Whoops - Did we kill our Bounty Hunting System?

ArchivedUser

I have a "small" concern and it's basically this.

The anti-Player Killing system of Corruption does the following:

• Makes it more and more likely you will lose a gear peice
• Makes your stats diminish
• Makes you a free target to attack
• Will eventually mark you on a map for players to find and kill
• 3-4x the durability loss of gear AND Experience debt upon death
• Corruption can only be removed through death and quests
• Bounty Hunters get to see you on their map and make $$$ by killing you

This is of course in addition to killing a Non-Combatant Only giving you a portion of the resources they carry, and HALF of that % if they flag up (as a combatant) and fight back.

It seems to me that Player Killing is ALL Punishment and does such a good job of detering PKers that it might not be worth Bounty Hunting unless the reward Money is pretty high which ultimately acts as an even larger deterrent!

Bounty Hunters will have no targets!
Add on to that the fact that this game will be subscription based and there won't be any  many 14 year olds going around lol-troll killing

ArchivedUser

Bounty hunting will probably not be a full time gig and instead be a more reactive activity. You aren't going to log on and decide to bounty hunt. You will log on, do another activity, and if someone starts screaming about a corrupted player, you will go hunt them down. 

Resources and potential of gear will be incentives but there will hopefully also be more personal reasons for hunting down pks. Without fast travel people wont move around as much so you will get to know the people in the nodes around you. As you get to know them, you will gain that extra reason to fight. Whether it's because the person attacked is someone you like or the person doing the attacking is some you don't like, you will have that extra motivation to get involved.

ArchivedUser

McStackerson said:

Bounty hunting will probably not be a full time gig and instead be a more reactive activity. You aren't going to log on and decide to bounty hunt. You will log on, do another activity, and if someone starts screaming about a corrupted player, you will go hunt them down. 

Oh you know there will be people playing bounty hunters just going around with the potion launcher and a leather cap and a wide rim hat  

ArchivedUser

nagash said:

McStackerson said:

Bounty hunting will probably not be a full time gig and instead be a more reactive activity. You aren't going to log on and decide to bounty hunt. You will log on, do another activity, and if someone starts screaming about a corrupted player, you will go hunt them down. 

Oh you know there will be people playing bounty hunters just going around with the potion launcher and a leather cap and a wide rim hat  

Just like we all know there will never be a lack of Pkers wandering the game world looking for easy targets to ambush.

ArchivedUser

CylverRayne said:

nagash said:

McStackerson said:

Bounty hunting will probably not be a full time gig and instead be a more reactive activity. You aren't going to log on and decide to bounty hunt. You will log on, do another activity, and if someone starts screaming about a corrupted player, you will go hunt them down. 

Oh you know there will be people playing bounty hunters just going around with the potion launcher and a leather cap and a wide rim hat  

Just like we all know there will never be a lack of Pkers wandering the game world looking for easy targets to ambush.

Now your getting into the spirt ^^ 

ArchivedUser

CylverRayne said:

Just like we all know there will never be a lack of Pkers wandering the game world looking for easy targets to ambush.

But as I listed in the OP, the deterrent are so strong and the rewards of a PK so meager I seriously doubt there will be very many out there

ArchivedUser

Digital_Wind said:

CylverRayne said:

Just like we all know there will never be a lack of Pkers wandering the game world looking for easy targets to ambush.

But as I listed in the OP, the deterrent are so strong and the rewards of a PK so meager I seriously doubt there will be very many out there

Working as intended.

ArchivedUser

UnknownSystemError said:

Digital_Wind said:

CylverRayne said:

Just like we all know there will never be a lack of Pkers wandering the game world looking for easy targets to ambush.

But as I listed in the OP, the deterrent are so strong and the rewards of a PK so meager I seriously doubt there will be very many out there

Working as intended.

Too well?

The only way I could see this working in the long run is if you could place individual bounties on players.

ArchivedUser

Eh PKers are a blight and something that shouldn't be coddled. I like how this game is handling it where you can if you really want and if the attacked fights back, good on them, less loss; however, if they don't, well that is your loss.

ArchivedUser

Loyheta said:

Eh PKers are a blight and something that shouldn't be coddled. I like how this game is handling it where you can if you really want and if the attacked fights back, good on them, less loss; however, if they don't, well that is your loss.

Agreed...however, we will have this wonderful bounty hunting system...for bounties that might not even exist!

ArchivedUser

Digital_Wind said:

It seems to me that Player Killing is ALL Punishment and does such a good job of detering PKers that it might not be worth Bounty Hunting unless the reward Money is pretty high which ultimately acts as an even larger deterrent!

Its not all punishment. Only if you kill green non-combatant players. You can still PK freely all flagged players and those who are corrupted already. And i am sure there will still be enough corrupted players to hunt for. 

ArchivedUser

Ferryman said:

Digital_Wind said:

It seems to me that Player Killing is ALL Punishment and does such a good job of detering PKers that it might not be worth Bounty Hunting unless the reward Money is pretty high which ultimately acts as an even larger deterrent!

Its not all punishment. Only if you kill green non-combatant players. You can still PK freely all flagged players and those who are corrupted already. And i am sure there will still be enough corrupted players to hunt for. 

Ah, but then you won't gain corruption which is YET ANOTHER reason how they have accidentally uber-nerfed Bounty Hunting.

ArchivedUser

Bounty hunting is just an incentive to hunt down the awful corrupted people. I think I'd die laughing if they added something like 'No logging out while corrupted'.

Who knows, maybe they'll add titles and secret cosmetics and skills for going corrupt and add another set of bonuses for bounty hunters. That'd be enough of an incentive to PK and if people are going red, people will be going bounty hunter. Maybe they'll add NPC corrupt players just so that bounty hunting doesn't die out.

To me, not many red people is not a negative to me... even if it costs bounty hunter content.

ArchivedUser

I bet we see a similar system to SWG Jedi vs BH. Doesn't matter if they log, the mission doesn't go away. Next time they log on, the BH gets a message. There were two classes of mission there also. NPC and player. The npc ones used the same mechanics but the AI was weak, they basically would just run away in a straight line till you caught them, then after a brief fight, then mission over. I spent a fair amount of time being hunted as a jedi under the old system before they changed the game and let everyone be a jedi, and the amount of stupid shit I would do to avoid the BH was hilarious. In SWG you could place up to 10 houses. Like Ashes, anywhere that didn't fall inside their restrictions, which were few. So if I was out in the wilderness grinding away levelling my jedi powers, having minimap set at max distance, saw a player blip or blips appear on radar, I would drop a house. Run inside and wait them out while they played 3 little pigs trying to huff and puff and blow the house down. Which of course wasn't a thing. Log out inside the house, and go play a different character. Log on later, rinse/repeat. Do not underestimate the lengths people will go to to avoid an in-game penalty time sink. IS will have its share of "exploits" also, their success in the eternal battle will be how they react to them.

ArchivedUser

That was a nice explaination @UnknownSystemError and @Loyheta I do like the idea of NPC missions.

Seeing as how there will be levels of BH progression all starting from a quest, I could see a Military node having NPC quests as I would imagine Bounty Hunting to grind out those levels would be quite the chore.

ArchivedUser

To address the original point...

Intrepid will always want to maintain a certain level of corruption accruing in the game, specifically to maintain the Bounty Hunter path as viable, but also to make it so that open PvP continues to provide the sense of potential danger that it is in the game in the first place to provide.

Fortunately, Intrepid will have many levers they can push and pull to ensure this will happen. They can increase or decrease the amount of corruption gained when a green player is killed, and could even make this change specific to a given level range (or level delta). They could alter the amount of corruption needed before items start having a chance to drop when a corrupt player is killed, or they could alter the amount of corruption that is lost when a corrupt player is killed.

All of these things (if noted accurately in patch notes) will have an immediate impact on the amount of PK's that actually happen in the game, and once Intrepid have an idea on how players will behave, they will be able to swing these levers like a nerf bat to exhort a fairly predictable player response.

It will be somewhat similar to what the developers were talking about in the last live stream in regards to the economy - they will have targets in regards to corruption, and they will have tools to help maintain those targets. After that, it is just a matter of being vigilant.

ArchivedUser

Digital_Wind said:

Ferryman said:

Digital_Wind said:

It seems to me that Player Killing is ALL Punishment and does such a good job of detering PKers that it might not be worth Bounty Hunting unless the reward Money is pretty high which ultimately acts as an even larger deterrent!

Its not all punishment. Only if you kill green non-combatant players. You can still PK freely all flagged players and those who are corrupted already. And i am sure there will still be enough corrupted players to hunt for. 

Ah, but then you won't gain corruption which is YET ANOTHER reason how they have accidentally uber-nerfed Bounty Hunting.

Yeah but you are just presuming and guessing that there wont be enough corrupted players. It is for sure there will be players with corruption, but how much is something we will have to wait and see. Also we have to remember that bounty hunter system is there to restrict ganking behaviour and not a feature, which controls the corruption system. So the base idea is not to get bounty hunting system work perfectly at cost of making ganking easier for example.

Bounty hunting will also be a feature, which easily balances itself. If there is lots of bountyhunters in specific area, it might easily lead to less ganking. People wont gank that much if they most certainly will be hunted down in no time. But after there is less crime and less gankers, then other players will drop bountyhunting or go hunting somewhere else. When bountyhunters leave, then ganking behaviour raises again. And when gankers have come back, will soon come bountyhunters too. So i see this system goes a little bit up and down all the time, but will be balanced by the players actions.

I am personally very interested of bountyhunter system, but i have no doubts it would not work. And NPC quest/bountyhunts sounds really interesting and something that should be implemented. I dont want to see just faceroll content, but seriously hard and deadly minibosses would be nice. Also some could be really hard to find or catch.

ArchivedUser

This is one system that will require close scrutiny during alpha - assigning players as designated PKers while their targets either actively defend or play "target dummy" will require understanding and patience from the testers. Proper data analytics and communication from all sides could be the make-or-break factors. 

While the closest one could see is the devs and alpha testers finding an imperfect balance this might not translate to the move to beta and launch. Can imagine seeing constant tweaks of the system for months after launch.

It's not dead yet, Jim. Just need to be careful not to put it on life support during testing.

ArchivedUser

If one wanted to hide from other players and bounty hunt NPCs, would it not be much easier to just go play any flavor of Assasins Creed?

ArchivedUser

ChuckSteak said:

If one wanted to hide from other players and bounty hunt NPCs, would it not be much easier to just go play any flavor of Assasins Creed?

Most likely there will also be NPC bounty hunting, but those will be more like tasks/quests, which relates to this bountyhunting guild/faction or what ever it will be called. There will be other ingame guilds/factions too, which have own quests, benefits, maybe vendors. 

ArchivedUser

I hope so @Ferryman there is going to have to be alot of bells and whistle on the Bounty Hunting system to keep it alive

• NPC Hunters or more likely, Targets
• Daily Quests
• Quests Lines
• In-game BH guilds (factions or alliances, not player run guilds)
• Special cosemetic vendors for kills
• Hidden skills like they've hinted

@ChuckSteak Probably...but then again, a Ranger would be able to track them faster and possibly escape faster too.  Also there will be map markers for approximate player locations - stealth won't do much good if a mage could simply dispel the area.

ArchivedUser

@Digital_Wind
Corruption can also* be removed via doing Quests from Religions Node. But it is meant to ... " cleanse the corruption "  slowly

ArchivedUser

@Digital_Wind
What do you think about being able to place bounties on players regardless of corruption? If that were possible it would make bounty hunting as a full time profession much more plausible. There are plenty of reasons for placing bounties on players apart from being PK'd, especially when you take RP into consideration.

ArchivedUser

Aeson said:

@Digital_Wind
What do you think about being able to place bounties on players regardless of corruption? If that were possible it would make bounty hunting as a full time profession much more plausible. There are plenty of reasons for placing bounties on players apart from being PK'd, especially when you take RP into consideration.

I love the Idea, I think it would be great to have player placed Bounties - gives us more Agency.  Imagine Guilds placing bounties on enemy guild leaders?  Or that guy stealing your Flower Picking spot, or some troll talking shit in chat.

Corruption might have to be included when attacking these targets, there is a difference between Bounty Hunting and Assassianations

ArchivedUser

Digital_Wind said:

Corruption might have to be included when attacking these targets, there is a difference between Bounty Hunting and Assassinations

Would have to be or there would be the temptation for "ganking by proxy".

Would be interesting to to see a "Catch Me if You Can" game mode wherein a player posts a bounty on themselves and the first to track down and kill them would receive a pre-selected reward.

ArchivedUser

Digital_Wind said:

I love the Idea, I think it would be great to have player placed Bounties - .....   or some troll talking shit in chat.

LOL would be funny if a person got hit with spam or report in chat 20 times by different random people he got tagged for corruption as a "Troll" with Troll skin  on a timer, they would be hunted by Troll Hunters with similar system as bounty hunters.   That would probably resolve Tolls and Spam. 

Sorry was just laughing when I read this and the thought just came to mind.

ArchivedUser

That's actually pretty funny. +1

ArchivedUser

Dorje said:

Digital_Wind said:

I love the Idea, I think it would be great to have player placed Bounties - .....   or some troll talking shit in chat.

LOL would be funny if a person got hit with spam or report in chat 20 times by different random people he got tagged for corruption as a "Troll" with Troll skin  on a timer, they would be hunted by Troll Hunters with similar system as bounty hunters.   That would probably resolve Tolls and Spam. 

Sorry was just laughing when I read this and the thought just came to mind.

Really funny and cool. However, I think there would be troll guilds just coordinating flags to turn random people into trolls. I think the best way to handle this system is to allow GMs or Mods designate players and give them the ability to do this in-game. That is up to them to think of a system to implement this. However, without the ability to become a 'judge' so-to-say, this system would be abused like any other.

ArchivedUser

I think the idea of bounty hunters not having targets could be misleading, if you log on and devote your time on bounty hunting in a world with no instant traveling, you will eventually find people corrupted. It all depends on the communities involvement also, you shouldn't only rely on your map but also the community.

Because people will always have a false sense of security out doing there thing, they might say "aw this area never has pk'ers around" but it will happen eventually. Say I'm gathering materials in an area far from town along with another player farming the same thing. Guess what, he/she can decide to kill me and loot what I farmed after an hour doubling the mats he gained by looting me.

I think corruption will be more of an opportunistic venture rather then just killing someone for the hell of it. As I understand it, the World is going to be very big along with a fog of war if you haven't explored an area yet. So I'm not sure if a bounty hunter will see corrupted players on the map if he hasn't yet explored that area which contains the corrupted player?

ArchivedUser

Let the hunting of 14 year old troll-gankers begin!!!  Steven's vision is for pvp to have meaning, not to incentivized a murder-fest of unflagged lowbies.  I'm not too sad if bounty hunting is reduced to a small portion of what honorable players do in their day.

ArchivedUser

Loyheta said:

Really funny and cool. However, I think there would be troll guilds just coordinating flags to turn random people into trolls. I think the best way to handle this system is to allow GMs or Mods designate players and give them the ability to do this in-game. That is up to them to think of a system to implement this. However, without the ability to become a 'judge' so-to-say, this system would be abused like any other.

I'd love to see "designate troll" as something moderators can do. Just send them a message "look dude, we've seen this, its not cool, if you don't cool down, you're spending three days as a troll, and everyone will be able to hunt you all they like" (and trolls get auto attacked by the NPC guards in larger towns).