Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Greetings,

So I have been playing eve off and on for the last 6ish years and have always kinda been let down by the lack of a proper bounty hunting profession. With alts and the way the system is set up now its just too easy to collect the bounty from your alt which ultimately takes away from the profession as a whole. That being said I think I have found a way to make it an actual legit working profession. My suggested changes are as follows:

1. Players can continue to place bounties as normal. However not just anybody can collect bounty. These bounties would go to an NPC agent specifically designed for the new bounty system.

2. Players would accept random bounties from these NPC's. Players would have the ability to accept and decline from a list of given bounties. Once accepted they are the only person able to collect the bounty reward on the given character. Further players would only be able to turn down so many bounties before the agent stops talking to them for a period of time. This would further deter people from trying to just cycle through bounties to get their own and collect with an alt.

3. Skills could be introduced to aid in this profession to give bonuses like selecting from a larger list of bounties or getting intel about last known location (or just using locator agents more often or with lower requirements) or something else along those lines. Alternatively instead of skills you could also get better bonuses based on what lvl bounty hunter agent you are able to use.

Because you are receiving a RANDOM list of people with bounties and you are only person able to collect the bounty when you have the mission I think it fixes many of the problems with the current bounty system. At a minimum i feel it puts it in a much better position.

What does everybody think about my current proposed changes? or even what they would add further? And what do you think the chances CCP decides to do something to Bounty Hunters as a profession?

While I do like the idea of actual bounty hunter professionals and jobs given from npc's it is to easy to place a bounty on someone.

As of now I do think the system could be changed to make it more interesting such as long time criminals get a permanent bounty and can be shot on site no more just raising your sec status like you never commit crime. The more crime (high/low sec ganks, theft, ect) you commit the more you are perminatly seen as a criminal.

I want to see a viable bounty system in EvE but you lost any support I might have given you with this one portion of your post.
The ability to bounty any character in the game, at any time and for any reason or no reason at all is in fact the very CORE of the problem with the bounty system in this game and your idea does nothing to change that. Let me explain, to prevent the bounties system from becoming a simple and cheap license to kill whoever and whenever without Concord intervention CCP MUST keep all current rules of engagement in place and that kills any real ability CCP may have to create a viable bounty hunter profession in the game.

Profit from killing yourself or a friend via the bounty system is another oft stated reason why we cannot have a viable bounty hunting profession in this game, in fact we have seen that very thing posted right here in this topic. Well to be honest with you anyone who uses this as a reason why bounty hunting will never work has not given the process much thought. If CCP simply requires the entire amount of the bounty be paid to Concord or some other NPC agent in the game at the time the bounty is placed it in fact becomes impossible to profit from killing your alt or a friend, since all you are really doing is taking a complex path to transferring ISK from your wallet to theirs and we can already do that. And when that ISK transfers to the bounty hunter he is in fact profiting from his activities and that is exactly what many including the OP seem to want. And to be honest if they can get space rich collecting bounties I am all for it.

To elaborate.
CONCORD might begrudgingly allow capsuleers to flag eachother for combat in parts of highsec after meeting a few criteria.
To place a bounty, being something CONCORD doesn't really approve of, one must spend an amount of their security status to make the arrangement. Let's say that you can't spend your way negative, you must always spend from the positive. Let it cost 5.0 sec for a 5.0 security player to bounty a 5.0 security player on the one end, and on the other end 0.0 sec for a 5.0 security player to bounty a <-5.0 security player. These shall be our limits where all other scenarios fall somewhere on the continuity.

For the bounty to activate a bounty flag, the amount must be greater than the estimated value of the ship and all its contents according to a mean value created by averaging the value across the highest volume trading stations.
Id est, for my average arbitrator to be flagged, my bounty must exceed approximately 35m isk. For my orca, approximately 800m isk.
Just to prevent mild catastrophe, bounty flags, CONCORD decrees, shall not activate in 0.8 space or above.
Now, having my 40m bounty in my 35m arbi, I undock and go about my day. I am met in a 0.7 system by a sacrilege pilot. He decides to engage me right at the gate! I, who have done nothing personally to offend this bounty hunter or anyone to really earn my bounty, am aided by the gate guns which engage the sacrilege. The sacrilege, having committed this act that CONCORD frowns upon, is granted a suspect flag, along with the same sec status reduction he would have received if he had aggressed me as a neutral in lowsec.
I, knowing that this was likely to happen, after a valiant fight simply cannot overtake the sacrilege. I am destroyed. My assailant recieves approximately 20% of the value of the destroyed items (the current payout) giving him a nice 7m payout. Let's say he decides not to take the pod as wel, becuase he doesn't want to risk such a large sec hit on the strong likelihood that I'm flying with no implants.
Now, if this were my alt in the sacrilege, I would net, let's say, 17.5m (with exceptionally generous insurance) or approximately 1/2 the value of my lost t1 ship and fitting.
Let us consider the plight of the high sec freighter pilot. He has been bountied a total of 5,000,000,000 isk. Since he has a sec status of 0.0, it required a pilot of at least 1.5 status to spend 1.5 sec to bounty him. Our freighter friend is one of many who believes CONCORD will protect him, so he loads approximately 6 billion in cargo into his obelisk.
When he hits the trail from Amarr to Jita with his load, he will not be bouny flagged as his total ship+cargo estimated value does not exceed his bounty. He might do well to carefully plan his return route, however, as at 1.2b his obelisk becomes a valid and highly lucrative prize for an intrepid young bounty hunter. His freighter might payout somewhere close to 300m to someone attempting to bring him in.
Let us consider another situation.
A merc group has declared war on an incursion corp. The incursioners simply don't want to deal with it. They decide to funnel a portion of their wealth into a large bounty pool on their attackers. Each member of this 15 man corp invests a billion isk into the destruction of the merc alliance. The average sec status of the merc alliance, after removing 10% of the highest and 10% of the lowest sec players is 1.3. The bounty placing member of the incursion crew is not detered and spends just under 3 sec from his 5.0 security to place the bounty.
The merc alliance can continue their war, of course, but with a 15b pricetag on them, every ship they launch will be bounty flagged.

The goal of what I've stated here is to bring CCP SoniClover's "tears of fear and frustration" to highsec using security status as a means of deterring wanton abuse.

I'll continue mulling this system over. I really want bounties to make a difference in how you fly.