Bounty Hunter Archive

Hi All (Forewarning this is going to be a long post):

I'm a new bounty hunter here, I played SWG during its first 6 months of play and I ended up leaving because I got bored with what content was there. So I picked it back up again recently bought Rage of the Wookies and got JTL with it. I must say I'm pretty impressed with the current state of the game. I started a new character because I had no clue how to play my old one. Decided the route I wanted to go was bounty hunter, and I picked the perfect time to come back, the following day they started the 2x exp bonus. Well since then I've almost mastered the bounty hunter line (just need investigation currently at 2), I've mastered Marksman, Rifleman, and I have 0003 of pistoleer. I've heard that this was a decent template.

I must say doing the bounty hunter missions are a lot of fun and add a lot of depth to the game. However I've come up with a few ideas that I think would again add even more fun to the game for all players not just bounty hunters. I've tried to take this from a roleplayers perspective, as well as fun game mechanics. Here are my ideas:

1) Firstly and I know this has been discussed before, open up bounty's on players more than just Jedi. I would say make this well known and make it faction based. Because we all know bounty's come from people getting pissed off enough to want the other person hunted down. Maybe its a Rebel Leader who really wants an imperial officer dead, maybe its Nymm really wanting a player dead who keeps killing his guards. There are lots of scenarios for this and it should be purely based on faction. So your a player that wants to NOT be hunted by bounty hunters, well you need to manage your faction and keep a low profile. This may not open up as much content for you, but thats a decision you will have to make as a player, get the faction and the rewards, with the downside of possibly being hunted, or stay low and ignore the radar. By the way this SHOULD also work for other bounty hunters, if there is a rebel bounty hunter who is killing a lot of imperials through bounties, then he should expect to be hunted. This would add depth to the entire world on all scales, this would be fun in my opinion.

2) Secondly there should be new types of bounty hunter missions, not just "track and kill". The Track and Kill method is a lot of fun but I think more could be added here are some ideas:

a) "Capture" Bounty -- We all know that there can be bounties placed on wanting people alive. This is how I propose we achieve this. Firstly included in the in the bounty mission will be an item that will be used for "trapping" the individual, this item can vary. One might be a "stasis field mine" which is layed on the ground and your goal is to get the PC or NPC to move over that mine and effectively trap him in it. Another item might be a fake vendor hut, when the mark walks into the vendor hutt a shield raises and captures the mark. Another item might be a type of gas grenade in which will knock the person out effectively capturing him. What would happen after a PC or NPC is captured? Well the following would take place: For an NPC, the "requestor" NPC will show up 3-5 minutes after the capture and make sure the bio-signature of the captured mark is correct, if it is then the exp and money is rewarded to the bounty hunter and the mission ends. For an PC , again the "requestor" NPC will show up in an amount of time, I would suggest a longer time period than the 3-5 minute range, I would say 5-10 minutes. What happens then? Well we are talking about players here and a number of things could happen, if the captured player is concious (IE non-smoke grenade capture) then this will give the player an opportunity to "bribe" their way out of the capture. We have to remember bounty hunters are in this for the money (unless you are needing exp), this gives the two time to talk while they await the arrival of their NPC. The bounty hunter will have controls of the outside shield or mine whichever is the case and can disable it at any time (this would make you fail the mission). However you would do so with much risk, for the next 5 minutes after a mission failure/success both players are PVP enabled against each other, so releasing a captured individual could be to your demise. If the player bribes his way out, he will be able to either pay off the bounty hunter, or attempt to free himself. There is a lot that could be done to this system but this is the base to what I think could be a lot of fun for all players.

b) "Threaten" Bounty -- In this kind of bounty your goal is to threaten your target, to let them know that someone is watching and if they dont streighten up they will be dead. The goal here would be to attack the target and get them to a % of life and when you do your bounty is complete. If you "Kill" the target the bounty will be considered a failure so you must manage what you do appropriately (IE no 1-2 shot NPCs). For players that are the target of the bounty they would receive a message (email) when the bounty hunter completed his mission from the bounty requestor with details as to why this has happened and how to prevent it. These kind of bounties are warnings to the players before they go on the kill or capture list.

3) Thirdly I think there should be some tools to help a bounty hunter complete his mission (any "type" of mission). For example bounties against players, we have to remember what we are going against are REAL players. When you are a newb bounty hunter and not many people know your a bounty hunter this can be easy. You can "con" your bounty into coming to you by talking to them through /tell at which point you could carry out your bounty (Kill, Capture, or Threaten). But after you become known in the playerbase this will be much harder to achieve. This is where I recommend tools to help you achieve your goal. The first type of tool I have an idea for is a way to send "fake emails" to players through some bounty hunter hacker terminal. This could be used to lure people into fake vendor huts or the like. Another idea for tools I had is that I was reading about how most bounty hunters feel that hunting Jedi can be a pain, well maybe you are given a tool in the bounty to limit force usage around you for a certain limited time period. Sort of a force stasis device, or maybe this is made through rare components from crafters. I think this would fit more in alighnment with the game world than saying "bounty hunters get a 30% damage bonus against Jedi". Bounty hunters portrayed in most Star Wars movies/novels are supposed to have a lot of options open to them depending on the situation, and most revolve around tools and tricks of some sort. This idea could be expanded quite a bit.

I know this is a lot about the bounty hunter class but I think this would help add to the atmosphere of the star wars universe while playing SWG. On all player fronts this would change the game and I think could add a lot of depth. Anyway those are my thoughts.

Icami Tyli