Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I believe that the whole bounty system we have should be scrapped & replaced with a new system.

this is my idea, a network of bounty offices should be be placed at certain stations & potential “bounty hunters” would have to register with these offices for a certain price & a limited time. i.e. 20mil isk for 8 weeks.
This is to prevent alts/corp-mates from getting the bounties from alts/corp-mates.

Once they register they are now able to pick up certain bounties, up to a limit, perhaps 10. These bounties/bounty contracts would give the hunter kill rights enabling him to go hunting. The contracts can be picked up by an unlimited number of hunters but are time limited, after a certain time if the hunter cant complete the kill, he either must re-pick the contract or find a new one.

Bounties should only be placed on another player if there is a legitimate grievance , to prevent anyone from placing bounties on someone they don’t like. A player would only be able to place a bounty if he/she already has kill rights towards the target player.

what this would accomplish, hopefully, is that having a bounty on one’s head would be somewhat undesirable, hi-sec would not be a safe heaven. Hunters would have a profession, & the hunted, who probably got the bounty on them because of pvp get even more pvp.

If this idea has been floated before, my apologies. Is this something feasible? perhaps I’m forgetting something in the game mechanics?

The contract system would not prevent me from using an alt to collect my bounty. It would actually encourage me to use the alt exploit in order to earn back my registration fee. There is no need to make bounty contracts time-limited if an unlimited number of pilots can pick them up at any time. It makes sense that you should only be allowed to place a bounty on a character who has committed a criminal offense against you but, under your system, the victim of a crime would no longer have kill rights. Only bounty hunters would have kill rights so, having kill rights should not be the condition for allowing players to place bounties.

I would rather stick with the current "wild west" mechanics where any player in good standing can collect any bounty at any time. Add to this the restriction that only characters in good standing can place bounties on characters who have criminally offended them would eliminate arbitrary or uncalled for bounties as well as the ridiculous billion ISK bounties that criminals often place on themselves.

Criminal characters shouldn't be allowed to place or collect bounties. But to prevent the alt exploit, it is necessary to cancel out the bounty reward with a corresponding debt to the criminal character. The bounty + x% is deducted as restitution from the criminal character's wallet before they are allowed to respawn in station. The restitution is then distributed back to the victims according to how much bounty they placed. If the criminal character cannot afford to pay restitution, they are denied a clone and cannot respawn. The player must pay off the criminal character's restitution in order to recover them.

The only 'exploit' the player has then is to terminate the 'dead' criminal character without paying the restitution. CONCORD can seize and liquidate the character's assets to cover the restitution anyway. If the character has a lot of SP, the player loses all the time and money they put into it. If the character has low SP, then it isn't much of a loss but isn't likely to have much of a bounty either.