Pistoleer Archive

Here is a system that is real simple and will work.

You kill an overt person of another faction and you have a 24 hour TEF on you so the people can place bountieson your head.

Its simple.. You killed someone.. You pvped.. You can get a bounty on your head for 24 hours thatcan only beissued by the person that you killed. When you go overt have a warning if you want to..

By going overt other players can attack you and people can put bounties on you for the next 24 in game hours.

You don't want to pvp then don't go overt.

Bascially, anyone that YOU killed can put a bounty on your head up to 24hrs after you killed him or YOU can put a bounty on anyone that has killed YOU for up to 24hrs after that happend. Should be a minimum of about 50k to place a bounty.

Here's what I think of your idea:

You posted it in the wrong forum.

I don't like the idea of a player bounty system in general. I think the game is quite pvp oriented as it is. I also think the BH class is already very popular in general and attractive to the pvp oriented player in particular, and that this would only make it more so on both accounts.

BUT - having said that, your system sounds pretty reasonable, and I could live with it. I think at the very least it's a good start for the planning of such a system (if they insist on implementing one).

I would recommend the following tweaks (although you probably won't like them ):

- When you get this "flag" that you can have a player bounty placed on your head, have that flag removed once / if you are killed by a BH. No matter how many people you kill, you only have the one flag, and can only be killed by a BH once. Each additional kill adds someone else that can place a bounty to your head. Allow any or all of them to place a bounty on your head at the same time. Allow multiple BHs to accept any of those bounties, so you could have 3 people paying to have you killed, and 10 BHs chasing after you, each working for one of those 3 people. As soon as ANY one of them kills you, your flag is gone, the others are informed that their mark was already killed.

- And more details on the payment: I would make it kinda cheap to place the bounty (say 10k), but that's payable up front and gone - regardless of if you're the third person to place the bounty or the first, and regardless of whether the bounty is carried out or not. Then have the rest of the cost be charged only upon successful completion of the bounty (another 25, 30, 50 - whatever thousand). I would also have a lot of that be overhead, administration, mafia, however you want to justify it charge. So the person paying to have someone killed ends up paying say 35k to 60k, but the BH only gets maybe 10k or 15k. Hopefully that will discourage excessive use of it (I'm thinking of situations where within a guild or between friendly guilds everyone just takes out bounties on each other and doesn't much worry about it because the money is just moving around between friends / guild members and it's "fun").

Oh yeah, third maybe point - should this be tied to faction? I realize that it already is in that you can only kill someone of the other faction anyway, so it would be a rebel taking out a bounty on an imp or vice versa, BUT - if a Rebel takes out a bounty on an Imperial player, should only a Rebel BH be able to accept that bounty? Seems right to me...

A. It's off-topic. Saying "it impacts your gameplay" doesn't make it on-topic, and (for anyone not involved in the GCW under your system) is false.

B. I fail to see how this fixes the problem player bounties had in UO, namely:

"Hey, Bob, get over here and kill me! This dude I just ganked wants to give us 50k!"

I know some of you may accuse me of being a care bear for my opinions, but I feel that I have a reasonable position. In the Star Wars Universe bounties were not necessarily faction on faction. The best example would be the Hutt bounty placed on Han Solo. At the time of the bounty Han was most certainly neutral. I don't think that bounties should be faction based, at all. I think that anyone, anywhere, at any time should be aeligible for a bounty as long as certain conditions are met.

The first, and most RP of them would be that you fail a mission for the Hutts, or another large crime organization. The bounty would be placed upon the mark, by the Hutts. If you dance with the devil, be prepared for him topinch your arse.

The second would be your standing in any given faction. The more points you have, the higher the probability of a bounty being placed on your head during any given time period. Nobody puts a hit out on the guy that changes the toilet paper in princess leia's restroom. Mon Mothma however, better keep his fishy hide among friends! This would be somewhat random, and never more than once in lets say, a week of IRL time. The week is something that would obviously have to be tweaked but since I am tossing out ideas, it sounds like its fairly reasonable to me.

The third would be for failing to collect for any given bounty. Hey, bounty hunting is a dangerous game. If you fail to remove the thorn from Jabba/The Emporer/Mon Mothma's side, which he PAID you to do, your future as a breathing bounty hunter should be in jeopardy. The more failures, the more the probability of getting a bounty placed on the BH's head.

The fourth, placing a bounty. Once again if you take this dangerous step, you open yourself to the underworld. If you place a bounty on someone, and they get hit, be prepared to have the hunters turned back on the client, and the bounty hunter. If the price for placing a bounty is high enough the war of retribution won't last long.

Obviously this would have to be tweaked for several factors. Such as the number of marks, and the number of bounty hunters online at any given time. You wouldn't want all the BH's sitting around polishing their blasters all day. However you wouldn't want people constantly living in fear every time they log on. Ithink that the bounties *should* have a time limit once taken by a bounty hunter. Perhaps something along the lines of 12 hours of the marks online time, once again this is something that would need to be tweaked. I think that the mark should be annonymous until the hit is accepted. This would reduce the number of "hey lets put a bounty on each other!" situations.

The reward would be commensurate with the skill level of the mark, as would the price! I Like the idea of it costing twice the amount of the bounty payoff, to place a bounty. I also think that the minimum price should be determined by the skill level of the mark. This would leave lattitude for how much the client wants the mark dead. Perhaps a level 1 bounty would be worth 10-20k, cost 20-40k to place and would be available to any level of bounty hunter. The payoff should be slightly random, so that it is slightly more difficult to determine exactly who the mark is deductively. Perhaps a hit placed on a Master Commando would pay 60-100k and cost 120-200k to place and be available to only the Master level bounty hunters. However a max price bounty should always have a max price payoff, since someone REALLY wants someone dead.

Obviously this system could be abused, like someone spending 12 of IRL online time locked in their house hiding, but then again perhaps there is an opportunity to get a slicer to open a door or something. Or perhaps BH's could get a tool that gives them 5-10 minutes of entrance to the house of their mark usable once per hour on each domicile. IE 10 houses = 10 uses of the tool, once per house per hour.

I don't think that just PvPing should earn someone a bounty. That seems a bit lazy IMHO. No RP to it, makes for lots of opportunity for griefing. Although those same opportunities for griefing would also be a wonderful way to sink money out of the game. Perhaps this could tie in to the factionalized hits. I.E. if you gained so many faction points over a given time someone from the opposite faction "could" put a hit out. In extreme cases perhaps the game could put a hit out.

Keep in mind that I am not necessarily in love with any of these ideas. I do however think that they are fairly reasonable. Any of the numbers would have to be up for tweaking simply because what seems like a long or short time to me, may seem too little/much to someone else. Same for the money.

Whether or not this is on topic is a bit silly. Who cares if its not precisely a Pistoleer thing. Its something interesting to talk about that isn't whining. Its an opportunity to express your opinion on the developement of the game. Take advantage of it. Promote responsible, reasonable, intelligent discussion. The devs are FAR more likely to read and listen to people who can express themselves well.

I feel so sad and geeky for wanting to correct this, but Mon Mothma was the female human leader of the rebellion. Admiral Ackbar is the famous Mon Cal from the films who was just a fleet commander.

I am against player bounties set by other players. PvP is supposed to be consensual. The TEF only lasts about 10 minutes. I dont want any more additions that enable other players to grief me at will.

Once missions are fixed so that 99% of the time they are not bugged then I think game generated player bounties can be implemented. If you work for criminal factions and fail in your job assignments then you run the risk of having a game bounty placed on you. This is inline with the SW universe. If you chose not to work for criminal factions then you do not run the risk of player bounties.

If Bounty Hunters want more PvP content then let them have it amongst themselves by adding declared BH factions. Once you take missions for a given Hut/Criminal faction your standing increases with that faction and decreases with the others. Once you achieve +1000 with one faction and -1000 with another faction you become a faction hunter. You are limited to only doing missions for your new bossesand are able to kill and be killed by other faction hunters. If you do not want this level of PvP then you can manage your faction to avoid it.

Sorry this is off topic for Pistoleer but we seem to get alot of BH lurkers in our forums!