Goblin Squad Member
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First, for those coming into the topic unfamiliar with what an assassination and a SAD are. An assassination is a contract that can be put out on players to temporarily remove their access to a respawn point and deny their settlement the benefits that character may provide them. Assassinating someone does not lower your reputation.The blog Join Forces Underground really dives into the topic of assassinations.
Second is the Stand and Deliver. Stand and deliver demands that a player give over a portion of their goods specified by you. If they refuse to comply you may kill them without reputation consequence. Enough has changed about SAD's (Mainly the removal of the Outlaw Flag) since it's original proposal that we aren't really sure what the downsides are, though a drift toward the chaotic alignment is almost assured. The best place to read about SAD's in the I Shot a Man in Reno Just to Watch Him Die blog.
So the Assassination and SAD mechanics seem to be very powerful mechanics. They are useable on players of any alignment and require no flags on the target. The SAD mechanic reaps a great amount of benefit for the player using it in the form of stolen goods, and possibly even a higher percent of lootable items on the corpses of players who reject SADs. (Some goods are destroyed and unrecoverable upon looting much like in EVE. The original outlaw flag lowered the percent of goods that are unrecoverable.) Assassinations place some pretty nasty negative effects on their target... for a cost.
So how should the good and lawful alignments be able to compete with these kinds of mechanics. First off, let's take a look at the differences L/G and C/E are already likely to have:
So there is some disadvantage inherent to being chaotic-evil, though from other statements we know lawful-evil and chaotic-good will not suffer from that as much. Lawful-good on the other hand, is an alignment that has only be associated with favorable conditions... and heavy limitations on what actions they can take.
So what kind of things should we expect to see in lawful PvP systems:
-Lawful PvPers should have legal authority to do what they do.
-Lawful PvPers should seek order and the fulfilment of the law.
And from good:
-Good aligned PvPers should seek to do what is right above what profits them. They should be self sacrificing in many cases.
-Good aligned PvPers should seek justice, and deliver mercy where appropriate.
Like assassins and bandits, bounty hunters should have to train up a set of skills in order to practice their craft. First off, a bounty hunter is really going to need some good tracking skills to locate their target. These would be general skills available to everyone as other professions like the assassin will likely rely on them as well.
The second type of skills is bounty hunter specific, though other professions will surely have their own versions. They are contract management skills, designed to decide how many targets the bounty hunter may track at once. These skills allow the bounty hunter to purchase and manage more complex licences that allow them to hunt more potential targets and even join into feuds and wars that their company or settlement are not part of as an individual agent.
As implied by the purchase of licences, these costs are not confined to skill training. They may have other associated costs like money, influence, alignment, or even reputation.
Whenever someone is the victim of an action that causes the aggressor either chaotic or evil slide on the alignment scale, they may put out a bounty on that aggressor.
For the next two weeks the victim can go in and create a bounty contract, specifying which characters and/or organizations can accept it, and how much they'll be paid upon completion.
The type of action they were a victim of indicates what kind of bounty can be placed. Bounties come in three variations. Lawful, good, and lawful-good. (I'm sure we can come up with fancy names for each, but bear with me for now.)
Lawful bounties can be placed by the victims of chaotic actions. Lawful bounties apply a lawful debuff to the target.
Good bounties can be placed by the victims of evil actions. Good bounties apply a good debuff to the target.
Lawful-good bounties can be placed by the victims of actions which were both evil and chaotic, for instance the victim of a murder. Lawful-good bounties apply a lawful-good debuff to the target.
In some cases the person placing the target may allow the bounty hunter to choose what kind of contract it is. For instance allowing it to be claimed as either a lawful-good, or good bounty.
Once you have placed the bounty and selected from one of the available types, there are still three more options. The first is severity, and determines the length of the debuff that will be put on the target if killed or apprehended. (I'll go more into the debuff's later on.) You can choose as small as a severity as you would like on any contract, but the maximum severity is determined by the type of crime. For instance if you were SADed and accepted, the maximum severity will be far lower than if you were murdered.
The second is "Dead or alive." This allows you to specify if you want the target killed, apprehended, or don't care which. Placing a dead contract gives both you and the hunter who collects evil points. Dead or Alive gives you a slight amount of evil points and may or not give the hunter evil points based on which option they take.
Finally, you can set reparations. Reparations allow the target to pay the hunter off in order to avoid being claimed. You can specify how much of that money, goes to the hunter, and how much goes to you. The money is automatically transferred to you when the reparations are paid.
At various locations in the world such as inns, magistrates, and town squares there are things called bounty boards. When a player goes to a bounty board it allows them to browse through all the contracts available to them as well as showing calls to arms for mercenaries wanting to help in wars or with escalations. When they find contracts to their liking they may activate any number of them, up to the maximum their current licence allows.
Once you activate some contracts it's time to collect your tags (Ok I really need a better name for this, but it's the best I can come up with so far.) The tags come in the same variations as bounties lawful, good, and lawful good. They are objects blessed with divine magic, and not cheap to pick up. They are threaded and rendered untradeable by divine magic, due to the variance in price for different individuals based on certain conditions.
From there you start employing your tracking skills, hunting down your targets. Once found you may either apprehend them, or kill them. The choice is yours unless the contract specifies. At the point they are apprehended or killed you apply the tag either to them or their freshly killed corpse, releasing it's divine magic, and triggering the debuff.
*Note: Lawful-good tags are 1.5 times the price of a lawful or good tag.
Apprehending someone is a process much like stand and deliver. If you attempt to apprehend someone they have the option to fight back or surrender. If they fight back and are killed, you can attempt to subdue them by bringing their health to or below 0, at which point they can be tagged. If they somehow die by any other method than you or a party member using a coup de grâce on them you can still claim a contract that specified to take them alive, and you take no evil hit.
If they surrender, you may first offer them the them the chance to pay reparations if the contract allows for that. If they pay, the contract is complete. If they do not pay you may tag them applying the debuff.
Whenever a tag is applied to anyone or their freshly killed corpse they take a debuff depending on the type of tag used.
Lawful debuffs make it so that for a set period of time depending on the severity of the bounty, the target loses all item threads if they commit a chaotic action. They regain those threads after the debuff wears off.
Good debuffs make it so that for a set period of time depending on the severity of the bounty, the target loses all item threads if they commit an evil action. They regain those threads after the debuff wears off.
Lawful-good debuffs make it so that for a set period of time depending on the severity of the bounty, the target loses all item threads if they commit a chaotic OR evil action. They regain those threads after the debuff wears off.
Paragons, guardians, and enforcers are three flags players may take up to increase their effectiveness at bounty hunting, but at the expense of painting a bigger target on their heads.
Paragons are lawful-good, both in their abilities, and because you must be lawful-good to be one. They get a discount on lawful-good tags and their bounty hunting licenses. As a consequence, they can be killed without rep loss by everyone with flags associated with evil or chaos (criminal, heinous, etc.)
Guardians are good, both in their abilities, and because you must be of a good alignment to be one. They get a discount on good aligned tags and their bounty hunting licenses. As a consequence, they can be killed without rep loss by everyone with flags associated with evil such as heinous flags.
Enforcers are lawful, both in their abilities, and because you must be of a lawful alignment to be one. They get a discount on lawful aligned tags and their bounty hunting licenses. As a consequence, they can be killed without rep loss by everyone with flags associated with chaos such as criminal flags.
• The cost of bounty hunting is to the hunter. People can set bounties with a payout of 0, but hunters will lose money and tie up valuable contract slots accepting and completing such contracts.
• There is no alignment restrictions on who can take contracts despite the alignment of the contracts. This is because there is no logical reason players of any alignment wouldn't be able to accept these contracts. Any alignment slide is based on how they are fulfilled.
• Good aligned players may be able to take contracts that specify the target must be killed, but they won't stay good for long if they do.
• Lawful players can break laws in the fulfillment of contracts, but they won't stay lawful long if they do.
Or we just have a system where you put a price on the head. Simple, easy to understand does all thats necessary without all the crap.
Working fine now they closed the one loophole in it which was allowing people to be killed by their own alts to claim the bounty. A simple elegant solution
The bounty is only payed as a percentage of the value of gear destroyed.
eg 100 million isk bounty
you get destroyed in a 10 million isk ship bounty payout is 2 million. Bounty of 98 million remains on your head. Works fine frankly
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Goblin Squad Member
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Ok but that doesn't balance out things like SADs and assassinations. An SAD allows you to walk up to anyone in the game and demand a portion of their stuff on threat that you can kill them consequence free.
An assassination contract can be placed on players of any alignment and gives some really nasty debuffs when fulfilled.
How does that balance out with a system that allows you to score a regular kill on someone without penalty... if they have something to earn a bounty contract, and you have that specific contract? Oh. And apparently it costs something too.
The death either needs to be nastier than usual, or an additional mechanic is needed.
Otherwise players seeking a good playstyle will just go evil and use assassinations and SAD's to deal out justice. Those tools are too powerful for it to end up any other way.
Hmm well lets see.
SAD I stop you and demand a portion of your goods in order not to kill you and take no reputation hit
vs
Bounty hunting where I kill you and take 75% of your goods by looting your body and get paid into the bargain
Seems about on par to me.
Assassination we do not have enough details as yet but we do know that for the extra, which amounts to severing a bind point, you need significant training and you need to pre warn your victim by observing them over a period of time in order to perform an assassination. So the balancing their is the time commitment need (I seem to recall 10 minutes being cited though that may well be faulty memory). Can't therefore see assassination being a routine tool.
However if you feel those tools give you advantage by all means go train to use them and I certainly won't be losing sleep because all the good people are suddenly switching tactics. They are not any more of a threat to my characters livelihood than are bounties
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Goblin Squad Member
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The value of a caravan or goods carried by a merchant will likely far outweigh the value of gear carried by anyone but the most elite (and therefore hardest to kill) PvPers.
Merchants can't always afford to keep a heavy guard and still make profits, and give up some combat efficiency for extra carrying capacity.
PvPers, equip themselves and work in groups that care about nothing but maximum fighting efficiency.
Bandits can rob anyone, anywhere, for any reason.
Bounty hunters can only kill targets they have contracts for.
SADs cost nothing.
Bounty contracts have been confirmed to have a cost beyond the price paid to the hunter.
SAD's are easier, cheaper, and more profitable.
Edit: Also, by my system, you get evil points for killing/looting bounties.
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Goblin Squad Member
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From another topic
[Sarcasm]
I would like to propose a new mechanic. Let's call it "Repent or Die!"
You can run up to anyone and deliver them a ROD. When you ROD someone, they are given the option to Repent. They repent by delivering a specified amount of their possessions to an agent of good... which is you. It flags you to them, and their associates, but not anyone outside their group of associates, and the flag goes away as soon as you are finished with the ROD. Any third party interlopers who attempt to interfere with your ROD take alignment and rep hits as normal. You also get a slide toward lawful because you were so generous to give up your chance to ambush them and RODed them instead.
If they accept your ROD, you gain reputation. If they reject your ROD, you are free to kill them without any reputation loss, though you may slide toward good for putting an end to their villainous ways.
Now the one big downside to RODs, is that people can put out assassination contracts if you do it. It will be expensive to put these contracts out, and all curses from a normal assassination go away making it really just a regular kill that's sanctioned. But hey. It's not like ROD's are so powerful they need much more downside than that.
Oh and one more thing. I'm not really decided on whether you should suffer any rep loss at all when you ROD someone for 100% of their stuff. Doesn't seem like that big of a deal to me.
But hey. RODs are a skill and take training. You want it, you train it, kind of simple.
PS. I no longer care if you are flagged when you SAD people. If I catch someone in the act of a SAD I'm just going to ROD them for 100%.
[/sarcasm]
This is based of Bluddwolf's vision for SADs. Either SADs need to be toned down, bounties/other good aligned mechanics need to toned up, or both.
On the bright side. Give me RODs and I'll never ask for another tool to hunt my targets. Of course that would entirely ruin this game for everyone.
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1 Can you provide a quote from the devs showing bounties will have a cost beyond that paid to the hunter.
2 While merchants are undoubtedly carrying more value than your target the bandit robbing the merchant does not get an additionaly payment from others. The lesson here is do not take cheapskate bounty contracts. Just as a merchant or bandit has to assess risk vs reward so too does the bounty hunter.
3 I would assume just as in Eve the bounty pool for an individual you are hunting may come from more than just one other player. For example it would not surprise me if certain unnamed bandits may have bounties placed on their head from a number of different sources
Bounty hunters will not in addition be being consistently hunted down whereas bandits will be having it done to them. For instance we in the empire will be exercising a zero tolerance policy to banditry within our lands and we will be actively seeking out bandit hideouts and destroying them. I fully expect many player settlements to be doing likewise therefore the bandit carries that extra risk on their shoulders.
By all means argue that SAD's and assassinations should be altered in their application
I have the following general objection to a lot of these systems.
The more complex the system the more coding time it takes.
The more coding time it takes the less coding time for other things that would be of more benefit to the game
The more complex the rules the more loopholes in the system and potentials for unexpected side effects which end up hurting those it was meant to help more than it helps them
The more complex the system the more it stifles player creativity and emergent game play.
The more complex the system the harder it is for new players to understand (The old Eve aggression rules being a prime example of this, compare them to the newly implemented rules which are both cleaner and tend to be much better at hitting the effect they were designed for)
I would prefer to see simple systems implemented for the start of EE and then revamped as needed during EE so they remain only as complex as absolutely necessary and no more
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Goblin Squad Member
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From another topic
[Sarcasm]
I would like to propose a new mechanic. Let's call it "Repent or Die!"
You can run up to anyone and deliver them a ROD. When you ROD someone, they are given the option to Repent. They repent by delivering a specified amount of their possessions to an agent of good... which is you. It flags you to them, and their associates, but not anyone outside their group of associates, and the flag goes away as soon as you are finished with the ROD. Any third party interlopers who attempt to interfere with your ROD take alignment and rep hits as normal. You also get a slide toward lawful because you were so generous to give up your chance to ambush them and RODed them instead.
If they accept your ROD, you gain reputation. If they reject your ROD, you are free to kill them without any reputation loss, though you may slide toward good for putting an end to their villainous ways.
Now the one big downside to RODs, is that people can put out assassination contracts if you do it. It will be expensive to put these contracts out, and all curses from a normal assassination go away making it really just a regular kill that's sanctioned. But hey. It's not like ROD's are so powerful they need much more downside than that.
Oh and one more thing. I'm not really decided on whether you should suffer any rep loss at all when you ROD someone for 100% of their stuff. Doesn't seem like that big of a deal to me.
But hey. RODs are a skill and take training. You want it, you train it, kind of simple.
PS. I no longer care if you are flagged when you SAD people. If I catch someone in the act of a SAD I'm just going to ROD them for 100%.
[/sarcasm]
This is based of Bluddwolf's vision for SADs. Either SADs need to be toned down, bounties/other good aligned mechanics need to toned up, or both.
On the bright side. Give me RODs and I'll never ask for another tool to hunt my targets. Of course that would entirely ruin this game for everyone.
I fully believe that SADs will be toned down, adjusted, tweaked, and balanced until they are not totally pro bandit yet are a (on average) better choice than straight up ambush. The Developers of this game are not idiots.
Edit: Jeeze, when I look back, I always see my posts as terse and harsh. So, let me add:
There is nothing wrong with any of us suggesting ways that can help them figure out the best way to do these things. Just plz don't make me read that much! :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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My system is actually pretty simple when broken down.
Evil for killing / criminal actions taken while hunting a bounty still apply.(Strikethrough to show no additional content or systems were added.)Bounty hunters use an item to apply a debuff.
This item can be applied through a system that is prettymuch the system SAD minus robbery or applying it to their body.The items you can apply depends on whether the action that prompted the bounties was evil, chaotic, or both.
Most of the rest of the system is just suggesting how to implement things we already know will be a part of bounty hunting. The additional flags is because good aligned PvPers should get a bit of reward from removing some of the protections afforded to them from other systems. PvPers don't need protection, regardless of alignment or reputation. It's something I believe needs to be done in some form or another no matter what mechanic it's attached to. Basically, a replacement for the champion flag.
---------If you want details on the cost of bounty hunting ask Bluddwolf. He's the one who cited it to me. I don't recall where he said it was found.
I see plenty of new systems you are asking for
1) The debuff system
2) New flags (especially as they are moving away from a flagging system)
3) The tag system
4) A tracking system to decide why the bounty is being placed
5) The apprehend system
6) The reparation system
Sorry I just don't see this adding sufficient game play over and above the simple select player from death list and place bounty of chosen sum on head and specify who can take the contract.I would actually prefer even to do away with the death list provision personally as there are many reasons I may want to place a bounty on someones head who has not ended up on my kill list. For example the bandit leader who always SAD's me on one of my profitable trade routes. I may always accept the SAD because I can't fight him but sooner or later I may want to give him back some of the pain
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'll submit that you don't see the value because you're going to be playing a lawful evil character (Who's not particularly PvP inclined if I remember right), and wars/feuds/faction PvP aren't the only forms of PvP content available to you.
You don't want time spent on mechanics you won't personally be using. That's fine, but to some of us good aligned PvP is really big deal.
If bounties are expensive and not that worthwhile that's a major loss of content to us.
As a merchant bounties are extremely useful to me. However bounties as currently proposed are not and your system does nothing to alter that. It is people like me who you need putting on bounties and what will currently happen is that instead of placing bounties using the system I will be going outside the system and agreeing bounties by word of mouth. (This largely due to you cant place a bounty on someone who hasn't killed you)
If bludd is right and bounties cost more than the amount that goes on the players head or they cost influence etc then even more reason to go outside the system, this also means those bounties will be going to people who do not care about rep and alignment hits (ie probably not good aligned players)
The bounty system is only of any use if players like me place bounties in the first place
Also while it is true I am planning to be a merchant and lawful evil I think a brief look at my posting history will show you I have never posted from the perspective of that particular role I post solely on what I think is good for the game. I happen to think that breadth initially matters more than depth for the start of early enrollment otherwise we run huge risks of sections of people finding their chosen playstyle is not supported at all whilst others have more depth than needed.
I would just as equally argue that we currently don't need much more than simple contracts available detailing date, quantity, product, price, location. Fripperies such as collateral, options, and all the other market style paraphenalia can wait till later and then get added only when the amount it brings to the game justifies its coding over other things.
In addition I would not say I am not PVP orientated just that I realise that stabbing someone in the face is not the only way to PVP and I can assure you my competitors will be getting regular doses of excruciating agony.
Nor does anything about suggesting that the bounty system should be kept as simple as possible imply that bounties will be expensive or not worthwhile. Indeed I would argue quite the opposite that the more complex you make bounties the less inclined people are to bother with them
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Goblin Squad Member
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Making placing bounties more worthwhile / likely to be placed is the point of this system. If placing a bounty means that someone will die if it get's claimed, grab some new pieces of their non-threaded gear and then go about their lives... it's not a particularly useful system to me. It gives a little bit of revenge, but unless that hunter kills them right as they are getting ready to SAD me, it doesn't provide me with much value.
So I'm paying the cost of the bounty, and the cost for someone to come out and hunt this guy down for really... not much value.
In this system, the cost is to the bounty hunter. So right there if it's someone like me who's doing it for fun and/or a chance to promote justice, they're going to be willing to operate at a loss if there is no profitable contracts available. Furthermore we can cut our costs down a bit by flagging ourselves.
If I only hunt for profits, thats fine. I won't accept contracts that don't pay what I want.
When the bounty hunter goes down and kills your target, it sticks a flag on them that says if they continue to do (whatever it is that let you put a bounty on them) they'll lose all their threaded gear when they die, so they're probably going to gear down a bit or lie low for awhile. If they don't they are going to take some hard hits as far as gear losses when they die, and they'll be a more attractive target to anyone willing to kill them because they'll drop more gear upon death.
That provides you with real value in that the bandits camping your trade route are now less threatening than they were before, or may even go do something else until their debuff expires.
As someone likely to be using bounties a lot your system makes me no more likely to place them. I really do not care about the debuff at all the bounty is a negotiating point not a punishment.
It may not be any use to you but you are the one going to be wanting to collect bounties not place them. The system you propose will not increase the number of bounties on offer to any appreciable amount in my opinion. That being the case then it offers nothing realistically except making you feel better about collecting what bounties are put out.
If you want to increase the amount of bounties available to you I would suggest you argue for
1) People do not need to be on the death list to have a bounty placed upon them.
2) Bounties last until collected
3) Bounty pools are paid out as a percentage of equipment carried and this value is subtracted from the bounty pool
1) because I will be placing bounties on bandits that habitually rob me, competitors who are routinely undercutting me even after I suggest that a price fixing cartel may benefit us both. People supplying my competitors who refuse my overtures to provide me with similar discounts
2) Because if I wish to make a point to someone I want to be able to put a large price on their head that is going to take a while to be worked off. Currently it is not worth putting any more on someones head than the minimum it will get someone to go out and kill them
3) See 2
As a merchant SAD's, Assassination and bounties will be everyday tools of my trade. As noted I am lawful evil and I consider that profit is king here and I will use all tactics that I can get away with. I am just looking at these system from a customer view and telling you that currently the bounty system does not fill my needs and that your proposals do nothing to fix that so instead I will stick to out of game methods of contracting these services
