Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Because one alt can't be 1.0? Uh what?
And all they have to do to avoid bounties is keep sec status farmed up by ratting or tags?

concord does not pay for the bounties, players do.

CONCORD isn't paying, I am. Why should a bounty hunter turn down my money because I have a low sec status, and why would I care that the person I am hiring is liked by CONCORD? Just like Darth Vader hiring Boba Fett, evil people can use bounties in New Eden to get a job done.

Money talks in New Eden.

Your system isn't better in any way - it only limits the number of people that can use it.

What is the point to put bounty on him? If he never break hisec rules, will be in npc corp, bounty will be incolletable by someone who don't want to break hisec rules. It doesn't make any sense...It's personal vendetta not a wanted notice, order to kill.
It's too easy to put a bounty, and there are few obstacles to collect it.

What if we pay concord to shoot? Some kind of license to kill?

FYI: a bounty has historically fallen "outside of the law"... not as "enforcement of" (which is a purely recent phenomena).

In fact, bounties have historically been payment FOR BREAKING THE LAW because the law often does not do what people want it to do.

A better idea would be to put bounties in the contract system.

Hear me out here.

You would have two options when creating a bounty

1. Assassination.

You make a private contract with another player via the contract system where they receive the set bounty in said contract when they deliver the frozen corpse of the target at a set station, almost like a courier contract. Assassins learn a skill book skill (call it bribery) , that when taken to 5 allows them to kill their target (and only their target) within highsec without concord smoking them, but at a 20% loss on their contract prices (bribing concord to look the other way). This allows lump sum payouts and isnt abusable by game of alts because players can then make contract killing a career path and hire assassins who are known for taking out people for cash. The 20% is not needed if the person issuing the contract includes killrights however.

Someone **** you off one too many times? Have them killed, why not right?

For those people who stay docked forever id suggest this, if you want someone who hides in a station to avoid a contract (if they somehow found out) You should still be able to kill them right? If you dock at the same station they are in, you find their name in guests and there will be a button called "kill" or something like that. You play a hacking like minigame to turn the stations internal defenses against the pilot and kill them. You get two tries, uses the hacking skill and the bribery skill. (one to actually hack it, the other to pay concord to not investigate) However if you fail both tries you get caught and fined heavily + lose sec status and the player becomes aware of your attempts. You then lose the ability to attempt for one week as station security is on high alert around you.

You then get their corpse in your items if you win, they die and wake up in a fresh clone not knowing what the **** happened.

That other trader keeps .01 isking you for 8 hours straight? Have someone put a cap in his ass. It will make you feel better. Got scammed in jita? What better way to get even than being able to hold their frozen corpse in your hold for god knows what purposes.

2. Vandalism

Private contract. (with the same skill at 5) You can attack them or any of their structures without concord intervening and you pay 20% to bribe concord. You get a payout once you have met the property destruction requirements. You can issue these contracts against an individual or corporation.

Example: You take a billion isk contract to destroy a billion isk worth of a corporations stuff, once you trash that much stuff, you get the payout automatically.

Second example: You are a miner and you just hate that other guys face because he keeps taking all the good rocks, so you have a contract put out on his shiny hulk. You get to watch it become scrap metal.

However if you kill the player the contract is void unless you have killrights or a second assassination contract. Want someones highsec POS gone but you dont want your hands dirty? Contract it out to a vandal corp. That other miner keeps getting all the good rocks? Hire someone to break all their mining barges. Know someone is botting in your roid belt and you just want to see their ships die in a fire? Go right ahead and outsource your revenge.

Sabotage sub paragraph.

Learn a separate skill (sabotage) that works like hacking, when contracted for property destruction it allows you to (if you are docked in a station they have ships in) play the hacking minigame to rewire the ships self destruct system to activate upon undocking and lock out the navigation controls so the player cant redock or abandon ship. You get two tries, failure results in heavy fines, security status loss and the player becomes aware of your attempts plus a cooldown of one week to try again for anyone at that station (security goes on high alert around you). You must play the game per ship you want to sabotage and you must know what ship you are looking for. So you cant use this skill to rummage around their ship stocks. This means you will have to observe your targets comings and goings to know they have a certain ship docked at a certain station. You can attempt a hack against any ship type but if they dont have it it will let you play them game but you will always fail. So act smart or you tip them off that you are after them.

However if you win, they are none the wiser and the next time they undock with the sabotaged ship it goes kaboom right under them.

Balances.

Players can learn another skillset (call it investigation or something) and play a hacking like minigame to learn the identity of the person who issued a contract on them. You get two tries and the option to play the minigame would be located in the killmail.

You cannot issue these contracts to yourself , your alts (IP locked) , your corporation or members of your corporation and you can only issue a contract once a week per type (one assassination and one vandalism per week). Contract takers cannot be members of an NPC corporation and you cannot issue them against an NPC corporation or NPC. All contracts can have collateral for failure and a time limit. (up to a month)

Vandalism contracts can be done one of two ways, the destruction of a specific ship type (pay someone to blow up a retriever) or pay to destroy a set amount of property value.

If you want a specific ship destroyed you have to right click them while they are flying in space and select "issue contract". The second type can be started within the normal contracts menu.


If you want a set value of property destroyed you must pay isk equal to the price of the property you want destroyed, this kind of contract must be made against their corporation as a whole and issued from your corporation.

You cannot issue contracts against characters 30 days old or newer, this prevents people from griefing new players.

This is in addition to the way bounties currently work. So no, trying to game the system wouldn't work.



Pretty sure concord is the intermediary, but w/e.



Pretty sure Darth vader was the legitimate authority of the area, and the rebels were literally "in house rebels" or terrorists. Darth vader hiring bounty hunters would be no different than...

http://truewest.ning.com/profiles/blogs/old-western-bounty-hunters

Which is individuals trusted by the state to handle people who are wanted.

The movie versions of bounty hunter is even more laissez faire then the real world version. The truth is, bounty hunting was usually handled by trusted people, and to bring certain people to justice.

If you guys want it to be contract killing, it should be seen as a concord offense if the person is in good standing with concord, because contract killing means inciting people to commit an actual crime.

Concord "protects" pilots with a reasonable security status, offering vengeance. If you don't play by concord's rules, via shooting other pilots, you get shot down. Currently, the way the bounty programs works is that you can contract people with high concord standing, and provide incentive for OTHER people to break the law of concord, which means two things. First, concord is, in fact, a part of the bounty system, because placing a bounty doesn't remove concord protections. Secondly, it is identical to contract killing, which is inciting other people to commit crime for reward. Concord takes appropriate measure when they shoot the aggressors, but you get off scot free.

So, if you want bounty hunting to be able to apply to anyone, then placing a bounty on a high concord status pilot should give you the security status penalty as if you shot them down yourself, because its encouragement for others to commit the crime in your stead.

Or, you can have bounty hunting become a non-shady and legitimate profession by limiting it through security status and therefore bounty hunters can operate in hi-sec shooting down pilots with less than -2 sec status who also have a bounty on them, placed by players with high sec status. Furthermore, this provides incentive for good standings players to hunt in low sec because the payout won't go to people below a certain security status, so pirates cant just collect on each other.

Bounty hunting has always been a state sanctioned activity, and contract killing has always been a mafia-style illegal activity.

If you want the bounty hunting mechanic to be equal to contract killing, might I suggest that you can do the EXACT SAME THING yourself without going through the game mechanic hoops of setting up bounties on people, and that the payout can be much better than the bounty system because you (contractor) or you(killer) can argue for a better price?

Why do you people need a game mechanic to pay others to kill people, when bounty hunting as a mechanic is currently useless? Why does bounty hunting need to not change into something that actually can impart value because you take issue with how the change might prevent you from putting bounties on high security status individuals?

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=postmessage&t=421196&f=270&q=5704103
http://truewest.ning.com/profiles/blogs/old-western-bounty-hunters
https://www.google.com/search?q=bounty+hunters+in+the+wild+west&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

Once again, you're talking about contract killing, which is a hollywood thing. Dead or alive is given to actual law enforcement in real bounty hunting, to bring someone back in exchange for some extra pay. The reason for dead or alive is that they can be more trusted to try to bring them back alive rather than just shoot them (as a criminal would) and bring the body back.

Yes, contract killing has always fallen outside the law. And in this game, bounty hunting is currently more like contract killing.





Sorry, you're simply wrong here. It is a game mechanic, and a rather pure one. If it was a player mechanic, it wouldn't be to select buttons and scroll until you have a good isk number on another pilot. A player mechanic is not activating modules on your ship, thats a game mechanic. A player mechanic is designing a payout system through game mechanics to have people in certain areas killed. A player mechanic is activating those modules when someone specific is in your sights, and not activating them otherwise. The actual activity of of activating the modules is a game mechanic.

The same is true of the bounty system. It is a game mechanic, because you choose to activate it through a button. Who you choose to activate it on is a player mechanic, but the removal of money, the payout after, and the mails, those are all game mechanics, not player mechanics.

The bounty system is meaningless because its a game mechanic used all the time on everyone. It lacks useability because everyone gets to use it all the time. If it were more restricted, its value would increase. We're talking pure economics of supply and demand here. Reasons be damned.

But people do like reasons, good or flimsy, for why to change something, and I think I gave plenty of out of game and in game reasons why limiting it for security status would improve the GAME mechanic's usability .

If you want to put a hit out on someone, just do it through word of mouth, or hire a merc corp, etc. If you want someone in hi sec with high security status killed, those methods will STILL work better than the current method of setting a bounty, because once again, concord and bounty payout limits make it undesirable for lone wolves to try to collect.

1. The concord no reaction is 100% at level 5 but you pay 20% of what you make on the bounty as a bribe. 20% per level of the skill (ie level 1 20% chance the bribe works level 2 40% etc)

2. You cant bounty NPC's you can bounty PC's in an NPC corp as long as they are older than 30 days. People *in* NPC corps cant issue bounties/contracts. This helps to prevent people from hiding in an NPC corp to avoid war deccing against their corp. If you want to put a hit out on someone you should have to be in a PC corp. (looking at code here)

3. IP blocks arent perfect but its the best way unless you can think of a better way of preventing game of alts. Theres always a way around everything for the dedicated person, but theres no stopping someone that dedicated to a game anyways. It will however filter out arbitrary abuse. The chances of unaffiliated roommates putting a hit out on one another is slim anyways.

4. The vandalism thing has similarities to a war dec but it lets you keep your hands clean and it adds an element of surprise . Your target just doesnt know who had them ganked. That could be reworked somehow to just target specific ships instead of the idea of having specific targets and property damage. With war decs you have to wait 24 hours, they know you war deced them and it costs to keep it up. This way its a one time hit and they never see it coming. The surprise element is the key.

Plus with suicide gankers sure they can get paid to kill ships, but then the ships they kill can pay to have them killed back. This encourages people to stop solo playing and work together for mutual defense. Plus the victims get kill rights on the assassin

5. Trying to harass people out of the game is already against the rules if im not mistaken and frankly wanting to harass someone is kind of ****** up. Playing an internet space villain is one thing, being a despicable human being irl is another.

6. The idea is to make bounty hunting/assassination a viable career path. I can imagine assassin corps forming if this was implemented in some form. Plus with contracts it simplifies transactions, details can of course be changed in my idea etc. Im open to suggestions.

If you're going to lie in order to make a point, you just lose credibility and the point is moot.

I don't care what you think of, when I place a bounty. I don't care if you consider it wasted ISK. I do it because I can and that's the point you're not getting. Restricting who can receive one, DOES NOT increase it's usability, or make it more of a conflict driver than it already is. Sure there are changes that could help it drive conflict more, yours is most definitely not one of them.

I want you to really think about what you're posting, before posting it.