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The other side of this is what happens to the kill right activation fee if the attempt to kill the bountied person fails?

If the fee remains paid in spite of the attempt failing and the kill right remaining active, this becomes a profitable baiting mechanism. eg. Kill your own alt, have them set an expensive bounty and kill right purchase price on your main, then parade the main around looking like he's easy to kill when he has an escape contingency and farm all the people buying the kill right.

Some of you have seen my thread in GD. I will now offer my input on the new system in this one, so that the devs can properly consider my viewpoint.

First of all, I would like to say that the bounty portion of these changes is quite nice. It's definitely a step in the right direction, and I don't see any significant flaws in it.

Having said that, let me tell you why the kill rights portion of the changes is ridiculous beyond justification:

First and foremost, this system spits in the face of the concept of being a bounty hunter. As I said in my thread, bounty-hunters have risk. Bounty-hunters do work for money, not pay money for work. Bounty-hunters don't want random people interfering in their work. Apparently CCP passed right over those concepts and went straight for making bounty hunting as close to a pve experience as possible.

To create a system in which the "bounty hunter" not only relies on random passerby to do his work for him, but indeed doesn't even have to expose himself to a modicum of risk, is completely absurd. What kind of bounty hunter just sits back and waits for random civvies to bag his target? This is a total cop-out. CCP is not delivering a feature that players have been asking for for so long.

There are other downsides to this system, aside from player satisfaction and realism. For example, this new system will not result in an increase in pvp quantity, or an increase in pvp quality, as many people have claimed. In fact, it will do the exact opposite. The reason for that, as I said multiple times, would be the prevalence of blobs used to ensure victory. People simply won't commit crimes unless they have the support base to deter full systems of neutrals interfering. There will be exceptions in less-populated areas, but generally this will be the rule.

Lots of people claim that pvpers should like this change, otherwise they're hypocrites and aren't all that hot about pvp to begin with. That's like saying "well you like pvp, so you should like either being forced to dock or being guaranteed to lose your ship every engagement." Like I said above, people will only fight when they know their situation isn't hopeless. When I'm flagged to an entire corporation, the odds may be stacked, but the situation isn't hopeless. When I'm flagged to the whole universe, the situation is hopeless because there can be so many people around that I have zero chance of winning unless I use a massive logistics blob.

Therefore, I have two viable options: (1) not fight at all, or (2) use so much backup that people quickly learn not to shoot suspects (from theft or kill rights, it doesn't matter). Either way, the quantity and quality of pvp will decrease.

Here is some supporting information for my argument:

Many years ago, when can-baiting was initially introduced, EVE went through the same thing. After the first few weeks, people quickly learned not to take from bait cans, or even to engage players who took from their cans/wrecks, because the party doing the "baiting" always turned out to be superior in combat. The exact same thing will happen this time. People will quickly learn not to shoot the suspects after getting trounced by the suspects and their infinite logistics backup.

The only difference is that while can-flagging created a new avenue for combat and retaliation from scratch (and thus leading to a net increase in total pvp), the new kill rights system will change a system that currently works, and could potentially work even better by making kill rights work only for the person who activates them, into a system that will be avoided entirely. Also keep in mind, this system will do nothing to deter the usage of alts in suicide-ganking, and anyone who uses a primary character for the task today will just roll an alt. They will not care about losing destroyers to kill rights on those alts.

Finally, as has been mentioned too many times to count, it will be extremely easy to game the system via the use of alts.

The Solution:

This is really quite simple. Make kill rights a tradeable item, able to be given/sold to either players or corporations. This would make the bounty hunting profession true to its name, balanced, and fun. Instead of toggling FFA flags on the perps, dedicated bounty hunting organizations will be able to take on contracts from the victims and pursue their targets according to standard kill right rules. This would add both an element of risk and an element of reward to the bounty hunting profession; the risk would come from actually having to go after your target instead of relying on uninvolved, neutral players to do the work for you, and the reward would come from having exclusive rights to the target's loot and bounty.

Really, CCP, this is a no-brainer. If you make this change, it would quite possibly be your best accomplishment in regards to pvp. It would be downright legendary, and word-of-mouth would travel fast. In fact, this would also make the suspect flag for can theft a tolerable feature as well.

Please heed my words.

Less serious from a technical standpoint perhaps, but not from a risk vs. reward standpoint or an overall design elegance standpoint either, I'd say.

If you think about the convolutedness of high-sec players acting as really bad arbiters of justice for stuff that happened in low-sec (where they refuse to go), it really does seem incredibly farsical.

Not that I'm a bounty hunter, but I think Destiny Corrupted has a real point.

What if buying a kill right triggered a Limited Engagement between hunter and hunted? Furthermore, what if the LE flag was extended so that it could apply to corps, if that was the right purchased, or to the fleet that the person belonged to at the time that they bought the kill right, if that was the right purchased?

Maybe the most expensive option could be a Suspect flag, if the person really wants to bring mayhem down on someone's head--not that it would necessarily work.

Does 'attacking in hi sec' extend to combat while under a war dec? I.e Does killing a player in hi sec whilst under the CONCORD war sanction mean you still get a kill right added?

Men of the internet the reality here is that while some very valid points / suggestions have been made to the devs in this thread in the main posting here is a futile endeavour.

Getting CCP to change any logical fallacies in what they propose to roll out would be akin to telling the captain of the Titanic that his ship was going to sink prior to leaving port.

I agree, the expansion will bring yet more pony and rainbow to high sec. My point still remains that posting here wont make CCP change anything as once the ship is fuelled it will still leave port anyhow even if the weather predictions are adverse to setting sail.