The thought of hunting down a known griefer is intriguing; the thrill of the hunt is intoxicating.

World PvP has earned its bad name due to constant lowbie ganking/griefing. It's obvious that certain sanctions must be placed in order to protect lowbies. These sanctions must be extremely harsh if they are to deter players from 1-2 shotting lowbies or murdering other players of their own faction.

I think it's about time that we get a working Player Bounty System for our PvP Servers:

1. If a player ganks x-amount of lowbies, then he or she will be automatically placed on the Player Bounty Terminal (unless lowbie attacks first).
2. If a player ganks x-amount of players from his or her own faction, then he or she will be automatically placed on the Player Bounty Terminal (unless attacked first).
3. These sanctions need to be harsh. If you accept a Bounty Mission and hunt/kill your target, then your target will drop all of his gear/gold. If the target is wielding "no-trade" or "soulbound" items, then these items should either be destroyed or rendered useless for 3 days.
4. The "Bounty Flag" will remain for 3 days...regardless if the target has been "collected". This is to prevent friends or "second account" from removing the flag.
5. The Player Bounty System doesn't provide any financial rewards. The reward is the gold/gear that you get from your fallen target. Maybe a title system perhaps, but nothing worth trying to exploit.

Yep would be awesome! However it could be abused, by for example his friends taking the bounty and sharing the money with him, so it need to be properly implemented.

Lineage2's flagging system worked just fine, if anything it was a bit too harsh back when the game first launched.

But any kind of bounty system WILL be exploited.  Either a bounty will be too low and no one will bother, or the bounty will reach a point where a person will let one of their friends kill them just to split the reward.

Originally posted by Yamota

Yep would be awesome! However it could be abused, by for example his friends taking the bounty and sharing the money with him, so it need to be properly implemented.

The automatic system won't provide any reward. The reward comes from when the flagged player drops all of his goods.

Originally posted by Majinash

Lineage2's flagging system worked just fine, if anything it was a bit too harsh back when the game first launched.

 

But any kind of bounty system WILL be exploited.  Either a bounty will be too low and no one will bother, or the bounty will reach a point where a person will let one of their friends kill them just to split the reward.

This is the problem when posting pictures: nobody reads the text :P

The only way I see player bounties working is:

1. Bounties can only be placed on characters that have commited a "grievous" act against another "innocent" player. The most common would be unprovoked killing of a player who had not way of defending themselves.
2. If a bounty is executed and collected, the character the bounty was on receives a stat or experience-loss penalty, scaling with the amount of the bounty. This prevents friends of the offender from collecting the bounty with no other reprecussion, and results in impactful penalties for the offender.

Originally posted by mmoDAD

Originally posted by Yamota

Yep would be awesome! However it could be abused, by for example his friends taking the bounty and sharing the money with him, so it need to be properly implemented.

The automatic system won't provide any reward. The reward comes from when the flagged player drops all of his goods.

Which is what happens when they both agree to let the guy's friend kill him...

Originally posted by Axehilt

Originally posted by mmoDAD

Originally posted by Yamota

Yep would be awesome! However it could be abused, by for example his friends taking the bounty and sharing the money with him, so it need to be properly implemented.

The automatic system won't provide any reward. The reward comes from when the flagged player drops all of his goods.

Which is what happens when they both agree to let the guy's friend kill him...

If you had read the original post, you would've understood that the "flag" is on a timer and not removed when killed.

Originally posted by Ceridith

The only way I see player bounties working is:

1. Bounties can only be placed on characters that have commited a "grievous" act against another "innocent" player. The most common would be unprovoked killing of a player who had not way of defending themselves.
2. If a bounty is executed and collected, the character the bounty was on receives a stat or experience-loss penalty, scaling with the amount of the bounty. This prevents friends of the offender from collecting the bounty with no other reprecussion, and results in impactful penalties for the offender.

This is actually a really good system. I am not a huge fan of controlled PvP but if I played a game with it, I would like to see this feature.

Originally posted by mmoDAD

Originally posted by Axehilt

Originally posted by mmoDAD

Originally posted by Yamota

Yep would be awesome! However it could be abused, by for example his friends taking the bounty and sharing the money with him, so it need to be properly implemented.

The automatic system won't provide any reward. The reward comes from when the flagged player drops all of his goods.

Which is what happens when they both agree to let the guy's friend kill him...

If you had read the original post, you would've understood that the "flag" is on a timer and not removed when killed.

Basically like the murder count system in UO.

deleted..

"Players on a PvP server ________ kill players who are significantly weaker than them."

Fill in the blank with either should or should not.

• If players should freely kill players who are weaker than them, what need is there for a deterrant? The whole point of playing the game is to hang out in a world where people are free to fight each other. The people who pick fights they can't possibly lose are still playing the game in a valid way. In an FPS, whether it's a FFA arena, a team deathmatch, or a team objective-based game, you wouldn't dream of punishing someone for using a sniper rifle to kill another player who only had a pistol. The point of the game is to kill other people; if you see another person, you kill them and get rewarded. Open PvP games are slightly different in that you're not explicitly given the goal of killing other players, but it's basically the reason why you're there.
• If players should not freely kill players who are weaker than them, why allow it at all? In order for this bounty system to work, the game must explicitly define what it means to "gank a lowbie" so that it can count how many times it happens. Once a definition has been settled on, why allow it to happen at all? The game can identify when someone attempts to gank a lowbie, and simply say "No, you can't do that." What excuse is there for creating a system for players to do something they should not be doing? It's like telling players they can't AFK craft with a macro, and then deliberately putting in a menu for creating craft macros. It's like telling players they can't stand on a ledge and fire upon non-ranged mobs below them, then deliberately making tons of ledges with non-ranged mobs below them. If you know the behavior is undesired and you can identify it and you can prevent it 100% of the time, why let it happen in the first place?

1. Griefers thrive on notoriety. It's the main reason they do what they do. A notice that tells you you've killed enough lowbies to warrant a bounty might as well be a frigging achievement to griefers.
2. Someone is playing an Open PvP game where the whole point is to engage in PvP, and the fact that some people are actively tracking them down is supposed to be a punishment? Seriously? Being the hunted is no less intoxicating than being the hunter.
3. You don't NEED good gear in order to destroy people 20 levels below you, and you don't GET good gear by destroying people 20 levels below you. If there are people in the game who care about having really awesome gear, they're not the ones who are griefing. As long as the punishment for bounty death is merely loss of items, it's irrelevant to griefers.

Everytime i hear this feature i keep feeling like people just want a easy way to scam people ... As if you could in anyway put a bounty on someone and not tempt the person with the bounty to simply self collect it. there is no way to block such a scenario from happening , the only one would be to play hardcore perma death games where it would be impossible to put a bounty in the first place since the victim has been long dead.

Originally posted by myrmx

Everytime i hear this feature i keep feeling like people just want a easy way to scam people ... As if you could in anyway put a bounty on someone and not tempt the person with the bounty to simply self collect it. there is no way to block such a scenario from happening , the only one would be to play hardcore perma death games where it would be impossible to put a bounty in the first place since the victim has been long dead.

Actually there is a way to block bounty scamming.

Make bounties incur stat/experience loss that scales with the size of the bounty. Sure they or their friends could collect on their own... provided they're willing to re-level their characters.

Of course, bounties should only be placeable on characters that are actually going after "innocent" players unprovoked.

And if stat/experience loss is too much for the offenders to bear, then maybe they could have the opporunity to pay off their own bounty... with the proceeds going straight to the person who placed the bounty on them.

If you have go into extremes in order to disincentivize ganking lowbies, why allow it in the first place?

Placing a "WANTED" bounty thing on someone for slaughtering lowbies implies that slaughtering lowbies is morally wrong.

Not sure if I agree there. :) 

Originally posted by Yamota

Yep would be awesome! However it could be abused, by for example his friends taking the bounty and sharing the money with him, so it need to be properly implemented.

This is how it works in EvE if you don't have an alt account then just get a friend you trust to pod you and share the isk.

Originally posted by mmoDAD

Originally posted by Majinash

Lineage2's flagging system worked just fine, if anything it was a bit too harsh back when the game first launched.

 

But any kind of bounty system WILL be exploited.  Either a bounty will be too low and no one will bother, or the bounty will reach a point where a person will let one of their friends kill them just to split the reward.

This is the problem when posting pictures: nobody reads the text :P

I played a Bounty Hunter in SWG (Pre-NGE) and player bounties were by far my favorite.   I would certainly welcome this game play feature in a new MMO