Forums » Suggestions

Bring the bounty system back (again)

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Jan 19, 2009 yodaofborg link
Only this time, make it like, reset itself to 0 when a player with a bounty gets copped.

This is how the old bounty system worked:

Player a) (me in this scenario) spends a lot of time killing players inside nation space, gets a bounty on his head for 20k, and decides he wants a fight with a bounty hunter, so he goes to b8, and says "hey, i have a bounty on me, whoever kills me in a fair fight, can have it!" - gets killed by player b) and goes back about his business of killing things in nation space, but this time is awarded a 22k bounty, rinse repeat till bounty is 13 million plus (what happened, infact) and the devs remove it. (took over a year for a bounty of that size!).

New system:

Bounty is placed on player a)'s head for 20k cos he has been a bad boy in nation space! He goes to b8, and declares this, player b) cops him and scores 20k. Woah, yeah, thats a lot of money! :P Player a) goes about his business and gets another 20k bounty put on his head, and thinks "woo, i may grind this before cashing in" grinds it up to a few hundred k maybe, before a *real* bounty hunter cops on and thinks, "Yeah, come ere you"...

...Worst case scenario is that player a) manages to avoid getting killed by any registered bounty hunter in over a year, and gets a 13 million plus bounty. Well, IMHO, he frakkin deserves it, I remember bounty hunting lecter in a gank squad and *boy* was that hard, and it was fun too! I cannot see a sploit in the proposed system, specially now we Player a)'s have them frakkin turrets to deal with!
Jan 19, 2009 Aticephyr link
re the "over a year" comment:

of course, this would have to be based on in-game, flight (not docked) time. Otherwise, I make a player, get a bounty on my head. I leave the player for a few months. I come back, log in. Have player Y whack me for X million, then player Y gives me half the proceeds.

Granted, its not a quick way to make money, but we shouldn't make the system an easy one to game.

I'm all for a bounty system, especially if it allows killing those with bounties but high faction standing in nation space without a penalty. (you listening inco? :p)
Jan 19, 2009 yodaofborg link
Oh aye, I'm talking flight time ;) I was employed by a company at that time that let me get away with what the hell I liked :) The job lasted about as long as the bounty system, heh

But yeah, the bounty was only raised if you actually killed more people or nation things in nation space, it's not time acculative, never was, only way to raise a bounty (even in the old days) was to do stuff.

[edit]

Sorry, I forget a lot of you were never here when it was about.

[edit 2]

Having a bounty did not make folk who *liked* me not like me being killed in the past, maybe with the FF change, that is a good suggestion for the new system though.
Jan 19, 2009 Aticephyr link
And I was here back in 2004... but only for a month :). I think I was commander of a guild called IDF or something. I honestly don't remember.
Jan 19, 2009 ArAsH link
+1 i miss the bounty system
Jan 19, 2009 JestatisBess link
Aticephyr: whats your in game name?

I agree yoda i miss bounties. With the turrets they will be harder to get too :)
Jan 19, 2009 Aticephyr link
My in-game name was Aticephyr or Aticephyrim at the time. I don't remember which.
I'm pretty sure you can figure out my current in-game name.
Jan 19, 2009 stackman122 link
I think there may be some positive additions to this thread here:

http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/19493

We talked a fair bit about what has and hasn't worked in the past and how to limit exploitation.
Jan 20, 2009 PaKettle link
you could go with player posted bounties only availible to certified hunters for a small fee of course.

IE A player posts a million dollar bounty costing 1.5 million which the system farms out as a mission to the nearest/next hunter....
Jan 20, 2009 Dr. Lecter link
Yarr, it was fun--I also recall being the one to get that 13 million bounty.
Jan 28, 2009 yodaofborg link
Well, seeing how Inc is tired of my whiney threads, I'll bump one of my more constructive ones. Bounties were damned fun, and gave cash rewards for PvP, which is a good way to kill two birds with one stone.

[edit]

And you did indeed have to fight me a few times for that bounty Lecter, but it was probably the only large bounty that I shared :) I used to let most folk keep the full amount :D
Feb 23, 2009 incarnate link
Note, I am not tired of bounty threads.. sometimes I'm just busy and not really paying attention to Suggestions that week. I come back later (obviously).

I do want to revive bounties, and welcome ideas on how to do so while minimizing stupid money holes where people end up claiming their own bounties.
Feb 23, 2009 Dr. Lecter link
Incarnate: easy--just make them player driven missions (i.e., bounties only happen when a player tenders credits to a marshall and takes out a bounty on said player. To prevent abuse, the player would have to have some sort of negative faction requirements also (like they would normally be eligible for one of the old bounties).

No real way to make these abuse proof if they're just massive credit injections from the VO-Fed.
Feb 24, 2009 bojansplash link
When pirate bots were active on production we also had "elimination" missions from Corvus.
Player who destroyed x number of pirate bots were listed at Corvus under elimination missions. Killing them gained a nice financial reward.
Bounty system could be set on the same principle universe wide.
Feb 24, 2009 Dr. Lecter link
Still exploitable, Bojan.

I and my friends go out, blow up many a pirate bot, and we're all assigned "elimination" missions. We each take one, kill eachother, and split the loot.
Feb 24, 2009 bojansplash link
@Lecter
If you put your mind to it... almost everything in VO is exploitable one way or the other.
The question is, do we really care?
Bounties were great fun. Old bounty system was exploitable but not linked to a mission system. It was just a small money exploit that required a lot of hard work.

I collected a lot of bounties on different players and I think i split the reward only once with yoda.
Not because he asked or we had a prearranged bounty kill. He was just broke so I gave him the money.
if we can minimize exploitability thru cleverly formed missions it should be enough.
Other players also collected bounties on me. Nothing was arranged. First one that found me and managed to kill me got that bounty.
Heh, I even remember chasing your bountied Dr. ass with Gavan and Serpentine all around Latos/Sedina/Odia. It was a wild hunt since you ran like mad. We got you at the end and split the money but only because it was a group effort.

@Incarnate
Old Bounty System was good content and provided a lot of fun, making VO joy to play.
Exploitable? Yes, to an extent, but so are other things in VO that have far greater impact on overall game-play.
If New Bounty System will do the same, I say, bring it on now!
We are starving for content and joy we once had playing VO.
Feb 24, 2009 Dr. Lecter link
minimizing stupid money holes where people end up claiming their own bounties

I think that answers your asinine question about "do we really care."
Feb 24, 2009 vIsitor link
I'm not quite sure how to put this...but I think Lecter has the right idea.

Give the money to the Marshal and they dole out the payment to the hunters when the target is offed. If money-laundering becomes an issue, then the Marshal could deduct a percentile "service fee" (maybe 10%) from the cumulative bounty.

And, as Lecter said, to prevent "bounty griefing" innocent newbies by puting 10M on their heads just by existing, place limitations that the target must be at less than x standing with the bounty-issuing faction and the pilot placing the bounty must be at at least y standing with the same faction. Even with the currently-broken faction system, this would narrow the choice of targets down a bit (might give a few more protections than are deserved, but thats an acceptable sacrifice).

[It also occurs to me that the bounty-system could be retooled into a assassin's roster, but thats a whole 'nother can of worms.]
Feb 24, 2009 Dr. Lecter link
Uh, I don't think we have money laundering here in VO. There's no limit on transferability of credits.

But I think there should be a 10% fee anyway. It will act as a much needed credit sink. And the fee to become a bounty-hunter needs to be doubled or something.
Feb 24, 2009 vIsitor link
I was just thinking about how it could be theoretically used for instant cross-galactic money transfers if abused (i.e. Someone smurf puts a bounty on a toaster alt, which gets blown up in Sedina by another smurf alt to transfer the cash faster than you can say "bus goes boom"), thus bypassing the whole "must be in the same sector to transfer credits" restriction that stands as-is.

But then again, I'm probably just being paranoid.