Anselm's MajorDomo
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Posted - 2011.04.25 12:01:00 -
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Obviously, the problem is with the current bounty systems is that the target knows how much his own bounty is, so when it gets too high, he has his alt or a friend pop him to collect it, screwing over whoever originally paid the money to cause the target pain, rather than profit.
(1) What I would like to see with a profession "bounty hunting" is that the payout remain invisible to the general public. All random people in local (and the player on the bounty on his head) would see is a mark indicating "WANTED: BOUNTY PRIZE OFFERED."
That way,the guy with the bounty on his head never knows when it will be profitable to have his alt gank him since he doesn't know if the bounty is for $5,000 or $500 million. (If the target has an alt Gank him on, he may discover to his chagrin he only gets 5,000 ISK.....) He just knows he has a bounty on his head from a notice that says "A bounty has been placed on you, and bounty hunters may contract to kill you at any time," and if he looks at his protrait, all he sees is a indicating "WANTED FOR BOUNTY."
However, professional bounty hunters with an appropriate bounty-hunting skill (let's call the skill "contract killing") can hop to a bounty office and be randomly assigned 2-6 targets (depending on their bounty hunting skill, ranks 1-5) for one week. The computer would then select a number of random choices (maybe a dozen?) listed as "target 1, target 2, target 3, and show the player the amount of the current bounty on each target and show whether the target is in high-sec, low-sec, or 0.0. (If he has skills in investigation, that might be boosted to showing what region the target is currently in, or the total number of jumps to reach the target).
The bounty-hunter then can select a few targets based on the highest fee or closest proximity as he prefers. That locks that bounty hunter into that selected target(s) until 1 week has expired or the bounty hunter kills a target on his list. Once he accepts the contract, he now gains free access to locator-agent like features to track the target from any bounty office for the duration of the contract.Important! The bounty hunter still doesn't give the target's name* even after the contract is accepted!
We could add another skill, let's call it "Bounty Tracking," or "Criminal Investigations" that augments the details a bounty-hunter gets on the target. The more ranks he has in this skill, the more he learns about how long the bounty has been active, how many times past bounty agents took the contract and were unable to finish the job within a week, and the last time the target logged online in EVE (to avoid being assigned defunct accounts with bounties). Keep it skill-intensive so alts can be used easily to spam agents.
(2) To further encourage anonymity, once a professional bounty hunter accepts a contract, CCP can tweak local so, *for those bounty hunters who have accepted that particular kill-contract only*, the target shows up in local only as "target #1" (or #2, etc.) with his normal name and image hidden, and the target's ship on overview may gain special flashy features to help the bounty-hunter identify it.
This would be a triple whammy for those who game the system by using alts or friends to collect their own bounties on their heads. #1--they will have a harder time knowing when it is profitable to have themselves intentionally ganked, at least not at a single glance at their character, #2--if they try to use a bounty-hunter alt to gank themselves, they can never be assured that their alt will be assigned to the correct target they want on any given week, and #3--it's easier for real bounty hunters to track them down.
However, I don't think a war-dec like feature mentioned above will work. Too easy for griefers to put bounties on carebears then have all the advantages of a war-dec without worrying about the corp members defending their carebear or fighting back.....
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