Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Let's say for a moment that you are a miner sitting in a pod that is currently filled to the brim with salt, and you need someone to make the bastard pay for the dastardly deeds done to you.

Right now, you would place a bounty on their head, and it would be whittled away by random no-name pilots that didn't even realize they were collecting your hard earned iskies. Zero malicious intent behind collecting the blood money, and it wasn't even paid out to a decent money grubbing thug. Probably Joe from next door at a random gate camp. Dammit Joe…

BUT! With this new system, you would place the bounty much like a contract assigned ONLY to a corporation or up to 5 individuals. After a few minutes of research (looking at killmails to see if the guy actually flies anything worth 500 mill) the Corporation or individuals would either accept or decline, notifying the miner that they had accepted it, or rejected--with a counter-offer.

And thus, the hunt begins.
Here are the details of the contract:

Price of Bounty - Security status will determine the price of placing bounty, as CONCORD does not approve of the hunting of upstanding citizens, but is still determined to take your money. Something to the effect of…
Highest SecStatus=pay double price of bounty,
Neutral SecStatus=1.5x bounty paid,
Lowest Sec Status=pay exact amount of bounty.
This is designed to keep highsec people from being ganked in a free-for-all where there is supposed to be a semblance of safety.

Minimum Bounty Placed - Also directed by security status. Something to the effect of...
Highest SecStatus=750 mill,
Neutral SecStatus=500 Mill,
Lowest SecStatus=250 Mill.
This sets the minimum amount of ISK that can be set for collection on a capsuleer. Multiplied by the placement multiplier means that the minimum ISK spent to place a bounty on a pilot with Max SecStatus would be 1.5 billion ISK and requiring 750 mill to be destroyed. This number isn’t set in stone (obviously) and I’m open to suggestions.

So, you're ready to place the bounty! You naturally assigned the bounty to a newly formed Bounty Hunting corporation, they accept your offer to destroy 500 million ISK worth of a Neutral SecStatus pilot’s assets with the payout of an equal amount of isk. After multiplying by his sec status, you pay CONCORD 750 Mill for this contract. It would be available to everyone in that corp, however, progress would be tracked by individual effort. This is so that the bounty placed could potentially cause more damage to the target than just 500 million ISK. If two people are competing over the same contract, one may destroy 400 mill, the other destroys 500 mill and receives payment. This amplifies malicious intent of the bounty system, and rewards the individual placing the bounty with a river of their enemy’s blood.

Questions to be answered:

Is the Bounty Activated like a Kill Right? or is it more like a War Dec, where they can shoot back first?

Should a deadline be able to be placed? Or should all contracts naturally have a deadline?

Official pricepoints so that highsec isn’t abused and new players are not run off?

Should the bounty multiplier run off the number of people in the corporation to decrease the possibility of being hunted by a 1000 man corp and make bounty hunting corps an elite organization?

Are there any questions that I missed? Let me know what you think!

Yeah, the bounty is only part of the issue; they need a bounty HUNTER system, where a player can pay a (large) fee (say, half the bounty or 100m, whichever is greater) to bypass Concord and collect the entire bounty (if they get the fight, and the kill). Sort of like a war declaration; fee paid in advance and you get a week and a bounty hunter "warrant" item that you can activate to flag the target suspect. If you get the kill, the bounty makes up for the hunting fee and then some; if you don't get the kill, well fee is not refundable.

I think the confusion I had was the actual word 'Bounty'. Once I realized it wasn't a bounty system but a paid revenge/kill right system, it made it easier for me to understand. Bounty had nothing to do with it.

Ralph points out a simple way to fix it, the OP's is a replacement system, and Memphis' post is also a simple fix.

My only question to all of you is: what are you trying to 'fix'? In other words, what's the core goal of the action of the game mechanic?

Do we need a paid revenge system?

If that's something we need, then yes, it would be better done as a fee to Concord or a 'kill rights' contract. Keep it basic and easy to understand.

If we don't need that system, then it should just be scrapped and if you want deterrent force, just pump up the security status loss points when they take on players in protected systems.

The simpler you make the choices, the easier it is to play the game and not have the game play you...

I love that you parsed this out in such detail, but as in all such things we see these days
a very VERY important little detail has been omitted.

THE STATE ISSUES BOUNTIES!

INDIVIDUALS TAKE OUT CONTRACTS!

One is legal. One is illegal.

As long as you have this convoluted system where individuals are granted state authority (by the game god, not the state) AND as long as STATES don't exercise their natural authority to ENFORCE their SOVEREIGNTY, then you get this rinky dink system that a year's production of duct tape can't patch together to make sense.

The EVE bounty system proceeds from a FALSE PREMISE, therefore logic will NEVER apply.

So, it's not a bounty. It's hiring a hitman. If you throw it out there, it's called an "open contract". It's what organized crime does. It's not what organized STATES do. This system demonstrates a juvenile naughtiness as its basis. It's also the other major game function which makes irrelevant having "Sovereignty _________" in the interface's description of where you are (upper left hand corner) and NEGATES all the effort that's gone into a rather intricate backstory around which this is all alleged to be occurring.

Fix this, and you don't have to go to the spreadsheet/calculator - table method the OP took the trouble to hammer out. And, hammer out he had to. It has no simplicity, no elegance, and only exacerbates the self-contradictory nature of the logic being applied.

now that we are getting a permissions list where we can make and share groups


1 full pay out on kill

2 when i place a bounty on some one just let me add one or more groups to the list that can take the bounty

3 let me chose the minimum est value of the ship that qualifies

I for one will never support any bounty program that allows you to hunt down and kill someone without repercussions in highsec, just because someone else paid for the privilege. The sole exception would be for people setting a revenge price for having been attacked by the individual unlawfully before.

Oh wait, that's killrights.

Highsec isn't a safari where you pay your entrance fee, grab a tag, and go blap a target because you thought it would be funny.

Especially since unlike wardecs, where an individual can leave a corp or stay in a noobcorp to avoid them, escaping from someone with spare cash that allows them to repeatedly place bounties that make them a free target is impossible without leaving to an area of the game where the other individual will not follow.

This would be massively compounded by being able to place a bounty on someone (say a mission runner with a pimp fit or a known freighter character), kill them, loot them, and in the process, collect all or most of the money you placed upfront for the bounty.

Absolutely no to what would basically become a tool for industrial level greifing.

And no I don't consider miner/freighter ganking, can flipping, scamming, or basically anything else in eve to be greifing, but this proposal would take it about 5 steps too far.

So Joe Tom who is Joe Bob's alt places a bounty on John Doe, then Joe Bob pays concord 15 mil for the privilege of getting to shoot John Doe anywhere, goes forth and kills John Doe, and collects the bounty he placed.

Congratulation, you have created a system where with a 15 mil isk fee, you can hunt down anyone in highsec, regardless of being in a noobcorp or not, mission runner, miner, or hauler, whatever that suits your tastes, and kill them.

I'm totally sure people wouldn't just sit between Amarr and Jita and take out private bounties on every single freighter they saw. sit outside of mission hub stations, scan for mission runners with shiny fits, and bounty them.

On the theme of completely ridiculous ideas, Concord is offering a new service. you can now pay them to explode anyone you dislike with a negative sec status as soon as they undock. 15 mil. One week, no undocking for them unless they tag their way back up to positive sec status.

Pay 30 and Concord will follow them around and constantly jam and neut them, to prevent them from taking nay action that might cause you inconvenience.

And for a blanket 50 mil a month fee, you can purchase protection from any and all characters less than three months old, so you never have to worry about new catalyst alts.


It's fair cause you pay for it, right?

Pretty much sounds like what already goes on....oh a shiny mission fit...lets war dec them...ohh lots of indy ships...lets war dec them!!.

Yes I can use my alt to place a bounty on a player to put them in the bounty system, then use my main to hunt them down....or i could just war dec their corp anyways and save the trouble..

And I am pretty sure that I didnt create the war dec mechanics that allow me to hunt down anyone currently in highsec for 50m

Corps war dec corps to collect players bounties now, I was just trying to suggest a way of getting around players who sit in npc corps to collect their bounty

But thanks for your valuable and creative feedback

I promise if implemented I will never use this to do harm. Can't speak for my alts though.

Shortly after the new bounty system I have removed bounty information from the overview: Nearly everyone has one, even if it small.

Bounty without a right to enforce it does not make sense. It is a contradiction that someone wants revenge and give a bounty to reward the the hunter - but on the other side, the kill right has a fee.

The problem is the chance for the "criminal" to benefit by getting killed by alts and friends, that leads to the current quite static system. Currently bounty is hardly more than an isk-sink.

I just proposed on the other thread of antipiratism to set earned killrights per default to an default isk and "available to all" and let the victim decide if he wants it otherwise. This would support law enforcement.