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Bounty System is broken
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Korya Tawate
Doomheim
#41 - 2015-11-25 19:53:41 UTC
Unfortunately the only way I can see to fix bouny hunting is to eliminate the ability to multibox. Which isn't going to happen.
Tristan Agion
Royal Amarr Institute
Amarr Empire
#42 - 2015-11-25 20:01:03 UTC
Ima Wreckyou wrote:
If you don't think so then please explain why I am able to blow up stuff in Highsec and claim bounties while you whine for a game mechanic change so you will be able to do the same.

I don't know what you are talking about. But I'm sure you are busy soloing Skiffs in High Sec for their bounties, or whatever else might be considered thread-relevant "elite PVP" vs. miners.
Esrevid Nekkeg
Justified and Ancient
#43 - 2015-11-25 20:09:13 UTC  |  Edited by: Esrevid Nekkeg
Korya Tawate wrote:
Unfortunately the only way I can see to fix bouny hunting is to eliminate the ability to multibox. Which isn't going to happen.
That would not be a solution at all.

Corporation Member A: 'Hey dude, care to blow me up X times and share the bounty?'
Corporation Member B: 'Yeah sure man, no problem!'

No multiboxing needed.

Here I used to have a sig of our old Camper in space. Now it is disregarded as being the wrong format. Looking out the window I see one thing: Nothing wrong with the format of our Camper! Silly CCP......
Galen Darksmith
Sky Fighters
Rote Kapelle
#44 - 2015-11-25 21:05:16 UTC
There will never be a bounty system that people are satisfied with.

"EVE is a dark and harsh world, you're supposed to feel a bit worried and slightly angry when you log in, you're not supposed to feel like you're logging in to a happy, happy, fluffy, fluffy lala land filled with fun and adventures, that's what hello kitty online is for." -CCP Wrangler
Valacus
Streets of Fire
#45 - 2015-11-26 01:47:06 UTC
Galen Darksmith wrote:
There will never be a bounty system that people are satisfied with.


QFT. There's just no way to do it in EVE. Too many complications and easy exploits. The problem with keeping your hands out of player interaction like CCP does is you can't stop them from wrecking the things you try to create for them.
Moac Tor
Cyber Core
Immediate Destruction
#46 - 2015-11-26 02:35:44 UTC
If death had consequences like CCP keep telling us it is meant to, then the bounty system would be fine. Losing a ship these days does not feel like much, and pod losses are meaningless unless you have a pirate set which most don't.

I think they should rework pod and SP mechanics so that you lose SP upon pod death much like losing a T3. If bounties were paid out on T3 losses then I dont think you would see many trying to game the system by killing themselves.
Moac Tor
Cyber Core
Immediate Destruction
#47 - 2015-11-26 02:41:05 UTC
Haleuth wrote:
Chainsaw Plankton wrote:
DaReaper wrote:
i personally think it should be scrapped for a more workable system. One that makes bounty hunting a viable professtion.


if you can design that system go for it, I'm sure CCP would be interested in hearing about it. AFAIK it doesn't exist.


They are not interested in fixing it, there has been one bounty hunting system invented in an mmorpg that did work which could be modified to fit with Eve.

This exact system has been suggested many times by many players yet ccp won't adopt it.

Sometimes, you don't need to reinvent the wheel.

Hal

Which is?
Hallvardr
#48 - 2015-11-26 17:28:57 UTC
What do you think about this as a possible solution ..

Limiting bounties being issued only for a limited time say 24hrs and only to pilots that have aggress'd you?

I know this is not real life we're talking about here, but you can't just go out and place a bounty on someone without due cause.

You could place a contract (illegally) on someone to have them killed. But everyone in that deal is a criminal in the eyes of the law.

In Eve, if I couldn't issue a bounty just because I find you irksome, I feel that would cut out a lot of the nonsense.
Kia Lafemme2
Defenders of Tash-Murkon Foundation
#49 - 2015-11-29 17:55:31 UTC  |  Edited by: Kia Lafemme2
A kind of solution would be to put a timer on the bounty, like a month maybe.

Keep putting bounty on someone just to annoy the person is harassment,
like keep phoning someone and then just cut the conection when the phone is answered.

I know the guy is out for me personal, since he put bounty on almost all my chars,
and since he try to sabotage everything i do, and he is calling me not so nice things on facebook.
Tippia
Sunshine and Lollipops
#50 - 2015-11-29 18:35:44 UTC  |  Edited by: Tippia
Kia Lafemme2 wrote:
Think something is totally wrong with the bounty system, Bad guys can place a bounty on the god guys who usually i flying expensive ships, making them targets for gankers. God guys can put a bounty on gankers, but it really doesn't matter, because they usually loose the ship to concorde anyway, and usually a quite cheap ship.

Further more the bounty can be and is often used to harass other people with, some people think it is fun to put people on other people with no reason at all, except to annoy them.

How is any of this a problem? Yes, they can put a bounty on you. So what? What's so annoying about it? More importantly, how on earth does it even remotely qualify as harassment? How does it in any way keep you from playing the game or engage in whatever activities you want to engage in?

Quote:
It can't be right a game mechanic can be used that way, so please do something about it, because it is totally broken, it was not god before, long time ago when it got changed, but it was not broken, now it is broken, and maybe EVE would be better totally without it.

What's not right about it? Bounties are a mechanism to allow players to hold a passive-aggressive grudge against other players for pretty much any reason whatsoever, but one that has little to no actual game-mechanical impact and that has exactly zero status effects on the other player. What you're describing is it being used in exactly that way. So how is it broken from that perspective, when it is being used in exactly the way it is meant to be used?

Quote:
A kind of solution would be to put a timer on the bounty, like a month maybe.

Solution to what? And how does putting a timer (on what, exactly?) in any way solve this presumed problem?

Hallvardr wrote:
What do you think about this as a possible solution ..

Limiting bounties being issued only for a limited time say 24hrs and only to pilots that have aggress'd you?
Again, solution to what?
Your limitations is bad because it means you're restricted to bountying people for one and exactly one reason and confuses it with a slew of mechanics already in place to deal with that exact situation, when the bounty system is really there to be a much more free-form tool to express your annoyance with the person and/or what they're doing, irrespective of the level of ship-to-ship violence involved.
Neuntausend
Republic Military School
Minmatar Republic
#51 - 2015-11-29 19:02:25 UTC  |  Edited by: Neuntausend
- Allow a bounty to be placed only on people you have a killright for. Because, basically, if you don't have the right to kill that guy, you should not have the right to make others kill him either.
- Raise the bounty payout to 80% or so of the kill. The "criminal" will have to lose more than the bounty is worth in order for it to go away.
- Don't payout insurance to people who had a bounty on them, when they lost that ship in PvP. Because, why would an insurance pay out to people who had it coming?

Done.


I do think, though, that you don't need a bounty system to pay a dude for killing another dude.
Tippia
Sunshine and Lollipops
#52 - 2015-11-29 19:08:15 UTC
Neuntausend wrote:
- Allow a bounty to be placed only on people you have a killright for.
- Raise the bounty payout to 80% or so of the kill
- Don't payout insurance to people who had a bounty on them, when they lost that ship in PvP.

Done.

Just suggest the removal of bounties. It would actually do the same thing and also not be as completely nonsensical.
Neuntausend
Republic Military School
Minmatar Republic
#53 - 2015-11-29 19:10:04 UTC
I don't care much about the bounty system one way or another. Keep it, remove it - doesn't matter, really.

How is my idea nonsensical, though?
Tippia
Sunshine and Lollipops
#54 - 2015-11-29 19:14:35 UTC  |  Edited by: Tippia
Neuntausend wrote:
How is my idea nonsensical, though?

It confuses bounties with kill rights. It make it exploitable. And it ensures that it will never actually pay out for “legit” reasons.

It completely removes the point of having the system, largely by making it impossible to apply bounties for the vast majority of reasons, leaving only one where it's wholly unnecessary to begin with. Look at my bounty and at what I did to earn it — you are trying to remove that option from players who need it, and for what?

And that's the real reason it's nonsensical: above all, it doesn't actually solve any kind of problem with bounties (but this is also in large part due to there being no well-defined problem to solve) and instead just creates new ones that make the whole thing dead code.
Neuntausend
Republic Military School
Minmatar Republic
#55 - 2015-11-29 19:17:49 UTC
Well, to place a bounty for any reason outside of game mechanics, you cannot have a working bounty system, and you don't need one either.

As for the kill right system - that one is what's really stupid. It's basically negative bounty. How does that make any sense?
Tippia
Sunshine and Lollipops
#56 - 2015-11-29 19:39:49 UTC
Neuntausend wrote:
Well, to place a bounty for any reason outside of game mechanics, you cannot have a working bounty system, and you don't need one either.
Sure you can, and sure you do.

In fact, that's the main reason for having one: because some things can't be determined mechanically and need to be in place to allow all kinds of emergent and inventive player (ab)uses.

Quote:
As for the kill right system - that one is what's really stupid. It's basically negative bounty. How does that make any sense?
In what sense is it a negative bounty? It is there to impart asset loss on the offending party, with an (unreliable and trust-based) option of also creating a slight cash in-flow for the victim.

For the prospective hunter, it's mainly just neutral unless they stupidly decide to shell out a huge sum for an insufficient pay-off. That kind of stupidity is on the player, not the system.
Neuntausend
Republic Military School
Minmatar Republic
#57 - 2015-11-29 20:13:31 UTC  |  Edited by: Neuntausend
Usually, a bounty contract goes like this:

The "issuer" states, he wants the "criminal" dead. A bounty hunter comes along, kills the criminal and gets money for it - which is why he does it in the first place.

Killright sales go like this:

The "issuer" states, he wants the "criminal" dead. A bounty hunter comes along, kills the criminal and pays money for it ... wait, what?

Selling killrights works in Eve, as we are bloodthirsty maniacs who are even willing to pay to be allowed to kill a dude. But it works only to a degree. Usually, killrights go for less than 10M, because if they are more expensive, people start thinking it may be a trap or insurance fraud (which is true, most of the time). However, if they are below 10M, chances are, the criminal will remove the killright himself. Better yet, with a killright below 10M, you just have to undock in a noobship in Jita, and some idiot will pay it for you, pop your noobship and get rid of the killright for no cost at all.

On top of that, the whole system is tied to game mechanics. You will only ever gain a killright on someone, when that someone performs what the game mechanics count as a "crime".

But think about this: When making a killright public, instead of asking money for it, you could opt to offer money for the kill, tied to the value of the loss as I described above, and while that bounty is active, the criminal will not be eligible for insurance payouts in PvP. That way, you will make sure the criminal will lose more than you pay, no matter what.

As for other, "non game mechanics" bounties: I don't like your guts, and I put 100M bounty on your head. Someone kills you, gets the 100M - basically, that's what we had before the current system, and it was stupid, mainly because you could simply ask a friend to pod you, and split the bounty. Game mechanics cannot judge if the kill was legit. But you cannot just tie the payout to the ship value and disable insurance, just because someone decided to put a bounty on someones head for no reason (you'd have to tie bounties to game mechanics somehow, to prevent that). That's why we ended up with what we have right now - the "criminal" gets insurance, therefore only loses very little. The payout is very low, to prevent the criminal from making a profit by killing himself. But a tiny payout like that surely won't attract bounty hunters, making the whole system nothing more than a tool to troll roleplayers.

If the reason for wanting someone dead is not tied to game mechanics, the only "bounty system" I could see working is a player organized bounty office. That would require trust, but so does mercenary work.
Tippia
Sunshine and Lollipops
#58 - 2015-11-29 20:45:45 UTC
Neuntausend wrote:
The "issuer" states, he wants the "criminal" dead. A bounty hunter comes along, kills the criminal and pays money for it ...
…and unless he sucks or is terminally stupid, he turns that investment into a neat profit from the stuff he scoops up after the kill.

Quote:
But think about this: When making a killright public, instead of asking money for it, you could opt to offer money for the kill, tied to the value of the loss as I described above, and while that bounty is active, the criminal will not be eligible for insurance payouts in PvP. That way, you will make sure the criminal will lose more than you pay, no matter what.
The effect you're describing is how bounties currently work, aside from it being tied to the unrelated restrictions of aggression mechanics. This lack of connection is a good thing since it allows bounties to be their own thing, with all the options this generates, not just a duplication of something that already exists.

Quote:
The payout is very low, to prevent the criminal from making a profit by killing himself. But a tiny payout like that surely won't attract bounty hunters, making the whole system nothing more than a tool to troll roleplayers
For one, if they get trolled by that, they're not role players — just shut-in and/or delusional. The boundary can at times be fuzzy, admittedly, but it's there none the less. P

For another, if it's not big enough to attract hunters, then there are two reasons: the bounty isn't big enough or the target is smart enough to counteract it. Neither is a problem with the system.

Sure, at the moment, bounties are more of an opportunistic bonus – you found a good target that you intended to kill, and you get something extra for your trouble. Yay. But is that really a “problem”? If you want a targeted assassination, then bounties aren't really what you're going for to begin with but can still serve as part of the control mechanism, and as you point out, the whole deal needs to be a bigger trust-based affair anyway. The mechanics become a support for that deal, not the single (inevitably restrictive) framework for it.

So really, the complaints about the bounty system always seem to boil down to one of two things:
1) “Onoz, I got bountied”, to which the answer is a very simple “so what?”
2) “Onoz, I placed a bounty and then did nothing, and then nothing happened!”, to which the answer is “well, duh… that's what happens when you do nothing”.

People being upset because they're in a sandbox environment is not a problem with the system
People using a single tool in the box and hoping that this will be all that's needed to achieve the end goal is also not a problem with the system, only with their understanding of it. They're effectively complaining that they can't hang a painting by just holding a nail to the wall and somehow expecting it to seat itself and the frame to just fly up in place on its own.
Merovee
Gorthaur Legion
Imperium Mordor
#59 - 2015-11-29 20:59:17 UTC
Remove it and replace it with a contract system.

I put a contract on Jimmy for 10 million isk

It goes up for bid for a week.

Johnnie has the highest bid for 5 million isk

I get back 5 million

Johnnie pods Jimmy gets 10 million

Is Jimmy Johnnie? Maybe

Maybe I should hire a Bounty hunter.

I hire a hit man for a kill mail and corpse.

Could I use the contract system to set up the hit?

Empire, the next new world order.
Neuntausend
Republic Military School
Minmatar Republic
#60 - 2015-11-29 21:10:57 UTC
Tippia wrote:
Sure, at the moment, bounties are more of an opportunistic bonus – you found a good target that you intended to kill, and you get something extra for your trouble. Yay. But is that really a “problem”?


Not for me. As it currently is, the bounty system doesn't really hurt anyone, but it doesn't offer anything either, really. It's just there.

Yet, this discussion comes back every once in a while. CCP advertised you could play a bounty hunter, and people try playing one, expecting game mechanics to support that line of work. But of course, they don't (Eve game mechanics suck, news at 11!), and people are disappointed. Just like you say: for the most part, bounties are just a nice bonus for a target you would probably have killed anyway, not an incentive for anyone to go and actively hunt down said mark.

But that is where I keep saying that you don't need a bounty system to have bounties. This game is a sandbox, put a juicy bounty on someone, state your conditions, advertise it somewhere and then don't go back on your word. Or, the other way around, offer your services to anyone who wants someone dead (and don't suck).