Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Private bounty hunting... Because Eve really has a strong bond of trust between all members of the community...

Go give it a try and see how often you get paid. You can also let me know how your reputation turns out if you choose to take on a few targets that prove too elusive and decide to move on to more profitable ventures, or you can get stuck on that wild goose chase for an unreasonable amount of time, losing money hand over fist, trying to protect that precious reputation.

It's not impossible. I understand that there are even a few people who do it already. But you don't see a lot of competition in the area and you don't see a lot of people with high bounties quaking in their space-booties do you? Private contracting is nice, and I'd like to see a system that sticks with the theme within Eve in that no source of income should be guaranteed, but I think right now the only thing anyone but a select few bounty hunters can expect in Eve is a whole lot of disappointment and absolutely no reason to pursue it as a legitimate gameplay style. Having game mechanics to pay out a reasonable bounty through an automated system is no guarantee of income as a potential bounty hunter either. They can't win every fight, and some targets may just be a waste of time. There will naturally be a balancing point where the people who're good at it make a decent amount of isk and those that aren't, don't.

People don't even rely on the good will of bounty hunters to carry out a contract in real life. Rewards offered by victims, be it theft or the family of murder victims, do so through their local law enforcement to ensure they don't get scammed. Why wouldn't capsuleers refuse to take on potentially expensive or dangerous tasks unless a third party handled the payment?

Bounty isk is already out there, but bounty hunters (rather, people who would like a reason to call themselves bounty hunters) have no reasonable means of collecting it.

Speaking as someone who used to have a several billion isk bounty that meant absolutely nothing to them, I would like to see a better bounty system in place that motivated players to collect on it.