Bounty Boards in the towns

[woodland]

I really want to see bounty boards in the towns. I don't like traditional looking for anyone to kill for the fun of it. But I love hunting those who have harmed others.

I loved the system in UO where whenever someone killed you could opt. to put a bounty on them, of course this would come out of your pocket!

People like me check the bounty boards daily and off we go for the hunt. Returning the head not to the bounty board, but the city Jail or the like for the bounty. This was a fun way to pass the time and earn a little money in the process.

You could even become famous in game as the hunters could be credited for the capture ...maybe.

[Burian]

That would be funny would fit into mo

[Lachrymose]

this has been mentioned several times before, and it always ends pretty much the same way. i think a bounty system would be great. if there was one that worked i would almost definitely play a bounty hunter. here's the problem though:

i kill x number of innocent people and sooner or later i have a bounty on my head. i get a buddy to come kill me, turn in my head, and we split the loot. even worse, if the bounty hunters are mentioned for their achievements, it will make this friend of mine seem like a hero, when in reality he most probably isn't.

there will definitely be mercenary clans for hire, and part of their job may be to kill certain people. so if you're interested in this sort of thing, you could always try joining a merc clan. as far as a bounty system, i just can't see a way for it to be implemented without it being easily exploited.

[Hereshk]

Yeah, I also think it would be easily exploitable,

Maybe on a smaller scale, like in ur guild ( 'cause often, u would be with ur friends in a guild)

[Uncron]

Player bounties and such aren't trivial. The developers always need to check if game features or mechanics are exploitable. If it's just added for immersion values then it's useless.

Example is if you put a bounty on someone you hate, does it stop a guildmate of that person from killing that player and splitting the cash with the hated player?

The mechanic of a bounty board is present in EVE Online with CONCORD Billboards showing some top featured players/pirates with high bounties. It's quite cool seeing the game react to it like that, but it's exploited like above. Or players put insanely high bounties on themselves with an alternative character to bump them ontop of the bounty list before they quit the game permanently. It's just impossible for automatic systems to know if it's proper or not.

[osteo]

Never thought of that before. Is that why all of a sudden in uo it was no longer there? There would be no way to keep it from being exploitable. Even if the devs scanned friends lists and guilds and devas and scan the friends lists of other chars that same player owned. With all that being done there are still loop holes. Maybe if these bounties were done internally in guilds then it could be possible. leave it up to the guilds if they want to do this or not.

[StingFeelsOnlyOnce]

After all, the game is about player to player interaction. I don't see a reason for this to be implemented even if it would work. In game where most things are decided by the players, and that has a world and a story that is kind of shaped by players, there is no need for this kind of a feature...

You can just go on and hire someone as a bounty hunter, simple as that. I'm sure it'll be possible to put up some sort of auctions up somewhere in the game if you are in position to do so.

[WonkoZSane]

Originally Posted by Lachrymose

this has been mentioned several times before, and it always ends pretty much the same way. i think a bounty system would be great. if there was one that worked i would almost definitely play a bounty hunter. here's the problem though:

i kill x number of innocent people and sooner or later i have a bounty on my head. i get a buddy to come kill me, turn in my head, and we split the loot. even worse, if the bounty hunters are mentioned for their achievements, it will make this friend of mine seem like a hero, when in reality he most probably isn't.

there will definitely be mercenary clans for hire, and part of their job may be to kill certain people. so if you're interested in this sort of thing, you could always try joining a merc clan. as far as a bounty system, i just can't see a way for it to be implemented without it being easily exploited.

It might work if you mark people who play/party together as 'friends' and you can only accept a bounty if you aren't friends with that person. It's hard to become buddies if you never interact. You could of course contact someone you don't know but odds are eventually you'll get caught. Just a thought.

WZS

[Lachrymose]

Originally Posted by WonkoZSane

It might work if you mark people who play/party together as 'friends' and you can only accept a bounty if you aren't friends with that person. It's hard to become buddies if you never interact. You could of course contact someone you don't know but odds are eventually you'll get caught. Just a thought.

WZS

meh, that's what alts are for.

another "great" reason to have MCS besides destroying the economy and mitigating punishment for murderers.

[Archimagus]

For a while I played a Web Based MMO called Fallen Sword. It had a pretty good bounty system in it from what I can remember.
If someone Killed you, you had like 1 hour or something to put a bounty on them. You would go to the bounty board and post how much you are willing to pay and how many times that player would need to be killed for the bounty to be paid, and how long the bounty was good for (max of like a week I think). Then the board would take the money out of your account plus a posting fee and hold it until either the bounty was fulfilled or the time was elapsed. If the bounty was completed the payment would go to the completing player otherwise it would come back to you less the posting fee.

It worked at least partly because you could only post a bounty on someone who had killed you. So there was no using an Alt to post a huge bounty on your main before leaving the game.

And sure it could be exploited by having two people working together, but for 1 the player base will figure this out and in MO you should be able to do something about it. For 2 the person who is going around random killing people to get bounties put on his head will get a really bad rep and most likely won't be able to show his face in any towns without getting killed either by players or NPC guards.

[Lachrymose]

sorry, archi.. the people who are getting bounties on their heads won't be doing it just to get the bounty. they'll be doing it b/c they are PK's, and the bounty will just be a bonus to them.

and i'm not so sure that people will figure out if someone was killed by a friend's alt or by someone legit. even if they did find out, they can't really do much about it other than stop posting bounties, which would make the whole bounty board pointless...

i mean, i'm all for a bounty board. if someone is naive enough to put a bounty on me, i'll gladly split their money with a friend of mine. i just don't want the devs wasting their time implementing this.

keep in mind, since this is a sandbox MMO, you could always "implement" a bounty board of your own. if it's like UO, one way you could do this would be to lock down a book on your doorstep with the names of the current bounties. your house could just become known as the bounty board, and people would come to you to with some money and tell you who they want killed, others come to you to get a bounty's name and come back with the head as proof. of course, this is assuming people trusted you with their money, but that trust could be earned in time..

[Archimagus]

I am not saying that it couldn't be exploited. I just don't feel that it would be a huge problem. The devs have said that you can kill whoever you want, but watch out for the long arm of the law. That says to me that most likely there will be a reputation system of some sort and NPC guard to enforce it. If you have someone that is constantly PKing he will have a hard time going into towns which should be somewhat important. Now if someone is going to sit out in the wilderness PKing, that is just part of the game and is most likely not enforcible by the devs nor should it be. Also I would assume that the town guards will patrol the outskirts of the cities (newb area) as well as inside the cities to protect people who are trying to craft or are just starting out. Also, we don't know what kind of death penalty there will be. If it is even kind of severe then bounty abuse shouldn't be too much of an issue.
All in all, I still like the idea of a bounty board. If it could be set up through a player run thing as you described in the UO setting that would be cool too. But we have no idea how much control the players will really have to set such a thing up. We can only hope.

[Lachrymose]

archi, i think bounties would be awesome too. i wish there was a good way to implement them, but i'm just saying i don't see how they could monitor something like that. the death penalty will be somewhat severe, since it's full loot, you lose all your gear/items that you have on you. the problem is, if it's your friend killing you to collect a bounty, he'll most likely just give them back (unless he's a jerk and keeps your stuff and the entire bounty for himself).

nearly all Pking will be done in the wilderness (or a lawless town, a la bux den) so any bounty you wish to collect would require you to actually go out into the wilderness in search of these PKs, which means there's not really any way to regulate it.

now, as far as PK's entering the city, most likely the majority of cities will have guards that KoS any PKs. however, PKs can just relegate themselves to clan cities OR thanks to [sarcasm] the beautiful multi character per account system [/sarcasm] they'll be able to hop on alts that don't have a murder status and mingle with the rest of civilized society.

[Archimagus]

(not trying to be an ass and argue, I just thing we may be having a good discussion here)
I am not sure that the bounty system would really need to be monitored in the way that (at least I think) you say it should be. I know the death penalty will be severe as far as being looted, but as you said, if it is your friend doing the killing then he can just give the stuff back. I was talking more about if there were a game enforced death penalty, I have no idea if there is or not.
Like you said, nearly all the PK'ing will be done in the wilderness. This to me is not a huge problem. The wilderness is where PK'ing should take place. (I am not advocating Griefing by the way, I hate it as much as anyone.) It is going to happen with or without bounty boards. At least with them, it gives you a chance at some retribution if you get PK'd and if gives the PK'ers a purpose if you will. I am sure there will be people who's sole goal is to get the biggest bounty placed on them. On the same token there will be people who's goal it is to collect those large bounties. With full loot, the PK'er will have a very difficult life if they always have a bounty on there head.
A couple more points on the abuse of the bounty system.
1. If they are having there friends kill them just to keep the bounty off there head so real bounty hunters won't get them then at least slows down there PK'ing a bit.
2. If they are abusing it as a way to make money, that brings to mind the move Dragonheart where the main character was posing as a dragon hunter and was in cahoots with the dragon. It could make for some interesting scenarios.

[Lachrymose]

lol, don't worry, i didn't think you were being an ass, we're just having a discussion like you said.

Originally Posted by Archimagus

I was talking more about if there were a game enforced death penalty, I have no idea if there is or not.

most likely there won't be. if there was a perma-death server, then a bounty system would be entirely possible (but unfortunately there's not going to be a PD server).

Originally Posted by Archimagus

I am sure there will be people who's sole goal is to get the biggest bounty placed on them.

this would actually be somewhat of a problem. i've heard someone else mention that in some MMO (i don't remember which, maybe anarchy online?) what people would do is get on an alt, put a HUGE bounty on their main's head, and then let their friend kill him and give back the loot. that way, their name would get pushed to the top of the bounty board. there's ways to counter this, like a percentage of the bounty is taken out before it is given to the bounty hunter.

Originally Posted by Archimagus

1. If they are having there friends kill them just to keep the bounty off there head so real bounty hunters won't get them then at least slows down there PK'ing a bit.

perhaps.. but probably not long enough to console the person that put the bounty on his head, knowing that it went straight into the hands of the person he wanted killed.

Originally Posted by Archimagus

2. If they are abusing it as a way to make money, that brings to mind the move Dragonheart where the main character was posing as a dragon hunter and was in cahoots with the dragon. It could make for some interesting scenarios.

lol, again, perhaps... but most likely it wouldn't be some big orchestrated event. it would just be one friend killing another in the middle of the woods with no one to witness it.

there would no doubt be some legit bounties turned in, but i can't see why anyone would want to put a bounty on someone's head knowing full well there's a very good chance that money will just end up in the pockets of the PK himself.

[Archimagus]

Originally Posted by Lachrymose

(but unfortunately there's not going to be a PD server).

Holy mother of pearl. . . I was beginning to there there was no one else left but me who would like to see a Perm Death game (or at least one with a perm death server).

this would actually be somewhat of a problem. i've heard someone else mention that in some MMO (i don't remember which, maybe anarchy online?) what people would do is get on an alt, put a HUGE bounty on their main's head, and then let their friend kill him and give back the loot. that way, their name would get pushed to the top of the bounty board. there's ways to counter this, like a percentage of the bounty is taken out before it is given to the bounty hunter.

As I said earlier in reference to Fallen Sword you should only be able to place a bounty on someone for a short time after they kill you, so at least you couldn't use an alt to put one on yourself. Although you could get a friend to do it. But then again, so you have 2 guys boosting up there rank on the bounty boards. The only people that really hurts are the other ones trying to do the same thing. Also, there should be a percentage fee for posing on the bounty boards, so if these guys want to go blowing money to get to the top of the board more power to them I say.
Come to think of it though. I would do it like in fallen sword where as soon as the bounty is completed it is taken off the board. No standing record of past bounties would make the "Race to the top." a loosing battle.

One that I am not sure if it would work in this case. But also in Fallen Sword when you placed a bounty you specified a number of times the person needed to be killed by the same person for the bounty to be considered complete. Now if there were a few people competing over killing the dude he could be killed like 20 times in a row. It might be a bit harsh, but then again, if you are going to kill players you need to be prepared for the consequences.

Another thought I had, With the Deva system. They could easily make it so that you cannot collect on a bounty with any character tied to the Deva that either posted the bounty or had the bounty posted against them. Then you would need at least 2 people to cheat someone out of there bounty, 3 if you were doing it to try and get to the top of the board.

For some checks and balances you could limit the bounty that can be placed proportional to the "level" of the person you are putting the bounty on. I know there are no levels per-say, but there has to be some metric you can use.

[WonkoZSane]

Originally Posted by Lachrymose

meh, that's what alts are for.

another "great" reason to have MCS besides destroying the economy and mitigating punishment for murderers.

When I said 'people' I meant devas not PCs. So it would include all the friend player's alts. When you check the bulletin board the list you get only include people who you are not friends list. Personally I'm not that interested in a bounty system but I don't think it would be too hard to implement.

WZS

[Victor]

Originally Posted by Lachrymose

this has been mentioned several times before, and it always ends pretty much the same way. i think a bounty system would be great. if there was one that worked i would almost definitely play a bounty hunter. here's the problem though:

i kill x number of innocent people and sooner or later i have a bounty on my head. i get a buddy to come kill me, turn in my head, and we split the loot. even worse, if the bounty hunters are mentioned for their achievements, it will make this friend of mine seem like a hero, when in reality he most probably isn't.

there will definitely be mercenary clans for hire, and part of their job may be to kill certain people. so if you're interested in this sort of thing, you could always try joining a merc clan. as far as a bounty system, i just can't see a way for it to be implemented without it being easily exploited.

That's because death in itself has no hefty penalty tied to it. That's why it's easily exploited.

Now on the other hand, if death meant something, really bad, then his friend and him would certainly not collect the bounty together.

[Lachrymose]

no matter how they tried implementing it, there would be ways to exploit it (at least, i have yet to hear of a successful way).

if they try checking to be sure it isn't your friends deva's turning in the bounty, you can just unfriend them when you turn in the head. if they keep a track of everyone that's ever been on your friend list (that'd be an awful lot to keep track of, but let's pretend), then either i would never friend someone i planned on doing this with (could be irritating) OR we could get a 3rd person in the mix. i get a friend to kill me, he gets a friend of his that isn't a friend of mine to turn in the head, we split 3 ways. not ideal, but it's still free money.

[Victor]

Originally Posted by Lachrymose

no matter how they tried implementing it, there would be ways to exploit it (at least, i have yet to hear of a successful way).

What if the bounty needs to be verified by the victims? That would solve it, I guess.

I.e. A murderer gets killed by his friend, his friend is a well known thug, or not known at all by the community, they make the claim void by simply voting "no", the bounty would still be valid and intact.

Another well-known bounty hunter kills the murderer, and goes to town to collect, the victims accept the claim, he collect his money.

Problem solved.

[Lachrymose]

victor, how are you supposed to know who the murderer's friends are, let alone his friends' alts? then, for those legit people you happen not to know, just because you don't know them means they can't collect the bounty? and the whole community having to vote on it sounds a little shaky, not to mention the whole "i don't have to pay you if i think you're lying."

[Victor]

Originally Posted by Lachrymose

victor, how are you supposed to know who the murderer's friends are, let alone his friends' alts? then, for those legit people you happen not to know, just because you don't know them means they can't collect the bounty? and the whole community having to vote on it sounds a little shaky, not to mention the whole "i don't have to pay you if i think you're lying."

Not the whole community, just the victims. Since they are the ones that have put the bounty on the murderer in the first place, they just confirm it. In UO they couldn't, you could claim it and collected the money right away. At least, with this above suggested, the victims can have a say, and maybe they won't allow the bounty to be claimed, until they feel someone got that murderer real good.

[WonkoZSane]

Originally Posted by Lachrymose

no matter how they tried implementing it, there would be ways to exploit it (at least, i have yet to hear of a successful way).

if they try checking to be sure it isn't your friends deva's turning in the bounty, you can just unfriend them when you turn in the head. if they keep a track of everyone that's ever been on your friend list (that'd be an awful lot to keep track of, but let's pretend), then either i would never friend someone i planned on doing this with (could be irritating) OR we could get a 3rd person in the mix. i get a friend to kill me, he gets a friend of his that isn't a friend of mine to turn in the head, we split 3 ways. not ideal, but it's still free money.

The friend 'score' would be behind the scenes. When you party with someone for 'x' amount of time you automatically become friends... this is automatic and cannot be undone. The person isn't necessarily in your 'friends list' and there is no obvious sign that you have been labeled friends. All it does is to allow the server to know that the people behind the devas know themselves well and *might* be tempted to cheat the system. So any bounty on one of their PCs wouldn't be available to the other. Simple and (hopefully) easy to implement. To avoid the 'three way friend' deal simply ensure that bounties can only be accepted from people who don't share a common 'friend' and only the person who makes the kill can turn in the bounty. Then you'd have to rely on someone you don't know, which if it was me, would take the money and turn you in for cheating. Because nothing annoys me more than people who try to abuse the system. (Picked this up as a NWN PW DM / scripter.) So any other objections?

WZS

[Archimagus]

I don't think that "cheating the system" is really that big of a problem. And it is not really cheating if your friend kills you to collect the bounty. Sure there will be people who will try to abuse it by killing random people until they get a bounty on them so that there friend can collect the bounty for them to split. To make it work though (for the "cheater") since he cannot go into town his friend would have to wait in town and keep checking the bounty boards. Then when a bounty appeared he would have to run out to where his friend is to kill him, then run back to the board to collect the bounty. This is also assuming that the "cheater" is good enough to keep random PK'ing people. Eventually probably sooner than later he is going to pick a fight with someone too good for him to beat and he will loose all his gear. Especially since to actually make any money doing this he will have to be killing more advanced players that have the money to be placing bounties. Between that and (hopefully) guards in the newbie areas there shouldn't be people camping the newbie area to abuse the bounty system.