Crime & Punishment

This is a multi-part series offering insight and potential regarding varying game play styles that is often over looked or deemed unconventional. This piece will deal with the aspects in the title.


Bounty hunting, assassinations, executions, we've all at least somewhat familiar with the concept. Bounties are in the game itself, but due to the nature of Eve (we're immortal) the system is mostly irrelevant. Payouts are limited and divided among multiple people in order to avoid abuse of the system. Once in a while you will see an individual offering money for killing X individual in Y ship. Often the bounty is fairly meager or subject to some sort of scam.

I sat and pondered the reason these issues arise and I've come to the conclusion that there is a fundamental misunderstanding about what exactly one should try to accomplish. At face value one party pays another party to target an individual and destroy their ship. Most of the time this individual will fly a ship with a value under 500 million isk and so the client will offer a bounty around that value.

Considering that the individual will more than likely fly with a group of people, which will require the hunter to bring their own group of people thus splitting the profit, coupled with the amount of time and work one has to put in to find the target, we can see why the system simply doesn't work.

If the target can never truly die, nor can we set up an efficient isk ratio kill set up, one has to ask "then what is bounty hunting etc trying to accomplish?" The answer is uncertainty. Clients/Hunters should seek to make their target feel that they are no longer in control of their own destiny. That is something that requires more than just a killmail, and it is worth more than just a few hundred million as well.

In order to do this, one must infiltrate the target's group, spend time learning about them, find out what kind of individual the target is. Lastly, when the target feels most safe, perhaps running a site or exploring a wormhole, that peace of mind must be taken away. That target must feel that their group has been compromised and they no longer have a safe place. Now that is more valuable to an immortal capsuleer than any ship.



For inquiries for this and other services, come and visit us at the House of Black and White.

And remember, take care of your friends and take care of your enemies.

Disclaimer: Not for double digit IQ'ed individuals.

Duno why but I read that in Seamus Heaney's voice, wasn't disappointed.

Sounds fairly interesting, don't mind if I start lurking your channel.

I appreciated the presentation, certainly piqued my interest.

No. It's an article concerning how we can better understand such play style on behalf of the House of Black and White, which is a public channel everyone is welcome to use to exchange ideas and network for such a service among many others.

You'd have to pretty much Hindenburg your entire primary school experience to consider what I wrote "florid prose." If you're unable to discern between the OP and the Merc Contracts channel, clearly there is nothing useful for you here.

IMO its irrelevant if you think the service is useless, or the goal is better served another way. The service exists. Options are good and I'm sure someone will find a use for it.

Who is talking about spying on carebears? Why is your thinking so narrow? You're still missing the point. Ships are just things. If you want to actually hit someone where it hurts, you hit their sense of certainty.

But yes the current mechanics make bounty hunting (or whatever else people want to call it) a pointless failed profession in its conventional form and this is because the pay out system is poorly designed due to our ability to manipulate things, and because we're "immortal." Thus the profession must be understood in another light beyond simply ISK paid vs ISK killed.



Don't assume others have your limitations.

+1 for this. Seraph is always looking for new ways to bring content.

What the OP is describing seems to go past just friendly ganking or wardeccing someone. The OP is talking about doing things that would really mess up someone's game. EVE: Gaslighting. Characters are immortal. You can get a billion ISK for about $20US, so it's not about making the target lose ISK. This would cause a lot of real tears...

Hmm....