Failure for City Bounties

Atalkez

Sarathai said:

Stuneree said:

The City-wide thing that @Atalkez mentioned I think would be a really great way of adding dynamic pvp into the game.

Not really. It might be cynical of me, but I think you'd probably wind up getting 3-4 person gank squads and even more people sitting on guard stacks until the bounty runs out. I don't think the bounty system should be a free-for-all.

Realistically, that's how it kind of is already. Once the person knows they have a bounty, you never see them without a group of 2-3 people (if they leave the city/log in for 5 days), so you have to bring people with you to complete it or you'll die anyway.

I also think there shouldn't be a message when the bounty gets taken, only when it's placed.

So instead of "The bounty placed on you by Targossas has been claimed" - you only get the message when the bounty is added to the board, leaving you to wonder when/if/who got the bounty.

Jarrod

With resetting to the board it should tell you every time, otherwise the only reasonable solution is having the timer decay on the board.

You shouldn't have to consider being jumped for an indeterminate amount of time after raiding once.

Tahquil

Tahquil's naive Bounty rules

-Bounty stays until successfully claimed
>Stops people merely timing out their bounties by not logging in.

-Bounty is taken off board by one hunter and returns when a) hunter dies (to anything or anyone) or after 2 hours
>If you take a bounty you should move directly to fulfill it instead of hogging it and going hunting when someone else could take it. If the bounty bitches out and runs you have a time to true lure them out via hook or crook.

-Person can only take the same bounty once per 2 hours. (arbitary amount)
>Stops the continuous kamikaze from the same person, giving them time to stop and assess what went wrong. Doesn't stop other people having their own chance to try and hunt the bounty. If you are unlucky enough to do the 2 hour timeout you can go immediately refresh at the bounty board anyway.

TA-DERP!

Atalkez

Jarrod said:

With resetting to the board it should tell you every time, otherwise the only reasonable solution is having the timer decay on the board.

You shouldn't have to consider being jumped for an indeterminate amount of time after raiding once.

Hrm, good point.

Tharvis

could also adjust the timing down of bounties so that the timer only ticks down if you've been online a specific number of hours that day - to avoid people literally QQ'ing for five days to completely avoid consequences.

Jarrod

Tharvis said:

could also adjust the timing down of bounties so that the timer only ticks down if you've been online a specific number of hours that day - to avoid people literally QQ'ing for five days to completely avoid consequences.

Looking at the wrong side of the problem. The impossibility of succeeding as the defender while online is a problem with the system if the only option is to not be involved with it.

Tharvis

Jarrod said:

Tharvis said:

could also adjust the timing down of bounties so that the timer only ticks down if you've been online a specific number of hours that day - to avoid people literally QQ'ing for five days to completely avoid consequences.

Looking at the wrong side of the problem. The impossibility of succeeding as the defender while online is a problem with the system if the only option is to not be involved with it.

combine it  with a 3 strike system of 3 failures = back to the board for someone else to pick up with the remaining timer.

Jarrod

Why should you have to deal with someone jumping you three times for a single offensive incident?

Tharvis

Jarrod said:

Why should you have to deal with someone jumping you three times for a single offensive incident?

right now it's practically unlimited, and it's already been stated it should be unique from contracts. Also leaves some leeway for recklessness, but also forces them to think about not being -too- reckless.

Jhui

Giving the person being hunted a way to put the bounty back on the board for someone else to take is fine, but it shouldn't be as simple as 1 death.  That gives all of the power to the person instigating the conflict in the first place.  That is no fun and doesn't encourage people to take any risks.  Remember, killing someone that doesn't want to be killed is already hard enough, so anyone can raid as often as they like with little recourse if they care to make it that way.

Maybe I am in the minority, but I love it when some scrub takes a bounty on me just because they believe they can eventually complete it by snagging a killing blow in a raid.

Either way, if something changes, Ashtan will likely just adopt the "kill whoever you want on the bounty board and have Dunn/Seragorn take it off the list and reward you when it's complete" method so we can make sure people that raid us pay a price even if we have to take some risks.

Jarrod

The bounty system wasn't put in as a way for PKers to enjoy killing people who raided though, it was pretty much put into place to stop the practice you're talking about. The bounty system exists as a way to say, "This person committed a crime and the city wants them dead, who will take up this cause for a reward?" It's designed to prevent the regular griefing that used to occur after raids, where anyone who tried to raid would get ganked by someone like Hirst randomly for the next few months and then decide they didn't want to raid at all. It was not designed to give PKers a reason to jump people they think they can kill in various situation.

Bounties for the city are in all but a mechanical sense, writs for an Order. They should act exactly the same, and disappear when either the person with the bounty or the person who the bounty is on dies to the other.

Jhui

Why is killing someone griefing.  Why does it always dip into that level when we talk about 1 justified death.  We are over-exaggerating the concept of a single death as we always do.  A few changes can be made to make the system better, sure, but we don't want to cripple it into becoming another reason to value a death so highly.

Exelethril

Why should someone have to keep killing bounty hunters over and over again if he/she succeeds in killing them until they die though? Not everyone enjoys being stalked or hunted and no one will lay down to die either.

I think a system that punishes failure for bounty hunters and rewards targets with "freedom" after 1-2 tries is better than an expiration date.

I can see why people that invested a lot of effort/time/money into PK would look for more avenues of conflict but there's the other side of the coin too.

Jarrod

There is a significant difference between 'a single death' and 'being forced to fight until you lose'. That is the distinction to be made here.

Jhui

Then we're all on the same page and people just like arguing.  A small change can be made, but it shouldn't start after 1 death.

Dunn

And a cap of three resolves that. Either you get two kills and one death or you take your death and move on. Not sure why you're white knighting this. 

Jules

What I have seen with city-wide bounties (-anyone- can try to kill the target at any time, until he dies to someone from the org), is that one or two people will come after the target (very occasionally three), assuming that the target is alone. 

If that target is someone top tier, and the bountying city is Cyrene, yeah, no one in their right mind is going to follow the code of "e-bushido" and walk into an absolutely certain death alone and unafraid (especially not over here in Achaea and especially not repeatedly), but I've never seen people bring an absolutely huge group for bounties, and you do get just one person coming after you a lot of the time, especially if you're not a PK God.  Anyone can claim the bounty, of course, but the people who are all over bounties do tend to be some of the best, so expect to be outclassed, unless your city has all of the best combatants anyway.

People are mostly not just trying to "smoosh" you if you were bringing fun conflict to their turf.  Now... if you actually cost them something that felt like a serious loss and not a fun skirmish - like say, brought a huge raiding group and took down a bunch of Cyrenians in the pre-raid stage, or cost them a fortune in comms, I can't promise they won't feel justified in using the system as more of an actual retaliation, given the opportunity (so make sure your "victims" are having fun too, don't be a jerk). 

But no matter what, it really is just one death for the target (and if he's lucky, he may get to claim several victims first, and actually come out ahead), so it's hard for me to feel very sorry for someone who's been bountied unless there are some fairly ridiculous bountying shenanigans going on.

Jules

Also, if the "this one guy won't stop trying to kill me" (even though that guy is eating a death himself every time he does that) thing bothers you THAT much, just put a small per person cooldown on it instead   so that he can probably still try if he really wants and no one else kills the target in the meantime.  I really don't think it's necessary, and you should feel happy that someone is willing to die repeatedly, but I like it better than just shutting the hunter out of the system.  He may be the best that org HAS, because PK cadres in Achaea are so extremely skewed. 

Jarrod

Dunn said:

And a cap of three resolves that. Either you get two kills and one death or you take your death and move on. Not sure why you're white knighting this. 

Not sure what you're talking about, the mention of Ashtan possibly ignoring the bounty system to return to old gank style is a clear indicator of a difference of opinion regarding the purpose of the bounty system.

Why should the bounty system allow multiple chances to attack someone when every other system that has stricter requirements for why you can attack someone limits it to one?

Jhui

Jarrod said:

Dunn said:

And a cap of three resolves that. Either you get two kills and one death or you take your death and move on. Not sure why you're white knighting this. 

Not sure what you're talking about, the mention of Ashtan possibly ignoring the bounty system to return to old gank style is a clear indicator of a difference of opinion regarding the purpose of the bounty system.

Gank style wasn't the intent there.  The intent was that anyone from Ashtan would go after the person until they got the kill, then alert Dunn/Seragorn to remove from the board and get the reward.  No reason to always assume the worst.

Why should the bounty system allow multiple chances to attack someone when every other system that has stricter requirements for why you can attack someone limits it to one?

Not sure why we want another of the same system.  This system, if anything, is saying the person being hunted (who is also the instigator for getting their name on the board) could potentially go 100 kills to 1 death  vs someone, while the bounty hunter's best case scenario is going 1-0 and receiving the bounty reward.

Seems skewed already, let's just make it 3 kills to 1 death as the highest potential and we've got ourselves a conflict system that isn't all about 1 side winning and 1 side losing.  Both sides can win! yay.

Dunn

I think if you raid, you deserve a death. You engaged offensively with a city willingly. I can only speak for my city, but we don't bounty frivolously. I think that if you can have some reason, the system is fine as is, but a death penalty such as losing the bounty back to the board with a cool down would be fine. Personally, I think a bounty should make someone open PK to the army of that city until they die or time (counted like contracts and not flat 6 like it is now) elapses. That's a bit outside of what people would be willing to do, however, because omg butthurt death. 

Jarrod

Again, why should they be required to die to satisfy this system, above any others?

It is skewed in favor of the attacker heavily, given unlimited reason to attack and a very large time window with which to initiate any number of attacks in whatever manner they want. A different system is good, an attacker-only victory system is not good. We've established before that XP is not a cost for the people who attack like this, so dying is a no-negative side effect here for the attacker.

Jhui

Jarrod said:

Again, why should they be required to die to satisfy this system, above any others?

It is skewed in favor of the attacker heavily, given unlimited reason to attack and a very large time window with which to initiate any number of attacks in whatever manner they want. A different system is good, an attacker-only victory system is not good. We've established before that XP is not a cost for the people who attack like this, so dying is a no-negative side effect here for the attacker.

Who are you arguing with now about this?  and what makes you think someone has said unlimited is the way to go?  Everyone is pointing to some sort of limit.  So pick a number/different mechanism and argue that instead?  You're just repeating this for no reason.

I'd like the number to be > 1, so let's stop using this 'unlimited' term.

Jarrod

I've yet to hear a compelling reason why this system, which has the loosest rules regarding applying a bounty on someone, should also have the loosest rules for completing said bounty.

Jhui

If you attack a city, you're likely going to die for it (somewhere down the line, to someone, hopefully...).  Pretty simple rule.  Not sure why it's loose.  The bright side is that it can be a win/win for both parties, with the person the bounty is on having more potential wins overall.  Crazy, I know.

If the bounty just has to keep going down the list until someone is able to complete it, then boy that person probably needed to be killed because they likely never die and aren't use to losing.  But at least, in the end, the city gets the revenge they were seeking and both parties have a chance at lots of healthy conflict.

Herose

It would be awesome if the bounties made you open PK to the cities soldiers.  No need to claim the bounty.  It would be automatically added to the city log once someone is successful in completing the bounty and remove them from the bounty board.  Obviously, it would require some structure and rules around who can get a bounty placed on them but I think this is already in place.

If bounties are being used properly then you have voluntarily done something against that city to warrant that bounty.  I believe it would make the system a lot more fluid and interesting than it is now. 

I raided Targossas and now they are after me. They want revenge and retribution! I brought conflict to their city on my terms and now they can bring conflict to me on theirs.  Sure, there would be a few people who are role playing honorable characters and would just offer to duel me but maybe there is a group of people who just want to kill me as quickly as possible.  Great!  Remember I initiated the conflict by doing something to that city to get a bounty placed on my head to begin with.

I think it's a great voluntary way to promote conflict which only lasts for one death. 

Itorvi

You're going to end up making players avoid participating in raids with a system like this because then they'll have to look over their shoulders for an undetermined amount of time afterwards. I don't think it's a good idea to add more consequence to organized conflict such as raiding. You already risk enough during the initial conflict. Adding more to that will not generate more "fun" for people who want to dabble in group pk - it'll make them avoid it even more. The point of the whole game is to generate fun.

Herose

If you don't think conflict is 'fun' then you shouldn't be raiding to begin with.

Noak

Personally, I like the fact I get some kind of notification that I'm being hunted. It's better than someone randomly ganking me two days later and I have no idea why. Outside of potential improvements I think the system itself is important. Plus, if the system wasn't there to begin with there's not exactly a limitation on how many times someone can try to kill you--at least this way it ends if they end up killing you during the bounty. 

Jules

I do think city raiding is on the short list of things we don't actually want a large portion of the game involved in, and in Achaea, this system does probably work as something of a deterrent there for all but the top tier and some hangers on, who likely benefit from it more than I'd like, but I can't imagine how you'd address that.  Anyway, I'd rather not see 20 man raiding parties (but 20 man defense teams are great).