Bounty Hunters: Essential or Afterthought?

While I believe that during the early alpha many players will engage in corruption to test the system and find potential loopholes, I am confident that Intrepid Studios will refine the corruption penalties to meet their intended goals before the official launch. If this happens, much like in Lineage 2, corruption might not be a significant issue. Players are likely to prefer other forms of PvP, especially since the seas offer penalty-free opportunities. However, do you think there will be enough work for bounty hunters in this context? If not, what ideas can you suggest to prevent bounty hunting from becoming an afterthought?

I apologize , I just saw there is a similar post below, at least I know someone else is thinking the same thing lol.

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Githal

TheHiddenDaggerInn wrote: »

While I believe that during the early alpha many players will engage in corruption to test the system and find potential loopholes, I am confident that Intrepid Studios will refine the corruption penalties to meet their intended goals before the official launch. If this happens, much like in Lineage 2, corruption might not be a significant issue. Players are likely to prefer other forms of PvP, especially since the seas offer penalty-free opportunities. However, do you think there will be enough work for bounty hunters in this context? If not, what ideas can you suggest to prevent bounty hunting from becoming an afterthought?

I apologize , I just saw there is a similar post below, at least I know someone else is thinking the same thing lol.

Imagine You farm some rare mats in some cave, and other green player try to farm next to you. You have 2 options - split the farm, or kill him and take all mats. I would deff kill him even tho i may become target for bounty hunters.

Other situation - your group of 8 players trying to do some world boss. Another group comes that are all greens, and want to kill the boss also. As we know only the group with biggest contribution will get the boss reward. while all other groups get nothing. Will you kill the other group to make sure they dont do more dmg to the boss than you? or will you risk them taking away all the rewards?

Now include players killing bots that farm. Also include Killing of players that are trying to harm the eco system in your node

Aszkalon

TheHiddenDaggerInn wrote: »

Bounty Hunters: Essential or Afterthought ?

do you think there will be enough work for bounty hunters in this context ?

All i can say with full Conviction, is :

When the Game is live and here, since let's say several Weeks to Months - > You will definitely have some Servers where "Gankers" will not be able to terrorise People as much or often, so that some or many People want to become Bountyhunters.

While on the other Hand - > You can be equally as sure, that there will also be Servers where several Bountyhunters, maybe whole GROUPS of Bountyhunters up to Five to Fifteen People/Bountyhunters at once, can have their Hands full hunting those People who made it their Goal in Life to pester as much other People as possible.

Maybe even more Bountyhunters than Groups of "just" Fifteen People. But i think this is already approaching Node-War Circumstances of so many People should gank and kill simple Ressource Gatherers around certain Areas between Nodes.

CROW3

IMO the Bounty Hunter system officially sanctions what players are going to do anyway. It just includes some helpful gadgets for hunting those red bastards down. 😉 So it’s more ‘nice to have’ than ‘must have.’

Arya_Yeshe

The term "bounty hunter" in AoC serves merely as a symbolic gesture, devoid of any real bounty hunting mechanics within the game. The current system is superficial and lacks meaningful gameplay, leading to disappointment among players

I've proposed an alternative in various discussions, and even created a thread outlining my idea:

Instead of a symbolic title, use the amount of gold required to repair a victim's gear determines their bounty
Killing someone whose gear repair costs 5000 gold sets your bounty at 5000
Subsequently, each time you die and incur gear damage worth a certain amount (let's say repairing your gear costs 1000 gold), bounty hunters who defeat you split this sum among themselves, reducing your bounty accordingly (e.g., to 4000). If a party of 5 bounty hunters kill you, then 1000/5=200

This system brings more benefits:

Gold measurements adds better measurement to the war score, killing a level 50 in legendary gear certainly should ramp up the score way more than one shotting a level 10 on regular leather armor
Nodes with gold can fund player militias to attack war targets, paying them in gold as rewards, make war profitable for people who wants to fight
Gold can also be used to finance repairs for citizens engaged in warfare, the pvpers fighting guild wars and node wars on the open world will spend gold repairing their gear
Establish genuine mercenary contracts and guilds focused on bounty hunting and mercenary work, with gold measurement you can know how much the mercenaries worked and make you enemy lose. Let's say your contract says you will pay 50% of the inflicted losses on the enemy up to 200k gold... so the mercenaries will join the war as they can and start killing then receive gold
Identify notorious pirates at sea and major criminals on land, pirates should have bounties for everything, even for destroying or stealing ships
Transforming "bounty hunter" into a meaningful role rather than just a superficial title
Implementing these changes would enrich gameplay and provide players with deeper, more engaging opportunities within the game world.

Githal

Arya_Yeshe wrote: »

The term "bounty hunter" in AoC serves merely as a symbolic gesture, devoid of any real bounty hunting mechanics within the game. The current system is superficial and lacks meaningful gameplay, leading to disappointment among players

WDYM by "lacks meaningful gameplay,"? The bounty hunting system provides you the location of the Red players, Also reward for killing them.

Arya_Yeshe

Githal wrote: »

Arya_Yeshe wrote: »

The term "bounty hunter" in AoC serves merely as a symbolic gesture, devoid of any real bounty hunting mechanics within the game. The current system is superficial and lacks meaningful gameplay, leading to disappointment among players

WDYM by "lacks meaningful gameplay,"? The bounty hunting system provides you the location of the Red players, Also reward for killing them.

which is nothing, boring and anyone will barely get any kill ever since the corruption system is also uninteresting and overly punitive

the so called "bounty hunters" will be so numerous and will almost never get any target for them

the bounty hunter today is closer to a witch hunter for the corrupted and not a bounty hunter in any means

Githal

Arya_Yeshe wrote: »

Githal wrote: »

WDYM by "lacks meaningful gameplay,"? The bounty hunting system provides you the location of the Red players, Also reward for killing them.

which is nothing, boring and anyone will barely get any kill ever since the corruption system is also uninteresting and overly punitive

the so called "bounty hunters" will be so numerous and will almost never get any target for them

the bounty hunter today is closer to a witch hunter for the corrupted and not a bounty hunter in any means

There will be corrupted players for sure. Tho probably not to extreme corruption where your stats drop by a lot. But defending some boss/mob from being stolen, securing farm spot, preventing other team from entering non instanced dungeon. This will all make corrupted players

Otr

TheHiddenDaggerInn wrote: »

While I believe that during the early alpha many players will engage in corruption to test the system and find potential loopholes, I am confident that Intrepid Studios will refine the corruption penalties to meet their intended goals before the official launch. If this happens, much like in Lineage 2, corruption might not be a significant issue. Players are likely to prefer other forms of PvP, especially since the seas offer penalty-free opportunities. However, do you think there will be enough work for bounty hunters in this context? If not, what ideas can you suggest to prevent bounty hunting from becoming an afterthought?

I apologize , I just saw there is a similar post below, at least I know someone else is thinking the same thing lol.

When you step back and look at the Bounty Hunter vs Red Player interaction, that is basically a way to declare yourself willing to do some PvP against whoever wants to come to you.
You can prepare yourself, chose gear, chose the favorite place and then kill a green volunteer and wait.

The fact that other green players can interfere might be the weak part of this kind of game-play.
Those green players should act as bounty hunters too when they attack a random RED player.
Or the Bounty Hunting should be possible for a longer time, even after the Red is not Red anymore.

Arya_Yeshe

Githal wrote: »

Arya_Yeshe wrote: »

Githal wrote: »

WDYM by "lacks meaningful gameplay,"? The bounty hunting system provides you the location of the Red players, Also reward for killing them.

which is nothing, boring and anyone will barely get any kill ever since the corruption system is also uninteresting and overly punitive

the so called "bounty hunters" will be so numerous and will almost never get any target for them

the bounty hunter today is closer to a witch hunter for the corrupted and not a bounty hunter in any means

There will be corrupted players for sure. Tho probably not to extreme corruption where your stats drop by a lot. But defending some boss/mob from being stolen, securing farm spot, preventing other team from entering non instanced dungeon. This will all make corrupted players

I don't think this will happen because the people going to farm dungeons and bosses will go in their best gear and rush to nuke the bosses and secure the loot, nobody will waste time and risk getting corrupted and lose any pice of good gear

Chicago

TheHiddenDaggerInn wrote: »

While I believe that during the early alpha many players will engage in corruption to test the system and find potential loopholes, I am confident that Intrepid Studios will refine the corruption penalties to meet their intended goals before the official launch. If this happens, much like in Lineage 2, corruption might not be a significant issue. Players are likely to prefer other forms of PvP, especially since the seas offer penalty-free opportunities. However, do you think there will be enough work for bounty hunters in this context? If not, what ideas can you suggest to prevent bounty hunting from becoming an afterthought?

I apologize , I just saw there is a similar post below, at least I know someone else is thinking the same thing lol.

like most systems, people usually do them for what they offer you, if there is an immersive enough progression path to becoming a bounty hunter, then rare kills might be okay, and even desirable to make top tier bounty hunters more rare, i think there will be rewards for choosing this system that are most likely based around pvp.

with thousands of active players i don't think there will be a big problem finding corrupted players to progress but time will tell and it will have to be tested.

Sidenote, this may also be affected due to how easy/hard it is to remove corruption, from what i understand corruption can be removed due to Exp gain, if you can kill a player and then remove the corruption in around 10 minutes it may be more difficult. But if the time to remove corruption is upwards of 30+ minutes then it will make leveling bounty hunting alot easier, i know it all depends on how corrupt you are too. My guess is people that want to gank will kill 1-2 people and then work off the corruption before going further

Githal

Arya_Yeshe wrote: »

I don't think this will happen because the people going to farm dungeons and bosses will go in their best gear and rush to nuke the bosses and secure the loot, nobody will waste time and risk getting corrupted and lose any pice of good gear

And i hope Intrepid dont make the PVE side of the game a walk in the park. When the boss can wipe you alone, you wouldnt want any other players party to sabotage you while you fight the boss.
If you can "nuke the boss and go out" - then this means the pve in the game sucks. And i doubt intrepid will make such a joke.

Texas

I am envisioning Bounty Hunting being something you just turn on while doing other activities and wait for opportunities to emerge.

If there are enough reds that you can make it an entire night of play by itself, something has gone wrong with the corruption punishment.

oOKingOo

The amount of gold you get as a bounty hunter should primarily be determined by the corrupted player's corruption level and maybe by his level as well. Basing it on gear repair cost is just way too easy to cheat. Also, I think it’s very fitting for a bounty. For example, in One Piece, the bounty is based on how much trouble you make, not just how strong you are, and corruption is basically a value that describes how much trouble you are making.

I also think it would be cool if bountyhunters coul track people that have been corrupted in the last 24 hours or so and kill them to get a reward.

As for how you get the quest, I guess bounty buildings are the answer. As you level your node, you can unlock and build the bounty building in military nodes where you can talk to an NPC that lets you enter bounty hunting mode.

I think, like most activities we saw so far, that bounty hunting should be something you dedicate yourself to doing and plan and prepare before you do it instead of it being a mode that you can just switch on like PK mode, for example. Higher level hunters and higher level bounty buildings could include things like prisons where captured corrupted players get a timeout when killed by a bounty hunter. Their friends could try to break them out earlier, but the bounty hunters can apply to protect the prison.

I think the system has a lot of potential in a PvX game.

Githal

oOKingOo wrote: »

Higher level hunters and higher level bounty buildings could include things like prisons where captured corrupted players get a timeout when killed by a bounty hunter. Their friends could try to break them out earlier, but the bounty hunters can apply to protect the prison..

I think this is going too far - i mean you are literally restricting the other player from playing the game that he paid subscription for.

BUT i think the idea is great, and instead of prison for the person - you can for example lock his equipment, and this is not just their items they wear atm, but also weapons and armor from their inventory.
As we know bounty hunters wont get the corrupted player items, but instead you can lock them. This way the corrupted player will need to either use some weaker items for X amount of time, or try to get their items back.

Apok

if you get any kind of reward outside what the red player drops I could see people gaming this system, one player will PK till he gets a bounty and the friend is ready to cash in the bounty and collect whatever his friend had. This could possibly lead to more people who would avoid PvP to get targeted for being that getting a bounty is now incentivized.

Githal

Apok wrote: »

if you get any kind of reward outside what the red player drops I could see people gaming this system, one player will PK till he gets a bounty and the friend is ready to cash in the bounty and collect whatever his friend had. This could possibly lead to more people who would avoid PvP to get targeted for being that getting a bounty is now incentivized.

dont think the bounty works this way...

You need to accept the bounty quest from a military node. This means your friend should first get corrupted (maybe he needs to kill 3-4 players before he gets a bounty reward put for his head), then you need to accept the quest, and then you need to reach your friend. Till then there might be more bounty hunters there already, or some random may see your friend being red flagged and kill him

Ludullu

As I've been saying for years now - I hope the BH system gets expanded.

Texas

Githal wrote: »

Apok wrote: »

if you get any kind of reward outside what the red player drops I could see people gaming this system, one player will PK till he gets a bounty and the friend is ready to cash in the bounty and collect whatever his friend had. This could possibly lead to more people who would avoid PvP to get targeted for being that getting a bounty is now incentivized.

dont think the bounty works this way...

You need to accept the bounty quest from a military node. This means your friend should first get corrupted (maybe he needs to kill 3-4 players before he gets a bounty reward put for his head), then you need to accept the quest, and then you need to reach your friend. Till then there might be more bounty hunters there already, or some random may see your friend being red flagged and kill him

If the BH system works like that, it sounds like something no one would do.

Ludullu

Texas wrote: »

If the BH system works like that, it sounds like something no one would do.

That is not quite how the system works. You only need the quest to become a BH, but then you simply toggle the corrupted search function
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Bounty_hunters
Bounty hunters can activate their Pathfinding ability to reveal corrupted player locations on their map.[3][4]
This will flag the bounty hunter for combat only to corrupted players for a period of one hour from the time of activation.[3]
The pathfinding ability can be toggled on or off.[3][5]
It is possible that bounty hunters will be permanently flagged versus corrupted players with the pathfinding ability toggled off. This design change will be decided based on testing.[6]

Noaani

My take on the bounty hunter system is that it was an important part of the games PvP system originally, but as corruption based PvP has been replaced by open world seas, corruptionless caravans and such, the bounty hunter system has essentially been made redundant.

Add corruption to all PvP in the open world, and suddenly the bounty hunter system becomes important again.

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