TOTALLY AGREE !
[ stamp of approuval ]

I disagree with 20-200k being even a mild deterrent, thats chump change in this game. Also, an xp hit for a bounty hunter who loses is perfectly reasonable, it keeps it balanced. Why should a person witha bounty lose a shitload of hard earned experience, and the bounty hunter lose what basically amounts to a dollar in this game. If you dont think an xp penalty should be there too, then failing on a bounty hunter missions should drop the faction for the nation you initiated it from down to about -400. Faction is easy as crap to get, and that would at least give bounty hunters some kind of penalty. As it is, having a bounty is bad news, and everyone and thier mother is a bounty hunter. Constantly adding incentives to traders and penalties to pirates/etc is just going to make it so lopsided that everyone will be a trader. Just look at the effect the backstory has on the nation populations.

The question:
Why should a bounty loose more then a bounty hunter?

Answer:
They are being hunted for doing something wrong, against the law, or non-server friendly.

Bounties are placed on people who had done something to get in trouble, even if they are not 'bad' per say. Why should thet enforcer of the law be punished. It's bad enough that they are going into a pvp situation, where they can potentially die, have to spend money re-equiping themselves.

Perhaps create a rating system for bounty hunters, a capture/escape ratio. Then there is something to strive for. You could also make a 10 most wanted list for the other side. Then you take that ratio and use it to determine what bounties your able to take on in the mission tree of bounties. You can only get the high priced bounties if your rating is better then a certain level. That will help with accidental bounty clames in normal pvp encounters, and, ad a new advancement path to the game.

Why is there any penalties at all if there are none for pvp in general?

John, I'm not saying the bounty hunter should lose more. I'm saying the loss should be roughly equal. Why?

because both the bounty, and the hunter are honing their craft. And whoever fails hasn't honed it well enough.

What craft do you speak of for getting a bounty. Pirating? They are not the only ones that get bounties. Besides, we are not honoring thieves, murderers, and thug! Is a detective punished for not solving a crime? Do we punish bounties hunters now? NO!! You all talk about honor and stuff but do any of you really have a clue what that means, I kind of dought it. Pirates have no honor, wether they say they do or not. THEY PIRATE!! They were the scourge of the oceans, and now they are the scourge of space. They don't get pitty, morning, honor, or respect for that matter. They get my neut2 in there exhaust! =P

Please let us dispense with the personal comments and stick to attacking the arguments only, gentlemen. Thanks.

Bounty hunter != Detective

Closer to vigilante, actually.

semantics, the point is valid. We do NOT punish a criminal investicator OR criminal procurer, even if the task is not completed. They simply try again, sometimes at there own expense.

There were no personal attacks FM, you're reading too much into it. That was a blanketed statement regarding all pirates.

I would avoid punishing Bounty Hunters for 3 reasons.

1) It's a nice fun way for new players to take on seasoned players.

2) My last bounty accounted for about 20 - 30 pk's before Shape got me (in the most bizarre circumstances) I killed about 10 or so Vipers some of whom died several times. These penalties would stop the willingness of people to hunt you.

3) It was really good but i can't remember. I may edit this sometime :P

John, you can have a bounty on your head without doing anything wrong. Acts of war at CtC will be enough to earn you that. I did get a couple of bounties for that; so did RelayeR. I don't think either of us are 'scourge of the galaxy'.

Bounty hunters are not public prosecutors. They are killers. Killers paid to kill people who did not have the right to a fair trial. They are not an instrument of justice, they are the tool of retaliation.

Let's put a penalty on those bounty hunters who fail :)

Your are soooo wrong about bounty hunters its astounding.

Bounty hunters are not cold blooded killers, they take contracts to procure those who have skipped bail or who have running from the law. They do not kill first and ask questions later, they're suppost to bring back there targets alive so that they can be prosicuted. Not alive no money.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=bounty%20hunter

You described a mercenary, they are the hired killers.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=mercenary

The both are very close but merc's generally are not asked to bring the target back alive, hunters are.

The problem with being a bounty hunter in VO is that you can not obtain a pilot and bring him back to answer for his crimes against whatever faction. Instead we kill them and that is good enough. Perhaps instead, when killed a token was dropped that is then turned in for the reward money, he who makes the kill is the only one that can pick up the token, or it's auto-placed in your hold. Either way, most people are Merc's not Bounty Hunters.

@Sun Tzu
You said it right there in your own sentance, "Acts of War" against another faction would bring about a bounty, you commited a crime against that faction. You are now a criminal in there eyes until you pay for your crime. In VO paying for your crime is death.

Wait, you just wrote that, "paying for your crime is death"

AND

Bounty hunters are officers of the law.

AND

Bounty hunters are not killers

Well.... One of the above statements is false

Each is true in it's own context. Is that the only attack you have for what I just wrote?

It's is not, it isn't ain't, and it's it's, not its, if you mean it is. If you don't, it's its. Then too, it's hers. It isn't her's. It isn't our's either. It's ours, and likewise yours and theirs.

- Oxford University Press, Edpress News

Actually no, all three cannot be true. If the letter of the law is that the offender must be killed, then the officer of the law must carry that out. Whether or not you find the action just, they are a killer.

But, I have to make a full response to your thread for you to take it seriously. Well... ok.

A) People recieve bounties during the course of normal gameplay. (Note: this is not in the Roleplaying section)

B) Bounty hunting and Pirating are considered to be tracks of a sort. In fact, when the bounty system came out, Incarnate referred specifically to the "Bounty Hunter" track. Pirating is also logged as a form of path, as can be seen by the fact that WHEN a "Bounty" kills a hunter in monitored space, it is logged to their charinfo.

For example, in my charinfo it says

"you have escaped from 51 bounty hunters, and killed 51 bounty hunters"

C) Since each is a path, one can consider each party to be (as I said above) honing their craft in that area. Yes, Piracy is a craft.

D) Since these two paths are linked by an unending game of cops & robbers, we can safely say that any advances made by one side, should come at a similar cost by the other, creating a zero-sum game.

E) I am open to the penalties taking a different form for pirate and hunter. But as long as there are no penalties for Bounty Hunters who suck at their job, there will never be the stratification/leveling process that "separates the Adults from the kiddies"

F, G, H, etc...) I believe these points were a sufficient reply, and I really don't have the time to respond to all your subtleties. If I missed something, I'm sure someone else will respond.

Ok Shape, I never actually said anywhere that a bounty hunter is a officer of the law, simply a tool of it. That does not make them law makers. Two, in VO death IS the penalty for a bounty, how else do you collect them? Three, Bounty hunters are NOT killers… First!!… which was the distinction that I was trying to make since Sun Tzu is clueless about what real bounty hunters are all about. My comments were reflecting on both real world and game world which cause some confusion I'm guessing. In any case, I've already agreed with you that if it were not an xp penalty that it would be fine. I've also make suggestions regarding other ways of handling it, which none of you have commented on. You all seem to like to focus on my definitions rather then the point of the thread. But whatever, we're not going to see any changes on this for months anyway, there is no real point to any of these threads, the devs do as they like and that's it. Plus you argue from an invested position, you are pirate and as such want to see the hunters penalized. I get that, I simply don't feel the same way, we don't, in RL, punish BH's for not retreiving there mark, they simply try again. It would be much nicer if the devs just made it more like a real bounty hunter, with "dead or alive" status that you could either capture the mark or kill it for a lesser fee, but since that would require the devs to sink tons of time into developement I don't expect that to happen.

And with respect to your opinion that pirates and other styles of play should all be treated equally, I disagree as well. Pirating, while a vialble play style, is a negative path and should not have rewards other then the "spoils" of your piracy. Pirates are scum, low lifes, who have nothing better to do then pick on others, wether you hail before hand, only ask ahead of time to fight or not. There may be "Honor among Thieves" but that doesn't mean that the rest of us honor you, or respect you for that matter.

read that

lagging ppl should have a bounty on their head

MUAWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

John, I will not discuss or even comment your misconceptions about the enforcement of law and what difference exists between an act of war and a crime, be it in Vendetta or in real world.

I would just like to point out that where discussing a game feature, it might help to distinguish the game and real world.

In an MMORPG the line is too think to tell cause everyone flip flops on a dime, I voice my opinions as I see them, they are neither rp or rl, they just are. Pirates are pirates and bounty hunters are bounty hunters, wether we're talking about a game or real life. The game has designed them wrong, I understand WHY they have done it that way but I do not agree with how it is done and have stated why. YOU on the other hand were completely off base when you said that bounty hunters are simply killers. They are NOT, VO makes them appear that way, because the limited mechanics of the game only allows you to kill them. If you had the oportunity to capture a player with a bounty and turn them into that nations marshal for an added fee I bet you'd start seeing less killing for the bounties and more non-lethal actions from the bounty hunters.

But that's not even what this thread was really all about and everyone but Shape seems to forget that. It's about wether or not bounty hunters should get penalized for being killed by a bounty. I say NO, or only a small faction hit to the nation that issued the bounty. Shape wants harsher penalties, though it sounds like he's not too sure exactly what. Where do you stand Sun Tzu?

I am clearly of the same opinion as Shape. I wrote it down in my first post in this thread.

And, again, I don't think this is the place to discuss why bounty hunting is incompatible with human rights and a constitutional State, however interesting it may be :)