Wanted Dead or Alive "Bounty system overhaul"

EVE Technology and Research Center Player Features & Ideas
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Hello everybody, especially you @GameMasters @Developers @ISD @CSM

I would like to introduce a new bounty hunting system.

MADE POSSIBLE by the ideas and wording from Wingspan TT CEO @Chance_Ravinne
I am only here to tell the eve community about it and add my own ideas to “IT”

I am not sure if there is anybody before me or not but i could not find anything so far.
(Apologies in advance if there was someone.)

CCP when you made the bounty system you needed a system wich could not be exploited.
And at the time it might have looked like a good system but the system in its entirety fell apart because its so stupid (sorry but it is) that nobody uses it.
This is not bounty hunting you are not hunting anyone.
Nobody is willingly going around to hunt down that specific person because he has a 20 million bounty on his head and even if they are he won’t get the 20 mil. If the person is lucky he gets a bit more than killing npc pirats so here is you “Overhauled Bounty hunting System”. ; )

This Is the video that made me post this.

thank you @Chance_Ravinne for making it

Now to put this in text!

Chance revinne:
first and foremost there are some goals this system must get right

Goals #1 Security of EVE Online is Not Reduced to a CHaotic Ganking Free-For-All
Goals #2 it should feel like you are bounty hunting At least a little

Chance Revinne + my ideas mixed

So let’s start with how the bounty should work and then rework at the kinks, Exploits and the other ideas later
Instead of having a 2 billion bounty on someone’s head and then hunting and killing that person and only collecting a fraction of that.

Forget all of that and listen to this!

One person puts a 100 mil isk (or 40plex) bounty on my head because I killed him or her in there precious Hecate and they want to have revenge but can’t do it themself
now that 100mil bounty after confirmation becomes a Contract that enters the pool of all Bounty Contracts ever made.
and I get to see a bounty being put on my head!

Now person 3 enters the game (you who started playing eve because you want to bounty hunt in space.)
you want to bounty hunt so you go to your respective station, office, agent, or concord and you ask them that you want to become a bounty hunter.
You get a list on your screen that consists out of 10 random bounties from the pool that you can choose a certain amount from. Depending maybe on a skill you can accept from 1 to 5 contracts at the same time and depending on your standing you will have more consistent information on where that certain player is what he is doing maybe even the amount of SP he has levels yadayadya.
That is for CCP to figure out.

of course, our player is level 1 hunting skill with basic 0 standing at the time so he can choose 1 from those 10 and only sees the location of that person on the moment he rolled those 10 bounties if he does not want to choose from those 10 he can do a weekly reroll can be shortened depending on standings and gets 10 other random bounties he can choose from
but ow he sees a bounty that he thinks he can do PS: its me with 100 mil contract on my head he accepts that bounty and my location at the time of accepting
now the bounty hunting timer starts let’s say for each bounty you get a minimum of one week to hunt him
(the contract is a item further explanation required later) acquiring a contract needs you to pay a fee that will be given back on top of the bounty this is for compensation

I get a warning that A bounty on my head has been accepted by our hunter and the hunt begins and the 1-week timer begins
(i don’t know which unless i only had one on my head to begin with and i don’t know who

let’s go on now the hunter now needs to find me he goes to the location that was given with the contract
upon arriving the story can go multiple ways.

  1. I am in the system he tracks me down and destroys my ship and either destroyed my pod so he can collect my head or body
    or captures the pod with me in it alive
  2. I am not in the system so now the tracking begins you can either go to a locater agent or access Jumpgate logs so you can see
    which gates he used at what time and direction or see which system he is in now with the locater agent and the it goes back to
    scenario 1
  3. i kill the hunter and he fails the contract as it will be 100% destroyed with his ship
    failing the bounty will mean the hunter will not get his compensation back for taking the contract

  • let’s go back too scenario 1 it is a success you have my destroyed clone or me alive in a capsule
    either you bring me successfully to the office or my friends will now hunt you down if they destroy you I can either escape unless of course, you destroyed the pod and only have my clone, either way, you still fail.

  • next
    you bring me (your target) to the office, just my clone will grant you a total of 50% of the bounty 50mil
    bringing me in my capsule will give you the total bounty of that specific contract 100mil NO MORE NO LESS. no matter how many contracts or how big my collective Bounty of all contracts on my head maybe.

! now we are at a point where there are things that can be exploited or go wrong so let’s sum them up if I forget any you can add them in the comments later !

  1. alt account rerolling ( making new account till you find your friend with a 2 billion bounty on his head to earn some quick and easy
    money)

  2. colluding with your target to share the bounty

  3. your target has docked in a station and is not leaving

  4. cheap ship kills (you made a bounty contract because you lost your 80mil isk ship but now that hunter is earning my 100mil isk
    bounty by killing his target while he was venture mining or was in a shuttle

  5. hunters hunting hunters ( I killed my target now he placed a bounty on my head now I the hunter am being hunted by other
    hunters the start of a devious neverending circle)

  6. ruining players lives we don’t want people to put 100mil bounties on players who just started the game

  7. I roll station alts that scam all day long but never leaves that station.

let us solve them

  1. This seems like a simple problem: bounty hunting should only be possible for omega accounts
    I want to see a person make 30 omega accounts just to find his friend in the pool of thousands of bounties o get that 2billion
    bounty ( I doubt that it is worth the money.)
    I do feel like alpha accounts should be able to hunt bounty’s but they can only accept
    bounty’s under 5mil isk so even if they make (they cannot see any bounty higher than set amount of isk to then later decide if
    making this alt omega is worth it)
    —minimum bounty placement—
    i don’t want to exclude beginning players from the fun and making this their main profession.
    frigat bounty hunting should be worth it so the minimum bounty that can be placed should be 5mil as it would make
    beginning players also able to hunt

  2. Bounty hunting should be painfully for the one being hunted.
    If the bounty on my head is 100mil and you collude with me to give me a part of the bounty than the system should make the destruction cost my assets higher than the amount the bounty hunter could pay me after receiving his bounty payout.
    The total assets of the targeted player should be 150% that of the bounties worth.
    100mil bounty = 150mil of assets that need to be destroyed + capture of clone or pod implant price included. So no matter how much of the bounties share you give him he will always lose more than he will get making it always worth defending against bounty hunters.

  3. I would introduce 2 timers into the system.

  • Timer 1 -
    is the amount of time the bounty contract is located in the pool of potential targets this can be
    set from the contract must be completed within 1 week to it stays forever on that persons head until collected if not completed by any players within the given time set the bounty office will return 90% of the set amount of money to
    the player who requested the contract. the compensation fee is not included in the return fee of failed contracts to the requester (we do not want people to make money from failed contracts)

  • Timer 2 -
    when a contract is accepted the first timer stops and a second timer start
    this timer will indicate the amount of time the hunter has to hunt there target
    before they fail the contract returning it to the pool on which timer 1 starts
    running again. timer 2, of course, has its own rules which will solve problem 3.
    every time the targets is docked or goes offline timer 2 pauses
    so no matter how long the target wants to avoid it there will be a time when he
    will need to face his impending doom. if the hunter is to go offline timer 2 will
    also be paused
    if the targets switches to a ship the hunter cannot handle than it is up to the
    hunter to decide what he needs to do.
    if 25% 50% 75% of timer 2 passes the contracted is duplicated every time and
    will be thrown into the pool of potential targets this will cause hunters to have
    some competition for trying to take down the target up to 4 hunters the 3
    pressuring the original hunter or they can team up to then split the reward
    evenly (compensation fee is returned to the original hunter If they team up)
    if all 4 hunters do not accomplish the contract within the timespan of hunter 1
    al hunters fail and the compensation fee will be added on top of the original
    bounty timer 1 starts to run again and the contract is again up for the taking.

  • new problem because of solution 3. vv

  1. target uses an alt account to hunt the hunter that is waiting outside the station!
    this one could also be quite simple to solve every hunter that accepts bounty will have their name
    and ship name hidden from
    there target so they would not now who is hunting them the only thing the target sees is the icon of
    which ship class the hunter is
    in when the target arrives at the station the hunter will look like any other player flying around or is
    cloaked up

  2. this one is again easily solved by the solution of problem 2

  3. this is also solved by the solution of problem 3.1

  4. bounties can only be placed on people with criminal stats maybe or should not exceed more than the 150% needed assets worth.
    if you get what i mean (hard time explaining this) also i feel like this problem is not entirely solved yet so help

  5. you get a rerole for every bounty you complete

new structures modules items and pod capturing maybe (maybe ships they do have a fancy lineup of concord ships you don’t see a lot)

well introducing new ships into the game specifically for hunting will stand out a little too much wich would make problem 3.1 a problem again

  • modules for pod capturing this would be to capture pods alive

      1. well capturing the pod will give you the full 100 percent of the bounty reward
      1. every implant the person had can be removed without any damage to the implants making you an extra buck
      1. if you bring in a certain amount of intact clones you could be given a jump clone for free maybe loyalty points from
        clone reprocess factory allowing you to do CCP decide things… ( ran out of ideas here)
      1. the person who is captured in the pod can choose when he kills himself up to the moment he is delivered to the bounty office this will allow him to have his friends or alt account tried and save his pod if he values his character a lot killing himself will not make the pod self-destruct and will still leave the body intact for implant extraction and will still give you a 100% bounty payout.
      1. while hauling active pods(alive player) you are not under the protection concord and can be attacked by other players
      1. the hunter can at any and all times drop the pod if the player inside has not decided to kill himself yet
      1. the targe that is captured and alive is blind by visuals but will still be able to tell his friends purely by ship sensors (general overview, directional scanners,… just no visuals it would look like you floating in the pod with the UI around you making a fun view and minigame)
      1. captured target can still lock on to outside ships but for outside ships, it would look like the hunter’s ship is locking on to normal players making them be wary of the hunter and giving the hunter trouble

  • !!! I really tried my best to make bounty hunting a cat and mouse game of trapping hunting capturing transporting and make all aspects fun for everybody to also give as many chances of escape as to capture !!!

    • Tracking module -
      if tracking module is activated can be done without locking target you just have to be within 50 km from the target it will make your target always appear in the overview no matter how many au he is away in the system so you will always be able to warp directly too him if he uses jump gates you can set a destination to him he cannot escape from the tracking unless he is multiple lightyears away or with the next item
    • item - Target redirector maybe it would be good like a drone counter to the tracking module
      this item will make it so that the tag that the hunter follows is duplicated multiple times upon launching from the station the hunter will have multiple targets that warp away in all directions and removing the tag on your back as long as target redirectors are active say 2 minutes the hunter cannot reapply his tracker only if he can lock on to your ship directly and having tracking module activated
      this will make it look like you are trying to escape the station throwing hunters off and make mistakes so you can have 2 minutes to do whatever you need to do
    • gate camp tracker trapping mechanics
      this item is placed on of 2 sides of Jumpgate when targets travel through them it will stun their ship for 2 minutes and apply a tracker so your tracking module can be used again even without being within the
    • information extractor module
      this will allow players to hack into gates and jump bridges even stations to see if their targets has tried docking or passing it would
      also show the list of everybody who went through the gate in the last hour and make you search through it to see which direction
      he is going in or out
    • stunner pulse
      would work in very much the same way as directional scanner can block a marked target from activating gates or requesting
      docking access to the station for 10seconds enough time to catch up if need be can be fired every 15seconds

  • Skills

    • tracking - skill increases the number of lightyears far you can see or how close you need to be to activate tracking module
      work
    • diversion - the number of redirectors you can launch
    • hacking - (already in the game) the amount of time it takes to hack gates and stations. Stations
      would take considerably
      longer and this would also work for people who want to see downtimes of structure
    • trapping - the amount of time a trap is inside of the Jumpgate or station would also require
      hacking the set structure before planting

I made it this far, not sure if i missed some aspects or not, if i think of anything else i will add it
if you see any problems point them out and try to solve it instead of pointing out that this will not work
I now that this entire message is an unorganized mess of ideas but i took me quite some time to plug the loopholes 1 by 1

I Want To Hunt So Like And Upvote Share It everywhere So CCP Can Not Mis IT
Let us make Bounty Hunting Finally Possible

#EVE_Wanted #Bountysystemoverhaul
lets make this as popular as #bosgacog

bye everybody and safe flying

1 Like
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We’ve had this suggestion before on the forums. It’s utterly gameable. and a terrible mess of loop holes and problems.
I.E. No, this doesn’t fix anything, it makes it vastly worse.

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wow, this is just fanfiction

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i took me hours to fix almost evry loophole and there are a few more but i should be pretty thight in what you can do and what you can’t i want people to poke holes in this so go on i will put many more hours in fixing evry loophole people can make

i just cannot find all the holes in my own design

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There are rumors that the only valuable thing in this game is your time.

Of course, money equals time. But the catch is “real money equals time and not always”. Nine women can’t bear a child in one month no matter how much money you spent on them (the year 2020, who knows what will be possible in the future).

So, a working bounty system should destroy a victim game time in one form or another.

Will it be a virtual jail, a subscription time reduction, an incoming isks annihilation it doesn’t matter.

What matters?

A victim should feel the consequences of a successful hunt for a period of time.

Destroying the victim’s property isn’t the right way to do it.

The bounty may be the only a fraction of the victim’s total wealth,
or worse,
the victim already losses more than the bounty every day,
or even worse,
the victim doesn’t care about isks he/she is here for fun.

7

:red_circle: Can you only put bounties on someone that committed a criminal act?

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@Zhalyd_Lyehin that was just a small idea don’t think itis necessary

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:red_circle: Then your bounty rework fails and you oust yourself as clueless.

If I can just pay a little bit of ISK to get a killright on someone, this entire system will be used for nothing but abuse and not the intended purpose. You see, in that video that this clueless individual Chance Ravine uses as background and that you linked, the hunted character has done something wrong that warrants a killright, he betrayed his comrades. What you want is nothing but abusable killrights on anybody that moves, especially in big ships that are easy to intercept.

What you suggest is not a rework, it is madness without any good reason for existing.

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@von_Susla yes i thought about that too the pod capturing was first meant to be like…

You’re captured alive and cannot transfer body or kill yourself and would be stuck in some kind of jail
you would either need to bail out by paying a certain sum of money, but then again it would not matter for players who are rich.
The other idea was if you where captured you would have a certain time of restriction placed upon you like you cannot train skills for a certain amount of time or you are reverted back to a alpha account for a certain amount of time.
I would make the consequences a bit harsher for people with account and a bit more experience and would be less hurtful for aplha who started still in progress of starting the game.

BUT then again some people have insane alts that don’t have omege so that again would be not a punishment

maybe we can solve it by combing both of these things

  • people who are captured are stuck to make a choice
    • first - bailout with a sum of money and have there character be reverted to alpha for 1 day
      and make there skill training be put on pause for 2 days = 50 mil bounty (something like this)
    • second - you choose to stay your skill training is not paused and you are stuck in the station and cannot do anything for 3 hour
      • ( I don’t have a clue what numbers to put on here the most important thing is that players don’t stop playing the game)
  • back to destroying players live the maximum amount a bounty can be
    would be 33% of the targeted player’s combined assest wealth
    • by making the minimum bounty higher we are effectively making new players safe from bounty spam
    • I would also like to introduce the a kind of new criminal system again which would make a safe haven for people who don’t want to be hunted
      • if you have not actively instigated a fight it could work like this
        • you are first one to start locking down = true
          you opened fire after locking down = true
          you have now instigated in pvp and can have bounty’s place upon you
          ( something like this )
          so that alpha character that is mining all day can’t have bounty place upon them and he is safe
          this does not delete bounties that where already on his head and not instagating afight for over a month or more make you safe from having bounties placed up you
        • if you get ganked i guess the system could fail in protecting you from bounties but that s just coding

And overall right now it really does not matter that you are not hurting the target because right now there are no targets, there is no bounty’s to go claim so I find what I made for a beginning system pretty good

thanks for telling me this I was able to come up with some new ideas to tighten the design
thanks for the help

have a nice day and fly safe

11

I pretty sure you looked over some stuff

first of all a little bit of isk to buy on a certain person a kill right on a certain person i presume you want to kill him yourself

  • then, of course, you would need to first pay the minimum bounty that is maybe 50 mil and you would also need to have extreme luck that you actually role that person you gave a bounty that is mixed in with all other thousands of bounties
    also with the new ideas i posted under @von_Susla
    that should be a good enough system to prevent you from getting free kill right

also next time you find loopholes instead of making the problem bigger try to solve it instead of saying it wont work if everybody points out the bad things but never solves them we will never get bounty hunting so help me fix the problems xD

fly safe

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:red_circle: I have solved this problem multiple times for multiple people having posted the same garbage multiple times.

Bounties only on people who have committed a criminal or suspect flagged act. No one else needs bounties on them that generates killrights for ISK.

Your claims that you need to be lucky to get the person is irrelevant. You create a killright on someone who has not done anything wrong that anyone can activate. It does not matter if you who paid a few million on a freighter or someone else who did that gets the killright contract. The killright is there and the system is abusable and will only be used for abuse.

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@Zhalyd_Lyehin

ones again i ask you to read my response and ideas to @von_Susla

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:red_circle: Did you really just claim that Sulsa’s suggestion makes anything better? A way for players to reduce someone else’s game time for ISK? Are you serious? Oh, I just remembered that you used Chance Ravine’s suggestion as basis for your rework idea. I have already destroyed Chance’s similar suggestion about a year ago because he brought forth the exact same points forward and did not see his errors because he thinks he knows how things work. It’s ridiculous. :joy:

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“Reverting captured player’s account to alpha for x amount of time, stop training time, etc…”

i’m sure CCP will be thrilled to deal with legal issues and refunding the time that players have PAID for because your suggestion takes it away for actions clearly allowed by the game rules.

“taking away a part of overall assets value of a player”

makes no sense and will be gamed to Hek (in both avoiding/hiding assets and framing/setting up players to rob them of assets).

Edit: the whole proposition of “capturing alive” is against the lore because capsule is a self-sufficient device and player inside can always choose to initiate self-destruct and wake up in a medical clone elsewhere.

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@Zhalyd_Lyehin

I did not
I said that e few of the new ideas might be what you are looking
this is not what would be in the game it is the basis on what you would build it
I was very reluctant to talk about taking away omega or even skill training because of those exact reasons @Ms_Steak mention
but for the criminal system, I think that I solved that one well

@Ms_Steak i will try to find another way to make a punishment but honestly that punishment system can only ever be implemented if there was a system and for know, we are working at the core to even get a system

second,
i think you talking about the lore of pod capturing does not make sense
why don’t you just say that anything new is against the lore because it did not exist
I think it very feasible for technology to stop a person from self-destructing there pod
if need be you can make it a hacking battle between the captured target and the hunter

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Wormholes, abyss space, dead space - nothing can prevent capsuleer from committing suicide and uploading their brainscan to a new medical clone. Capsule/ship self-destruct timer in game is there for real world players in case they change their mind, so there isnt realy a time for “hacking battle”. Also preventing “self-destruct” does not mean that you can prevent brain scan (that takes fraction of a second and fries the brain in the process by the lore) - you will just end up with a whole capsule and a corpse inside.

And any suggestion of “stopping brain scan” opens up a whole can of worms and abuse involving perma-death of characters…

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Yes you are very right about some things here
Thank you for pointing them out.

when you talk about perma-death are you talking lore-wise or the fact that people could hold down the there captured target and never release them

if it was the later

  • then put a timer on “the stoping-brain scan” if you are not given to the respective bounty hunting office within the hour of capture
    you can transfer your mind with 100% success and the game moves on

lorewise, I would not even be sure what you mean

  • what happens with players that retire from the game i mean character destruction all your clones are given back to reprocess for 24 hours and final completion and you can make a character again
    its how people start new alts some time.
    that is permadeath in lore right there.

the second thing you pointed out is the fact that self-destruct does not give you the time to make a battle in hacking then make the hack time-based

  • on the moment of captured the targets starts self-destruct to prevent from being delivered alive
    the self-destruct sequences is 10 seconds I think wich means the hunter has 10 seconds to attack the pods core with the hacking minigame upon success the hunter will have secured the capsule with the player in it alive the player if the hunter fails the pod is destructed and he will be left with just a half a corpse floating in space which will still give him 50% the bounties total
    If not delivered within the hour after capture and hacking than the player can transfer brains and the bounty reward is only 75% + implants
    if the player is delivered alive 100% bounty payout

  • I think it would also create quite a sweaty fight you have successfully captured your target but his friends are still hammering down on you and now you gotta deal with a hack in the middle of the fight.

  • I don’t truly care that bounty hunting would be difficult, because there is none right now

Still thanks again I am noting down all problems to one day make/design the complete system
any input helps :wink:

19

This dumb idea has been listed as a so called counter to alt getting bounties many times.

So if I have a 2 billion bounty and I fly around in a corvette the 2 billion is pointless since the payout will only be a few million.

-1 Same old bad ideas recycled into a wall of text with poor formatting.

20

Now that wardecs have been eviscerated, we can use this to declare wars on individual characters. Better than nothing.