud you for thinking of ways to improve things, this would only make the system worse. At least at the moment, no-one really gains anything from it except bragging rights.

3 Likes
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make it contract based.

you select if its public or private contract. you select the bounty pool. you select the %of the KM that turns into a payout from the pool. you select the min value of a km to be eligible for a payout. you select the max single payout value. finally you put down a collateral and a time limit (ideally with a max no less than 3months)

here is an example one

I create a bounty on alliance A for 1,000,000,000isk and assign it to corp B. now i trust corp B and they have a good reputation overall so i put the payout per kill at 75% of the kill value so long as the kill is worth more than 10,000,000isk. i put a cap on a max single pay out of 250,000,000. to ensure they put in actual effort i place a collateral of 800,000,000isk and a duration of two months.

I now know that they have to make 1,066,666,666.66isk in kills to break even a number i am satisfied with and they believe they can easily meet.

only real issue with this is the contract system is old and idk how much work this would take.

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The issue with what you’re proposing is that it would be a complete run around the relative protections of Concord. If you kill someone without legal authority they destroy your ship. This mechanic has been around for years and is fundamentally important to high security space. Warrants that stop Concord from involving themselves would effective turn high security space into low security space.

Currently, the mechanic for killing people in high-sec without Concord intervention is the War Declaration system. You basically pay Concord to ignore combat between your corporation and another corporation (or alliance). If you don’t want to fight someone but you still want them to be killed you can always hire a merc group to declare war and engage in the fighting instead.

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Now if you can only put a contract or ‘warrant’ out on someone who illegally attacked you first then that gets rid of the potential issue, but then you’re effectively describing kill rights.

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considering wars and ganking exists i don’t feel this needed

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So, unless I am missing anything, what you are proposing would effetely be a mechanic where anyone with Isk can make anyone else a target in high security space potentially for entertainment value, to harass someone or simply to wreck someone’s gameplay?

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are you still responding to the OP or someone else?

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Oh wow, I need more sleep. I thought you and the OP were the same person. Sorry about that I am just going to walk away quietly now :zipper_mouth_face:

2 Likes
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lol i was confused because my idea had nothing to do with letting you freely kill in HS

1 Like
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In answer to A: preventing such a abuse is something i specifically took into account, namely completing a warrant only rewards double what the bounty payout was, so in total, i believe the current payout is 1/5 of assets losses, if you combine a completed warrant the payout would only be 3/5 of assets lossed, furthermore, the random nature of the warrants would prevent players from getting warrants on targets they want, which would not make it a suitable replacement to wardecs, because you don’t get to choose your target.

I also took into account the protection of concord, players would be limited to only having one active warrant, and the warrant itself will expire after a set time, furthermore the warrant is only valid within a specific region of space, so players with a active warrant AGAINST them can leave, furthermore, since CCP would be the ones controlling warrants issued (because it would be a NPC issuing warrants) they can include a cooldown period where a after a warrant is completed (whether by expiration, or completion) a new warrant will NOT be issued on that player for X amount of days (basically granting imunity to warrants for a set amount of time)

i think i poorly described the warrant idea, let me see if i can better describe it.

Player A places a bounty on player B, C, and D, for 500,000 isk, 500,000,000 isk and 5b isk respectively
Player B has a bounty below the threshold, empire and concord do not consider him a high value target and thus will NOT issue warrants on said player, player C is considered a level 3 bounty, and will add that player to the list of available players for lvl 3 bounties, and player D is considered a level 5 bounty, so ccp adds that player to the list of level 5 bounties.

Player Z has a positive security status and visits a level 3 warrant officer, and request a warrant, the officer will assign a random warrant for ANY lvl 3 bounty player within the same region of space, the warrant must be completed within 7 days, otherwise it expires, if the warrant expires, or is completed, the bounty amount is deducted from the player (which may or may not downgrade his bounty level) and the player is protected from any warrants for a limited time (this is all backend stuff, player won’t be aware of who is in what bounty pool, or even the bounty threshold levels etc etc) lets say 7 days (so a 1:1 in terms of warrant duration) player Z can only hold 1 warrant at any time, he can only remove it with expiration of the warrant, or by completing it. the warrant itself is only valid in a specific region of space.

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i feel you underestimate the amount of isk people have and are willing to put on people…

i have put a 10b bounty on a corp member just because i saw him talking in corp chat about never having a bounty.

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I actually like this system even if an ISD is giving push back " So anyone rich can ruin your day comment" umm… yeah that’s eve bro, learn to play.

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Not if it opens anyone to be attacked at anytime. That’s simply not going to happen.

@op, i find it better if you just contact other players and offer to pay them directly for attacking a certain player or hampering their game. You can determine (with far greater detail, scope and clarity) what constitutes a result satisfactory enough for payment.

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At which point you’ve effectively neutered the system so heavily that no one could ever reasonably be expected to use it, especially when you take into account the huge volume of characters that rarly or never:

  • Enter High Security space
  • Log in outside of the play time of the person with their contract
  • Log in with much frequency at all
  • Undock.

Look, the forums have done this whole song and dance probably two dozen times with just this exact idea over the last ten or so years.

This isn’t even a particularly original take on it in any meaningful way.

The general conclusion has been that there is no way to make PvP bounty hunting a fun and profitable endeavor for players without making it a massive magnet for abuse and a way to circumvent CONCORD in High Sec OR making the system so restricted and/or random that it’s basically unusable when the realities of the game are taken into account.

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  1. who said this was only RESTRICTED to high sec, in my original post i even explain how concord warrant officers could control and issue warrants in low and nullsec, furthermore, i even explained how the warrant would give ADDITIONAL rewards for kills, were not only is the bounty the incentive.
    2.yea, the joys of bounty hunting, the one the bounty is on may not be playing during your play times, which makes it a oh well moment, it’s doesn’t devalue the idea one bit.
    3.ok you have a point, getting a warrant on a player who isn’t currently playing could be a pain…so lets make warrants require some back end activity, ei the player must have logged in in the last X amount of days to have a warrant issued on them .
  2. oh yes those players who never undock…you know what since all players never undock then lets just get rid of ships and pvp all together…i mean come on THAT arguemnt is a huge massive cop out.
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Your last post has an increasingly passive aggressive undertone. Your idea being rejected is something you have to deal with. it’s not new, and not original.

Players everywhere are already allowed to do so. in highsec it’s called suicide ganking and in low- and nullsec the mechanic is called “not giving a ■■■■”, because no one cares about CONCORD outside out highsec, and no one needs “permission” to shoot anyone, anywhere, ever.

Bounty hunting is nice side income for suicide gankers in highsec. if you want to kill people for their bounty, without wrecking your sec, then create a suicide ganker. for the bigger targets either group up, or alt up.