True…there are no titles in EVE…I was also not asking for titles…
…and no, ganking is not bounty hunting…That would be like saying a thief stealing your furniture is a moving company.
And to be clear, there are no titles in EVE so…no idea why you are starting down that path…
No, it is not. That does not even make sense.
Anyone who decides to go shooting people with bounty is, literally, a bounty hunter. I do not know why your world is seperated into boxes of activities, but i can assure you that people are not necessarily doing one activity only.
Can you not be objective about this?
One is legal…the other not…that is objective.
i can assure you that people are not necessarily doing one activity only.
At no point did I say this or suggest this…
There might be a misunderstanding here.
You believe that someone who hunts people for bounty can not be a bounty hunter unless he does it with the acknowledgement of the governing entity … am i correct?
So you get scammed and you cannot add a bounty because CONCORD doesn’t understand scamming?
Bad idea. I think you need to learn the game more before you suggest changes.
You believe that someone who hunts people for bounty can not be a bounty hunter unless he does it with the acknowledgement of the governing entity … am i correct?
There is a specific difference that I am trying to make. BOTH are collecting bounties so yes, both could be considered “bounty hunters”. The difference is that one is sanctioned by the state and and the other is not. Both have pros and cons…
The system is for ship losses. not scamming…
I think you need to read the OP before making suggestions.
The current system is for everything, a replacement needs to be as well.
-1 poorly thought out idea.
The current system is pointless and is for nothing…it’s meaningless.
-1 poorly thought out reply.
That’s what I was referring to when I wrote “title”. You’d have the title of “bounty hunter”. Maybe “title” is the wrong word … sorry if so. See, from my perspective this does not matter, because the outcome is the same thing.
There would only be a difference if gankers, who shot for bounty, would not receive said bounty. As everyone does, though, is everyone who exclusively hunts people with bounty a bounty hunter simply based on what he is doing.
That’s why i can call myself a miner, an industrialist, an awoxer, a ganker and a bounty hunter. I don’t do that, of course … mostly because I don’t put people into the above mentioned “boxes” and see them as fluid things going through all kinds of activities.
For the game it does not matter if it is sanctioned or not. Everyone gets paid, therefore anyone who wants can be a bounty hunter. If you restricted this, you would end up in a state worse than now, because you will not have many targets to actually hunt and they will likely group up, giving you individual bounty hunters a run for their money.
I see your point, but what matters is that in reality anyone who hunts for bounty can call himself a bounty hunter as long as he is getting paid for it.
Just some added ideas concerns to this system:
Putting up a fee in advance and loosing it, without any guilt of the Hunter sounds pretty harsh. Haulers pay a fee when they accept a contract and that fee is returned upon delivery … So i were to suggest a Hunter pays a fee upon accepting, and gets (most if needed) it returned upon NOT completing the contract. Guess you could throw in a small % for administration. The Upfront fee is then mainly to make sure the person is Serious about being a Hunter, if he fails within the timeframe then (i dunno) 98% of that fee gets returned, if he completes the kill non of it is returned as it’s just part of the bounty payout.
Killing a player with a bounty on their Head, without a contract, should still pay out part of the bounty. The bounty system would need some sort of check for ‘known associates (IP check)’ and ‘corp members’. To prevent mis-use (claiming on alts or corp members). (it might need this mostly tbh!)
This system sort of ‘needs’ a type of gossip NPC … bit of a shame CCP removed the station interaction as it would be THE place for a bounty hunter to go and inquire about a potential target. If a target would visit the system frequently that would be known locally, or if he’s hardly there. If the target would also be involved in NPC killing a lot, then perhaps NPC-corps could add to bounties (but say only if you inquire the right NPC (say you question a miner in a bar, the target killed a lot of miners, he happens to know the Corp has a bounty on that guy’s head too, it gets added to your contract payout), or maybe even local NPC’s can have small bounties if they lost something due to the target (local bar owner might pay out a small amount because people avoid the system and thus his bar). Inquiries could also produce ‘leads’ to get closer to the target, or an actual Time the player is seen online?
Quite possibly the system would also have to be fed with NPC-bounty Targets to populate the data base and make sure enough Targets are available.
Very true. I think if people take anything from my idea is that I’d like to see the “occupation” or “title” receive a bit of a wrapper from CCP rather than the current system of ganking. Right now, the bounty system is pointless unless you are adding on 6 figures or more (most of the time) and even then, you make money on the salvage/loot.
So yes, I agree that bounty hunting can be done now but not in a way that is actually acts as a counterpoint to “crime”…and if that’s the case then any action is also criminal in itself.
looking at the title…
Realistic???
If we want realistic…then only the Empires can place Bounties on characters that do thing that make them go criminal(or maybe even suspect).
Players would be unable to give out bounties on each other…only NPC’s could…and for certain actions only. (ie ganking)
A true Bounty Hunter would have to be not only positive in Sec Status but the Empire Faction as well, pay a licensing fee to acquire the right to be a Bounty Hunter in their territory…
There you go solved.(if you want to be realistic)
You’re point about getting a portion of the fee returned is valid. I think I went with the “lose it all” route as I see it as more of a licence rather than a deposit. I see your point though…
I think that with all the levels of anonymity it would be really hard to game this system. the BH’er has no idea who his target might be or even where…
Did you know Han Solo actually shot first?
What i mean to say by this is that even good guys can be considered criminals. I know he was a smuggler, not a bounty hunter, but you likely get the point.
I am not disagreeing that bounty hunting is fully broken for anyone who is not a suicide ganker, and still half broken for every suicide ganker. Things sadly only get worse when we add restrictions to it, because you would limit it to a small subset of the population of highsec.
We do not currently live in a culture that really supports such a game mechanic. We did far more eight years ago, and before, but nowadays it simply is not doable anymore. For things to work we would need to have a player base that fully accepts that it can and will be killed anywhere. Everyone would need to be willing to fight, and everyone would need to be vigilante. We don’t have that anymore.
If we did, we could easily play in a system where bounty hunters could legally hunt for bounty, because when there are no carebears, there are no complaints about being shot at in highsec. I guess, in a sense, what I am saying here is that by removing carebears you could fix bounty hunting. And wars. And suicide ganking.
I digress, sorry.
We do not currently live in a culture that really supports such a game mechanic.
EVE is famous for being against most changes…and I’d say that posting this 10 years ago would have elicited an even more toxic and explosive response. EVE is actually starting to mellow-out a bit in it’s old age 
But your post does say a lot of truths…
The problem with realistic is in reality you don’t have your friend kill you so you can collect the bounty 
There are two problems with bounty systems in general and they are more or less inherent to the game.
Unless your mark is someone local to the systems you usually hang out you will never find that person. You could look all you want and they may not even be logged in. If the system only handed out local bounties then it would be easy to scam the bounty.
Because death is not permanent all bounty systems can be scammed and allow the wanted person and friends to collect the bounty.
My Omega vote is that CCP should not waste 1 man hour on ANY bounty system.
-1 No.
Reminding everyone that the current “new” bounty system was the redesign from ?8? years ago.
You have to read the old old forums (aka original forums) to see how pointless the whole exercise was/is.
You can’t have friends kill you in this system…
Finder agents help you locate people (they could be enhanced?)…
The system does not give out contracts on players that are not playing anymore…
Not only local bounties…
This system has yet to be shown how it could be scammed…
(yes I know you said “in general”, just pointing out that some though did go into my idea)