Since the ultimate purpose of this change is fighting against isk inflation (I guess). You guys can work on the issue directly but not nerfing normal players again. We all know this change will affect normal semi-AFK player, and adds more advantages to bots, this inevitable encourages normal players to use tools help them avoid tedious target locking and F key pressing.
But I have a great idea that may can reduce the isk incoming of botting/or punish them, encourage more PVP activities, make semi-AFK player more active, the most import part is helping reducing isk inflation greatly. @CCP_Paradox
Here is my solution
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change the current bounty system. Make bounty not paid directly to players’ wallet. The players need to collect proof, like dog tags, from NPC pirates and turn into ENCORD NPC station to get paid off, like ESS isk check.
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How to make this change in compatible with ESS? This is quite simple. The isk goes into ESS stay the same. Player still get paid off every several hours. The rest isk will goes into bounty proof items and players need collected from NPCs.
PROS
It sinks more isk to the system. So, the player at least needs to collect wreckage and transport those bounty proofs to NPC station to get paid off. During transportation, players can get killed and part of the bounty proof items will be lost during this PVP activity. This is another way to sink isk back to the system and further reduce the inflation
This will punish bots, since player need to collect bounty proof items, bots cannot just ratting they need to collect wreckages, and do the transportation.
It encourages PVP, because the bounty proof items can be taken away by other players during PVP. Now hunter players are more motivated to engage people not only in ESS but also in Anomalies.
The most important is it doesn’t change the current players style, so it causes much less damages to the existing player base. Semi-AFK players still be semi-AFK but they need to be aware the hunters more and manually collect bounty proof items from wreckages and stock them safely back to stations before transporting them to NPC station to get paid off, otherwise if they get caught and lose all the bounty proof items in their ship cargo.
It doesn’t make the null space emptier. Null sec ratting is still profitable and not as tedious as what it will become after we have upcoming Drone aggression changes. I am in one of the biggest alliances, as far as I know many players are considering to do missions to replace ratting in null space for isk. That means they will spend much less time in null space. Null space will become emptier. So those null space PVP players (hunters) can’t find ship to shoot, they properly leave the null space or leave the game.
It creat a isk buffer for the current economy system. Since isk is in the form of bounty proof items, it takes time to cash out.
CONS
More development work. I think it worth the effort considering so many pros.
It may introduce isk spikes to the system. If people stock the bounty proof item and cash them out in large amount. But this can be easily solved by add expiration time to the bounty proof items.
This change may be not new player friendly. It may only be apply to Null space. In High sec space, for low value bounty target, mojority bounty can be still paid direct to players. For high value bounty target, split part of the bounty into bounty proof items part paid directly to player. So it can help new players learning this system. This part need some tuning to make it new player friendly.
If you guys like this idea, please click like and let CCP dev team see my post. Thanks. (Please pardon my English.)