Bounty Hunting Balancing

koltovince

Hello everyone, I wanted to raise a discussion around the bounty hunting system. I know its still barely even A2, and the system will probably receive multiple iterations before the game comes out. But the current iteration brings some questions to mind I would like to hear from others on.

Currently the bounty hunter system is the Military Node's progression system upon hitting tier 4 comparable to the teleports, auction houses, and divine crypt of other nodes. Players who progress the bounty hunting system will have a pathfinding ability to track down corrupted players, and will be in a special state of purple against corrupted players.

The issue is this state of purple. Corrupted players receive no additional penalties from killing bounty hunters, nor is there stat dampening in effect when fighting a bounty hunter. The only additional gain is tracking a corrupted player which can lead to traps. A green player will have far more incentive to kill the red player than a bounty hunter, and have an easier time.

This leads to my question, would players accept the stat dampening/increased corruption on kill being even more amplified when fighting a bounty hunter? If the bounty hunting system is a military nodes special feature and it is designed to make corruption even riskier, shouldn't the bounty hunter be something than makes corrupted players worry instead of feeling relief its not another green player coming at them? Thoughts and opinions?

Wiki link for those who want it: https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Bounty_hunters

Taleof2Cities

Bounty hunters have the advantage of being able to locate corrupted on the game map … which is a pretty big advantage, koltovince.

The bounty hunter can also bring a group if they wish.

To me, it’s no different than any other flagged PvP encounter.

As you say, there’s a lot of testing still to be done on the mechanic.

While I don’t think steeper corruption penalties are the answer, I’m keeping an open mind that players and devs can arrive at a consensus.

Dolyem

Seeing as bounty hunting is dependent on a healthy population of corrupted player activity (as it is currently designed anyway), making corruption even more punishing than it already is (and its already massively punishing) is probably going to do more harm than good.
That being said, we know pretty much nothing about what entails the progression system for bounty hunting, benefits such as types of rewards or skills aside from pathfinding, how difficult it is to progress within the system, which different services you can actually partake in aside from just hunting corrupted players. I would just wait until we get a much more fleshed out version of it to see what direction they wish to go with it.

I will also add that bounty hunting is one of the weird systems featured in ashes, because while corruption is meant to not be actively done, the bounty hunting system, as it is, completely relies on corruption being somewhat common to, at the most, uncommon if it is to be relevant. So its a bit of a contradiction.

koltovince

Taleof2Cities wrote: »

Bounty hunters have the advantage of being able to locate corrupted on the game map … which is a pretty big advantage, koltovince.

The bounty hunter can also bring a group if they wish.

To me, it’s no different than any other flagged PvP encounter.

As you say, there’s a lot of testing still to be done on the mechanic.

While I don’t think steeper corruption penalties are the answer, I’m keeping an open mind that players and devs can arrive at a consensus.

Only reason I didn't bring up groups is on the wiki it says a BH must land the kill in order to get credit, but they also admit the system may change. Tracking is a big deal, but I just view the current system as having bounty hunters little more than glorified trackers than actual punishers of corruption.

Here is hoping the system is expanded beyond corruption hunting.

Arya_Yeshe

There will be barely any corrupted players

CROW3

I’m treating the BH system as just concept until the corruption system has been calibrated to support core PvX gameplay.

Keeps expectations grounded.