EVE General Discussion

In light of the entire conversation, it's very self-explanatory and exclusionary by nature. It doesn't matter what your fan of or not. I'm not a fan of any mechanic being introduced at all to fix a non broken system; this is why it's called an attempt at a compromise for multiple concerns.

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

i'm not understanding how anyone can call this a non broken system? no one does it. every eve player you ask to date will all tell you the same thing,
1 its not worth it
2 its almost impossible to make money
3 its almost impossible to find people.
4 you can't take out anyone in highsec that has a bounty on their head due to concord.

the first step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one.

that being said this is the point where community feedback is most important you need to take the words of the players and tweak a system that in a sense might not be "broken" persay then add or subtract or change certain mechanics of said system based on the main complaints or words players use to ward off players from attempting it. this is common knowledge. it may not be broken but it is a mechanic that is never explored by almost all if not all players in eve online. making that specific game mechanic usless and broken by its own right. alot of people need this mechanic and i wish csm would show up and instead of just stating "ya we know bounty hunting needs a rework but none of these are it" tells me one of three things.
1 they don't care
2 they know something but aree't telling us
3 they know it needs a rework but think it doesn't impact eve enough to be a priority.\

well i guerentee its a hidden impact on eve online that goes unnoticed.
just think about the vast number of players that wanted to do bounty hunting, i'm sure there are a plethora of people that never picked up eve because as they were doing their research they found that the one game mechanic that would have gotten them into it wasn't feasable. or maybe the players that left because bounty hunting was changed to a crappier version because of fear of exploit and the one game mechanic they loved wasn't enjoyable or lucrative enough to keep playing. point is every aspect of eve needs to be looked after not just by "priority" and no one can ever say they know for a fact some aspects of the game doesn't impact eve online. because every aspect does. by the players for the players everything is maintained. so i strongly believe we need some light shed on bounty hunting everything deserves to be played. and a single mechanic isn't getting the attention it deserves.

@csm check this out open a discussion. i would really like to speak to someone in the csm to hash out bringing it up when you guys go to iceland in january.

didn't ignore man, i read them they didn't make sense. everything you suggested is within the same nature of what everyone else has suggested that has been turned down. and honestly everything you suggested was completely non sensical in fixing the issue. so in other words don't tell me i didn't read. just beacause you use big words doesn't mean your smart. so make some sense next time.