Gully Alex Foyle
Black Fox Marauders
4496
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Posted - 2016.12.19 08:47:47 -
[1] - Quote
Bounties in RL are about arresting or killing someone.
Simple fact is that in EVE there aren't mechanics to kill another player (as in biomass their character) or arrest them (as in prevent them loggin in). Except bans, I guess. 
'Killing' someone in EVE actually means causing an asset loss (plus salt, in some cases lol). So let's get back to RL. What would we do if RL bounties were tied to asset loss (as I guess they sometimes are, btw)? The obvious problem would be to carefuly investigate the asset losses, to avoid fraud. Which, unsurprisingly, is exactly the main problem with bounties in EVE!
So how can we avoid bounty 'fraud' in EVE's asset-destruction bounty system? Simple solution that comes to mind is to make a more robust killmail-valuation system:
. Only count ships, modules, cargo that have a value that can't be easily gamed. This just takes some thought and effort. Criteria can be heavily traded items only, or items that had price fluctuations max +/- 50% in the last year, etc. Throw in a few 'manual' exceptions and additional rules, such as tourney ships valued at a fixed 100B, etc. I'm sure it's quite possible to make such a system work with very few loopholes, which by the way can be easily patched out as they surface.
. Now that the loss valuation is more reliable, pay out 75% of the kill value to the bounty hunter. If the hunted wants to blow himself up with an alt, that's perfectly fine too since he's losing at least 25% of ISK. Since, as we said, the objective of EVE bounties is to cause asset losses this is perfectly coherent with the system.
. To spice things up, add a 'bounty scanning' module that acts like a ship scanner but displays the expected bounty payout instead of the list of modules (no detail, just the total ISK amount). Adds a fun and engaging mechanic for bounty hunters.
. Note that I'm not suggesting to change the standard killmail valuation system, but to introduce a new one in parallel that works just for bounties (since this new one would have to 'miss' several items/mods in its valuation, to avoid fraud). In other words, std killmails in-game and on zkill, new valuation system in place only to calculate bounty payout
Make space glamorous!
Is EVE dying or not? Ask the EVE-O Death-o-meter!
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