Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Short Version: Make shared kill rights searchable. Let players figure out the rest.

I have discussed this with a few CSM members and they like it enough to encourage me to post a thread.

I am aware that strengthening Bounty Hunting as a profession has been proposed many times in many ways. However, all of the suggestions that I have seen end up being complex or affect game balance significantly. I propose the simplest possible solution.

I propose that it should be possible to search for shared kill rights available to you. That's it!

This proposal does not make any changes to the existing mechanics for kill rights, bounties, aggression, locator agents - but instead allows these existing systems to be used in combination to make Bounty Hunting as a profession more viable.

Here is how it would work:
1] Go to a Bounty Office (or some other UI function). Search for kill rights shared with you. Pick a few candidates.
2] Check the Bounties on these candidates. Do some intel. Choose one to hunt.
3] Run a locator agent on them.
4] Get on grid with them. Activate the kill right to flag them suspect and engage!


The mechanics are 95% there! We just need that searchable kill right. Players can make the rest happen.

A desirable refinement and a note:
- it would be nicer if the search showed the price of the kill right (just to avoid wasting time on overpriced kill rights).
- I like that this is not "easy mode", you need to be skilled, connected, organised to be a good Bounty Hunter.

Stacee

Great idea, would lead to more PvP, which is great.

+1 for this

This is a great idea. As you say it doesn't make it easy, you still have to have the skills and the ability to find your target, then actually successfully engage him.....gonna keep one eye on this but it gets a +1 from me.

Not a bad idea but you still have to take into account that bounty hunting as a profession will never be fully isk viable given the current mechanics / payouts.

If you look at the top bounty hunters on the bounty board the first one can be discounted as that was an abuse of mechanics.

The second one who is legit (and dedicated to the cause) has made 8b+ since retribution was released in December 2012.

400m on average per month basically.

Not terrible, but that still pales in comparison to other "professions" especially taking into consideration that Santo excels at what he does

The current payout structure means the average bounty hunter will never make a decent income from bounty hunting so it will only ever be a hobby on the side, or a bonus when you get lucky, but never a fully blown profession with regards to isk generation.

What you've suggested would certainly enhance the system but increasing bounty payouts to 50% of ship / pod value would also potentially make the concept of hunting more appealling to some.

75% if you are have a bounty hunting permit, just like a mining permit, maybe

Bounty contracts allowing assigned individuals to hunt other individuals / corps / alliances for personal profit certainly might not be a bad idea either assuming it can't be abused for griefing.

This kind of bounty contract mechanic could maybe be extended to cover wardec contracts also which might augment the Mercenary profession.

At the minute people have to rely on sending / or expecting isk for services rendered, in good faith with no binding onus on either party to keep their word. A more formal process might be good for all parties involved.

How do kill rights translate into bounty hunting? I guess you have to hope that the person that you want to pay the kill right for has a higher bounty than the kill right's price. Seems like a nice idea for making it easier to find kill rights, but I don't quite understand the bounty hunting aspect.

A free kill right will simply be used by an alt or a friend of the person on the kill right.

This is not true, not long ago I killed an Orca and Vindi within 2 hours both with 0isk killrights...
Alot of people dont understand the system and do not realise they have killrights.

This idea is great but im not sure if it can be implemented as currently killrights do not get updated instantly by the server, you literally have to scan through ships in space to find a target with a killright, then it might of already been used.

The last I got told killrights update every 3 hours as the load would be too much on the servers to constantly search and update killrights. (When i say update i mean that they will appear on the overview and even if a killright has been exhausted it will still show a killright available)

This obviously would carry over to your killright system that targets killrights may of already been used or the target already hunted and you wouldnt know until you got in system with them.

The kill right / bounty mechanic is broken in several ways, at least for the hunter. +1 for the idea, although I think this will not change a lot finally.

Currently the kill right mechanic is simply mapped to the suspect feature, which isn't the best choice imo. What about mapping instead to a (modified) war dec mechanic? Hunters could get a personal war dec against the kill right "recipient" for a fee per week paid to the owner of the right. The recipient can be decced by multiple hunters and has the chance to surrender by paying ransom to the deccer.

Whilst I accept the comments that have been made that suggest that there are other fixes that are required to the bounty hunting mechanic, it strikes me that this change, if delivered, would only be positive and deliver more pew pew.

I quite like Angeal MacNova's suggestion that the kill right only be extinguished on a podding. This would have the advantage of limiting, though not necessarily extinguishing, the killed-by-alt solution to public kill rights.