So just so I've got it right the opinion of Agmen, Athenian as the leaders of the BHG| faction, and admin reps of the Hunters, is that the bounty board is first and foremost a list of targets who you are free to engage and that is as far as the interaction is required to go.
If I put three million credits into shooting Liberty Rogues in Liberty that money will go until someone claims it for the work they have done. This could be weeks or months. In the meantime it is open season.
The reasons stated:
A) Claiming bounties is hard work and needlessly infringes on free time.
B) No one is ever required to interact with the forum unless they've been banned/jailed and then only to be released.
C) If people forget to account for the kills they've claimed in the name of a posted bounty they will be subjected to needless sanctions.
In this case I would advocate for the BHG ID to be given free reign to hunt pirates across Sirius in the same fashion as house police. If they would no longer be involved in the normal bounty process, it being reserved for Mercenaries and Freelancers. I would like to see the BHG roadblock removed from reforming the bounty system which has been a rotten blight for the entirety of my tenure here.
Maybe I'm in the wrong. But I can't really see what the point of being a bounty hunter is if you don't want any part of that. If you want to play in the same capacity as a 100% Discovery ZOI LPI officer that's for you. But it doesn't sound like you and I want to eat from the same table. This is a problem.
I would very much so like to fix the bounty board. I would like to fix it one step at a time. I would like it to be a place where people can easily and readily identify what is going on, who is doing what and establish a sense of community and competition amongst different bodies who enjoy the act of shooting people down for money.
But that emo lollypops and rainbows nonsense aside I also think that the system of player A blowing up player B in the name of money put on the table of player C is broken if player A never deducts any of the funds from the pot.
' Wrote:There's a problem here, and that's the "guilty until proven innocent" blanket that will fall onto the hunter (I am not referring just to the BHG| here. This will also affect mercs and freelancers). Again. Because we're all PvP whores who do not RP. Apparently. The only way to prove innocence is to have umpteen screenshots of every encounter. This kills the game. What are we meant to be doing here, hitting printscreen every 30 seconds? Every 10 seconds?
The 'guilty until proven innocent' falls on every single person on this server. That is how our sanction system works. It works that way for everyone. Do I agree with it? No.
As for your question about hitting print screen every 30 seconds? Yes, if you havne't noticed that is indeed what the admins expect of us. Everyone is subject to the 'guilty until proven innocent' rule, not just hunters and mercenaries.
Quit with the drama jeez. <- Kinda flamy but you are acting like only the Hunters/Mercs are subject to that rule, when we are in fact not.
All that is required is you do what you'd normally do with a bounty and ensure you claim it, to defend against a sanction all you then need to do is keep the thread link handy. I.e. the thread in which you claimed the bounty. That's it. If you have that you have ample evidence of claiming the kill. Also if this harms folks who don't come to the forums, how exactly do they know there is a valid bounty anyway? If they don't come here they can't know. So that's an invalid argument right there.
It should be expected to claim on your bounties, if those bounties are contracted then all you need to do is follow the Mandos lead and simply have a BHG| thread where any member of the BHG can post their kills with the relevant screenshots. If your comp messed up and failed to capture the screen then make a flood thread about it as if you'd disconnected accidentally. Seriously, it's a bit more work for the top fellows, but then anyone who's ever run a faction knows that 75% of the job is paperwork. It's a fact of Disco. Higher ups do the paperwork so that the regular mooks can play with freedom.
Saint Del is considered a holy healer of diseases of children, but also as a protector of cattle.
There are standing contracts permitted for factions, at least, to hunt people without posting up screenshots and going through bounty boards. Something like a minimum of thirty million must be paid, yeah?
I would not be so adverse to it being made a requirement to post up the screens of your blue message and whatnot if it becomes permissible for a merc - an individual, not one in a faction - to be paid a set amount of money in a set period of time to shoot people. So, let's say I have a merc down in Rheinland, and some local lot gives him 5 million a week to shoot up Hessians and whatnot. I can then go with that merc and shoot Hessians as much as I want. I might get five in the week, I might get twenty. It's up to the faction paying whether or not it keeps the deal going. Screenshots aren't necessarily required.
I think I'm going to concede defeat on this one. It seems that people don't feel that it's necessary to collect the bounties you're killing for in large enough numbers to make it worthwhile to push as a rule at large.
Edit: Since my normal behavior has gotten ahead of me, no I'm not being sarcastic or insincere. I'm pulling out of this one. It was an interesting thread.
Actually, Dusty, I had a long and involved reply that I had made at work on this - and then I simply pressed delete instead. I figure people don't need long walls of text.
Instead, in keeping with your general humor, I have a proposal to make - call it the even steven proposal. All those people who have PvP encounters to collect bounties will be required to do so if....
All those people who are pirates post specifically who they are going to attack, only attack those specific people mentioned and no one else, and post every single act of piracy that they perform. That also includes all unlawful ID's as well, such as Corsairs, Hessians, Rogues, and such - not just the generic pirate ID.
Now - seriously - all I did was just turn around, from collecting bounties to pirating, exactly what have been proposed here. Does that seem like that just sucks all the life and fun out of flying your spaceship, if you have to fill out a crapload of paperwork, sort through umpteen different screenshots - and god forbid if you got into a combat and didn't actually have FRAPS turned on by mistake...
How about instead of getting all dramatic with things - which you have a tendency to do - that we just give this a rest for a while, let us as the admin team have a chance to discuss things when we're not also dealing with major server issues, and have some time to sort things out? You know as well as I do that we don't move quickly on some things - and you also know as well as I do how pushed through the last set of ID's was on us, where we got zero time for comment, and zero chance to modify or change things.
(11-21-2013, 12:53 PM)Jihadjoe Wrote: Oh god... The end of days... Agmen agreed with me.
It's been mentioned a few times before, but an easy way to get people to collect the bounties they act on is to make it worth writing the paperwork. The 1-mil minimum did a lot to help this, but if that was bumped up a bit that might help. It might also be unnecessary, and would probably be a pain for houses that want to make serious use of mercenary labor. Still, if you want more people to collect, getting them to want to is a better solution than forcing them to. If it gets bad, it's something to consider, but right now I think we're fine.
I cite the success of the anti-LN bounty on MercNet as my main example of how this can work.
I just stated that, after multiple pages of compelling discussion, that I was content with the way the thread had panned out and was conceding that my position wasn't favored... So you figured it was time to come back and post those five self serving paragraphs of nonsense?
My hope was to gather the opinions of a wide selection of people on this issue, the act of killing people for immediate financial return, the responsibilities of players killing for bounties to collect them in addition to pushing public awareness of some of the issues facing the mercenary ID with aims to prevent its nerfing at the hands of people who have reasons to disdain it.
That was accomplished. Good show all.
Furthermore, you need to lecture me about the crushing burdens of being an admin just about as much as you need to levy personal attacks.
I agree with Dusty 100%. Prehaps add a 3 strikes rule (or a few more even), and make it were if they dont claim more than a certain ammount of kills within a 1week period they have get a sanc.
They get more than 1 or two more sanc's for not bothering to claim bounties, and they as a player loose the ability to collect on bounties and/or have chars with BHG/Merc/FL IDs
Yes that last bit does seem atad extreme (hence the 'and/OR' bit) but if they show they cant RP properly and just use it to get PvP, well frankly they deserve it in that case.
Now why did I get involved in a thread that I already left.....well......here:
' Wrote:I agree with Dusty 100%. Prehaps add a 3 strikes rule (or a few more even), and make it were if they dont claim more than a certain ammount of kills within a 1week period they have get a sanc.
They get more than 1 or two more sanc's for not bothering to claim bounties, and they as a player loose the ability to collect on bounties and/or have chars with BHG/Merc/FL IDs
Yes that last bit does seem atad extreme (hence the 'and/OR' bit) but if they show they cant RP properly and just use it to get PvP, well frankly they deserve it in that case.
This is where rules alone takes us. The problem is more complex, because people have a stake in this system. At least that shows that people care, even if they can be foolish and have poor judgment as a result (myself included).
' Wrote:I think I'm going to concede defeat on this one. It seems that people don't feel that it's necessary to collect the bounties you're killing for in large enough numbers to make it worthwhile to push as a rule at large.
Edit: Since my normal behavior has gotten ahead of me, no I'm not being sarcastic or insincere. I'm pulling out of this one. It was an interesting thread.
Not defeat Dusty. You have experience of a bounty system at both sides. The system is unsatisfactory for a number of reasons. Laziness is indeed one of the problems. Abuse of it is also a problem. But they are not the only ones.
A major overhaul of it is long overdue. It may require a number of measures, some ID changes and possibly, though not necessarily, some rules changes (and ideally not an act of parliament).
A few things together in tandem are most likely necessary, one of which is responsible people to handle and administer how the bounty system works - this will have to be a combined effort - players, moderators and administrators.
People may appear to have their own interests at stake, but what is good for the game and the community comes first. We have to strike a balance between compulsion and desire, establish a system that is fair but also fun and amenable to casual players and devotees alike. As well as that, striking a balance between in-game and forum roleplay will also need to be done. Like I said, this will require work on all peoples' parts.
For now, as the thread has run its course, I'll assume that people have understood the concerns raised and that people will support the moves to overhaul the bounty system which Dusty makes a very convincing case for. More to follow.