EVE General Discussion

So if I'm on the this bounty board, I can use my alt to pay 50% of the bounty as a deposit. Then I can kill myself with my alt and claim the full bounty on my head after which I get my 50% deposit back for being a successful bounty hunter?

And the only risk to me or my alt is a 30 min suspect timer on the alt?

Sounds good.

(Ima's alt) nice Orca bro, how about a mining permit? No? Ok, here have a bounty
(Ima) oh look a bounty hunter contract from my alt for this Orca, how convenient, 50% deposit payed
(Ima's alt) warp to me bra
(Ima) Wow, that Orca went down quickly, have your bounty money back trusted friend, I do this things for free
(Ima's alt) Thx bra, already spotted another Orca. Let's make Highsec great again!

I've been playing Planetside 2 recentrly to satisfy my hunger for an action-packed first-person shooter, and it's got the same problem. The thought thought is was a good idea to give players an opportunity to "GET REVENGE!" on their enemies by placing a bounty on them (and paying real money to do so, lol). It makes no difference to the target of the bounty: he'll light up as a crosshair on the HUD and the minimap when spotted, so he might, indeed, get some extra flak from the enemy, but in a game where everyone shoots each other all the time you'll always have people going after your ass if you get yourself expesed, bounty or not. It doesn't really benefit the killer and the person issuing the bounty, either, except for some extra XP. The XP bonus is less than a specialized XP boost in terms for XP/$, so it's not really worth it.

The example above shows that bounty hunting is a mechanic that it extremely hard to implement right in a PvP game where dying, respawning, and reshipping is but a part of your daily routines.There's no real benefit for anyone to give their ISK to have another player blown up because most of those people who receive big bounties tend to get blown up very often, anyway.

As Tisi has pointed out, a bounty system that allows to circumvent the current Crimewatch mechanic would be exploited to death by those who are supposed to be the target of bounty hunters. The only way I see bounty hunting work is if it only applies to highsec criminals and gives the anti-gankers an incentive to prevent ganks entirely or save the victim in the process of a gank instead of padding their killboards with CONCORD kills.

Not nearly beautiful enough, no.

The change the bounty system *actually* needs is a numerical one. 20% needs to become 35% or 40%.

It's then significant enough to actually encourage killing, not just to be a tip for the person that does the kill.

The only good bounty system idea i heard in recent times was one were its an assigned contract, that the person puts up, they can assign it to merc corp, much like a courier contract or put it up publicly, or to alliance, or to corp. If the target of the bounty merely kills himself with an alt , that person shouldnt have put it up in public and its their own fault, however this would actually give life to the bounty hunter career via an actual avenue for it to properly happen, in fact this what merc corps already do.

Ive tried over the years to think of many ways to fix this. Everything i or anyone else came up with i was able to either to come up with a way to exploit it( within the rules) or it would absolutely make being in highsec miserable for everyone...not that thats a bad thing.

The best idea is to just hire a merc corp to get revenge or learn to pvp and get it yourself or just move on in life. Seriously we do not have all these issues in 0.0 people in high sec have with mercs, wardecs, and not being able to defend stuff. In short null has a lot more profit and a lot less drama.

You've been creating an awful lot of threads recently, n'est ce pas?


e: although what you say about Sustrai Aditua is absolutely true, of course.

Immortality is a ***** eh?

Bounty systems (a true bounty system) are incompatible with EVE Online.

The purpose of a bounty is to stop misbehavior which can't be stopped in any other way. Yet in EVE Online, there are only a few things deemed unacceptable misbehavior and they are enforced via rules and GMs. The rest of misbehavior it's just "playing the game". Thus, any "bounty system" actually working as a bounty system would just pee on someone's playstyle for no reason. Thus you can't turn bounty system into a "free-kill voucher" against non-PvP players nor a "omg what a terrible mistake I did" harsh penalty against PvPrs.

The current bounty system is idiotic and mostly useless but it can't be gamed, and that's about the best you can do within EVE's spirit and guidelines. Whenever you ask to "improve" it some players will ask for a way to game it, or a way to circumvent crimewatch, or a way to discourage ganking. CCP would be foolish to listen to any of them.


PS: anyway I would get rid of the ability to bounty yourself. It's eye-soring stupid.