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The Hunt: How to restore the the bounty system in Eve.

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Phoenix Slayton
Absolute Order
Absolute Honor
#1 - 2015-06-03 21:37:08 UTC
Speaking in hushed tones, I glance over my shoulder making sure the transmission cannot be overheard. "Have you located the target" "We have sir" the staticky image on the comm system replies. I smile inputting the coordinates, my ships warp drive kick hard, and I head out to collect the bounty on my unsuspecting prey. We have all dreamed of being hunters in Eve, but currently the bounty hunting system is little more than an extra bonus when I ship pops. The system has never worked, and most fixes and suggestions would only make it worse. I've thought about this for a long time, and as such want to put my idea out there. I'd love any constructive feedback, and maybe together we can have the bounty system we have all dreamed of!

Purpose: The purpose of placing a bounty on a target is to insure retribution of the intended target.
Plan: New Bounty Hunting Agents: These agents will distribute agent missions, which can be filtered by bounty amount. No name will be indicated. A max of 3 players can be assigned to ine bounty. Once accepted a brief Intel report will be sent to the player, indicating name, last system visited, last ship flown, and last 5 entries on kill board.

Upon destruction of target, bounty will be paid.

Fixes: plays will not be notified when a bounty has been placed upon them, nor the amount. Only players on a hunting mission will be paid for these bounties. This ensures players can't have their buddies Pop them from the bounty. Nor will they deviate from their normal play. Of course s player could tip off the target, but would loose their potential for isk. Also players can only accept 1-2 jobs at a time.

Bounty Targets will only show up on the mission select list if they have been active within 72 hours.

This system would allow players to truly become bounty hunters, as well as allow players to utilize their isk to ensure the destruction of their target. All bounty targets can be attacked regardless of sec status.

Okay, so all ideas are welcomed, I would really love to see the bounty system fixed, so let's work on it!

Thanks,

Phoenix
Nevyn Auscent
Broke Sauce
#2 - 2015-06-03 21:59:54 UTC
Or you could just message your buddy and tell him 'I'll give you 5 mil for killing so and so for me' and do it privately. What you are suggesting does nothing to fix the general bounty system

Quick ways to abuse the system.
Flood it with market alts who never undock, making it too much of a churn to find a target who actually ever moves for people to bother. They are still active.
If you can decline a bounty without penalty you could accept/decline bounties to see who is actually bountied.
The 'active within 72 hours' requirement makes it an activity checking tool to see if someone has logged in.

And I'm not particularly inventive when it comes to breaking stuff.
Phoenix Slayton
Absolute Order
Absolute Honor
#3 - 2015-06-03 22:15:53 UTC
I agree that your not to inventive, as almost none of your ideas would work... First you have no idea who the person you accept to job on is, making the likely hood that they even trust you almost non existent. Secondly you can't flood the system with alts, as you would have to then place large bounties on all of them. Making that pointless, and ya it I would hate to have a feature that checks when people log in, like the watch list........ But yes the system would only populate bounties that are active, and who have undocked within that timeframe.
Christopher Mabata
Northern Accounts and Systems
#4 - 2015-06-03 22:25:08 UTC
I agree with some of the points Nevyn Made, there are simply too many players who have been bountied and never undock for this system to work. Not to mention all the rules of engagement that bounties never change.

Example under your idea:
-Player A is assigned a Bounty contract, their target is a 2010 toon who happens to reside in Highsec
-Player B is the target, and has a 200,000,000ISK bounty for trolling in a channel or whatever it may be, but they never leave highsec.

This means in order to kill your target you either have to give them a way of becoming suspect to kill them or lose security status suicide ganking them. Lets say it takes a 12m T2 fit suicide gank catalyst to get the job done, they die in a retriever, whole thing was worth 50m including the empty pod.

Under the bounty payout system you would recieve what? 5,000,000ISK? Your now nearly 8,000,000 ISK negative here, and your average L4 pays out what maybe 2m before LP? You wont break even, or profit doing this, and making it pay out the whole bounty hearkens us back to the days of podding yourself with an alt for ISK after accumulating a bounty worth claiming. Which is no good.

Other issues could be what if the target goes inactive after taking the Contract mission? Then you fail by default and lose standings, Who offers these missions? what level are they? What assurances do we have about the entire process?

You also forgot to mention that the bounty system is used for an ISK sink, removing some ISK from rotation in the market and in wallets and placing it in a CCP controlled escrow where most of it will never be claimed. Sure it can make a career for some people who hunt super pilots with large bounties hoping for a nice payout when they pop, but thats about it. Generally it covers your ammunition costs and thats about it.

Theres a lot of potential exploits here so i have to go with the "Not Supported" option

♣ Small Gang PVP, Large Fleet PVP, Black Ops, Incursions, Trade, and Industry ♣ 70% Lethal / 30% Super-Snuggly / 110% No idea what im doing ♣

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Phoenix Slayton
Absolute Order
Absolute Honor
#5 - 2015-06-03 22:37:17 UTC
I give up.... Did you read the OP? They are fully able to be engaged in hi-sec, no need for suspect. They would collect 50% bounty for the ship, or 100% for the ship and POD. If they never undock the agent won't put them on the mission list. If the target goes inactive they are removed from the list, no negative standing hit would occur.
Christopher Mabata
Northern Accounts and Systems
#6 - 2015-06-03 22:48:57 UTC  |  Edited by: Christopher Mabata
You see Bounties do not change Rules of engagement for a good reason,for this exact reason even.

Under this system you could simply bounty a freighter pilot or anyone flying something expensive, have alts accept the mission or friends and keep declining or failing them until you finally get someone in something big; run a cheap 250K locator, then set out and destroy their ship free of CONCORD intervention or without venturing into "lawless Space" where they may have friends or enemies to contend with.,

And all it costs is a few mil possibly less! Its cheaper than war, less chance they fight back since they have 0 idea someone is coming for them and the hunter has all the time they need to choose a white whale of a target and you neither lose sec status or a ship blowing them up in potentially "secure" space. ( not to be confused with Safe Space, no such thing )

This would be broken, repeatedly exploitable, and a cancer upon Eve. I am in no way a fan of highsec, but i will advocate on its behalf against this type of system. All your after here is killmails, not an actual fix to a system that was neither intended to work this way or broken. This dosn't add content or provide anything to the game, it simply gives you a way to go to war with 1 guy rather than his friends and their powerless to help him out.


Oh and lets not forget the coding nightmare this would be either.

If you want to draw blood and hunt bounties go right ahead low sec, null sec, WH space, and war decs are viable options. Hunt to your hearts content. But keep this terrible idea in a dark corner where it belongs or in cold storage.

♣ Small Gang PVP, Large Fleet PVP, Black Ops, Incursions, Trade, and Industry ♣ 70% Lethal / 30% Super-Snuggly / 110% No idea what im doing ♣

This Message Brought to you by a sweet and sour bittervet
Not that Forumguy
Hedion University
Amarr Empire
#7 - 2015-06-03 22:54:02 UTC
Phoenix Slayton wrote:
Speaking in hushed tones, I glance over my shoulder making sure the transmission cannot be overheard. "Have you located the target" "We have sir" the staticky image on the comm system replies. I smile inputting the coordinates, my ships warp drive kick hard, and I head out to collect the bounty on my unsuspecting prey. We have all dreamed of being hunters in Eve, but currently the bounty hunting system is little more than an extra bonus when I ship pops. The system has never worked, and most fixes and suggestions would only make it worse. I've thought about this for a long time, and as such want to put my idea out there. I'd love any constructive feedback, and maybe together we can have the bounty system we have all dreamed of!

Purpose: The purpose of placing a bounty on a target is to insure retribution of the intended target.
Plan: New Bounty Hunting Agents: These agents will distribute agent missions, which can be filtered by bounty amount. No name will be indicated. A max of 3 players can be assigned to ine bounty. Once accepted a brief Intel report will be sent to the player, indicating name, last system visited, last ship flown, and last 5 entries on kill board.

Upon destruction of target, bounty will be paid.

Fixes: plays will not be notified when a bounty has been placed upon them, nor the amount. Only players on a hunting mission will be paid for these bounties. This ensures players can't have their buddies Pop them from the bounty. Nor will they deviate from their normal play. Of course s player could tip off the target, but would loose their potential for isk. Also players can only accept 1-2 jobs at a time.

Bounty Targets will only show up on the mission select list if they have been active within 72 hours.

This system would allow players to truly become bounty hunters, as well as allow players to utilize their isk to ensure the destruction of their target. All bounty targets can be attacked regardless of sec status.

Okay, so all ideas are welcomed, I would really love to see the bounty system fixed, so let's work on it!

Thanks,

Phoenix


They can put this in when they create Criminal agents that make Raiding missions on Haulers and barges.
Zan Shiro
Doomheim
#8 - 2015-06-03 22:54:29 UTC  |  Edited by: Zan Shiro
Nevyn Auscent wrote:
Or you could just message your buddy and tell him 'I'll give you 5 mil for killing so and so for me' and do it privately. What you are suggesting does nothing to fix the general bounty system.



this basically. Want to keep it on the DL skip the bounty process and hire the peeps directly.


Would say it fixes well they hide in cheap ships. But since most times this is an empire problem that meany ganker is in the cheap ship most of the time anyway. Killing is their business....they cheap ship it for a better bottom line.

Here is why bounty will never be fixed. Some bear feels wronged. But not wrong enough to pay well.

They offer a bounty that I go you know...for the hour(s) of this work could be I could run this here WC my agent just gave me....for more money for less time.

Then in a worst case lets have the ganker have friends. Hell, lets have them in code. Now the bear is expecting my char and/or my corp to show up on their radar popping their people....for chump change.

PVP'ers into the whole pay for pvp thing tend to already be doing it. They'd be in merc crews. usually 0.0. where a blob with lot of extra isk says here is lots of billions of isk, go make stuff happen for us.

this is why bounty is not a happening scene, for me anyway. Crap pay better made running pve and the returns I get do not outweigh having code. (or any other gank crew) taking a very strong interest into who I am.
Phoenix Slayton
Absolute Order
Absolute Honor
#9 - 2015-06-03 23:21:05 UTC
Christopher Mabata wrote:
You see Bounties do not change Rules of engagement for a good reason,for this exact reason even.

Under this system you could simply bounty a freighter pilot or anyone flying something expensive, have alts accept the mission or friends and keep declining or failing them until you finally get someone in something big; run a cheap 250K locator, then set out and destroy their ship free of CONCORD intervention or without venturing into "lawless Space" where they may have friends or enemies to contend with.,

And all it costs is a few mil possibly less! Its cheaper than war, less chance they fight back since they have 0 idea someone is coming for them and the hunter has all the time they need to choose a white whale of a target and you neither lose sec status or a ship blowing them up in potentially "secure" space. ( not to be confused with Safe Space, no such thing )

This would be broken, repeatedly exploitable, and a cancer upon Eve. I am in no way a fan of highsec, but i will advocate on its behalf against this type of system. All your after here is killmails, not an actual fix to a system that was neither intended to work this way or broken. This dosn't add content or provide anything to the game, it simply gives you a way to go to war with 1 guy rather than his friends and their powerless to help him out.


Oh and lets not forget the coding nightmare this would be either.

If you want to draw blood and hunt bounties go right ahead low sec, null sec, WH space, and war decs are viable options. Hunt to your hearts content. But keep this terrible idea in a dark corner where it belongs or in cold storage.


I feel like you have good points, I feel like there has to be some way to prevent that, but maybe in just hoping for something that's not possible. Thanks for contributing.
Felix Judge
Regnum Ludorum
#10 - 2015-06-04 09:31:50 UTC
Check the bounty office for worthwhile targets.
Check zkillboard for activity / undocking.
Use a locator agent.

There you are. The tools are available.
Donnachadh
United Allegiance of Undesirables
#11 - 2015-06-04 14:34:08 UTC
NO - bad idea is bad idea.

All I see here is another tool to be used by the high sec kill board cowboys looking to pad their kill boards.

Any bounty system that circumvents / bypasses or otherwise removes the rules of engagement in high sec is a system that will quickly become a nightmare for everyone.

The bounty system in EvE is a farce, a ruse really something that leads players like you to think that it just might be a viable career path and leads to terrible ideas like this one.

What CCP really need to do is have the courage to admit that the bounties system in EvE is worthless and remove it from the game.
Agondray
Avenger Mercenaries
VOID Intergalactic Forces
#12 - 2015-06-04 14:57:02 UTC
Used to you could only put a bounty on people that were negative status and when killed you got all of the bounty.

under crime watch it lets you put a bounty on anyone and the hunter gets a percentage of the ship value from the bounty....they figured it would get rid of the people that use it to make use alts and make free isk.

Now with the Kill Right system we have people using their alts to attack them, put a huge amount of isk needed for a KR so they make isk and set their alt in a hub or autopilot...

"Sarcasm is the Recourse of a weak mind." -Dr. Smith
Ralph King-Griffin
New Eden Tech Support
#13 - 2015-06-04 15:05:45 UTC
Best and simplest notion I have read towards this was making killrights searchable at the bounty office

Murderers of Negotiable Motivations

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