I would like to get opinions on an idea.
In my opinion, bounties should be linked to the ZoI of the faction that issues the bounty.
Reason:
At the moment, there is an experiment running in which (by the means of two high bounties), a faction is targeted siriuswide for about 50+ million per kill (indies are 20+ million). There is an organised, tagged group that collects that bounty even in a rather harmless way (as they cannot even go /l1, /l2, but have to make a demand and thus there is a way out). It could be a lot worse with untagged ships, FL-ID, and no means of getting out alive.
However, it is resulting in new players leaving Disco and 100 % of the faction's new players stopping to fly tagged ships, but instead returned to flying indie ships of another ID.
That's the
reality, just happened 1 h ago and prompted this thread:
Quote:[Player, 3rd week on the server]: think I'm done with the game
[Player, 3rd week on the server]: the whole "hey, there's one guy there, lets bring 2 and a battlecruiser" isn't really fun (comment: it was 2 hunters + an indie OC battleship joining them)
[Player, 3rd week on the server]:: i'll send you the cash I got when I come back home and whatnot
[Player, 3rd week on the server]: I don't think it's a server worth investing time into*
This is the consequence of it, when the easy targets get killed too often. Experienced players will shrug and say something like "deal with it". However, that's not the way we should be thinking. Just because the experienced Disco players can take it, doesn't mean it is what it should be.
I believe bounties need to be regulated in some way. They have the capability to harm gameplay and to drive people off by making their gaming experience bad.
The idea is, that a bounty has to be linked to the ZoI of the faction that issues it.
A faction's core business is defined by their ZoI. That is where you make your money. That is where you have your influence. That is where you can actively get involved. Your focus lies here, and you would deal with your trouble (like e.g. rivals) there.
I'll give an example of what I would find stupid (hypothetical examples on purpose):
- Liberty bounties Outcast siriuswide and hunters claim OC kills made in Alpha.
- Bretonia bounties Corsairs siriuswide and pays for kills in Gamma.
- IMG bounties OC in Alpha and Sairs in Gamma.
I hope we can agree that this is somewhat wrong.
Suggestion:
I was thinking about a rule that limits bounties to the faction's ZoI, or something like ZoI+1 system.
Obviously there would be factions that have a huge ZoI, and some with rather small ones, but I am convinced that solutions could be found.
So... I am curious what your opinion is on the topic of "linking bounties to ZoI".
Good to see after posts in my bounty hunting thread and your proposal here Jack, that not only I have doubts and concerns how the bunting system currently works. Lots of good points such as "die xyz" hurts indies the most was raised. Maybe it's not entirely broken, but I neither it's entirely 100% ok how it's currently done, the bounty hunting. I'm curious what will community think of this idea.
Edit: Just to clarify, at the moment I don't have firm opinion on this, I think if this was introduced, it'd require some sort of balancing between factions with small and factions with big ZoI, as pointed out. I'll decide on final opinion after hearing arguments of other people.
Honestly, that is what killed *CBF* back in the day, sure we kind of were asking for it, but when as soon as one *CBF* tagged ship joins the whole server switches to their bounty hunters and it turns into a gank fest, it killed that group.
Again, we were kind of asking for it, but due to the bounty systems certain groups were able to collect somewhere around 75million if they killed even a single fighter.
Now again, I'm just using that as an example of how it can destroy a faction, yes CBF was asking for it, but even a faction of older experienced players and be destroyed for the right price.
Hmmm, how would that work with ZOI-less factions? How would that work with factions which their area is within their enemies range, but their zoi does not provide possibility of retaliation (oddly worded)?
I think bounties out of ZoI are fine, provided that the people carrying out the bounty aren't blasting up transports all over Sirius without making a demand.
There are factions that obviously want to hit other ones where it hurts. I suppose bounties linked to zoi make sense, but what about factions that have a line "Can attack xxx anywhere"? Imho they should be executable anywhere. Other than that, I fully agree.
From what I see, bounty hunting is hurting the new players, and the faction(IMG) that most of these new players end up getting into contact with first, usually in their first few days. I'm mentioning only IMG here, because I don't know what the situation is with other factions. New players are required to do solo time investment into the game to get going, and are mostly using small/medium transports or Hegemons for the first days. These players are the most helpless ones against this bounty hunting, as they don't have the means to defend themselves against constant demands of pirates. When I first started, many times I got locked out of my only ship(Hegemon) and the game altogether, because I didn't want to pay 10M out of my each 15M ore sale return from Fort Siloso.
In additon to this, I also think that in its current state, bounty hunting is a very unbalanced feature. I will try to explain and keep this short, but bear with me if it turns out long.
For some players -ones that hold pvp above other aspects of the game-, balance is the most important thing in a game. Different games maintain balance in different ways. Some games give the players a default start, no additional options(chess). This is not a problem to balance, since.. it is balanced by default and very easy to maintain. Other games give players different tools to play with(mainly to address different tastes), and these games are harder to balance (think about WoW's seasonal pvp balance issues, fotm comps vs chess balance issues).
In addition to balance, players expect a certain depth from games. No one likes to play simple games where you mash 3-4 buttons mindlessly. So you give them multiple options to play with. But, depth and balance are intertwined. In simple words, to provide depth you provide layers of counters that players will have in their kit, with which they will be able to respond to the opponent's moves. This however, needs to be done in such a way that there is not a kit/move that is able to counter every move, every play without giving the opponent a way to counter it. Such a kit/move would be what people call "iWin button". If you think about moves, plays or any kind of action in a pvp situation, the player makes a commitment, sacrifices seconds and more importantly, takes a risk. You try to interrupt a spell, use a cooldown, move your pawn ahead, you take the risk of making a bad play. If there is a move that has a chance to give you advantage without any risks, every player will do it.
Now the Discovery mod, has great depth and some balance/counter layers with ship types. I will not make comments about how well balanced it is, because I don't see myself knowledgeable enough yet to evaluate it correctly. However I will talk about why the bounty system combined with chat/online list is broken.
By implementing bounties, you basically put a large reward in front of players. The most efficient way of getting this reward is keeping track of player list, and logging in to the system with your friends to hunt the said player. You make a demand, or shoot the guy for the bounty. It's a safe move that's sure to win, and groups of players can do this when they catch people outnumbered. It requires minimal time investment, and has no risks since you know exactly what you're getting into; the player list is showing the hunters exactly what's what. The hunted has no chance to win from the encounter, reaction time is very limited and hunter has nothing to lose. And the biggest issue with this, in my opinion, is that it locks you from playing a faction/doing a spesific thing in the game, especially if you want to do things solo. It also locks you out of a system if you die, due to the server rules. There have been many times where I log onto my IMG| tagged ship and sit at Java base for a minute or two, and see 2-3 outcasts/junkers log in together, at which point I undock, see them lurking around Java&hail me, dock back again and alt+F4 out of it.
For bounty hunting to be a balanced feature, it would have to have its risks as well. One way of doing this would be the removal of locations from the online list. This would make the hunter take a risk, by committing time/effort to the act, with the possibility of not being able to find the hunted. I do realise people are afraid this would reduce player interactions due to the size of the game universe and the number of players. This could probably be solved by showing the total player count of systems, so players would know where stuff is happening.
There might be other/better ways of doing this, I didn't put that much thought into it. It's 9:00am and I'm hungover.
TL;DR Bounty hunting has reward, but no risks. With the current state of it and the online player list showing locations, it is not a balanced feature. Read the post. <3
The guy in the example in the OP was talking about ganks and capital ships, I don't see how ZOI and bounty hunting relates to that specifically.
I don't mind Sirius-wide bounties, but I think it would be better if only official factions and groups and players individually mentioned on boards were valid targets. New players would be free of bounties or at least have a group of players to protect them. There'd be fewer scrubs registered on the boards as well.
To the guy above: There's plenty of risk involved. I can't count the amount of times I've tracked down a target, engaged, and suddenly 5 of his mates come online. Or random freelancers jumping in to defend the target without pay and so on. Solo bounty hunting is as challenging as solo piracy, both of those are probably the activities with the highest rate of failure out of all activities on the server.
Yeah... as I already mentioned in another thread: I don't think there is a major link if any between bounties and the "unfair" or overly excessive killings of new players.
I used to play Unreal Tournament back in the day - why? To kill other players. I looked for a full server and logged in to shoot others, killing them being reward enough for me.
Nowadays I can't bother with modern shooters like CoD and alike even though I get extra rewards like perks, new guns etc..
Players, who are here to kill other players new ones as old ones will do that no matter if there are bounties or not. People always seem to imply that bounties -enable- players to shoot others. They don't, except for Freelancers. Everyone else taking up bounties can shoot their enemies anyways.
The cash sponsored on normal bounties is not even worth mentioning. In your example or experiment you offered an overly excessive payment being not representative for your normal day bounty.
Honestly one player leaving isn't representative for anything in my opinion or to point anything out. People also stopped playing WoW on PvP Servers, because they got ganked while leveling. Some people can't handle being targeted by others and being virtually killed aka "lose".
About the actual proposal. As it is right now, I could just make an unofficial generic ID faction, friendly to my official faction, as place holder and sponsor their bounty board to circumvent the ZOI rule since generic IDs have a sirius-wide ZOI.
Note: I'm running a sponsored generic ID bounty board. Not to circumvent anything, otherwise I wouldn't mention it. That's just why that problem, if your proposal would be implemented, came to mind.
So, if your proposal would be considered by the admins, that would be something to take in account while thinking of new bounty rules.
Talking about risks and unfariness tied to bounty hunting/being hunted in general. On one end people seem to complain about hunters being able to use the player list.
I agree that having the player list removed or kept more general in what informations it gives away would probably be at least worth testing, if possible. But more for general immersion reasons than to make bounty hunters lives "harder".
Targeted people can also use the player list to avoid getting caught by lawfuls, criminals, hunters, nomads etc.. So that's a pretty even ground for everyone and not an advantage the evil bounty hunters have at their disposal only.
You don't want to pay 10 million to a pirate? Pay 3 million to an escort/scout.
If you expect to play this game solo and be always on even ground with others you are playing the wrong game and should probably play chess (and even there remain advantages like skill and experience... you could even argue playing white has an advantage/disadvantage because they have the first move).
Last but not least rule one comes to mind "Be decent to each other". As long as people can't/won't follow that rule entirely we best shouldn't have any way to kill each other on the server and should all trade in Stargazers, because there -will- be unfair situations all the time, where you are on the receiving end at some point.
Quite frankly the bounty system is probably not even mentionworthy compared to other things going on on the server on a daily basis being totally unlinked to it.
Limiting bounties to your ZoI seems kinda stupid for some IDs. For instance, if one group REALLY hates another they'll want that group to perish at all costs, thus a Sirius wide bounty. They'll get other people to do their dirty work in areas the group can't get to.
How ever, bountying Sirius wide should apply to factions as apposed to indis. Bountying Indis should be in your ZoI