The beaten dead horse. bounty hunting :(

EVE Technology and Research Center Player Features & Ideas
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okay folks. before you dismiss this topis as “oh this has been discussed a thousand times” think of it as “oh crap this just keeps coming up maybe something should be finally done so we can stop beating this poor dead horse”

Alot of players have made their thoughts clear on the subject giving a plethora of ideas, and the system is as broken as it was when it was reworked and no one does it. its a meaningless mechanic right now and i think its time to change that. some tweeks, minor reworks, and some minor overhauls are nothing compared to what CCP has been doing lately (stations and moon mining) and it deserves some attention. alot of players have been disappointed to join this game only to find the mechanic is broken and no one does it. give us closure CCP. will it ever be reworked? will it go the way of station walking? we just need to know.

Okay so here it is.

My idea makes bounty hunting a two parter and similar to FW.

Its a career which means it should have NPC’s that you can talk to and given missions to take out high value npcs for cash and maybe Loyalty points (see part 2)

Make it a faction. Alot like faction warfare. And in order to join this faction you have to have to have a sec status of x amount (well say 5) and a good standing with all main factions (Gallente, Caldari, Ammar, & Minmatar) and cannot join if these pre requisits are not met. This way not just anyone can join and claim a bounty thus exploitation virtually cannot happen since the bounty can only be claimed if you are a member of the bounty hunter faction with good sec status and standings. Now of course you can have an alt in BHF but theres no benefit on trying to raise your pirate alts bounties and just killing yourself because acruing bounty from people takes alot of time so much time that just killing your pirate character or your friend wont put bread on the table.

Now we have a few more things to think about,
kill rights (obtaining them and activating them)
Finding bounties
And NPC involvement
Payout

Kill rights should be bought by the bounty pool. And can only be activated by the Hunter. And obviously not getting a sec status hit when attacking them but combat timer still applies so they can fight back but of course the bounty still gets a sec status hit but yet highsec police and low sec turrets do not intervene. Why? It adds an interesting mechanic to it, take the status hit or surrender if the hunter has you tackled. Because lets face it if they have been an ass enough to get the bounty they shouldnt be let off easy, and this opens a chance for people to put bounties on people or Corps like code and give them a run for their money. Code exploits the system with what they’re doing so this would give players a chance to fight back. With bounty hunters!

Next up, finding bounties. We have a ton of options and i would rather leave that up to CCP but New Eden is a big place so there should be something to help with the search no matter how small that help is, NPCs might help with that. (See next option)

And now NPC involvement.
Basically as i mentioned before you would be able to get npc missions where your given bounties on npc bad guys, basically the secondary factions that all the main factions dislike (blood raiders as an example) and they would funcion like all other npc fighting missions with dungeons and your bounty at the end i would def say the bounty payout should be higher depending on noc level.
Second and i would hope this wouldnt be too difficult. Tie an NPC to the bounty list where you can search people with bounties and see the top 10 bounties and bounty hunters. Now when you search for bounties on this list a little more info can be given. (Like general locations “last seen in region in high sec”) just so you dont have to scour all of new eden to find someone but doesnt give you so much that its easy. Also you could add a bounty search paramiter like im looking for bounties in this region in high sec for example. And you could talk to people about your bounty as if anyones seen him talk to some of the players they have killed. You know bounty hunter work. And on the other side of things players with bounties can bribe people to warn them if there is a bounty hunter after them.
When you select a bounty or multiple bounties for example the npc hands you the kill rights (purchased from the bounties pool when selected for the first time, and id say limit active bounties to 5) and given an allotted time to claim the bounty say a week or two weeks or even a month until the kill right expires (and could be repurchased from pocket if more time is needed) this way kill rights are not handled by any one except npc agents.

Now who knows what the payout should be it would have to be tested first. But maybe it can be affected by your charisma, and npc skills involving pay and negotiations. Just to tie some more skills in aside from combat skills. But like real life it should always be a % of the bounty. And maybe a higher % payout if you involve more people with all the players skills influencing the payout and it being split amongst the players in the fleet when bounty is claimed and the bounty destroyed. NOTE: I DO NOT THINK COST OF SHIP DESTROYED SHOULD EFFECT PAYOUT AT ALL. Make them feel the rage as they get destroyed in a rattle and the payout is only 80 mil compared to their 200 mil rattlesnake. Oh the sweet salty tears :yum:.
Now this is important after you get whatever payout the entire pool of the bounty is depleted and sinked into the bounty hunting npc faction. Which means one hit wonder bounties this is why i will not even suggest pay out because that can only be determined after the economy is settled and CCP makes the necessary changes. And will most likely effect how much people put into that bounty so it can go anywhere in the ball park.

Due to my limited knowledge of programming i can only assume all of this would not be more extensive then some of the updates and programming that has been done lately. Its mostly additions, a few tweeks, and little to no complete overhauls.

What do you guys think?

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Please replace your code formatting with a quote formatting. Having to scroll sideways is hideous in this forum.

Furthermore, you throw around the words bounties and killrights all the time. I get the impression that your idea again boils down to that people can jsut throw a bit of ISK on someone’s head and this would magically generate a killright on that person. Unless I misread something, which I doubt because of:

your idea is as terrible as all the other bounty rework ideas that were repeatedly and redundantly posted in the old forum. Paying ISK to generate a killright is the worst possible implementation of a bounty system. Unless you suggest a limitation on who a player can place a bounty, your idea is terrible.

2 Likes
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okay obv you didn’t read very well. the bounty pool pays for the kill rights, and if you don’t catch and kill the player before the kill right expires (say 30 days) the you can either purchase another kill right out of pocket or abandon the bounty and select another one

please try to read and understand befoer you speak

and sorry i tried to fix it but it refuses to go away

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With “bounty pool pays for the killright” you mean to say that people throw ISK into a bounty account and that generates a killright on someone for no reason whatsoever, or does it mean people throw ISK into a bounty account and they can pick from or get existing killrights assigned to them for the hunt? If the first is the case, my point stands; if the second is the case, everything is fine. So far, however, your suggestions sounds an awful lot like the first version.

You might want to be a bit more clear with your information before you accuse others of failing comprehension. And maybe you should put more effort into fixing your post. Changing the word “code” with “quote” can’t be too hard. Scratch that, removing the spaces or whatever the crap in front and after your Code text is and replacing it with quote tags shouldn’t be too hard. If that does not work, @CCP_Avalon might want to check his coding.

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actually it kind of combines both points.

the bounty pool generates a kill right, that can only be activated by a bounty hunter. then those kill rights are assigned to that bounty hunter once he selects his 5 out of 10 bounties or whatever.

kill rights are barely used as is, barely anyone buys them, and barely anyone gives them away they just wither away. so taking away kill rights as a general use and make it a bounty hunting thing. it kind of fixes what i’m pretty sure your getting at.

right now bounty hunting is a big isk sink. which with my idea it still kinda is. The kill rights are payed for by the player. but not anyone can get it just bounty hunters. so the pool generates a kill right for a bounty hunter the bounty hunter kills said bounty. gets whatever % gets paid then the entire bounty goes into the sink. Corporation bounties can work a little different, if a corp has a 12b bounty on them you get x amount paid to hunter per player you kill in that corp. and higher x amount paid if hunters are in a fleet

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Ok, so my original response hit the nail completely. Now that we have cleared this up, imagine this:

People in EVE have nothing better to do than to pick holes in to mechanics and go to extreme lengths just to get a kill. If they could just throw ISK at the game to, for instance, create killrights for a ton of freighter pilots in order to gank them without any risk and material investment, what do you think would happen? Exactly, they would throw a lot of ISK at this mechanic to bounty-killright anything that moves and looks vaguely juicy, mission runners, freighters, general haulers, you name it. Getting high standings with all 4 factions is tedious but not impossible. Now that CCP has set the precedent of gaining security status faster with a particular ship, the same is absolutely likely to happen for empire standings. After all, the tedium is way too much to ask for for the average useless contemporary Farmville player CCP tries to lure into EVE. Therefore, the requirements to join this exclusive club of bounty hunters would be way lower than you think and way easier to comply with.

A system where you just pay ISK to generate a legal killright for someone who has not done anything to earn a legal killright (no, crap talking on the forum is not a reason), is a terrible system. Period.

Yes, killrights are not being activated a lot but that’s mostly because I do not see why I should pay a disgruntled guy 70M ISK to kill a T1 frigate. Or activating a 500M killright on a freighter is also not going to get activated by intelligent people because they know that is just an insurance bounty scam.
Furthermore: Yes, I also absolutely see the need to rework the bounty and killright system because either are not in a satisfying state. But allowing to generate killrights for a meager ISK sum is not a good system to replace the current mediocrity.

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You clearly show lack of understanding how EvE and mechanics work. Also the killright system works just fine, you just need to know how to use it, and then it can be profitable. Allowing players to kill other players in highsec for no game-controlled reason, will certainly be applauded by all the haulers and “carebears” out there. :wink:

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okay you didn’t catch everything that was put in. as a bounty hunter you cannot just throw isk on a bounty and then claim it immediately.

a bounty is placed on a player
a bounty hunter has to go to an NPC agent.
you have to generate 10 RANDOM bounty’s
you have to select 1-5 of those bounties.
then you go claim those RANDOM bounties.

there is no oh place bounty out in space, get a kill right and activate it.

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i think i have a good understanding of how game mechanics work

i’m not saying the kill right system doesn’t work, i’m simply saying it should be re-purposed.

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That argument was brought forward in the old forum, too. And it just window dressing because you just have to bounty enough people to get what you want. There are so many blood-lusty cowards in high sec that it is completely reasonable there are more than enough bounties generated to get big fish on a continuous basis.

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Yeah, many do think that.

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alright. i think i see what the problem is here. alot of people are bashing on everyone ideas for a new system of bounty hunting. now the reason for that is alot of people like yourself look at how this idea effects the game “as is” and the bounty hunting mechanic “as is” you need to stop looking at it “as is” and think about what would happen if the bounty hunting system worked a different way. we forget that when things are changed enough it changes the players perspective it changes how the players do things.

basically your not looking at this like “how is this going to effect player behavior” and how they place and claim bounties. and or kill rights

your assuming that with this mechanic people are going to continue to just throw away 30 mil as a bounty on a player because he’s pissed off. but with a mechanic like i’m proposing it will cause the economy of placing bounties to shift. which means people might be more inclined to throw down either less or more.

but you also have to think about this. i’m proposing keeping the % of the total bounty rewarded to the bounty hunter. your npc interaction skills effect what % you get of the bounty, so highers skills mean higher %.
someone places 30 mil on a player. a bounty hunter will prob pick up that bounty really quick the bounty is in a frigate your skills allow you to take 20% of that, thats only 6 mil.

now lets say there is a guy in a t2 cruiser just sitting at gates or jita just ganking people left and right, 30 people put 20 mil on this guy. thats 800 mil. if you do it solo you get 120 mil of that.

now remember the rest of the bounty pool goes away into the sink the NPC ran corporation. the cycle starts all over again.

there will never be enough time or money thrown around to be exploited because you will be racing the thousand other bounty hunters to the kill.

think about the changes that would happen with a mechanic like this. trust me people would be doing it differently then you are thinking

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my point exactly :wink:

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there are three things we need to consider when comming up with a mechanic for a game.

  1. changing player behavior towards this mechanic and how much they will end up placing on a bounty
  2. limiting exploitation or getting rid of it completely
  3. balancing out the economy

those three things need to be considered and with those there in mind i believe i have a solid case

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I am thinking very comprehensively about how your system would change player behavior. That is why I gave you these examples.

Your system will make certain people throw more money at certain targets in order to generate killrights for them. There are groups in this game with hundreds of alt characters (just look at CODE., this is more or less a 5 men show with 20 alts each (a bit exaggerated, but you should get the point)). People just throw bounties with their alts and collect them in form of killrights with other alts. If you need a real EVE life example on how players change their behavior upon introduction of a new mechanic, here are two:

  1. When CCP introduced Faction Warfare (or was it a change to the system, I can’t remember correctly), CFC immediately went to dismantle the system and exploit certain aspects to earn ridiculous amounts of LP and made ridiculous amounts of ISK before reporting the exploit.
  2. When CCP introduced Duels as a form of “structured 1v1 combat” that should no longer need to rely on can stealing for a suspect flag, gankers immediately started to use the system to gank freighters. They did this by starting to bump a freighter and then a random stranger passed by and offered them help (telling them to web them so that they can warp away from the bumper) if they duel the stranger. Next thing that happened was a freighter dying to the duel partner.

Under your original suggestion, there are also not “thousands” of other hunters because there are not that many people available with high enough standings that go bounty hunt. This again favors your specifically setup alt armies. I do not know how this projection is looking at the game “as is”.

Your system also carries over a burden of the current bounty system: You only get a small portion out of the activity, most of it remains untouched or gets thrown away completely, according to your response. That is a feature of the current bounty system a lot of people love.

With regards to your list of things to pay attention to when you design a new system:

  1. There are enough examples about how player behavior changes if they get an easier way to achieve kills in particular on targets they could not get to kill easy before. I listed numerous in my responses.
  2. Your system is extremely vulnerable to alt armies and the fact that you can create a killright just by paying a meager amount of ISK is the biggest exploit in the system itself.
  3. What does bounty hunting have to do with the economy? Ships are dying every minute.
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okay your not getting it. when a bounty hunter goes to the NPC and selects bounties you have to physically go to a station with a bounty hunter NPC get a random selection of players with bounties on them. and pick some. you cannot activate this bounty in space. you have to dock. talk to an NPC and get the bounty. you will not be able to just place a bounty out in space activate a kill right and gank them.

which means if you place a bounty on one of your 20 alts. the chances of you getting your alt as a selection is unlikely. and since most of the money you put down on your alt will go into a sink its not profitable. so no one is going to do that.

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only bounty hunters can claim bounties and activate kill rights. so what i’m suggesting is that it is only beneficial for bounty hunters to after bounties they did not place.

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How much ISK I have to pay in your system to get mission runner Blingy Carefree being killed just for the tears?

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Okay lets say mr. Blingy carefree is just killing people left and right, several people have placed a 300mil bounty on him. So that makes 1.8b total. A bounty hunter gets wind of this bounty for 1.8b that means hes causing alot of havoc and not dieing much so he looks at the kms he realizes hes flying bling bling so he grabs some other bounty hunters and makes a fleet to take this guy down. All the skills of the bounty hunters go into isk claimed from the bounty so lets say 4 bounty hunters grab their ships and head out the fleet is going to claim 80% of the bounty after the kill the isk is split up between all members of that fleet so each one gets 360mil. To me that sounds like incentive enough for bounty hunters to go after him.

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lol, proofs my point, you have no clue.