The ideas concerning this bounty system are things that have been discussed before. They each have their flaws, and most of them would be boring and make little sense at all. A gold tax? How lame.
Why not think of why societies might place a bounty against a person? Obviously, the individuals that have bounties on them have caused a negative effect on another in most cases. The amount of the bounty often reflects the degree of the crimes the individual has committed.
Why not think of the bounty hunters themselves? How do they find their bounty? How do you find any person? You search records, you talk to people that see them often, you learn the places they often frequent. Then, you search or wait at those places.
Here is my solution:
1. The crimes committed by a player are noted and stored in a list. The higher the person is on the list the more their bounty is worth. Players can also pay money to increase the bounty price of another player. Though, this does not change the rank on the bounty list.
2. Players can access the list and choose a limited amount of bounties to go after (perhaps 5 or something).
3. If a player kills a character on their bounty list, then the player can turn in and collect the bounty. The bounty on the character then resets to 0, and it is displayed as such for anyone else who has selected the bounty.
4. If a bounty is turned in on a character, then that character is punished. They are prevented from committing crimes for a certain duration. Though, they can do other things in the game. This duration might be calculated from their rank on the bounty list so it fits the amount of crimes commited.
5. Player's are able to see the current game area a bounty is in but not the actual position. Though, they can always ask the players in that area if they have seen the bounty of coarse.
6. Rewards are offered in the game for players who have committed a certain number of crimes without getting caught. This can be in the form of quests that open up.
Bounty System
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Quote:Original post by Zefrieg
A gold tax? How lame.
It sure beats what would happen in real life. A.) Thrown in jail. The character can't play for the next 24 hours or whatever. B.) Executed. The players character is gone.
Quote: Zefrieg
1. The crimes committed by a player are noted and stored in a list. The higher the person is on the list the more their bounty is worth. Players can also pay money to increase the bounty price of another player. Though, this does not change the rank on the bounty list.
6. Rewards are offered in the game for players who have committed a certain number of crimes without getting caught. This can be in the form of quests that open up.
Sounds interesting. #6 I've been thinking about for a while now. I'm trying to perfect how it's implemented.
Quote: Zefrieg
4. If a bounty is turned in on a character, then that character is punished. They are prevented from committing crimes for a certain duration. Though, they can do other things in the game. This duration might be calculated from their rank on the bounty list so it fits the amount of crimes commited.
I believe this punishment is too easy to escape. The criminal could just macro their setenced time away. This also wouldn't really punish the criminal at all they could continue to go about their ways unaffected and just kill again when their time period has elapsed.
Another thing that I haven't covered in this thread is that this system should help keep cash in the economy down. In most MMOGs there isn't a set cap to how much cash can be in the economy at any one time. (For example each skeleton you kill gives you 100 gold. Each looted skeleton adds 100 gold to the economy. If you kill 100,000 skeletons then you add 10,000,000 gold to the economy that didn't exist before)
This system will:
A.) Collect gold from the person paying the bounty
B.) Potentionally disburse equal amount of gold paid in A to bounty hunters
C.) Cut the criminals gold intake thus subtracting the gold twice from the economy leaving less gold in the economy then would have been the case otherwise.
This is a from another post that got on to the subject of bounty type system, which might be helpful for thoughts on your design.
Realm switching in MMORPGs for the full thread.
Realm switching in MMORPGs for the full thread.
Quote:Original post by LostQuote:Original post by Omegavolt
While I understand the needs of resource collectors, I also understand the fun factor involved in full-on PvP. Im currently working on a solution for this with my 2D ORPG. Some ideas involve giving PKs a bounty that increases each time they kill someone more than 5 levels below them. After doing that enough, they become targets themselves. Others involve the ganked players going to Heaven after dying, and their God granting them some special power or invulnerability so they have a chance at revenge. If worse comes to worse, I may just make it so that the towns AND the roads are PvP free. Im not positive about that one though. Making it hard to get from town to town allows for lots of escort quests that will help my game along. Ill have to wait until a beta is released to see. ;)
Only thing I would say/suggest is protection against exploiting your system (if you haven't already accounted for it).
PK kills a friend that is 6 lvl's below them over & over (building up the bounty), then PK lets his friend kill him & collect the reward. Tracking who they have killed in order to limit it to one bounty increase per person per day could help, but too could be exploited (Res-killing or just following them & annoy a single person). Limiting the bounty to once a day, just gives the person free ride for the rest of the day to be as evil they want to be.
My only thought/suggestion would be a decreasing bounty each time they kill the same player. 1st time 100%, 2nd 75% & the 5th time and beyond would be only 1% bounty increase.
*edited in*
But that still wouldn't stop a PK from killing multi lower lvl players & then having a friend kill them to collect the bounty & split it.
Author
Quote:Original post by Lost
This is a from another post that got on to the subject of bounty type system, which might be helpful for thoughts on your design.
Realm switching in MMORPGs for the full thread.Quote:Original post by Lost
Only thing I would say/suggest is protection against exploiting your system (if you haven't already accounted for it).
PK kills a friend that is 6 lvl's below them over & over (building up the bounty), then PK lets his friend kill him & collect the reward. Tracking who they have killed in order to limit it to one bounty increase per person per day could help, but too could be exploited (Res-killing or just following them & annoy a single person). Limiting the bounty to once a day, just gives the person free ride for the rest of the day to be as evil they want to be.
My only thought/suggestion would be a decreasing bounty each time they kill the same player. 1st time 100%, 2nd 75% & the 5th time and beyond would be only 1% bounty increase.
*edited in*
But that still wouldn't stop a PK from killing multi lower lvl players & then having a friend kill them to collect the bounty & split it.
A good idea but like you mentioned it still has an exploit. My system will stop criminals from profiting off of having a bounty on their head. With each bounty collection only a portion of the bounty is collected (say around 1/5th) and no player can collect on the same bounty more than once or possibly within a certain time frame. The criminal will incur a gold debt equal to the bounty collected. So at best even if a criminal conspired with 5 friends to kill him and give him the bounty, the crimnal would break even, he wouldn't have a bounty on his head but he wouldn't have proffited off of the bounty. The bounty hunters would be in the negative since they would have to pay for a list of bounties (wouldn't be a full list, no guarantee they would get their friend on it) and then give the bounty to their criminal friend.
Just a thought, there.
What if, instead of having a problem with money and property, people had a problem with INTERACTION?
I mean, the system I used in my text-based game, is that a PK is added to the character's counter if and only if THERE IS A WITNESS, that means, if there is someone to report it, before the character killed is taken back to life. Someone being killed and resurrected will have no previous memory of anything, therefore no souvenir of the murderer...
On the other hand, being seen murdering someone make syour PK counter grow, and the more you are a well-known PK, the less it becomes easy to interact with ANYONE, including the NPCs, because I ruled that the NPCs became defiant of anyone known for repeatedly assaulting innocent bystanders, for fear for their own lives.
In the beginning, you may find yourself facing agressive lines of dialogue, if you were known to commit only a few PKs, and as the number of players grew, if your own counter was under the average of the world, then people were less afraid of you than they were of others. Whic means that, since they wanted to have commercial interaction, they would let you in their shop again. But meanwhile, you would have to face the difficulty to be healed, to sell your loot, and to buy some more items.
And I ruled that there would ALWAYS be someone ready to sell anything to anyone, in the Underworld, but that the price of every item would be multiplied by the ratio PlayerPK/AveragePK. The more agressive towards players, the more it costs you to keep playing in teh same universe, because you have to hide and make that seller take unconsiderate risks... Until you become the most wanted player killer in the kingdom, and are not allowed to buy from him anymore, until someone finds it in him to kill more people than you did.
I think this works better than bounties alone, because it forces players to take their actions into consideration, as well as their consequences...
But bounties are another feature of my game, if you have been seen killing someone, because, obviously, you left a witness, which will tell the tale. Therefore, the witness is free to tell it or not, which leave sthe question of the bounty up to the witness. if the witness is in your faction, and he sees you killing someone, odds are that he won't babble, and you'll be free. But if there were TWO witnesses, and only ONE tels about it, then the bounty is also set on those who said nothing. Players are encouraged to report Player Killing, in order to live in a safe world..
What if, instead of having a problem with money and property, people had a problem with INTERACTION?
I mean, the system I used in my text-based game, is that a PK is added to the character's counter if and only if THERE IS A WITNESS, that means, if there is someone to report it, before the character killed is taken back to life. Someone being killed and resurrected will have no previous memory of anything, therefore no souvenir of the murderer...
On the other hand, being seen murdering someone make syour PK counter grow, and the more you are a well-known PK, the less it becomes easy to interact with ANYONE, including the NPCs, because I ruled that the NPCs became defiant of anyone known for repeatedly assaulting innocent bystanders, for fear for their own lives.
In the beginning, you may find yourself facing agressive lines of dialogue, if you were known to commit only a few PKs, and as the number of players grew, if your own counter was under the average of the world, then people were less afraid of you than they were of others. Whic means that, since they wanted to have commercial interaction, they would let you in their shop again. But meanwhile, you would have to face the difficulty to be healed, to sell your loot, and to buy some more items.
And I ruled that there would ALWAYS be someone ready to sell anything to anyone, in the Underworld, but that the price of every item would be multiplied by the ratio PlayerPK/AveragePK. The more agressive towards players, the more it costs you to keep playing in teh same universe, because you have to hide and make that seller take unconsiderate risks... Until you become the most wanted player killer in the kingdom, and are not allowed to buy from him anymore, until someone finds it in him to kill more people than you did.
I think this works better than bounties alone, because it forces players to take their actions into consideration, as well as their consequences...
But bounties are another feature of my game, if you have been seen killing someone, because, obviously, you left a witness, which will tell the tale. Therefore, the witness is free to tell it or not, which leave sthe question of the bounty up to the witness. if the witness is in your faction, and he sees you killing someone, odds are that he won't babble, and you'll be free. But if there were TWO witnesses, and only ONE tels about it, then the bounty is also set on those who said nothing. Players are encouraged to report Player Killing, in order to live in a safe world..
It still looks like you're just totally hosing PKers. Why not just make it impossible to hurt other players? Are there times when it's perfectly acceptable or prudent to PK?
Bounty hunting looks like a "good" PK, but it's predicated on a "bad" PK earlier on. If you take out the bad, you won't need the good. Making the "bad" PKing totally useless would lead to a society filled with hunters and no villains. If you live in a city full of costumed superheroes, the last thing you would want to do is put on a mask, call yourself "Dr. Destructinator" and start blowing up bank vaults. It just gets all the jerkwad "heroes" ganging up on you, and you get slammed by society for being a criminal, by each individual bounty hunter for being attractive prey, and then again by society for having a record.
Nobody would ever go down that road. People start lives of crime because it's an easy way to get money and goods. Why pay for armor in Morrowind when a few quick axe blows will get you a whole armorer's shop for yourself? Sure, I'll pay the fine, and then I'll come back to the shop and gear up forever.
In your system, you don't even really get to enjoy the lewt before the posse shows up and swarms you. Every character in the region will have a tin star, because the back of the box said you could play as a bounty hunter, and so you'll be faced with a horde of idiots who want to be Clint Eastwood.
From what I see, this neither solves the PK griefing problem nor improves the game experience. If you gave the criminal crazy super Predator powers and awarded him experience points for every merc hunter he killed before they brought him down, it would be worthwhile. This is just a drawn-out version of "do the crime, pay the fine".
EDIT: Why not just add a "God of Vengeance" to your pantheon, and a player that's been PK'd can go to the temple, drop all his gold into the coffers, and then be granted power upgrades that will only take effect when he's fighting against the guy that killed him. If a level 5 player gets ganked by a level 30 player, he can get boosted to level 31 for the re-match, and have a real chance at revenge. If he wins, he gets the experience and some loot, and of course since Vengeance approved, there can be no re-revenge. If he loses, he eats a little crow and goes back to the grind.
This way, PKers could make a living, but just griefing newbs would be unwise, becasue they'll come back after you as your equals. Better to PK guys near your level, so Vengeance will be disinclined to help them out. Vengeance helps victims, not guys that just lost a fight.
Bounty hunting looks like a "good" PK, but it's predicated on a "bad" PK earlier on. If you take out the bad, you won't need the good. Making the "bad" PKing totally useless would lead to a society filled with hunters and no villains. If you live in a city full of costumed superheroes, the last thing you would want to do is put on a mask, call yourself "Dr. Destructinator" and start blowing up bank vaults. It just gets all the jerkwad "heroes" ganging up on you, and you get slammed by society for being a criminal, by each individual bounty hunter for being attractive prey, and then again by society for having a record.
Nobody would ever go down that road. People start lives of crime because it's an easy way to get money and goods. Why pay for armor in Morrowind when a few quick axe blows will get you a whole armorer's shop for yourself? Sure, I'll pay the fine, and then I'll come back to the shop and gear up forever.
In your system, you don't even really get to enjoy the lewt before the posse shows up and swarms you. Every character in the region will have a tin star, because the back of the box said you could play as a bounty hunter, and so you'll be faced with a horde of idiots who want to be Clint Eastwood.
From what I see, this neither solves the PK griefing problem nor improves the game experience. If you gave the criminal crazy super Predator powers and awarded him experience points for every merc hunter he killed before they brought him down, it would be worthwhile. This is just a drawn-out version of "do the crime, pay the fine".
EDIT: Why not just add a "God of Vengeance" to your pantheon, and a player that's been PK'd can go to the temple, drop all his gold into the coffers, and then be granted power upgrades that will only take effect when he's fighting against the guy that killed him. If a level 5 player gets ganked by a level 30 player, he can get boosted to level 31 for the re-match, and have a real chance at revenge. If he wins, he gets the experience and some loot, and of course since Vengeance approved, there can be no re-revenge. If he loses, he eats a little crow and goes back to the grind.
This way, PKers could make a living, but just griefing newbs would be unwise, becasue they'll come back after you as your equals. Better to PK guys near your level, so Vengeance will be disinclined to help them out. Vengeance helps victims, not guys that just lost a fight.
Quote:Original post by RobotechII
Besides bounty hunting I would say clan wars, factions, dueling areas etc. Meaning if you kill someone from an opposing faction they can't place a bounty.
The best solution seems to be to only allow it in those circumstances.
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I don't want the system to outright stop PKing. I want people to have the option to play a cold blooded killer.
e.g. a griefer
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I just don't want them to be a murderer without suffering a consequence.
These systems usually seem to want to stop griefers from doing their thing. But how do you distinguish between a griefer and someone roleplaying a cold blooded killer? Or, what is the difference between a griefer and someone roleplaying a cold blooded killer?
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Some games have stat or skill loss for PKs which most people don't like and I don't feel is fair. I think a gold loss is much more fair.
It doesn't make any more logical sense (WTF!?! Where's my money?) and it seems just as fair to me. If money is worth something (classic difficulty in MMORPG's, have they fixed it in the recent ones?) then it's very similar to experience as far as a player is concerned. If money isn't worth anything, then it's not much of a punishment.
Players will do "bad" PK because they are rewarded for it; perhaps not explicitly in gameplay terms, but in the feeling that they just one-shotted someone several levels lower than them, that their guild is the Good Guys and everyone else is the Bad Guys, or simply because they are able to have this impact on another player.
In World of Warcraft, before the honor system was implemented, PKing was still rampant. You got nothing from defeating an enemy besides satisfaction, and inconveniencing them, and the servers flourished; PvP was everywhere.
Interestingly, world PvP died down a lot once rewards were put in place for defeating an enemy near to your level, but that's a discussion for a different thread.
In World of Warcraft, before the honor system was implemented, PKing was still rampant. You got nothing from defeating an enemy besides satisfaction, and inconveniencing them, and the servers flourished; PvP was everywhere.
Interestingly, world PvP died down a lot once rewards were put in place for defeating an enemy near to your level, but that's a discussion for a different thread.
Author
Quote:Original post by Iron Chef Carnage
It still looks like you're just totally hosing PKers. Why not just make it impossible to hurt other players? Are there times when it's perfectly acceptable or prudent to PK?
Covered this already. I don't want to make it impossible. Obviously you haven't read the thread too closely. I've already stated that criminals with a large bounty will get some kind of benefits.
Quote:Chef Carnage
Bounty hunting looks like a "good" PK, but it's predicated on a "bad" PK earlier on. If you take out the bad, you won't need the good. Making the "bad" PKing totally useless would lead to a society filled with hunters and no villains. If you live in a city full of costumed superheroes, the last thing you would want to do is put on a mask, call yourself "Dr. Destructinator" and start blowing up bank vaults. It just gets all the jerkwad "heroes" ganging up on you, and you get slammed by society for being a criminal, by each individual bounty hunter for being attractive prey, and then again by society for having a record.
There will be a system in place to prevent bounty hunters claiming bounties by ganking criminals.
Quote:Iron Chef Carnage
Nobody would ever go down that road. People start lives of crime because it's an easy way to get money and goods. Why pay for armor in Morrowind when a few quick axe blows will get you a whole armorer's shop for yourself? Sure, I'll pay the fine, and then I'll come back to the shop and gear up forever.
In your system, you don't even really get to enjoy the lewt before the posse shows up and swarms you. Every character in the region will have a tin star, because the back of the box said you could play as a bounty hunter, and so you'll be faced with a horde of idiots who want to be Clint Eastwood.
It's still an easy way to money and goods. It's just like real life it's awesome until you get caught! Even when you get caught it's not unbearably bad. You'll only lose half of the gold that comes in. Meaning you can still make a living.
I'm sure there will also be "a horde of idiots" who want to be a murderer. Not to mention there will be a cost to obtain bounty hunter lists and there could even be an initial fee for a bounty hunter liscense.
Author
Quote:Original post by Way Walker
The best solution seems to be to only allow it in those circumstances.
Not to me. This thread is not for arguing for or against a bounty system. Just ideas about the system I proposed. Alot of people believe that MMOGs that only have consensual PvP are boring and it's not just griefers that share that opinion.
Quote: Way Walker
These systems usually seem to want to stop griefers from doing their thing. But how do you distinguish between a griefer and someone roleplaying a cold blooded killer? Or, what is the difference between a griefer and someone roleplaying a cold blooded killer?
I don't believe there is much of a difference.
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It doesn't make any more logical sense (WTF!?! Where's my money?) and it seems just as fair to me.
I'm glad it does...
Quote: Way Walker
If money is worth something (classic difficulty in MMORPG's, have they fixed it in the recent ones?) then it's very similar to experience as far as a player is concerned. If money isn't worth anything, then it's not much of a punishment.
If you check on eBay you'll find virtual MMOG cash selling for real cash. I guess that pretty much puts a value on virtual cash.
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