The only real thing that could be changed is the ability to hunt down bounties in highsec, and a more active means of getting a bounty reduced. This may also mean that stricter conditions would need to be applied in order to actually place bounties though, so as to discourage griefers.

I would suggest implementing a system where players actually register themselves as bounty hunters, and have this status show up on their icon when players are on grid or maybe even on local.

Next, implement a system to allow hunter to engage targets. One system for doing this could be similar to how kill rights work. Allow bounty hunters to be able to engage bounty targets without concord or gate gun intervention by paying a deposit. If the hunter destroys the target they get half the deposit back + the normal bounty proportion from ship value. If the target gets away, they lose their deposit and the target gets their bounty reduced by the amount of the deposit. The highers the security level the higher the deposit level.

Another type or complementary system could be to develop a specific bounty hunting module. This module would work the same as a warp disruptor except it will also temporarily disable a pod after the ship is destroyed. Once the pod is disabled the bounty hunter could then kill/capture and loot a clone of the player, which they could turn in for a bounty reward (assuming a bounty reward system is implemented)

Alts are the main and underlying issue as to why it will never work. If anything it should be removed.

Bounty should be a contract, should be put up for bid to be bid on by anyone, a time limit is set as well. Winning bidder must complete contract before time limit or the contract expires. No time limit contracts can be resold as a market item.

Everytime they come up, we get entertained by some Person claiming the current System is broken and then present a System which can be abused so easily that even a chimp can figure out in 5 seconds how to abuse it.

Alts are the main and underlying issue as to why it will never work. If anything it should be removed.

Now if character A and B are controlled by the same person and C is controlled by a different player we actually have what we want and that is a system where players can profit by collecting bounties.

Depending on point of view the current system is broken or we would not have a continuing string of topics asking for a bounty system overhaul. On the other hand there are those that claim the current bounty system is not broken because they want to be able to place a worthless bounty on anyone in the game.


This seems to be the basis for most arguments against changing the bounty system, and yet it would be extremely easy to set up a bounty system that CANNOT be farmed for ISK by using alts or friends. Remove the full amount of the bounty from the wallet of the character at the time they place the bounty and the profit from killing your own aspect is completely removed.
Sure character A could place a 100 million ISK bounty on character B, but in the process character A has 100 million ISK removed from their wallet. When your character C kills your character B and collects the bounty you as a player simply get you 100 million ISK back, no one has profited because you could simply transfer the ISK from A to C and avoid the whole bounty hassle.

Now if character A and B are controlled by the same person and C is controlled by a different player we actually have what we want and that is a system where players can profit by collecting bounties. And yet because A is required to put up the entire amount of the bounty when they place that bounty we are not creating ISK out of thin air we are simply moving it from one character to another.

This seems to be the basis for most arguments against changing the bounty system, and yet it would be extremely easy to set up a bounty system that CANNOT be farmed for ISK by using alts or friends. Remove the full amount of the bounty from the wallet of the character at the time they place the bounty and the profit from killing your own aspect is completely removed.
Sure character A could place a 100 million ISK bounty on character B, but in the process character A has 100 million ISK removed from their wallet. When your character C kills your character B and collects the bounty you as a player simply get you 100 million ISK back, no one has profited because you could simply transfer the ISK from A to C and avoid the whole bounty hassle.

Now if character A and B are controlled by the same person and C is controlled by a different player we actually have what we want and that is a system where players can profit by collecting bounties. And yet because A is required to put up the entire amount of the bounty when they place that bounty we are not creating ISK out of thin air we are simply moving it from one character to another.

Everytime they come up, we get entertained by some Person claiming the current System is broken and then present a System which can be abused so easily that even a chimp can figure out in 5 seconds how to abuse it.

Now that the thread is in F&I, my contribution in actual ideas.

Disclaimer: I expect the following idea to be relatively cheap to implement, relatively non disruptive to normal game play. Possibly in a dev's 20% time or whatever they call it. The key point is that it could make bounty hunting an actual thing without allowing the target to profit from it.

Split the bounty into two pools. Pool one is as is, the total bounty on a target. Any time a player dies to PVP, the bounty gets paid out exactly as it does now, except instead of going to the player, it goes into a jackpot pool for that player. The jackpot pool is only paid out on pod death. The value of a jackpot can accumulate to completely ridiculous amounts, worth going after a pod for, worth suicide smartbombing a pod for, but it still won't ever be profitable for the target or his alts because it still requires him to lose more than can be gained. He can still claim it himself to reduce his risk, but he can't profit from it.

Further iterations could be tools to provoke fights, more similar to things the OP talked about, such as:

-tying the bounty payout to the corpse itself, and holding a bountied corpse in cargo would grant a suspect flag
-a possibly valuable tag (value determined by a bidding system) that puts the holder in suspect status to hopefully provoke a fight with his target and competitors.

The primary change in having a jackpot pool for the target could be a relatively cheap (I don't know the cost of development) way to test if it's worth doing (possibly) more expensive iterations. With the iterations, it would be a bounty system I'd actually look forward to get bountied for.

Depending on point of view the current system is broken or we would not have a continuing string of topics asking for a bounty system overhaul. On the other hand there are those that claim the current bounty system is not broken because they want to be able to place a worthless bounty on anyone in the game.

Depending on point of view the current system is broken or we would not have a continuing string of topics asking for a bounty system overhaul. On the other hand there are those that claim the current bounty system is not broken because they want to be able to place a worthless bounty on anyone in the game.


This seems to be the basis for most arguments against changing the bounty system, and yet it would be extremely easy to set up a bounty system that CANNOT be farmed for ISK by using alts or friends. Remove the full amount of the bounty from the wallet of the character at the time they place the bounty and the profit from killing your own aspect is completely removed.
Sure character A could place a 100 million ISK bounty on character B, but in the process character A has 100 million ISK removed from their wallet. When your character C kills your character B and collects the bounty you as a player simply get you 100 million ISK back, no one has profited because you could simply transfer the ISK from A to C and avoid the whole bounty hassle.

Now if character A and B are controlled by the same person and C is controlled by a different player we actually have what we want and that is a system where players can profit by collecting bounties. And yet because A is required to put up the entire amount of the bounty when they place that bounty we are not creating ISK out of thin air we are simply moving it from one character to another.

The way you describe it, it is quite possible to profit by killing yourself with. Sure, you won't be able to fill the jackpot pool yourself, but once you have been killed often enough you can still cash in the jackpot by just podding yourself.

You could still cash in on the jackpot yourself, but it still won't be more than what you lost to fill up the pool. That would be exactly the same as it is now. They might clear it out themselves every so often to keep it down to a manageable level, but at least then there would be a decision to make as opposed to now, there is no decision.

I do still stand by my original stance though... that game development doesn't happen on public forums. This is all self indulgent fantasy. Is there an emoji for the wanking gesture?