Bounty Hunter Archive

I'm a jedi and am extremly shocked at this guys ignorance and extremly proud of your patience.

You were clever and played the part. Think of it as undercover work.

Ultimately you should feel good that you found a creative way and waited for an opportune moment to strike.

There is more than one way to skin a cat. A Bounty hunter is not a brute thug. He/ she must be creative and clever. sometimes even befriending their mark for a short period. Especially when confronting a superior opponent. You did what must be done. All that matters is the kill.

Job well done,

I'm here to tell you. If I were a BH I'd be unscrupulous. I'd go imp and hunt imps. if only to gain a little advantage and keep em a little more relaxed before I pounce. If it was a reb. I'd go reb. period.

Bounty Hunters are not police. Not in this game nor in RL. They are on the fringe of society. They are in essence domestic mercenaries. You call them in when the fugitive cannot be brought in with conventional mean (i.e. the police, stormies, etc.)

A Bh by nature is 1.5xs weaker than a jedi. I know So why would a BH go toe to toe? Only the most inept and stupid BH will do this.

Bounty Hunters should liken themselves to Lions in the grasslands. Stalking, waiting, ready to pounce their prey at the most opportune time. Sometimes it works, sometimes you clone.

If I were a BH I would use every tool at my disposal. Including same faction hunting.

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Cyrrex wrote:

(Disclaimer: coming from a Jedi)

Nothing inherently wrong with what you did - neither according to the mechanics of the game, nor in your role as a BH. The mark was apparently engaging in stupid behaviour, and he opened himself up to attack.

On the other hand, consider the net result. The jedi and his buddies are mad as hell, and feel you are dishonorable. The Jedi lost xp. You got your mark and your payout, but unless you are a sociopath, you probably don't particularly enjoy the hate tells you received. You cozied up to your mark, trying to gain trust or some level of comfort, and then unloaded. You become more hated, and the Jedi and his friendsbecome more paranoid and hate bounty hunters even more than they probably did already.

This kind of situation is not good for you, the Jedi, his friends, or the whole community. The Jedi have a reason to hate you (BHs in general), as they see you using "dirty" tactics. You (the entire BH community) have a reason to hate the whining, public duelingJedi and all their hate tells. I am not blaming your actions, however...I could see myself doing the same thing. But if I was the Jedi in question, evenif I was being a tool, I would probably be pissed at you too. The problem is the punishment system for Jedi. The xp loss. The Jedi gets pissed at the lost xp, and he directs it at the immediate cause of the loss...you.

I know it has been beat like a rented mule, but the xp loss is what leads to all this hate. On both sides. XP loss is not going to curb the Jedi population, so no reason to even bring it up as an argument anymore. All it does is lead to hate. They should find another system of punishment that still hurts, but does not lead to this kind of stuff. There are other ways to do this. Most of you probably think XP loss is fantastic...or you probably think it should be even more severe. But I think you should consider how much less stressful this game would be if they found another alternative to xp loss. Instead of getting hate, you might get congratulated on a job well done.

Some of you probably do not realize how painful the xp loss can be. Granted, fora full template Jedi it means nothing (another good reason to find another system), but for anyone else it is significant. In reality, a half templated Jedi will earn about 900 - 1000 Jedi xp per kill for a mob a couple levels above them. Any other double elite will earn roughly 6000 weapons xp for the same mob. That is a rough conversion rate of 6 to 1. Now, you have to further consider that the half templated Jedi is MUCH weaker than the double elite...so the kill rate is slower too. Effectively, I estimate that the actual xp gain rate is about 10 to 1, maybe a little less. You can argue this, of course, but I do not think I am too far off.

Now you have to factor in the xp costs of advancing up the skill trees. A single tree in a regular combat prof takes 1.25 million weapons xp. A single tree for a Jedi prof requires 3 millionJedixp...that is 2.4 times the xp requirement. So if you will allow me to use my 10 to 1 xp gaining rate, that means it takes 24 times the effortin combat toadvance through a single tree. Oh, and I forgot...Jedi do not gain combat xp while they gain Jedi xp. That adds 33% to my number, since you now have a fourth tree to worry about to get to a mastery. That brings us up to 32 times the effort.

So to bring it into perspective for those of you who may not have known: If you kill a half templated Padawan (112 skill points), he will lose 224,000 xp (it is 2000 times the skill points invested that you lose). At 32 times the effort for Jedi xp, that is equivalent of losingaround 7 million ordinary weapons xp. Shoot, lets just say my numbers are way off, and it is only half that...3.5 million.

Imagine if you lost 3.5 million Rifle weapons xp. You would not be happy about it either. You mayeven vent your anger on the person who is directly responsible for your loss, and especially so if he/she used less than honorable tactics. That wouldn't mean you had a right to complain, but it would at least be understandable.

No, I did not mention the AFK Kashyyyk issue...I see it as a circular problem. Yes, that is a method for gaining the xp back and to do so in relative safety. But the only reason people do it is because of the xp loss.

I am not a disgruntled Jedi, I am only trying to present an observation (I have only lost xp once, and have never beento Kashyyyk). I can deal with it as it is. But honestly, I think both sides would be much better off if they got rid of xp loss and found a new system of punishment. Most of the hate would disappear, and the only haters left would be those who truely are jerks.

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Camelz wrote:

There are two ways to look at this, but both start with the premise that most kids under 15 and a fair few over 15 get this game then say "I want a Jedi and I want it NOW"

1) The path to Jedi is supposed to be "long and difficult". The devs, in their infinate wisdom, have decided that long = difficult. Hence the massive grind required for Jedi. They did, however, manage to come up with one idea to add difficulty - BH missions. Back to the devs idea that long = difficult, it was only natural that the difficulty just added length to the grind. The idea is that the BH will slow down the grind, making it longer and therefore, in the eyes of the devs, more difficult.Ergo xp loss.

2) The path to Jedi is a time sink that costs you $15 a month per account = the path to jedi is a time sink that adds $15 to SoEs coffers each month. SoE also realise that high end content is pretty sparse in game, so for the Jedi that are not PvP oriented (i.e. most of the n00bs with glow-bats that dble xp'd and respeced their way to full template while crying none stop that being a Jedi is so unfair because BH can attack me) they are going to get pretty bored soon and probably decide to give Blizzard or somebody else their pocket money. Although it was in SoE interest to sell the Wookie World expansion to all aspiring Jedi, it has backfired in that the time sink has now been reduced to $7.50 for a full template - they are never going to sell a Jedi template for less than $7.50and would actually like much more, hence the group xp nerf. Expect the time sink to get longer not shorter - SoE were expecting a lot more than $7.50 per full template Jedi.

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No argument from me. I unlocked shortly after CU, so I have not had the benefit of respecs and double xp. And the only thing Iever did AFK was artisan surveying. Grinding Jedi should take a long time, but I do not think xp loss has proven a very effective deterrent. At best, it forces people to do the AFK grinding to compensate for it. At worst, it generates a ton of hatred. Time sink? Fine. Punishment for visibility? Dandy. XP loss? Bad. The fundamental flaw with xp loss is that it is regression. It does not matter much how long the grind takes, as long as you feel that you are always moving forward. XP loss sets you back to such a degree that it causes anger. Ironically, I think it hurts more the lower level you are as a Jedi (even though the actual xp loss is smaller). I think that if they increased the xp requirements by 50% (or some arbitrary number), but got rid of xp loss, Jedi would be much happier...even if the net result is a longer grind overall. The xp loss has a pschological impact - this is a game centering around character progression first and foremost, and when your character suffers a hit to that progression, it hurts.

Better solutions than xp loss? I will just throw out an idea or two:

-Give BHs a "Dead or Alive" option. Instead of delivering the DB, you alsohave an option to take the mark in chains. In reality, you complete your mission, at a slightly lesser payout. Jedi loses no xp, but spawns at the Imp prison on Dathomir (or something silly like that). Or, you can complete the DB for full payout. Jedi only loses 1000 times the skill point investment in xp (instead of 2000).

-Eliminate all forms of xp loss. Instead, a Jedi who dies at the hands of a BH will have one random crystal or pearl in his inventory be destroyed (we always have some on us, in our sabers if nothing else). That would hurt, but not overly so, and the punishment scales more appropriately from Newb to Knight. Of course, pearl and crystal drops would have to be fixed before something like this could work. I am sure a lot ofJedi would hate this change at first.

There are probably better ways.

Message Edited by Cyrrex on 08-03-2005 06:26 AM