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Kunming
T.H.U.G L.I.F.E The Volition Cult
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Posted - 2009.10.13 21:58:00 -
[1]
Greetings EVE,
When I first heard about EVE and got accepted to BETA back in 2002, I was much amazed by the possibility of becoming a bounty hunter. But not long after the servers opened the system showed some conceptual flaws and turned useless.
I believe that it would have an impact to low sec population if the targets of pirates would have a way to revenge themselves.. sorta.
I'll use a scenario to explain the current situation:
Mission-runner/miner lives in low sec, one day a pirate or 2 come to his system where he hangs out and kill his ship. Now he has couple options;
- The most common one, doing nothing! - Hop into a ship and chase after the pirate, this usually ends in vain. - Hire some mercs to go after the pirate, this is out of pure personal vendetta, as it is more of an ISK cost on top of the lost ship with no financial gain.
There is one more option, the bounty system. Lets pretend the system is working as CCP intended. Our victim now adds some bounty on the pirate according to what he deserves or what the victim can afford (this also means killing poor targets will keep you a low profile while going for gold will pull the attention of pirate hunters). Sooner or later the bounty would grow juicy enough for a bounty hunter to come after the pirate.
Unfortunately this is not the case though, once the bounty is high enough the most logical thing to do is to kill yourself with an alt (or via a trusted friend). In the end no one really bothers adding a bounty (besides for unintended purposes), and there is no initiative for bounty hunting.
So the system is broken, what to do?
First, lets analiyze the problem;
- Adding the bounty: This seems to work fine - Display of the bounty: I got mixed arguements for this, but I'll say more about later - Collection the bounty: This seems to be the point where the real flaw is.
LESS IS MORE
A new bounty collection mechanic needs to be in place in order to fix the system. Now my suggestion is as following:
- First, the collection of bounty by anyone needs to be removed, or did you really think CIA would pay Usame for bringing in 5addam?
- The new system would have the 4 empires giving out bounties through a new type of agent. You, as a bounty hunter, would have to climb up the ladder of trust before getting the big contracts, this would be achieved through accomplishing small bounty missions first.
- The empires will prioritize targets that killed the most victims within their borders.
- A bounty mission for a pirate is not given to a single pilot but still has a limit relevant to the amount of bounty, so this means if you are looking for trouble you will get it (more pvp); the more your bounty the more hunters will be after you.
- If the pirates security status increases to 0 or more OR the set amount of time is passed (lets say 1 month) OR someone collects the bounty before you the mission is a failure, you cant collect a bounty for that target anymore.
- As I mentioned above bounties would no longer be visible to public, this would prevent the encouragement of someone, with a very high bounty, to make his alt a bounty hunter to collect on his own. An alternate could be a agent lvl based list, revealing ever more with increasing lvls.
- Bounty collected through these missions would be subject to corp tax, so Bounty Hunters Guilds could be a reality
- The empires could add a bonus depending on your factional standing (nothing big 10% max, so 1 billion bounty with +10 standing would give u 100mils extra at max, at those numbers its peanuts but still nice enough)
CONCLUSION
Some final words; I think a working bounty system would:
- liven up low sec and make everyone happy, from carebear to pirate and pirate hunter alike - add more reasons to pvp, and more conflicting parties - add a long lost and craved for profession - give miners, missioners and the like a means to fight back; remember, the carebears weapon is ISK
Thats it... Discuss
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5ilent 5hift
Amarr
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Posted - 2009.10.13 22:11:00 -
[2]
Wow, thats a wall of text, and then some... O_o
Lets not forget the guys who put huge bounties on their heads then leave the game temporarily/permanently, that might mess up the system...
Other than that, sounds alright to me Might make low sec more interesting, for some parties anyway |
Kunming
T.H.U.G L.I.F.E The Volition Cult
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Posted - 2009.10.13 22:18:00 -
[3]
Originally by: 5ilent 5hift Wow, thats a wall of text, and then some... O_o
Lets not forget the guys who put huge bounties on their heads then leave the game temporarily/permanently, that might mess up the system...
Other than that, sounds alright to me Might make low sec more interesting, for some parties anyway
Oh yes I thought about that, forgot to add...
- Ppl who have been away for over a month (by that not logged on), are excluded from the system until they do so.
I think the one of the problems is that you make an efford to go to low sec, then someone comes and kills u and disappears and you sit there in your pod wondering what just happened... Most folks will prefer sitting under the safety of concord. If you give them working tools to retaliate by their means (ISK) then it could have an impact on the situation.
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Cpt Branko
The Scope
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Posted - 2009.10.13 22:47:00 -
[4]
Edited by: Cpt Branko on 13/10/2009 22:48:39 Edited by: Cpt Branko on 13/10/2009 22:47:52 tl;dr
Anyone can hunt pirates. Everyone who is in the position to, does. However, hunting them often requires a set of balls or blobbing. Blobbing is more common, and pirates tend to avoid blobs, unless they do it for lolz only (fail) or are stupid (fail).
Bounty hunting cannot ever work as: (a) it's trivial to save your pod out of 0.0 (this works for everyone, really, it's not a magic trick pirates do) (b) alts exist
Means of retaliating via ISK exist. It's called mercs. You don't need a wardec to kill someone in low-sec and professional pirates are going to be -10, so... no wardec necessary.
Sig removed, inappropriate link. If you would like further details please mail [email protected] ~Saint |
Kunming
T.H.U.G L.I.F.E The Volition Cult
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Posted - 2009.10.13 23:24:00 -
[5]
Originally by: Cpt Branko Edited by: Cpt Branko on 13/10/2009 22:48:39 Edited by: Cpt Branko on 13/10/2009 22:47:52 tl;dr
Anyone can hunt pirates. Everyone who is in the position to, does. However, hunting them often requires a set of balls or blobbing. Blobbing is more common, and pirates tend to avoid blobs, unless they do it for lolz only (fail) or are stupid (fail).
Bounty hunting cannot ever work as: (a) it's trivial to save your pod out of 0.0 (this works for everyone, really, it's not a magic trick pirates do) (b) alts exist
Means of retaliating via ISK exist. It's called mercs. You don't need a wardec to kill someone in low-sec and professional pirates are going to be -10, so... no wardec necessary.
Yes but without a bounty system there is no initiative to hunt pirates (since pvp is not really cost efficient).
Bounties turn pirates into sources of income, a resource.
My suggestion eliminates (or at least reduces) the use of alts in bounty collection as there needs to be real combat involved to climb up the ladder, you wont be able to collect on your main straight away and there will be other (real) bounty hunters also trying to score.
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Becq Starforged
Minmatar Ship Construction Services Ushra'Khan
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Posted - 2009.10.14 01:03:00 -
[6]
In my opinion, the single biggest problem with the "pirate hunter" mini-profession is the sec-status mechanics. Currently, if you hunt pirates, you are in effect flagging yourself as a pirate as far as CONCORD and other players are concerned. This needs to be changed to make bounty-hunting feasible.
What needs to happen is for prospective pirate hunters to be allowed to purchase a 'license' (perhaps a 20-100m deposit plus 5-50m per month, with reductions based on sec status, renewable in a manner similar to wardecs). The license would be restricted to those with sec status over some threshold (ex: +2.0 or higher). Anyone holding such a license would be free to attack any individual with a sufficiently low sec status -- say -2.0 or less -- in low-sec space, without gaining criminal flags, trigerring guns, or losing sec-status. Aggression flags would be generated as normal, which would mean the target and his corp would be allowed to attack back without repercussions, so a wise pirate-hunter should keep this in mind. Note that if a licensed pirate-hunter were to commit a criminal act, their license would be immediately revoked and the deposit lost. (Though it could be re-purchased if standings were still sufficiently high.)
This would do nothing to fix the bounty system as such, but would make it possible for players to take on a role policing low-sec without becoming what they hunt.
For the bounty system to work, you need to make sure it isn't possible for insurance+bounty to be enough to make suiciding profitable. I think the only way to do this would be something along these lines: - Limit bounty payouts per kill to some fraction (probably less than 30%) of the base cost of the ship destroyed, plus half the target's current clone cost for a pod-kill. - If the total bounty is more than the limit, then it is simply decremented by the amount paid out, with the remaining bounty staying in effect. - Reduce the insurance payout to the bountied 'victim' by the amount of the bounty payout.
To reduce the use of bounties as griefing tools (this probably can't be eliminated completely): - Limit placement of bounties to people you have kill rights for. - The total bounty amount should be reduced after each full week, perhaps by as much as 50% of the current amount (minimum reduction 5m or so).
-- Becq Starforged
The Flame of Freedom Burns On! |
Haryman
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Posted - 2009.10.14 01:29:00 -
[7]
Why not make kill rights a commodity?
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Kora Zilesti
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Posted - 2009.10.14 01:34:00 -
[8]
Originally by: Haryman Why not make kill rights a commodity?
This.
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Danton Marcellus
Nebula Rasa Holdings
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Posted - 2009.10.14 02:00:00 -
[9]
Easy enough.
Should/would/could have, HAVE you chav!
Also Known As |
Nye Mu
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Posted - 2009.10.14 02:07:00 -
[10]
Like has been said before with the current sec-status mechanics being a bounty hunter is problematic. But working within the current sec-status mechanics it could work.
The way I always saw bounty hunting is this;
Get positive sec (through doing missions or ratting), then go to one of the Concord stations and sign up with a bounty hunter agent. You have to be flagged as a bounty hunter. If you drop sec status/standing you lose your flag and cant take jobs. This agent is able to do two things, give you targets (first few missions can be NPC so people get the idea of how to do it, maybe a new bit of NPC AI to make it more realistic) and second is a locator agent. There are a number of agents in the Eve Universe but not too many. The missions are given out randomly to stop griefing or other foul play.
Once you have passed some NPC missions, you get given player targets to hunt. Now this is were it gets a bit more interesting; bounties can only be claimed in Empire space (so if a bounty is put on a person and they go into 0.0 and get podded in a battle then the person who pods them cant claim the bounty, neither can a bounty hunter claim in 0.0). Once you are given the mission you either have a time frame or whatever (maybe a month or something) to complete the mission, turning down a mission doesn't affect you much because you might live in a totally different timezone to the target and the system would have to allow for that.
Now the bounty hunter can openly fire on a target in any system 0.1 to 1.0 and so can the target. So the target with the bounty if they see the bounty hunter first can fire first and not have to wait until the bounty hunter fires first. So that is a risk the bounty hunter takes; not paying attention and being killed first.
No 2 bounty hunters can have the same target, but normal aggression rules apply so if someone is RR the bounty hunter or target then they can fire on them.
Reason for random targets is so if a target has a huge bounty they cant just have a friendly bounty hunter pick them and go after them and share the isk. But a bounty hunter can take multiple jobs (maybe skill or standing based) so they are not restricted to one target). Also once a target is picked and the mission given to the bounty hunter the target is informed so they are warned.
Now pod killing in highsec or lowsec is hard without either a inty or smartbombs so the bounty is on the ship the target is in, and if the player is podkilled then the bounty hunter gets a bonus of maybe a percentage of the bounty or multiples of the bounty.
Now if the target continually blows up bounty hunters and is really hard to kill he gets marked saying he is very dangerous or whatever and Concord ups the price on his head. This way it gives something back to target as well, so the system is not totally in the favour of the bounty hunter. The same thing with the bounty hunters, if they have a high success rate or don't get blown up often they get a percentage increase on all jobs taken and something shiny when you display info on them.
I haven't used pirate and used the term target because a bounty could be put on anyone not just those with a negative sec status, the reason for this is that maybe you want someone dead for reasons other than them blowing your ship up...say market PvP or something. So to stop this being abused there would be a system to remove bounties...not sure what though. This way you can have highsec PvP and it not restricted to lowsec. (Maybe something like bounties are bigger is the target is negative sec status and is killed in lowsec, or neutal sec or high sec status the bounty is limited so its not as attractive for the bounty hunter). This bit I can see causing problems...but i think restricting it to lowsec causes its own problems.
Equally this could be extended to corps, you could put a bounty on a corp and a bounty hunter corp could take a job. Though I'm not totally sure about this one either.
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Stratharn
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Posted - 2009.10.14 02:54:00 -
[11]
Being able to purchase kill rights on a player with a bounty would work... I like that idea... but you'd still have the problem of that player just getting a buddy to pod him to split the bounty.
Perhaps instead of this, a higher bounty means a significantly lower cost to purchase kill rights on the player. The higher the bounty, the more isk is removed from the 'pirate' when they get podded... and yes, they can go into negatives. Kill rights of course would extend into High-Sec, and any number of people could purchase the 'kill rights' - perhaps also based on the size of the bounty.
The person who has purchased the kill rights and gets the kill gains LP with the corp they bought them off, as if they'd just completed a mission... effectively trading isk for LP... plus of course the right to pick over that player's wreck... and bragging rights.
Stratharn http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vz1-Yxqw6oo
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Slade Trillgon
Masuat'aa Matari Ushra'Khan
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Posted - 2009.10.14 03:50:00 -
[12]
Another problem is that to collect the bounties requires you to destroy the pilots pod. Any pirate worth their weight will know how to save their pod, therefore defeating the system.
Slade
Originally by: Niccolado Starwalker
Please go sit in the corner, and dont forget to don the shame-on-you-hat!
=v= |
Professor Tarantula
Hedion University
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Posted - 2009.10.14 04:01:00 -
[13]
Just make the bounty between the client and an individual bounty hunter or a corp of them. Problem solved.
Could even have people meeting in bars to arrange hits through Incarna. You want someone killed, go here and talk to this guy, or whatnot. That way the people who are good at what they do make a name for themselves, and wouldn't dare sacrifice that by colluding with the targets.
My deepest sympathies. Prof. Tarantula, Esq. |
Amitious Turkey
Gallente TarNec New Eden Retail Federation
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Posted - 2009.10.14 04:05:00 -
[14]
Originally by: Professor Tarantula Just make the bounty between the client and an individual bounty hunter or a corp of them. Problem solved.
Could even have people meeting in bars to arrange hits through Incarna. You want someone killed, go here and talk to this guy, or whatnot. That way the people who are good at what they do make a name for themselves, and wouldn't dare sacrifice that by colluding with the targets.
I vote for this, making bounties private between client and bounty hunter would solve the problem and really liven things up I've been waiting for the bounty system fix ever since I started Eve.
BECAUSE OF FALCONDUST!
Originally by: CCP Navigator We love you all as well <3
GO NAVIGATOR <3 |
Xetal Maelstrom
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Posted - 2009.10.14 04:39:00 -
[15]
Have bounties cause skill loss when they are collected (when the player is podded).
More bounty, more skilloss, but generally the amount is relatively small even with larger bounties (akin to losing your pod when you have forgotten to update your clone)
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Kunming
T.H.U.G L.I.F.E The Volition Cult
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Posted - 2009.10.14 06:17:00 -
[16]
I suggest you guys read my initial post again, I already addressed the suggestions and concerns you guys are raising.
Most of you guys suggest the same thing along the lines of the initial post. I had the idea in mind to keep and fix the bounty system with small additions not start from scratch.
The sec status is irrelevant, you want to be a legit bounty hunter, goto your bounty agent and get legit killrights that will earn you the bounty if u succeed, no need to raise or lower sec stat.
Trading killrights will not change anything in the current situation as it wont prevent the bounty owner to use an alt/friend to buy his own killright and collect on him self.
And NO, the pod needs to be destoryed to collect the bounty, bounty hunting is meant to be difficult; it requires a dedicated tackler and teamwork. Solo you will need a sensor boosted ship and wait for an oppourtunity kill like when the target is flying a weak ship.
The only problem I see with my own suggestion is that it cant prevent a bounty hunter to make a deal with the target for an arranged battle and share the bounty, but then again alot of trust needs to be involved on the part of the target in such a deal...
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Malcanis
Vanishing Point. The Initiative.
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Posted - 2009.10.14 07:54:00 -
[17]
Originally by: Stratharn Being able to purchase kill rights on a player with a bounty would work... I like that idea... but you'd still have the problem of that player just getting a buddy to pod him to split the bounty.
Limit the bounty payoff to the NPC mineral price of any items or T2 ships + the base insurance value of any T1 ship + destroyed in the killmail (the game can parse this automatically), plus the clone value if the perp is podded.
EG: Evil Jack has a 100M bounty on his scurvy hide. Billy The Bounty Hunter destroys his T1 fit Thorx and only gets a 2M payout. Later, Lucky Larry destroys his T2-fitted Ishtar and easily claims the outstanding 98M.
With this method, the worst abuse that can take place is doing the equivalent of blowing up your T2 ship for the insurance, or pod-jumping for free.
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Adunh Slavy
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Posted - 2009.10.14 08:36:00 -
[18]
How about, if you have a bounty on you, your next two clones will cost 1,000,000,000 times more. There, no more self poddings unless you're so rich you want to loose ISK.
The only counter to bounties is clone cost, the only reason for clone cost is bounties, but it appears that bounties got way ahead of clone costs. Just like, there would never be more than three or four titans ever, right?
Get rid of bounties and get rid of clone cost. Both are redundant and serve no useful purpose unless clone cost for the bountied person goes so high that having a friend/alt pod you would not be worth it.
The Real Space Initiative - V6 (Forum Link)
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Vysnaite
Caldari Science and Trade Institute
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Posted - 2009.10.14 09:21:00 -
[19]
Originally by: Haryman Why not make kill rights a commodity?
A good idea. It's exploitable, but hey - everything else is, so its ok.
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5mokey McPot
Alpha Strike.
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Posted - 2009.10.14 10:05:00 -
[20]
Id love to see the bounty hunting system work as its somthing ive always been interested in, but as most people know the current system is flawed. And the only way i see it working is through being able to set up bounty contracts and this is how it would work
-Player A sets a bounty contract on the pirate that killed him -The contract is worth 40m -Player A gets to decide the conditions of the contract eg, just kill the pirates ship, kill 3 of the pirates ship or pod the pirate etc -Bounty hunters can apply for this contract and after a certain amount of time player A who put the contract up can choose which bounty hunter to give the contract to out of the ones who applied for it, this should stop alts being able to kill there main for the bounty -The bounty hunter who gets the contract can then go start hunting his target.
Im sure theres some reason why it wouldnt work but meh.
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Merdaneth
Amarr PIE Inc.
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Posted - 2009.10.14 10:17:00 -
[21]
OP: you are missing the problem of the bounty system entirely.
No bounty system where the bounty is higher than the penalty for 'being caught' will ever work.
If, IRL the penalty for a criminal would be 1 day in jail, the criminal would find a way to turn himself in if he thought the bounty was high enough to justify 1 day of doing time.
In EVE, the bounty is currently linked to a pod-kill. The reward for the bounty can thus never be higher than the price of a new clone. This is notwithstanding any restrictions you add on how and what people can get the bounty.
The classical SF bounty hunter gets his money when the target is captured or killed. In EVE capture is non-existent and death is largely meaningless (death = isk loss).
The only way to fix the problem is to increase the loss to the criminal with the bounty when captured by the bounty hunter. If the criminal's wallet would be debited with the outstanding bounty (possibly bringing it into the negative) then you would have a workable system, because it adds a real penalty to the criminal 'being captured'
____
The Illusion of Freedom | The Truth about Slavery |
Gallente Citizen1
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Posted - 2009.10.14 10:28:00 -
[22]
Originally by: Haryman Why not make kill rights a commodity?
Heard this few times before but it is a good one.
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Doddy
The Executives IT Alliance
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Posted - 2009.10.14 10:45:00 -
[23]
Bounty hunting (indeed hired killing of any sort) is the big missing element of eve. The problem is its always going to be hard to implement when the cost of death is so low (i got podded so what?). To implement bounty hunting properly (or indeed assassination) they need to make death matter more and i don't see how they could do this without fundamentaly changing the entire game.
Even if it was implemented in such a way that pirates couldn't pod themselves or get their freinds to do it, are you really going to put a 100m bounty on someone just so they lose a cheap clone? Fair enough if you know the target has a high grade implant set in every clone but what pirate is going to have that?
The only way i can see it working is if they trully make bounty hunting a real proffession and introduce a bigger death-price (sp loss i think would work best) attatched to being killed by a bounty hunter. This would be a massive change to the whole game though with far reaching consequences. Incidentaly if such a system was implemented it should not be reserved for bounty hunters but for assassination of non-pirates as well.
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Malcanis
Vanishing Point. The Initiative.
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Posted - 2009.10.14 10:49:00 -
[24]
Originally by: Doddy Bounty hunting (indeed hired killing of any sort) is the big missing element of eve. The problem is its always going to be hard to implement when the cost of death is so low (i got podded so what?). To implement bounty hunting properly (or indeed assassination) they need to make death matter more and i don't see how they could do this without fundamentaly changing the entire game.
Even if it was implemented in such a way that pirates couldn't pod themselves or get their freinds to do it, are you really going to put a 100m bounty on someone just so they lose a cheap clone? Fair enough if you know the target has a high grade implant set in every clone but what pirate is going to have that?
The only way i can see it working is if they trully make bounty hunting a real proffession and introduce a bigger death-price (sp loss i think would work best) attatched to being killed by a bounty hunter. This would be a massive change to the whole game though with far reaching consequences. Incidentaly if such a system was implemented it should not be reserved for bounty hunters but for assassination of non-pirates as well.
I posted a possible solution above that would make killing a bounty target worthwhile - or force him to stay in T1-fitted cruisers
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clixor
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Posted - 2009.10.14 10:51:00 -
[25]
Originally by: Gallente Citizen1
Originally by: Haryman Why not make kill rights a commodity?
Heard this few times before but it is a good one.
In principle a good idea but the problem is that the bounty will always be higher than the contract price. If not, than alts/friends can still get the "contract" and claim the bounty. IMO the only way to solve this is to give bounty contracts (=kll-rights) randomly and this can be done with bounty agents. If you add different levels of agents Bounty hunting can come a fullblown profession where you have to work you're way up in the chain.
As podding is virtually impossible (and if a pirate gets podded he probably will have a low bounty on him anyway) i like the idea that ships-worth is detracted from the bounty amount. This way bounty really has value.
This even can be done on a corp level. F.i. you can put a bounty on a corp and a bounty hunter corp can accept that bounty.
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Destination SkillQueue
Are We There Yet
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Posted - 2009.10.14 10:57:00 -
[26]
Originally by: Merdaneth OP: you are missing the problem of the bounty system entirely.
No bounty system where the bounty is higher than the penalty for 'being caught' will ever work.
If, IRL the penalty for a criminal would be 1 day in jail, the criminal would find a way to turn himself in if he thought the bounty was high enough to justify 1 day of doing time.
In EVE, the bounty is currently linked to a pod-kill. The reward for the bounty can thus never be higher than the price of a new clone. This is notwithstanding any restrictions you add on how and what people can get the bounty.
The classical SF bounty hunter gets his money when the target is captured or killed. In EVE capture is non-existent and death is largely meaningless (death = isk loss).
The only way to fix the problem is to increase the loss to the criminal with the bounty when captured by the bounty hunter. If the criminal's wallet would be debited with the outstanding bounty (possibly bringing it into the negative) then you would have a workable system, because it adds a real penalty to the criminal 'being captured'
That isn't really a bounty system, but a stealing system. It might be workable if CONCORD wouldn't exist at all, so there would be something to balance such a rediculous negative. Seems like a horrible gameplay mechanic nonetheless.
A much more realistic system would be to tie the bounties to mineral/clone/insurance costs and only pay a bounty of similar value to the loss caused to the hunted from the bounty pool(as Melcanis suggested). This is better, since bounties are a way to enact vengence to criminals in game. You just need to create an incentive to kill them, allow the hunter a system where he can do that without any penalty and make it cost ineffective for the target to kill himself.
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destinationunreachable
Hello Kitty Fanclub
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Posted - 2009.10.14 13:23:00 -
[27]
I really think as well, that a true bounty hunter profession is missing and I like the ideas the OP has presented here. One small correction: I think the system should stay at only allowing bounties on people with negative sec status, otherwise it can be easily abused as a griefing system. Possibly it also needs to be tied to actual kills.
There is just one issue - how does the bounty hunter find the target ? Does he need to search through killboards to see when the target is usually online and in which system. Should the agent maybe give the hunter some clues ? Should the bounty hunter be able to use any Concord agent as a locator agent ? Be alerted such as "your target is currently in constallation X" ? I think it needs to be solved and carefully balanced...
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Kratznotzt
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Posted - 2009.10.14 13:28:00 -
[28]
I'm a hardcore carebear and even I like this idea. Sure, it would have to get twinked and tested so that there wouldn't be too much griefing, which this bounty system easily could lead to. One thing that could be done to reduce the possibility for griefing could be to place a limit on how many bounties can be placed on the same person, to let's say two per month or so? Otherwise there will be some poor sucker who constantly will have a bounty on him regardless of how many times he gets podded.
Also, it could be a good thing to increase the cost to place the bounty depending on the sec status so that it, for instance costs 100m to give kill rights in 0.5 and 200m in 1.0. The actual sums would have to be tested, of course, so that it isn't too cheap (or too expensive either).
Oh, and I think there would have to be a possibility to pay up a ransom to get rid of the bounty so that it won't get silly. Otherwise the person that is hunted would just get a rookieship, get into a jumpclone and start looking for someone who would pod him to get rid of it...
This could really be a fun idea to get some more fighting and paranoia into high sec areas. It would also allow pvp whiners to collect som tears.
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Malcanis
Vanishing Point. The Initiative.
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Posted - 2009.10.14 13:35:00 -
[29]
Originally by: Destination SkillQueue Edited by: Destination SkillQueue on 14/10/2009 11:59:05
Originally by: Merdaneth OP: you are missing the problem of the bounty system entirely.
No bounty system where the bounty is higher than the penalty for 'being caught' will ever work.
If, IRL the penalty for a criminal would be 1 day in jail, the criminal would find a way to turn himself in if he thought the bounty was high enough to justify 1 day of doing time.
In EVE, the bounty is currently linked to a pod-kill. The reward for the bounty can thus never be higher than the price of a new clone. This is notwithstanding any restrictions you add on how and what people can get the bounty.
The classical SF bounty hunter gets his money when the target is captured or killed. In EVE capture is non-existent and death is largely meaningless (death = isk loss).
The only way to fix the problem is to increase the loss to the criminal with the bounty when captured by the bounty hunter. If the criminal's wallet would be debited with the outstanding bounty (possibly bringing it into the negative) then you would have a workable system, because it adds a real penalty to the criminal 'being captured'
That isn't really a bounty system, but a stealing system. It might be workable if CONCORD wouldn't exist at all, so there would be something to balance such a rediculous negative. Seems like a horrible gameplay mechanic nonetheless.
A much more realistic system would be to tie the bounties to mineral/clone/insurance costs and only pay a bounty of similar value to the loss caused to the hunted from the bounty pool(as Malcanis suggested). This is better, since bounties are a way to enact vengence to criminals in game. You just need to create an incentive to kill them, allow the hunter a system where he can do that without any penalty and make it cost ineffective for the target to kill himself.
Another advantage of my system is that it limits abuse. If you want to cause someone 1 billion ISK worth of loss, it will cost you 1 billion ISK.
It also allows ISK-rich but combat-weak players the ability to leverage their wealth. Putting a 500M ISK bounty on someone will be a genuine threat, specially when you dont actually have to pod them to collect. A bounty on your head would become a huge liability, as it should be.
The knock-on effects of an effective bounty system would be numerous. For instance, currently there is no real incentive to honour ransoms.
Overall, the lack of an effective bounty system is a dreadful deficiency in the game, and a severe handicap to players who are not combat-specialised (Are you listening, MatrixSkye II - if you actually wanted to help the poor carebears, you'd be pushing this issue hard, instead of just trolling).
It is really disappointing that CCP have not so much as acknowledged the issue in all the time I have been playing EvE. Threads basically identical to this were being posted when I started playing. So much could be added to the game, and so many long running problems could be fixed or at least mitigated.
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Ana Vyr
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Posted - 2009.10.14 13:43:00 -
[30]
Edited by: Ana Vyr on 14/10/2009 13:44:33 Edited by: Ana Vyr on 14/10/2009 13:43:44 I'd turn lowsec into a player-run police area.
For example, you go and take out a contract from CONCORD that requires you to kill a certain number of player ships of players with low security status (or bounties on them) in low sec. Succeed at this and you get a nice mission reward. The catch is that during this time you are flagged as working for the police, but you don't take security hits from killing pirate ships.
The pirates in lowsec are given the option of becoming cop killers from a pirate agent. This allows you to kill a certain amount of player deputies for a similar mission reward.
Make the rewards for this stuff rather nice on both sides, and players will participate. Scale the rewards so that the group who has less participants gets better rewards to try and keep the teams even.
Might be fun?
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