Bounty Boards in the towns

[Archimagus]

Wow Lach, Awesome post. That is probably the best system I have heard of. One possibility to add though, if you go to the bounty office or whatever, it should just not show you any bounties for yourself. That way if I go and look for bounties there is no possibility that I will see the one for myself. Also, when you request a a bounty, It might be good to get a random list of 3 or so to pick from that only show the location, character "level", and bounty amount until after you take it. I do like the fact of having a time delay between requesting bounties unless you come back with a completed one. One last thought, how would you handle bounties for people that are off line? I would assume that the bounty office would only give out bounty tickets for people who are currently online. It would suck to be searching for someone that is not there to be found. While WAY out of character, if might be good to have some kind of an indicator on the bounty ticket to let you know if the person is online. I don't really like it, but I think it is better than the alternative.

[Lachrymose]

yea, archi. that would be a good idea, and i think this is what wacko was saying, but if you look for a bounty, then it shouldn't give you a bounty for any character that is part of your deva. and yes, it would be a pain for friends to search for your name on their too with a time limit in play.

one possible downside that necro mentioned in the irc is that you wouldn't be able to kill a bunch of pk's then later check the bounty board to see if they are on them to turn in. honestly though, i don't see this as a huge downside, since a bounty hunter doesn't go around just killing everyone in sight and then checking to see if there's a bounty on him. either way, you could still hang on to the heads of any notorious pk's you've killed, then check the bounty boards every so often and whenever one comes up with a head you already have, you could claim it.

archi, i don't think it matters whether the person is online or not. no one ever said that the bounties would be collectable immediately. i imagined some might take days or possibly even weeks, since some of the PK's may be elusive or just very difficult to kill.

however, you should be able to go back to the bounty hall to see if there have been any updates on your bounty, so perhaps while you were looking for him, he killed again, so the bounty would be worth more now and there would be a new "last seen" on the bounty, which would not only tell you he's probably still online, but he's probably somewhere in the area.

finally, if you get stuck with a bounty you feel is too hard, or the guy hasn't shown himself in a while, you could always give up looking for the bounty, although you would be subject to the same penalty as if you rejected the bounty in the first place. however, if the time penalty is, say, 3 hours, if you looked for the guy for 3 hours and didn't find him, you could i give up and get a new one immediately. if you'd looked for 2 hours and got sick of looking for him, you could give up, but you'd have to wait another hour before you could get a new one.

[Archimagus]

That all sounds fine good to me. And I was thinking like an hour between requests if you had not filled the bounty, but 3 hours is probably good too. The time limit though would be something the devs would have to figure out through testing.

[Sabbicat]

Here is a thought. If in a city and a PK happens how about a Bell being tolled as in a llarm for all to come running. If it has been out in the surrounding area then its like a town cryer announcing the heineous crime and all to be on the look out for the brigand. Of course these should be reserved for the worst case despots not those following just general pvp rules.

[Mercerism]

played a bit too much assassins creed, eh?

[yXXe]

I like the idea. More risk/reward to killing other players. Awesome.

[wrath]

brilliant, im for this idea at 100%

[Kohlrabi]

Thumbs up for Lachrymose's idea.

[Hardboot]

If someone is doing a lot on PKing you could put up a bounty on their head, then people can kill the guy and chop off his head, then turn it in for the reward.

Awesome, great crime deterrent.

PKing would actually have consequence and it would make thing much more fun with Hitmen and Mercs.

[Stump]

Actualy, I dont like your system Lachrymose. It is not so free as it should be in the SandBox, IMO. I like memory idea much more: http://www.mortalonline.com/forums/2...html#post51008
I think this idea is much more better.

[Lachrymose]

Originally Posted by Stump

Actualy, I dont like your system Lachrymose. It is not so free as it should be in the SandBox, IMO. I like memory idea much more: http://www.mortalonline.com/forums/2...html#post51008
I think this idea is much more better.

the whole reason i suggested the idea is because it would be a way to prevent a bounty board from being exploited. i'm afraid the "memory idea" wouldn't do anything to prevent PK's from just getting their buddies to kill them so they can split the loot. in fact, that idea has nothing to do with bounties, but rather it was about how people should know whether you're a murderer or not.

the reason my idea sounds somewhat restrictive is because it needs to be in order to prevent it from being exploited. if the system is easily exploited, people won't use it as much, and if not many people use it, then there isn't much point in having it, so the devs would be wasting their time to implement it. if freedom is the big concern here, the most appropriate idea would be to not have bounty boards at all. players still have the freedom to seek out mercenaries or bounty hunters who have a good rapport with the community, and they can just tell them "bring me the head of so-and-so and i'll give you x amount of money."

one of the huge selling points behind sandbox MMO's is that anything the devs don't implement, the players can artificially implement themselves. in fact, i could start up a bounty board in my own house if i wanted to, all i'd need is a locked down book or maybe some kind of bulletin board.

[NiKtheALiEN]

In a reality where people are reanimated, daily, how much reality is there left in Bounty Hunting?

Therefore, bounties would not be much money, and therefore exploiting the system or whatever you want to call it would be minimal.

Bounty Hunting would then go on, more for fun then anything else. And in a game where law and Karma have mechanical effects, it may be necessary to have a legitimate system to kill players without offending law or karma.

[Archimagus]

Originally Posted by NiKtheALiEN

And in a game where law and Karma have mechanical effects, it may be necessary to have a legitimate system to kill players without offending law or karma.

That is something else that was always in the back of my head, but It just never made it into one of my posts. But I agree, that is one of the reasons that a bounty system probably wouldn't work if it wasn't official in some way.

[Resin]

Originally Posted by Lachrymose

RANKS:
first off, if you want to attempt a bounty, you wouldn't get to choose which bounty you wanted to go after. rather, you would go talk to the "bounty master" and you would get to choose which "rank" of bounty you were interested in. there could be 1-star bounties, up to maybe 10-star bounties. the number of stars would indicate how much money was on the person's head, but you can also assume that the highest bounties will be harder to kill, since they've probably killed several people to get their bounties up so high.

RANDOMNESS & VOLUME:
once you select which rank of bounty you want to go after, the bounty master selects one at random and offers it to you. if you choose to decline, you'd have to wait a certain period of time until you could ask for another one. since the bounty is selected at random, you won't know whether or not you're on "the board" (there won't even really be a board), and the time limit prevents people from refusing, and then asking again multiple times in hopes of finding themselves or a friend on the list. however, if you accept the bounty and then complete it, you shouldn't have to wait to get another one.

now, one problem i thought of could be that there may not be a whole lot of people placing bounties, so if you're a PK and you kill several people, you might assume that there's a bounty on your head, so you hop on your alt to check the "bounty hall". if there aren't many bounties posted, there's a higher chance that you'd randomly find yourself on there, so any way to increase the number of bounties being posted would help to prevent this.

one way to increase the number of bounties is when a player is unlawfully killed, it will ask them whether or not they would like to contribute to the bounty on that character. if you say yes, a menu will come up with the amount of money in your bank account, and you can then type the amount of money you're willing to place into the bounty for this character. if players are forced to run all the way to a city to place a bounty, it may seem like too much work, so making it convenient will increase the chance that they will contribute to the bounty. also, since players will initially act off their emotions, they would also be more likely to add to the bounty than if they had some time to cool off as they ran back to the city. of course, you could put a bounty on someone by going to the bounty hall as well, if there was someone you wanted to place a bounty on even if they didn't kill you (maybe they ripped you off in a business deal).

ACCUMULATED BOUNTIES:
so, there won't be 10 bounties on the same person, but rather there will be one bounty that gets larger and larger as people add to it. that way, the more infamous criminals will eventually have the largest bounties. obviously, when the criminal is killed and the head is turned in, the player who turns it in will be rewarded and the bounty will be reset to 0.

BOUNTY LOCATING:
another good thing about asking players when they're killed if they want to add to the bounty is that if they say yes, it can take note of where that person was killed. the bounty on the murderer would say "last seen: xxxxx" and the general location of the last person to get killed and place a bounty on him would be recorded (ex: "last seen in kokiri forest"). also, it could have a log that keeps track of all the locations in which bounty contributers were killed, that way bounty hunters could get an idea of where this criminal resides

BOUNTY HUNTER REP & PRIVATE BOUNTIES:
one additional feature could be a rating system, where bounty hunters would gain a reputation at the bounty hall as they completed bounties. then, a list would be made available of all the bounty hunters and their reputations. if you selected an individual bounty hunter, it would list all the bounties they've completed and for how much, so you could see what rank bounties this person usually goes for (indicating the level of difficulty he is interested in), and you could also be clued in on whether or not he's legit (if you see he's killed some guy named "steve" 40 times, you might be suspicious).

using this, you could place "private" bounties. so if i wanted someone killed, i'd talk to the bounty master, and place a private bounty for 5000g, and i could designate who this private bounty would be offered to. no one could add to my private bounty, so there may be several private bounties on the same person. although they would have to be pretty high for them to be worthwhile. then, when someone that you listed when you placed the private bounty goes up to the bounty master to check for bounties, he would have a list of all his private bounties, and he could look through them, but if he declined them, he wouldn't be subjected to a time limit like he would after declining a "normal" bounty.

also, by taking out a certain percentage of the bounty, this could act as a money sink.

I would like this if 'Bounty Master' were a player skill- I think a skill like this should have a requirement of owning some sort of player accesible structure, either a keep or a tavern or something of that nature which could then be designated as a 'bounty hall'. Basicly combining the book locked to your doorstep method with your system.

It would be nice if these players had there own rep system, kind of like our forums here. Perhaps only Bounty posters could affect it and only bounty masters could add to the bounty hunters rep. So the BMs would have motivation to be good at their jobs. I could see a player who owned a tavern acting as a BM to up his patron traffic.

I don't like exploits of game mechanics, but making it a P2P interaction would make it more of a challenge at least, where if it was being exploited players themselves would have a chance of spotting this and doing something about it. I think a player would be more adaptive in actively looking for exploits, they just need the tools to be able to do this.

Rather than having global bounties, BMs would have to physically share their bounty logs, and you would always have to go to the BM holding the gold to collect your bounty. Perhaps birds or message courriers (good side occupation for a traveling bard/cartographer) could carry letters that could do this as well. I think this would create more jobs, be better for immersion, and give natural localization, somewhere between completely seperate individuals and a global network. BMs in the close traveling distances might work together to update regularly and get more bounties cashed (thus collecting more commision) or one might try to put another out of buisness through a variety of strategies (pvp, slandering reputation, etc.) while BMs that are futher apart would update each other less frequently, perhaps when they think one of their more elusive PK commisions is heading to another BMs territory.

It probably is less effective and more exploitable than the message on death system, but I would make that trade for a more player-based system.

[Honorzeal]

RANKS:
first off, if you want to attempt a bounty, you wouldn't get to choose which bounty you wanted to go after. rather, you would go talk to the "bounty master" and you would get to choose which "rank" of bounty you were interested in. there could be 1-star bounties, up to maybe 10-star bounties. the number of stars would indicate how much money was on the person's head, but you can also assume that the highest bounties will be harder to kill, since they've probably killed several people to get their bounties up so high.

RANDOMNESS & VOLUME:
once you select which rank of bounty you want to go after, the bounty master selects one at random and offers it to you. if you choose to decline, you'd have to wait a certain period of time until you could ask for another one. since the bounty is selected at random, you won't know whether or not you're on "the board" (there won't even really be a board), and the time limit prevents people from refusing, and then asking again multiple times in hopes of finding themselves or a friend on the list. however, if you accept the bounty and then complete it, you shouldn't have to wait to get another one.

now, one problem i thought of could be that there may not be a whole lot of people placing bounties, so if you're a PK and you kill several people, you might assume that there's a bounty on your head, so you hop on your alt to check the "bounty hall". if there aren't many bounties posted, there's a higher chance that you'd randomly find yourself on there, so any way to increase the number of bounties being posted would help to prevent this.

one way to increase the number of bounties is when a player is unlawfully killed, it will ask them whether or not they would like to contribute to the bounty on that character. if you say yes, a menu will come up with the amount of money in your bank account, and you can then type the amount of money you're willing to place into the bounty for this character. if players are forced to run all the way to a city to place a bounty, it may seem like too much work, so making it convenient will increase the chance that they will contribute to the bounty. also, since players will initially act off their emotions, they would also be more likely to add to the bounty than if they had some time to cool off as they ran back to the city. of course, you could put a bounty on someone by going to the bounty hall as well, if there was someone you wanted to place a bounty on even if they didn't kill you (maybe they ripped you off in a business deal).

ACCUMULATED BOUNTIES:
so, there won't be 10 bounties on the same person, but rather there will be one bounty that gets larger and larger as people add to it. that way, the more infamous criminals will eventually have the largest bounties. obviously, when the criminal is killed and the head is turned in, the player who turns it in will be rewarded and the bounty will be reset to 0.

BOUNTY LOCATING:
another good thing about asking players when they're killed if they want to add to the bounty is that if they say yes, it can take note of where that person was killed. the bounty on the murderer would say "last seen: xxxxx" and the general location of the last person to get killed and place a bounty on him would be recorded (ex: "last seen in kokiri forest"). also, it could have a log that keeps track of all the locations in which bounty contributers were killed, that way bounty hunters could get an idea of where this criminal resides

BOUNTY HUNTER REP & PRIVATE BOUNTIES:
one additional feature could be a rating system, where bounty hunters would gain a reputation at the bounty hall as they completed bounties. then, a list would be made available of all the bounty hunters and their reputations. if you selected an individual bounty hunter, it would list all the bounties they've completed and for how much, so you could see what rank bounties this person usually goes for (indicating the level of difficulty he is interested in), and you could also be clued in on whether or not he's legit (if you see he's killed some guy named "steve" 40 times, you might be suspicious).

using this, you could place "private" bounties. so if i wanted someone killed, i'd talk to the bounty master, and place a private bounty for 5000g, and i could designate who this private bounty would be offered to. no one could add to my private bounty, so there may be several private bounties on the same person. although they would have to be pretty high for them to be worthwhile. then, when someone that you listed when you placed the private bounty goes up to the bounty master to check for bounties, he would have a list of all his private bounties, and he could look through them, but if he declined them, he wouldn't be subjected to a time limit like he would after declining a "normal" bounty.

also, by taking out a certain percentage of the bounty, this could act as a money sink.

/applauds

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant

But, only one problem.

I would rather choose what public bounty I would like to hunt, rather then being at random. The "friend kills bounty and splits the loot" issue could be solved by friends lists (if the hunted is on the hunted friends list, or vice versa, the bounty you have chosen automatically is cancelled) or guild members (can't be in the same guild if you choose to hunt player x)

However, great idea. I hope the devs use it

[Lachrymose]

Originally Posted by Honorzeal

I would rather choose what public bounty I would like to hunt, rather then being at random. The "friend kills bounty and splits the loot" issue could be solved by friends lists (if the hunted is on the hunted friends list, or vice versa, the bounty you have chosen automatically is cancelled) or guild members (can't be in the same guild if you choose to hunt player x)

well, there have been many similar suggestions previously in the thread, and the reason i added the random assignment feature is because in my opinion, if you can choose your bounty, it will be exploitable. for example, i could just not add someone to my friends list if i planned on colluding with them to collect bounties.. it was also suggested that the game could keep a log of everyone you've ever grouped with and disallow you from turning in their bounty, which i don't think would work out very well, not only because that would be a ton of data to keep up with, but also because you may have randomly grouped up with someone who became a PK later, but now you are barred from a legitimate bounty AND there's still always the possibility that i could exploit (i explained my thoughts on these circumstancesa previously in the thread, if you have the patience to wade through it all ;P).

[Resin]

If the bounty master were a person this would be much more organic. Asking for a bounty on a specific person would arouse suspicion so most people wouldn't do that, unless they had a particular grudge to settle, something you couldn't do otherwise.

There are only a few reasons I can think of why not to have player bounty masters:

1)Not always on: this is part of the reason I tied the idea to property ownership particularly taverns (besides giving more and more varied traffic to taverns to compete for). Taverns could be around the clock money generators (or losers if your not careful) you could hire either NPCs or other players to run them when you're not around including the BM aspect. NPCs could then handle all the functions you suggest except one.

2)exploit:The whole bounty on your friend deal with the BM in on it. Well if it works, how is this any different than killing for a living, or theiving for your money, if anything it is more immersive. And the rep system would be there for the fool who put the big bounty out and got bilked. Maybe bounty posters could actually add more elaborate forms of retribution if it is a P2P system, like a certain item must be looted to fulfill the contract or it must take place in a public and humiliating way.

3)The on death system/accumulation systemersonally I find the on death part to be an immersion breaker. But if each BM had the option to correlate their bounty books with other BMs via a book comparing letter writing system then you would get a)more jobs for messengers b) the ability for PKs to kill messengers c)an organic compromise between localised and universal bounty systems that promotes alliances vs. competition.

4)BM sounds like Bowel Movement: maybe we should change the name of the profession to something else.

[Lachrymose]

Originally Posted by Resin;603201)[B

Not always on[/b]:

yep, if BMs were controlled by players, i think it would be a great idea to have npc vendors to take over their position and be responsible for their duties while the BM is away.

Originally Posted by Resin;603201)2)[B

exploit:[/b]

i'm not against exploits per se.. the problem i have is that when an optional feature like a bounty system is easily exploited, i'm afraid people will choose not to use it. i get the impression most people wouldn't want to contribute money if there is a decent chance that money is going straight into the hands of their assailant. if people are discouraged from using it, then i feel the system has failed and would become useless.

Originally Posted by Resin;603201)3)[B

The on death system/accumulation system[/b]:

i mentioned somewhere in here that instead of having some cheesy dialogue screen pop up, players could report murders to healers. i mean.. you're probably going to have to go to a healer anyway, unless you have a friend nearby who can give you a rez (which means he either killed the enemy and there's no longer a reason to put a bounty on him, or he hid while you were being killed, which just isn't very nice). so when you're killed, you run to a healer to get a rez, and when he revives you, you simply tell him that someone killed you. then he could send a messenger falcon to the city reporting the BM of the recent murder.

Originally Posted by Resin;603201)4)[B

BM sounds like Bowel Movement[/b]:

great! this is another reason to leave the name as it is.

[Elfvis]

What about having player and npc driven bounty's. A player can create a bounty but also npc's can create bounty for thieves, npc killers (town killers), or other?

Also with the ranks we should think about not only our ranks as we do more bounty hunting but the level in the world that the bounty is seen at. What I mean is you could have something like a peasants bounty (poor name) for someone who is not a serious threat. Then you could have something like a lords bounty for a person, or clan that has done great wrong against the kingdon. While name conviention may come later its still something to consider while were here posting.

[Kragos]

Lach, great work with your system, something im confident devs will consider.
An additional feature to add to it may be item return. (Eg. You have been killed and the PKer took your house key. You would probably want this back, possibly a request within the bounty).
As this is more of a specialised request, it is probably too difficult to incorporate to the game's system, I think this flaw could be overcome by the ranking system of bounty hunters also mentioned in Lach's post. A personalised request could be accomplished by a player bounty hunter. However with private bounties such as these, the ranking system of the bounties themselves found in the BM system would be irrelevant.
**I do think the private bounties would be an acceptable variation in the system.

Also I think this bounty system could easily incorporate the killing of innocent npcs in towns, as well as for any other lawbreaking activities.
- This "criminal bounty" would need to be separate from player set bounties, yet still be added on to the entire bounty of the criminal/PKer.
In essence bounty hunters could also act as police/vigilantes, receiving reward from the city. While at the same time receiving reward from players.

As an extra point, the criminals/Pkers should be able to pay for their lives. Ie pay back to the city for their "criminal bounty" and pay back their bounty worth to the bounty- putter, as well as adequate compensation. I'm not sure how this final point may be implemented

[osteo]

@Lachry I love this idea but it is exploitable. You have limited it a great deal but maybe you are trying to approach this from the wrong angle. If your a bounty hunter you would need some kind of advertisement of being a legit bounty hunter. So maybe you create your house then on your house name you represent that your a bounty hunter for hire. Then on top of that you could while your walking around town have a tell that you are one as well. I dont know if MO will have general bulliten boards or not, but if they did then you could post it here as well.

Now here is where my idea fits in to the picture. You use fraps or screen pics to record your killings and post them on a offsite guild website or you could just email them to your future BM. You also could request to see his log book. Now the log book would be unique, It could not in anyway be recreated. It should not even be able to be picked up i think but thats not the point. I explain what the log book is later. Now Resin idea of BMs could still be used here but instead of listing the murderers you list the BOUNTY HUNTERS!!!!!!!!! Now here is where it gets difficult.
1) now the bounty log is a list of all the bounty hunters at that bm place of business. It also shows the level of each bounty hunter.
2) based on what lvl the bounties you choose; you randomly get sent a bounty that is your lvl whether the bm does this or not i dont know
3) To keep the BM from being biased on which bounty hunter he chooses, if he gets to, when a bounty comes to collect his money maybe there is a log book with x amount of pages on it that shows who collected on that bounty, so if there is always the same guy collecting it then those bounty hunters will move elsewhere. Gotta love Capitalism!!!!Now this log book is not an endless book. It would eventially erase the page that overflows it. to keep it from taking up to much space. That does not mean you can't take a screen shot of the book pages if you wanted too.
4) this last step is what im having problems with how would the bms create the contract? It could be verbal. But how does the BM get a list of the criminals? Is there another book or does the healers send them out like lachry said? Wait maybe it could be both. Actual players would come up to you and create the target for you, and when a healer rezzes someone they ask you if you want to start a bounty.

Thats my idea what do you all think?

[adrala]

Erm guys...
I have a question...
If I want someone killed cant I just go to the town center and search for a person that accepts this task?
Once he brings me the head of the guy I wanted killed, I would pay him.
If yes...then why implement all these ranks, bounty masters and complicated systems?