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System for Bounty Hunters to Return Stolen Goods
Sengarden
Member
What if, upon the death of a green player in a PvP scenario, any items they drop are flagged in a way that makes them "hot". I know Steven already said about a year ago that corrupted players will be prevented from P2P trading while corrupted, but this seems needlessly restrictive when corruption could potentially last a very long time. I still think corrupted players should be able to trade non-stolen goods with whatever allies they still have. What if instead of completely blocking off their trade capacity, they were instead prevented from selling or trading any items stolen from green players? The items are already singled out and identified by the system when they drop from the player, could they not theoretically be flagged as stolen goods and given a timed trade lock-out?
In the system I imagine, if a corrupted player carrying any of these "hot" items is killed, the entirety of them would be dropped from their person. If another corrupted player picks them up, the "hot" flag timer resets. If a green or purple player kills them, the "hot" flag would shift to a new flag: "Property of [victim], this/these [item name](s) may be returned to its/their owner for gold or additional bounty credits."
Once this new flag has been applied, whoever carries the victim's property may seek them out and return them via player trade, or perhaps just mail them back if there's a post system. The player returning the stolen goods will receive a gold reward for doing so. Not nearly as much as the items are worth (to avoid creating too much wealth out of thin air) but enough to incentivize being a "good samaritan". Maybe the percentage of the goods' approximate value paid out to the friendly player can be set by the government of the player's home node, almost like insurance for the mayor's citizens. For example, the local government could use taxes to pay 500 gold / week in order to pay out 25% of the returned items value, or they could pay 1000 gold / week to pay out 50%. The higher proportion of gatherers prone to PKing in a mayor's community, the higher their chances are of having lots of artisans and money in their community, and the larger tax pool they'll likely have to draw on to insure their community's stolen goods. If the player returning the stolen goods happens to be a bounty hunter, they can choose to instead receive additional bounty hunter credit/experience for their bounty hunter system progress relative to the approximate value of the items returned.
After this secondary flag has been applied, the new carrier can still choose to pocket the goods for themselves or choose to sell them elsewhere if they wish, the goods are not longer hot. However, I think it would add a touch of social encouragement to bring justice to non-PVP-flagged victims of PKing, perhaps giving some players a moral nudge when they're attempting to be the "good guy" by killing corrupted players, only to then consider selling off something marked as another player's stolen property. As it stands now, green players who lose their goods to corrupt players don't actually get any justice when someone else kills the thief. I think something like this could amend that. What do you think?
TL;DR: The current bounty hunter system doesn't do much to actually bring justice to green player victims of PKing. Stolen goods from green players could be flagged as "hot", making them untradeable for a certain period of time as long as they're carried by a corrupted player, then have their owner's name "stamped" on them when retrieved by a green/purple player who kills the thief. These items become tradeable/sellable again, but could instead be returned to their original owner for a small gold or bounty hunter "credit" incentive.
In the system I imagine, if a corrupted player carrying any of these "hot" items is killed, the entirety of them would be dropped from their person. If another corrupted player picks them up, the "hot" flag timer resets. If a green or purple player kills them, the "hot" flag would shift to a new flag: "Property of [victim], this/these [item name](s) may be returned to its/their owner for gold or additional bounty credits."
Once this new flag has been applied, whoever carries the victim's property may seek them out and return them via player trade, or perhaps just mail them back if there's a post system. The player returning the stolen goods will receive a gold reward for doing so. Not nearly as much as the items are worth (to avoid creating too much wealth out of thin air) but enough to incentivize being a "good samaritan". Maybe the percentage of the goods' approximate value paid out to the friendly player can be set by the government of the player's home node, almost like insurance for the mayor's citizens. For example, the local government could use taxes to pay 500 gold / week in order to pay out 25% of the returned items value, or they could pay 1000 gold / week to pay out 50%. The higher proportion of gatherers prone to PKing in a mayor's community, the higher their chances are of having lots of artisans and money in their community, and the larger tax pool they'll likely have to draw on to insure their community's stolen goods. If the player returning the stolen goods happens to be a bounty hunter, they can choose to instead receive additional bounty hunter credit/experience for their bounty hunter system progress relative to the approximate value of the items returned.
After this secondary flag has been applied, the new carrier can still choose to pocket the goods for themselves or choose to sell them elsewhere if they wish, the goods are not longer hot. However, I think it would add a touch of social encouragement to bring justice to non-PVP-flagged victims of PKing, perhaps giving some players a moral nudge when they're attempting to be the "good guy" by killing corrupted players, only to then consider selling off something marked as another player's stolen property. As it stands now, green players who lose their goods to corrupt players don't actually get any justice when someone else kills the thief. I think something like this could amend that. What do you think?
TL;DR: The current bounty hunter system doesn't do much to actually bring justice to green player victims of PKing. Stolen goods from green players could be flagged as "hot", making them untradeable for a certain period of time as long as they're carried by a corrupted player, then have their owner's name "stamped" on them when retrieved by a green/purple player who kills the thief. These items become tradeable/sellable again, but could instead be returned to their original owner for a small gold or bounty hunter "credit" incentive.
3
Comments
The green player lost the goods the moment he died. Why should you bring anything back to them rather than pocketibg it yourself
I thought about this as well. So like I said in my post, once the items are recovered from the corrupted player, they're not longer "hot", they're no longer untradeable. The BH can choose to keep them or sell them if they want to, I think they should be entitled to do that. They're the ones who did the work of killing the thief, after all. However, I think there will be some groups of BHs (I could see myself enjoying being part of a group like this) who take on the BH role in order to maintain a degree of peace and justice within a given region. Almost more like being a group of traditional knights following somewhat of a simple code of chivalry.
I suppose limiting the benefits to BHs would be a way to encourage more players to get involved in the BH system. But yes, I think including a sub-system like this would help smooth over some fears I've seen expressed by PvE/crafting/gathering-oriented players in regards to the PvX nature of the game.
Regarding rewards, if Joe Cool lost his stack of stone, then Joe Cool can offer a reward. Joe's reward is basically offering to buy stone, whether it is the stone he dropped or not, since stone is fungible.
I think that the system suggested by the OP is not necessary and overly complex. Sorry, but a thumbs down from me.
When writing my original post, my perspective on this was that corrupted players were potentially going to be given "rewards" for killing bounty hunters. I assumed this meant they had their own incentives in place. Upon further inspection of the Wiki footnote referencing this claim, I've found the video they reference is now private and unviewable. I haven't seen any other mention of this type of incentive. Given all that, I now believe Steven must be on the track you've described here, and I agree. Regardless, items stolen from green players could still be tagged with their name and be returned for an incentive.
The main issue with this would be - how will the BH know who any recovered stolen items belonged to? I'm starting to think perhaps a gold reward is a wrong way to go, and agree with @NiKr that this incentive should be reserved for BHs. In such a case, perhaps the BH credit/experience (however that will work) should only be given if the stolen goods are returned without payment, or perhaps given as a ratio in correspondence to any other approximate value of wealth or goods given in exchange for the return of the stolen goods. If you want to bounty hunt to take stolen goods for yourself and sell them somewhere, that's fine. But I think at least offering some incentive for their return would be nice, giving BHs an opportunity to be rewarded for doing something kind to the player who suffered so that they could have content.
Corrupted players only exist when they kill other players not flagged for PvP. In other words, the BH system wouldn't exist if green players weren't around to be griefed by PKers. If there's no system in place for the community to help track down the owners of stolen goods and at least have the option of returning them for some non-game-breaking incentive, I think you'll see fewer green players in this game over time. The more green players (PvE-centric gatherers and crafters) you disincentivize from playing the game, the fewer corrupted players you'll have in turn, and the more meaningless the BH system will become.
Corrupted players can't trade. Seems like that "period of time" on the looted resources would have ended by the time Corruption ends.
Resources don't need names stamped on them. That's an odd concept.
I don't think there should be a monetary incentive for returning goods. The incentive would be improving your standing, the reputation of your group and region with a particular player and their associates. That behavior would encourage players of all kinds to traffic the areas you and your party defend. This could mean taking a longer route to ensure their safety and spending their resources at your node during travel. It could mean that a gatherer/crafter becomes a citizen of your node. A BH may also just sell the goods for some quick cash. So long as it's simply flagging these items differently to facilitate gameplay, this change could be implemented relatively easily.
Except that Mr Goodly doesn't know whether the items came from Mr. Green or Mr. Lime. He just followed the "Corrupted Player" map marker he got as a Bounty Hunter from a nearby military node.
Sure Mr. Green can tell him they're his. But so can Mr. Lime. More than that? They could both be right. Mr. Red has many victims.
It doesn't matter who the rocks came from.
They are all just equivalent to money. There isn't an emotional attachement to a couple of ressources.
If you want to give rocks aka. gold to somebody who recently lost some, then you can. Nothing stops you from doing that
Not like its gear or a mount.
I just feel you might be oversimplifying this. Again, anyone can go around saying they had something stolen from them, but why should you believe them? Besides, no one’s gonna waste time crying in chat because they got PKd. No one “puts out bounties” and lists all the stuff they had stolen from them. And even if they did, there’s no verification for their claims. This is verification. Like SongRune said, the BHs just follow their map markers whenever they show up. They don’t get involved with victims at all.
I would argue corruption isn’t really justice though. Corruption is sending the police after the guy who stole your stuff and giving evidence to the judge jury and executioner (BHs), if they can even catch up with the guy and actually take him out. So the corrupted player maybe gets killed once, and drops some stuff that wasn’t even his and maybe a piece of gear, none of which the green player will never see - why would the green player care?
That’s like having your car broken into and a bunch of your stuff stolen, giving a perfect view from a dash cam to the police, being told they’ll send out a team to try and track down the thief, and never hearing (or getting anything) back again, knowing that if the police did find him and your stuff, they either sold it for money or kept it all for themselves. Also, you can’t put any contact info on your police report, so they’ll never be able to contact you or verify that any of the stuff the thief stole was yours, even if they wanted to return it. Is corruption a deterrent for PKing? Yes. But it seems like a vague sense of “justice” to me.
As for the stamps, I don’t imagine them needing to last more than a half hour. After that, the goods just go back to looking as ordinary as anything else. Hell, for all I care, the player who picks the stuff up can choose to dismiss the tag whenever they want. I’m not trying to impede on anyone’s right to BH as they wish, I just think there should be a system in place to help BHs who want to help other players out a bit (while still getting some non-stolen loot and BH EXP from the thief).
The BH system sounds like fun to get involved in, I think I would enjoy it, but I would hate to see a lot of the PvErs who’ve already expressed fears about losing resources on death be dissuaded from playing the way they want - again, drastically reducing the opportunity for BHs to have any real meaning or regular work to do. It doesn’t sound like anyone offering any critical feedback has any interest in being one of these green players, I don’t either, but we all sure seem to enjoy the idea of Bounty Hunting, even if for different purposes.
Keeping or selling the stuff stolen from PKed players that gave you your BH role in the first place is like getting high on your own supply. Eventually, those “corruption farms” are going to get fed up and choose a new line of work.
I think this is the general idea, yep.
I mean it will probably go something like this:
Some people are just Lawful Good or Lawful Blue.
I don't know how much I'll bounty hunt yet, but I'm certainly the sort of person who would. I'm not there to make money. I'm there to have fights with serious players. The money's a nice benefit, but I'm still often (but not always) closer to being "there to bring justice".
Besides, returning the items is a great way to get called when there are reds about, which is a pure benefit to me. And returning the items to the wrong person because I've been lied to is a great way to not get called again. I'm a hunter, don't make me play judge.
So have I just been looking at the BH system wrong from the beginning then? Is it supposed to just slowly devolve in meaning and purpose as the game reveals itself as less and less accommodating to non-PvPers until there are hardly any opportunities (green players who don’t fight back) for corrupted players to appear at all?
It just seems weird to have this entire game system devoted to solving a problem that will mostly solve itself if the source of the content (green players who don’t fight back) eventually change their gameplay style or leave the game. The BH system isn’t any real sense of justice for the victim, I certainly wouldn’t feel that way if I got PKed and some rando got to have gameplay content and extra loot (my stuff) because I decided to play the game the way I wanted. And knowing how chaotic this game will be at launch, greens will be getting picked off all the time. I think there will be very strong encouragement for them to either go purple in fights, get better at evading, or find something else to do. Which... means a lot less for BHs to do.
If that’s the goal of the system, then that’s fine I guess. I was just trying to think of a way to preserve that green player base and give them a reason to feel like maybe it’s okay to keep playing green, so that BHs can keep having content.
If the green player “feels like the corruption on the attacker is worth the loss of materials”? I still have no idea how you guys think corruption will feel like a satisfying punishment. They just stole all your stuff. If anyone kills them and gets it back, you’ll never see it again. And you’ll never know if they were successfully hunted down anyway. So with that in mind, I feel like most green players will eventually learn to just always go purple in fights to mitigate losses, because who cares if any of that stuff happens to the one that attacked them?
The majority are either going to learn how to defend themselves or quit the game out of frustration. If you’re cool with losing the majority of the content that gives any sense of meaning to the BH system, that’s fine. Maybe that’s how it’s supposed to work. But it seems like Intrepid plans for it to be a complex enough gameplay system with talents and levels to the point where it would be a shame for the source of that content (green players not fighting back) to dry up and leave BHs without much of anything to do.
With no prejudice to anything else you've written, here's a concept for "how people think that":
Punishment is never "reparations". Those are separate concepts in legal systems for a reason. The punishment you inflict by turning them corrupt is the vindictive payback of "Fuck you. You wanna kill me? I may not be able to beat you, but I can get your ass killed by some professional red hunters." Reparations are not offered by the system, for better or for worse, and that's intended. Steven wants you to have to fight for your resources back.
The other important thing to consider though, is that Corruption is not intended as a punishment for PKing at all. It is intended as a deterrent. The difference is subtle but these too are separate concepts. The goal of corruption is specifically not to stop PK ganking. It's to stop PK ganking streaks. If someone comes and beats you up and takes your stuff, that's supposed to happen. If someone harasses you and constantly tries to take your stuff, you're supposed to be able to call them an asshole and put a bounty on their head. That bounty is Corruption, and the payout is "the mats they took from you". (Or, you know, didn't, if you're baiting a particular gank-happy pest with a relatively empty inventory.) Someone has to pay out bounties even IRL right?
The reason corruption penalties increase progressively is so that they specifically do not prevent ganking, but so that they instead make it harder to gank a lot, against people who can't stand up to you.
Will this work as a whole? That's a separate question. But "having your mats stolen by a stronger player from time to time, if you can't manage to fight back" is the intended gameplay of Ashes of Creation, and the intended "satisfying outcome" is killing the attacker yourself, and your mats they're now holding are your payment to a bounty hunter to do it for you. Corruption is a Slow, not a Stun.
I mean that's very easy.
Just to name a few.
I suppose when you break it down like that, it makes more sense to me. Sort of like paying taxes for police to (hopefully) do their job, and they bring your stuff back to you if they can because you already “pay them” through taxation. Here, things are a little more haphazard in terms of “payment for retribution” being the things that were taken from you, which could be anything, so even the bounty hunters take risks sometimes with the effort they put into the hunt. But it’s a medieval fantasy society. There’s plenty of risk involved with whatever you do.
I guess the question of how well this will work as a method of (in the end) trying to maintain a diverse player base of PvP-oriented, PvE-oriented and PvX-oriented individuals is what drove me to start thinking about this concept, but it’s obviously impossible to know one way or the other until the game is live. Even in testing, I don’t have think we’ll get a truly full idea of it’s effectiveness, since I imagine a lot of people uninterested enough in PvP to be playing green out in the open all the time won’t be interested enough in the game to play the test phases. I think most of them will come in to “try it out” once it’s launched. Again, for the sake of the bounty hunter system remaining relevant, I hope it delivers enough satisfaction for them and deterrence for PKers to achieve the desired result.
That’s fair. I guess I was mostly thinking about this situation occurring when the player was on their own, but hopefully if they’re PvE oriented enough to be primarily involved in the economic system, they’ll also have enough allies who care enough about their contribution to the economy to join them or who’d be willing to come to their aid if they do lose a fair amount of resources. Rival node dynamics could push that further as well.
Hopefully the PvP system will encourage these social dynamics enough in order to balance out most PKing occurrences, though in that case, bounty hunting may simply be little more than an occasional bite of side content.
In the end, I’d just hate to see them put a bunch of effort into this bounty hunter system (that I’ve already seen some people trying to form entire guilds around) only for it to not feel satisfactory enough for green players to stay green or stay in the game at all, and have that awesome concept lose its purpose because it’s not doing enough to preserve a green player base. Hard to say for sure, but that’s the core purpose of my concept. I understand if you think it’s doing too much to “protect” one group of players over others or simply won’t be necessary. I just hope you’re right!
If corrupt players can trade, then they can give equipped gear and other items that could be dropped to friends in order to protect the gear. The risk of losing gear is supposed to exist as part of the deterrent from going corrupt.