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Player-made Bounties (Long)

After getting ruthlessly pk'd a few times, a player, who may not have the desire to fight would still seek revenge! They would quickly offer their own resources and money to seek this revenge! I propose that within a node of at least level 4, a town, (this is because lore-istically, law and justice would prevail more) a player should have the ability to create a bounty by posting upon the town's bulletin. This bounty would list the name of the player, the name of the killer, their current builds, a chosen time limit and the reward amount along with a place to leave a message for any convincing or.... choice words.

A time-limit scale of 2 hours to 2 days would be the set limits. (These will only count-down depending on the availability of the culprit, see *'s below) Meaning, a poster has a minimum of a 2 hour time-limit, but could set it to any time in-between to a maximum of 2 days. A poster who wanted the fastest time limit would have pay a larger reward. For example, a 2 day time-limit be rewarded 20 gold (these amounts depend upon the weight of the currency) a 10 hour limit would be rewarded double and a 2 hour limit would be rewarded quadruple. (Although, pricing depends on the skill of the bounty hunter, see the **'s below)

One bounty can be accepted by a max of 20 people. Once a bounty is accepted, the poster is alerted via mail. Their posted bounty would be shown and they would be able to scroll down the list of requests, seeing the name of the player who accepted the bounty, their character info and any reply or comment if they had any.

In such a massive area, finding the culprit would prove difficult. But, bounties would have an exclusive mechanic to allow players the locate the the player by means of a bloodtrail that can only be seen by the player who accepted the bounty. If the player is offline, the bloodtrail goes cold, effectively reducing the chance of finding the player, as it should. When they are online the bloodtrail is hot, enabling you to resume your search. *Because bounty hunting will be dependent upon the availability of the culprit, the time will only count-down when they are in-game. (These time-limits are short because a massive amount of time like 1 week could mean a month of virtual time!)

Once you find the culprit and engage in battle with them, be careful. If you die the bounty can no longer be claimed by you and the contract between you and the poster will be terminated. 
**Being killed by your bounty will decrease your "expertise", a 1-5 star rating system that tells players whether or not you are up to the task. 1, being a new or unskilled bounty hunter and 5 being a player with a kill-rate above 75%. This would mean you are able to complete 3 out of every 4 bounties without being killed.

Unless a player accepts a bounty, killing the culprit will solve nothing. The bounty must be accepted, then, anytime you kill the player within the specific time limit the bounty will be completed.

A player cannot be helped. This is your bounty.
Make sure that you are able to accomplish the task. To prevent this, if another player besides you attacks the culprit there will be a reduction in the reward amount by 50%. This is a mechanic that automatically comes with accepting the bounty. However! If you find yourself in an inopportune situation such as:

-the culprit noticing you and running away
-the culprit running into a city
-the culprit having pking friends around him
-being distracted by real world situations... (need to eat, etc)

...you will have the ability to "disengage" the bounty, essentially making it so that if you engaged the culprit and find that you might be killed due to being teamed or being trolled or might not be able to catch up to the culprit, anything that happens to the culprit will not negatively impact your bounty. (Stolen or griefed bounties do not reduce your expertise level, only the reward) 

Even so, you will still be required to fulfill the posted time-limit! However, you can also "hold" the bounty. This sends a request to the poster to cancel the bounty mutually. You can also choose to cancel the bounty without addressing the poster resulting in a penalty fee. (This fee does not go to the poster.)

The system would be like this after deciding to hold the bounty request:
[Hold]*click*  
"Do you wish you alert the poster?"
 [Yes]   [No]*click*
"Do you wish to cancel the bounty?"
[Yes]*click*  [No]
"There will be a penalty fee of X amount, are you sure?"
[Yes]*click*  [No]

Now, if you are unable to complete the task within the time limit, your "expertise" rating may drop depending on your current kill-rate. 

**Players will higher "expertise" will be rewarded more for their services versus a new-comer or not so experienced bounty hunter. All rewards would be increased by 50% if you chose to hire a 5 star. This process all depends on the level of satisfaction that the poster of the bounty wants.

For a new bounty hunter who may be discouraged about the amount of 5 star hunters... advertise your skills! Comment to the poster that although you are a new bounty hunter, you have experience in PvP or have a certain build that would allow you to kill more effectively than other classes. This all centers around the poster of the bounty. Appeal to them and convince them! They just might spring for the cheapest option that looks capable enough.

~Thanks for reading. Tell me your opinions!

Comments

  • Since they have SWG veterans on staff, expect to see a similar system to what was there. Instead of seeker droids to locate your target, imagine seeker crows. If you are know those mechanics, they worked pretty well in allowing those with bounty missions to track those with bounties on them. Wasn't always perfect, and had some exploits, but was by far one of the better systems out there.
  • I like your idea! What I'm hoping to add to that is bounty worlds or realms where you put on your set of gear or bring a certain amount of loot that you're risking in this bounty world, then the more value of your loot the bigger label or price you have on your head. 

    I'm picturing Runescape's bounty hunter mini-game back in 2009-2012. Go check that out and see for yourself how cool it is to loot your kills and defend your title in the arena.
  • Ultima Online had a pretty good bounty system. Basically if someone PKed you, you had the option to report them and contribute a little gold into their bounty, but only people who'd been PKed by that person could report them. There's a board in town with all the bounties on it, and the more a person was reported/higher the bounty was, the higher on the list they were. If you attacked someone on the bounty list you didn't get negative karma for it and you would hack up their corpse and bring their head back to a guard for your reward. If the person didn't get reported again for , I think it was two weeks, their kills would start to drop off the board.  It allowed people who wanted to be notorious PKers to do that, and gave people who didn't a way to curtail their activities. I recall quite a few bounty hunters who just spent the whole game hunting down problem PKers. 
  • ArchivedUserArchivedUser Guest
    edited July 2017
    1. After you have engaged in combat, you shouldn't be able to "disengage bounty". In this case everyone would engage and if they are about to lose the fight they would just click "disengage option" to avoid negative rating mechanics.

    2. Question arises how to deal with "troll bounties", when someone wasn't really killed by anyone but he posts bounty anyway just to troll the person and send people after him to kill him.

    3. What if person doesn't have enough on bank account to pay for bounty. What if he has at the time when bounty is posted but spends it and when bounty is completed he doesn't have to pay the bounty hunter. If money is taken upfront where would it be kept. How would it be returned upon possible bounty fail (mail?), what amount of stress would that be on mail system. Any other options?

    4. How would mechanics deal with fights where bounty was posted against a person who just commited 1-2 PKs, but he is in fact green (he is not red player). What if he does not fight back, does game function with standard green / purple mechanics or differently.

    5. Time limit on posting the bounty after the kill? I suppose one does not get to wait 6 months after being killed then still able to put out bounty. :) It means time stamps of all the killings should be tracked and memorized, how much stress is that on game.

    6. blood trail would kind of make it "too easy" to find someone. Maybe this could be tweaked somehow. Deep red players will be marked on map, so for them it's easy find anyway. But (imho) player who commited just 1-2 PKs shouldn't be too easy to track.

    There is probably more questions involved here to think about. :)
  • Gothix said:
    1. After you have engaged in combat, you shouldn't be able to "disengage bounty". In this case everyone would engage and if they are about to lose the fight they would just click "disengage option" to avoid negative rating mechanics.

    2. Question arises how to deal with "troll bounties", when someone wasn't really killed by anyone but he posts bounty anyway just to troll the person and send people after him to kill him.

    3. What if person doesn't have enough on bank account to pay for bounty. What if he has at the time when bounty is posted but spends it and when bounty is completed he doesn't have to pay the bounty hunter. If money is taken upfront where would it be kept. How would it be returned upon possible bounty fail (mail?), what amount of stress would that be on mail system. Any other options?

    4. How would mechanics deal with fights where bounty was posted against a person who just commited 1-2 PKs, but he is in fact green (he is not red player). What if he does not fight back, does game function with standard green / purple mechanics or differently.

    5. Time limit on posting the bounty after the kill? I suppose one does not get to wait 6 months after being killed then still able to put out bounty. :) It means time stamps of all the killings should be tracked and memorized, how much stress is that on game.

    6. blood trail would kind of make it "too easy" to find someone. Maybe this could be tweaked somehow. Deep red players will be marked on map, so for them it's easy find anyway. But (imho) player who commited just 1-2 PKs shouldn't be too easy to track.

    There is probably more questions involved here to think about. :)
    Ah, IGothix said:
    1. After you have engaged in combat, you shouldn't be able to "disengage bounty". In this case everyone would engage and if they are about to lose the fight they would just click "disengage option" to avoid negative rating mechanics.

    2. Question arises how to deal with "troll bounties", when someone wasn't really killed by anyone but he posts bounty anyway just to troll the person and send people after him to kill him.

    3. What if person doesn't have enough on bank account to pay for bounty. What if he has at the time when bounty is posted but spends it and when bounty is completed he doesn't have to pay the bounty hunter. If money is taken upfront where would it be kept. How would it be returned upon possible bounty fail (mail?), what amount of stress would that be on mail system. Any other options?

    4. How would mechanics deal with fights where bounty was posted against a person who just commited 1-2 PKs, but he is in fact green (he is not red player). What if he does not fight back, does game function with standard green / purple mechanics or differently.

    5. Time limit on posting the bounty after the kill? I suppose one does not get to wait 6 months after being killed then still able to put out bounty. :) It means time stamps of all the killings should be tracked and memorized, how much stress is that on game.

    6. blood trail would kind of make it "too easy" to find someone. Maybe this could be tweaked somehow. Deep red players will be marked on map, so for them it's easy find anyway. But (imho) player who commited just 1-2 PKs shouldn't be too easy to track.

    There is probably more questions involved here to think about. :)
    Ah... I'm discouraged. 
  • (burp)
  • Why necro your own thread?

    Let it RIP man :)
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