CCP claims to taken them down due to the resources/efficiency issues.
Players claims they have been taken down due to the abuse be it potential for griefing new players receiving bilion isk bounties that will never go away or by killing self with alt/friend abusing the loss mail value calculation by some high tech market manipulation schenanigans.
And it is the potential abuse which is why they were never really functional in first place.
There were a lot of talk on this subject in past, lots of ideas how to reinstate them back to the game. Hopefully I am going to present a new take on this content which should be free of abuse.
I am going for minimalist approach: All that is needed to be done is to allow players to place a bounty on another player with the caveat that they will have to specify exact player or corporation or alliance that is allowed to claim the bounty.
If then this player or anyone from this corporation or alliance kills the target, he claims 100% of the kill mail value (divided by as many eliglible attackers for this bounty up to the bounty total value of course).
This wonât allow anyone to kill peoples legally in highsec or lowsec where it wouldnât otherwise be legal, standard rules will still apply.
Further details:
Putting up bounty on someone will only be possible in CONCORD stations with a new station service button and will be taxed based on the target security status. The higher, the higher the tax will be. (EDIT: the tax should also be largely increased in case of putting bounty on same player repeatedly.)
Bounty will only stay for 1 month after which, if not fully claimed will the remaining pool be sent back to the issuer.
The wanted tag will only show on that player info if you are eligible for the bounty or it wonât show there at all and a new GUI will list all players with bounties that you are eligible to claim.
Setting up a bounty will popup a new notification about that for victim where the issuer will be revealed.
Why should this work better than previous system?
It no longer is going to give money to anyone so the code for bounty distribution will be simple and not causing server performance issues.
Since it will be heavily limited and only temporary, it wonât be used as broadly as before and just for fun which further limits the potential for server issues. It will also not be visible to everyone, so if there was some problem with having âWANTEDâ at your portrait, this is no longer the case.
The need to specifically select player or corporation who can claim the bounty will largely solve the potential abuse. Furthermore it will enable players to form a new bounty hunting corporations to advertise their services to players who want to put bounty on someone, but does not know anyone they can trust to claim it.
Yeah sure, let it be wasted then. I have no problem with that. I just though that it is kinda unfair for target to hide from all pvp entire month and the issuer wasting his money - would then people set up bounties at all? I donât know. I suppose that we could also allow the âvictimâ of bounty to pay the bounty off to the CONCORD too. Which would be double ISK sink .
I can sort of understand that having a 1b bounty on your head under previous system might be problematic and might be seen as harassment as there was no way to get rid of it, but my proposal solves this. It wonât be visible to anyone but selected individual(s) and it will disappear after 1 month so this system should limit potential for griefing and harassment by default.
Say I have six accounts with three toons a piece. On each account I place a bounty on the head of a specific player I donât like that I know runs missions in HS and assign that bounty to Safety.
As soon as one bounty is used up I can replenish it with another toon. That would be using the bounty system to harass someone
I actually was writing the exact same scenario with explanation that you can already do this without bounty system, but I decided to delete it from my response. Anyway, the only difference is that you have no guarantee that Safety. wonât scam you of your ISKs and wonât deliver the service. But if you would be on good terms with them, then you can pay 2bil to Safety. for them to suicide gank that player all day long already.
So I am not sure what reinstating bounties in this form changes. I suppose that it makes this kind of âharassmentâ a bit more likely to happen as the risk of being scammed is not that high. I mean, they donât have to take your offer at all and you lose your ISK anyway, but at least you can be relieved that those ISKs didnât went to the other playersâ pockets
EDIT: But you are actually right. Since this does not enable anyone to legally kill the target, all this does is giving extra incentive to suicide gank someone (as lets be real, it was mainly used against highsec residents who never wander into low or null). So even if this mechanics enables and creates a new content and players will call themselves a bounty hunters, in fact they will be gankers because that is the only way to kill someone in highsec if that someone doesnât wish to PvP. And therefore it is likely that before such new entities establish themselves, peoples will probably put their bounties to ganker alliances such as Safety. to fulfill it. That being said, the current gankers are unlikely to take such requests⌠They are not interested in hunting players though whole highsec, they would only kill such player if he entered âtheirâ systems anyway.
I picked Safety as they are a big enough alliance that itâs fairly likely to happen. With the bounty system members could gank to access the bounty and there would be no real way for Safety to be considered at fault. If safety were to actively take the money as an alliance then they would need to consider wether repeatedly ganking the same player would put them at risk. Plus like you said they could take the money and run.
Iâm not saying itâs likely, Iâm just saying we should think carefully about where and how changes like this are open to abuse and refine the idea to mitigate the risk.
Thatâs how you wind up with an idea that people will take seriously and not just something like âletâs make all T1 frigates invincible to protect newbros lolâ
Whenever bounties were discussed before the proposal was to make it a mechanic that allows to kill the target legally without wardec or without being concorded. Which obviously brought a lot of hate and was rejected as nonsense and prone to abuse.
Yet, if we donât allow this to happen it is also wrong because it is an indirect buff to the gankersâŚ
Can it be used for harassment? Sure it can be. Same as can ISKs themselves be used for harassment. This is nothing new.
Would this result to more pvp? Probably yes. Is that a bad thing? Well to me it isnât, but it is obvious that anyone against PvP and we have LOTs of peoples like that lately on forum will automatically reject this from this very reason. They want no PvP, this has potential to increase PvP = automatic denial.
You can and you could always harass peoples in EVE. Wardecs, suicide ganking, bumping. All legitimate mechanics which the victims consider harassment and griefing as we saw on Hateless case. But if we remove this all because it is harassment, then this game wonât be the same. So automatically rejecting new ideas because âsomeone might use this to harassmentâ is nonsense imoâŚ
This isnât an indirect buff to gankers. The gankers would just be tools to carry out the harassment of a player, by the douche nozzle with a deep wallet and multiple accounts.
A simple solution for that form of abuse might be that anyone reveiving multiple concurrent bounties be flagged for GM review for instance.
Iâm not saying we shouldnât do your idea, Iâm just saying letâs discuss and theory craft it a bit!
Personally, i would shoot the person i wanted to, âcostâ was never really a consideration. Who cares though? the point is, gankers can shoot who they want, bounties donât really change that.
I would gank the guy with bounty. What I am saying is that it is unlikely for Safety. or other ganker corps to actively chase and hunt someone outside their jurisdiction with bounty on his head no matter how high it is.
But whether this is done by gankers or new entities which will call themselves a bounty hunters and will specifically offer this kind of service. Either we completely scrap it because it is harassment, or we allow it. There is no middle ground.
Why canât there be middle ground. For instance itâs flagged for GM review after multiple concurrent bounties on the same player. GM sees there is either no correlation between the players and closes the ticket or sees that they are all from the same linked accounts and asks some questions.
It would be a shame to scrap a whole system just over some potential outliers.
But I donât understand why would you do this at all and why is that any different to putting up one super high bounty at one time?
What are you gaining by using alts that you cannot do with single character?
What you are saying is that this entire system allows to harass peoples and it is wrong. Whether one player puts a 1bil isk bounty once or 5x 200mil isk bouty using alts, the outcome is exactly the same - that guy has 1bil bounty on his head and can be hunted for profit by peoples you specify.
If you view ppls hunting someone for ISKs because someone paid them to do it as harassment then it is obvious that you will be against this idea and there is nothing to discuss.
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