Life is Feudal Official Forum

[Guest]

Something i would love to see is a good bounty hunting system.
Perhaps it could be related to alignment somehow, i would love to see this idea expanded.

[Mawnin21]

how about potentially having bounties for players with the most kills that way there is a reward for going after harder opponents

[Guest]

That sounds good, but they have to make lower bounties available, i don't want it turning into the crappy bounty system that eve had. There has to be a REASON, a carrot on a stick if you will for players to go bounty hunting, and i think alignment could be just that carrot! I'm talking about besides money of course >_>.

What i mean is what would be the point in posting bounties, aside from vanity? There has to be a reason to post the bounty in the first place.

[Mawnin21]

i have an idea for bounties. perhaps you could can collect a bounty for killing some wild animals in the vicinity of you or your town

[Guest]

What if you commit a crime, you lose alignment and gain a bounty, and the more crimes you commit the higher your bounty stacks. I think that would make it pretty awesome.

[MacWarrior]

I agree with Fyapowa. That way you could reduce crime in game and make a nice sum for yourself

[Xenadrome]

Maybe have player posted bounties. Where if someone is wronging you, place a bounty, if someone kills somebody with a bounty, they could collect it(if the brought proof of death, such as a head). you could also tie this in with an alignment system, where someone could post bounties for people with either high or low alignment(good killing bad or vice-versa) that can be collected by killing anyone of said alignment.

For example, player A could post a bounty for 5 evil/very evil players at the price of 20 gold each, player B then goes out and kills 3 evil players(this would increase his alignment) and would then be able to collect 60 gold.
The same could be done with evil/neutral player posting bounties for good/very good players.

[Red]

Putting code in the game for bounties seems like a waste to me.
Bounties should be player created and player controlled.
No need to waste coding time for systems in a sandbox game that can be controlled and ran by the player base.
Having the players run things like bounty hunts really draws players into the game world, instead of creating a mindless reward system like most games.
Crime should be handled by players. If there is a criminal around constantly killing newbies, then some powerful players should be wary of him and be out to get him.

Again, no code should be spent on systems like this. These things should be player handled. If you want some wolves in the area killed, you put up a sign asking people to do it for a reward you will provide. Same goes for wanting other players killed.
Let the sandbox be run by players and the world be controlled by players.

[finalreview]

If there is an alignment system implemented where performing specific actions such as pick pocketing, murder, destruction of property changed your alignment I don't see why a bounty system couldn't be put into place. With out a GUI to interact with and post your player created bounties you would have to rely on ingame chat, forums, or community made websites dedicated to bounties. You would also run into the problem of players not paying after a contract was completed (which actually would just help for more player created game play that could be fun). With both player and computer made bounties there would be a much higher value on alignment. The game mechanics would make being an outlaw much more risk vs reward then the chance that enough players complain about you in general chat that a party is made to find you until you log out and they forget your name. But with the computer made bounties and player who reached a specific level of negative alignment would get a specific price value bounty put on their head. Also there needs to be some type of death penalty greater then just full loot for bounty hunting to even effect the risk vs reward of being an outlaw. One could simply never wear gear unless he knew he was going to a fight.

[Guest]

I'll be honest, the one reason i wanted to play EVE is because i was told it had a bounty hunting system.
When i got my combat skill up enough, i tried to go and do it. Long story short it was crap.
I think that doing acts that reduce your alignment should add to your bounty (kind of like oblivion) except their are no npc guards that will come after you, it has to be player bounty hunters, also i do like the idea of players posting bounties on other players, but in EVE rich players would make an alt, put a huge bounty on it, then never play it again.

Also you shouldn't know simply by clicking if the player has a bounty on them, you need to know before hand, and also their should be a way to track bounties down, but not to overpowered. I can understand that some people aren't into bounty hunting, and they can play the game their way, BUT I LOVE BOUNTING HUNTING, and i will not rest until there is a bounty hunting system in this game!!!

[finalreview]

Me too Fyapowa. I don't have enough experience in EVE to discuss its bounty hunting system, but I have extensive knowledge of SWG player bounty system. The system for tracking was pretty over powered, giving exact planet and coordinates of the player (which you could constantly update). No man could hide from me! Unless he was inside a privately owned home

What if there were bounty boards placed evenly across the world. Players who committed crimes, or whatever is the action that increases a players bounty, in that area would be added to that specific board. So it would be possible for a player to have an extremely high bounty in one area, but be an unwanted man across the map. Or maybe boarding zones also post the bounty but it is 50% less or something. This could also help for realms to enforce their law on the land that they are in. Realm bounty boards would be interesting also. Bobik has talked about security zones, what if when a realm enforces their own laws through the bounty board they can in a sense create their own "lawful" land.

[trashman]

I like your idea of having a "lawful" land, but it would only be an idea and not really a boundary. I think certain actions will increase or decrease one's alignment, but I think that only players can create a bounty and it is not an automatic process.

[fallen_saint]

Hmm, would there be bounty levels depending on the rank or prestige of the one who set the bounty? A king proclaiming a bounty on someone would have all the cities in their kingdom red. The person perhaps have a red or another color ring over their head to say this person is wanted. It could go down to yellow and back to normal as the person goes further away from the bounty. [Sometimes I wish there were npc cities so they could hunt the person down too, but I know on this game it is very anti-npc for anything]

If it was a simple sheriff the spectrum of where the person is wanted would be diminished. It could be located in the area where the bounty is set at and decrease outward unless the person with the bounty pays more money for it to extend to different regions or cities in other places.

[Guest]

I believe i may have a solution to the "overpowered" scenario for bounty tracking. What if there was a system that showed a players LAST KNOWN COORDINATES.

For example, say a player plays as an outlaw, and staying in safehouses and outside of towns, then he would be difficult to track, as he is staying outside of the radar and his last known location would be very outdated.

But say we have a second hypothetical outlaw, who regularly visits towns. His last known coordinates would show when and which towns he had visited, or which caravans had spotted him where, so on so forth. Tracking him would become more realistic, but not completely overpowered. Of course it would have to show his online/offline status as well.

Perhaps there could also be a system like fallen_saint said, where if you get very close to your bounties location, a yellow marker leads you to them, and if you visibly spot them, they have a red marker on them. If they can get far enough away from you AND break your line of sight you've "LOST THEIR TRAIL"

Thoughts, anyone?

[finalreview]

Actually sounds great. Could be some what of a player has to actually have his cross hair on you and do a /report or something type of system. You know bandits snuck into towns they were wanted in for provisions / women / trading / stuff like that. I do like that idea though. Would also add to a bounty hunters renown that he could actually find these people skillfully, instead of only being good at fighting.

[Guest]

So from what i can tell we agree the bounty system could work something like this:

Bounties could be tracked on 'Bounty Boards' or possibly some name that is more medieval. These would show the bounties details, online/offline status, bounty on head, and last known co-ordinates and dates, danger rating, etc. Any player can collect a bounty (assuming of course you have the skill or preparation required to terminate the bounty), and there would be two ways of posting a bounty.
-
The first type of bounties could be listed under 'Public Bounties', and the bounty list would be populated by players who have broken 'The Kings Law'. Public bounty would be added to the player if they (are spotted?); stealing, pillaging, murdering (lawful zone killing), assault (lawful zone attacking), vandalism, etc. A player could earn gold and alignment for completing public bounties. This system would mean the law enforcement aspect of the game is COMPLETELY player driven, eliminating 'guard' NPC's from the game almost completely.
-
The second type of bounties could be listed under 'Private Bounties', and the bounty list would be populated by players who have had a bounty placed on them by other players. Completing this bounty would not give alignment, but the player who posted the bounty can offer other rewards with or instead of gold; such as weapons, armor, items, resources, reputation with their kingdom (if applicable), etc. Placing a bounty on others would have strategic significance. For example, two merchants work the same route, the first merchant places a bounty on the second merchant, the second merchant is eliminated, and now the first merchant has monopoly of the market (for the moment). Tracking bounties would be difficult to implement in a way that is not too overpowered, but I think I have come up with a solution.

"Last Spotted" would be a system that would update the outlaws last known location, status, and other info(such as rated danger depending on skill, equipment, and ranking) when they enter or are spotted by; towns, caravans, possibly players with high good alignment, security organizations, other bounty hunters, etc. Obvious exceptions that would not update your bounty sheet are players in your kingdom and alliance and (possibly) towns owned by your kingdom and alliance. If you visibly spot a bounty you are tracking, a warning will pop up on the screen (possibly for bounty hunter only), and if the bounty spots you and chooses to flee, he must make you lose sight of him/her to get away, and if you spot them again, the warning will pop up again (have a maximum range to stop it being overpowered). This warning would only pop up on bounties you are currently tracking, and you would only be able to track a limited number of bounties (skill related?).

Bounties would also affect your alignment. If you earned the bounty by breaking the 'Kings Law', your alignment would go towards the negative, but if you killed a player with a bounty earned by breaking the Kings Law, your alignment would go towards the positive. Normally, a player would not be able to attack another player without either incurring a bounty, challenging to a duel, or being in a pvp scenario (e.g. sieges, wars between kingdoms, etc.), however, any player who has a bounty can be attacked and KILLED by any other player WITHOUT CONSEQUENCE. This reflects on the harsh laws during the medieval age, adding to the realism of LIF.

This would mean not only would people stop attacking each other in lawful cities, but it would also give rise to 'Lawless Zones', in which player's with bounties would gather in outlaw towns so as to update their bounty sheet as little as possible, while still gathering the supplies they need, which would give an interesting contrast to the game.
Lawless towns would not update your bounty, meaning that outlaws would either have to try and get rid of the good aligned players and bounty hunters, risk having their sheet update, or sneak into town for supplies and sneak back into the wilderness to keep their bounty update to a minimum. For any players familiar with EVE, this would be reminiscent of High sec, Low Sec, And zero-zero space, except that it is player driven.

These lawless zones that came from bounty listed players would also open up avenues of income for lawful players who associate with lawless players, one possibility being 'FENCING'. Lawless players would steal and pillage goods, but be unable to sell them in the highly populated lawful towns full of rich care-bears (players who do not pvp, but spend all their time farming money). This is where the fence comes in, he would buy the stolen goods from the outlaw at low prices, and then would take the goods into lawful towns and sell them for a profit. Another possible avenue of income is 'THE SPY'.
Outlaws would send in a player with no bounty into lawful towns, who would trick other wealthy players, merchants, or caravans into traveling somewhere in which the outlaws would ambush and rob them. These are just two examples, but there are plenty more possibile business interactions between lawful and lawless players.

Collecting bounties would either have to be a C.O.D (Cash on Delivery) basis, or returning to a bounty board upon completion of a bounty. I also think calling them 'bounties' may be a bit too old west for LIF. Perhaps instead of calling them 'Bounties' they can be called 'Inquisitions' and instead of 'Bounty hunters' they could be called 'Inquisitors'. It could somehow (loosely perhaps) tie into the religious aspect of the game, and as the church was so corrupt during the medieval age, private contracts would still be applicable, as would Inquisitors with bad alignment.

Contributors:finalreview, Architect Supremacist, Mawnin21, fallen_saint, MacWarrior, Xenadrome, Red, and trashman.

[Guest]

http://www.lifeisfeudal.com/community/f ... =2227#2234

Eskaldar raises such a great point. And it also got me thinking that what if 'Private Bounties' were global, but 'Public Bounties' only have jurisdiction in the lands the crime was committed. Say a thief commits crimes in territory A, he is a wanted man, and if he is killed or captured the bounty will be paid. But if he escapes to Territory B, and is then killed (maybe capture available?) the bounty is not paid, unless it is a private one. But if he come BACK to Territory A and is then killed or captured, the bounty will still be paid. This would also add an EXCELLENT world PvP scenario to each of the territory's, and it would encourage players to roam around and 'Enforce the Law'.

Also, if you capture a target alive the bounty reward is increased, and there is an awesome interactive scene in which the criminal has to be executed .

Thoughts?

[finalreview]

You would need to be able to have to deathblow a player like in Darkfall or SWG.

[Dragon Scales]

Bumping this thread up, because I think it is awesome.

[Reamagorn]

if speaking about forcing a player to follow there might just be an option, though i don't know if it's a good one.

lets say you beat the bounty and need to take it to the city (if there's such a system). there could be lets say a rope or just some item that you could use on knocked out criminals only. lets say we use it and he/she gets sort of debuff where he must stay in some certain range of the hunter and if he doesn't or decides to attack anyone, he insta dies and gets more penalties than he could get anyhow else.

i personally think that'd be motivating enough

here's more of my thoughts about it and else things: post3272/#p3272

[Robbor]

If there is a criminal around constantly killing newbies, then some powerful players should be wary of him and be out to get him.

The problem is when said criminals are 90% of the server population and there is simply no powerful players to be out to get them. And the ones that are are all new badly equipped characters.

Then we have mortal online! \o/

[Dailato]

meh, could work if the death penalty was severe enough, and/or increased with bounty posted on you. Else it's just a case of your guildie (possibly after leaving guild for a few minutes) killing you and splitting the bounty between you.
That's why shit didn't work in eve online. Still doesn't work cause it's not worth anywhere near the time and effort it takes to hunt people down for the money, as almost anything they fly worthwhile (bounty is now based on the worth of the ship they lost) will be too fast to catch, or too tanky to kill before help shows up, and all the while you're risking your own ship just to get to where they are, let alone fight them.

Now if there was some kind of jail system in LiF where people with a bounty on them got taken to jail or such and were stuck there for a time depending on their bounty, it might be a different story, and avoiding a bounty (or relishing in not getting caught with a very high one) would be a thing with real consequences.

Most developers poop their pants at the mere thought of players quitting cause the game "punished them" for their "playstyle". Which usually involves killing noobs or pissing people off in general, and generally causing other people to quit playing... but a bounty system is meaningless without severe consequences for getting caught. Which is rarely the case.

[Rotnroller89]

I kinda skimmed through this, sorry if I repeat an idea. My thoughts on a bounty system I think should mix with some code of game generated tracking system with the said alignment system and player controlled aspect.

Example, Player A runs around killing low players or raiding some established trade route or various other things. Player B being a member of a kingdom, empire etc with a certain level of rank can access a tracking system to see said players list of kills and where and creates a posting that can be put out to the his kingdom and placed at some kind of board for traveling adventurers or players looking to collect on bounties to visit and proceed to attempt to track said target player A.

I also think with that player creation can put a certain level of priority based on said "crimes" and then specify if they want them dead or alive, brought back alive leading to some kind of jail time based on the kingdoms laws/rules in place. Something like for x number of kills equals number of ingame days that character sits in the cell and or fine they must pay.

That's my thought any way, with a game like this bandit and jerk players will be around in vast number. But to implement a slight duel system will help get the players into the community who really want to enjoy what the game has to offer. Games like Warz(Infestation:Survivor Stories) don't have a reward system for having hunted players that make a living off hunting and killing newbs, outside of gaining rank for killing them.

[Sting5]

Great idea to put bounties on bandits. But it should be done automatically, not manually by players.

I would also suggest respawn penalty system - adding prolonged respawn time, for example:

- STRONGLY NEGATIVE ALIGNMENT - if You're really bad and Your alignment is strongly negative, then You couldn't respawn for 10 hours.

o DEFAULT ALIGNMENT - just like Vladimir told in stream video, if Your alignment is good, You should be able to respawn with very tiny loss on skills. And respawn time should be matter of seconds/minutes that is.

+ HIGHLY POSITIVE ALIGNMENT - If You're very good, you get no penalties on skills, and instant respawn rate - such system would be best to prevent COD kids from this game AND make think twice before killing someone.

[Atiden]

Great idea to put bounties on bandits. But it should be done automatically, not manually by players.

I would also suggest respawn penalty system - adding prolonged respawn time, for example:

- STRONGLY NEGATIVE ALIGNMENT - if You're really bad and Your alignment is strongly negative, then You couldn't respawn for 10 hours.

o DEFAULT ALIGNMENT - just like Vladimir told in stream video, if Your alignment is good, You should be able to respawn with very tiny loss on skills. And respawn time should be matter of seconds/minutes that is.

+ HIGHLY POSITIVE ALIGNMENT - If You're very good, you get no penalties on skills, and instant respawn rate - such system would be best to prevent COD kids from this game AND make think twice before killing someone.

The only problem I see with this is the 10 hour respawn, gotta remember this is a game, your meant to sit down, log in, play and have fun, then log off when you get bored, forcing people out of the game for playing the game is just a good way to anger the players and lose some of the fan base.

If I remember correctly, the lower your alignment, the more your skills are reduced, to me this system works fine, the skill reduction while short-term, is still an effective deterrent, for instance, if I had just spent the last day getting my skills to 100, the last thing I would want to do is get myself into a situation where my skills are reduced and I have to work to get my skills back to 100 again.

[Arrakis]

The only problem I see with this is the 10 hour respawn, gotta remember this is a game, your meant to sit down, log in, play and have fun, then log off when you get bored, forcing people out of the game for playing the game is just a good way to anger the players and lose some of the fan base.

If I remember correctly, the lower your alignment, the more your skills are reduced, to me this system works fine, the skill reduction while short-term, is still an effective deterrent, for instance, if I had just spent the last day getting my skills to 100, the last thing I would want to do is get myself into a situation where my skills are reduced and I have to work to get my skills back to 100 again.

Agreed about 10 hour respawn.

Also I believe that actual penalty for killingspree is pretty much enough, you all must know that after reaching -50 alignment you cannot go back, you remain a murderer for life, and well, each death = loosing a great number of skillpoints, which may eventaully lead to lowering to 'newbie' level and starting all over again.

[Proximo]

Give me the ability to write on a piece of paper and put it on a board in my town. Then give the player an ability to collect a dead persons head as an item. ex Severed head of Mick the Wick Spaniard. as proof of the kill you take it to whoever wanted it and if they have honour they will reward you.

Leave the alignment system as it would react. it's up to you to decide if the amount of gold is worth the kill.

[Thokan]

Great idea to put bounties on bandits. But it should be done automatically, not manually by players.

I would also suggest respawn penalty system - adding prolonged respawn time, for example:

- STRONGLY NEGATIVE ALIGNMENT - if You're really bad and Your alignment is strongly negative, then You couldn't respawn for 10 hours.

o DEFAULT ALIGNMENT - just like Vladimir told in stream video, if Your alignment is good, You should be able to respawn with very tiny loss on skills. And respawn time should be matter of seconds/minutes that is.

+ HIGHLY POSITIVE ALIGNMENT - If You're very good, you get no penalties on skills, and instant respawn rate - such system would be best to prevent COD kids from this game AND make think twice before killing someone.

The only problem I see with this is the 10 hour respawn, gotta remember this is a game, your meant to sit down, log in, play and have fun, then log off when you get bored, forcing people out of the game for playing the game is just a good way to anger the players and lose some of the fan base.

If I remember correctly, the lower your alignment, the more your skills are reduced, to me this system works fine, the skill reduction while short-term, is still an effective deterrent, for instance, if I had just spent the last day getting my skills to 100, the last thing I would want to do is get myself into a situation where my skills are reduced and I have to work to get my skills back to 100 again.

+1

Give me the ability to write on a piece of paper and put it on a board in my town. Then give the player an ability to collect a dead persons head as an item. ex Severed head of Mick the Wick Spaniard. as proof of the kill you take it to whoever wanted it and if they have honour they will reward you.

Leave the alignment system as it would react. it's up to you to decide if the amount of gold is worth the kill.

I personally would like to see just the ingame mechanic of leaving static messages on ingame items and let the meta game take care of the rest. It is dangerous to dictate with too much ingame mechanic, it can be deterrent to post bounties on people, it can be far too incentive.

But if there would be an in-game mechanic for bounty hunting, make it as above, as simple and forthcoming as possible.

[Sting5]

The only problem I see with this is the 10 hour respawn, gotta remember this is a game, your meant to sit down, log in, play and have fun, then log off when you get bored, forcing people out of the game for playing the game is just a good way to anger the players and lose some of the fan base.

Again, this is only suggestion (while the thread is mainly about that), but - 10 hours, 1 hour or no penalty - it's all about making people pay for annoying/negative/trolling game style. At least that's what I would prefer - a game, where being bad is much less profitable than being good and helping others. In DayZ it takes around 5-10 minutes to respawn for being good/bad, and the game doesn't seem to be unpopular. And just imagine: You create the character, join the game, and get killed because of... because. That would not anger the fan base? Penalty would be a problem for those who have negative alignment. If You are friendly, then why worry about penalties?

If I remember correctly, the lower your alignment, the more your skills are reduced, to me this system works fine, the skill reduction while short-term, is still an effective deterrent, for instance, if I had just spent the last day getting my skills to 100, the last thing I would want to do is get myself into a situation where my skills are reduced and I have to work to get my skills back to 100 again.

Exactly, very true! But where did You find info on how much Your skills will be reduced? If a guy with maximum negative alignment loses 20-50 points, then it's not hard to restore. Like Bobik said in stream video - minimum grinding - you get to 90 skill points in few hours, so 20 points would take even less.
Again, all this is just my point of view. The skill reduction system is really good idea, I like it, but it must be implemented correctly - if it works, then no other penalties are required really.

[Dailato]

I can't remember exactly where it was mentioned (some post on these forums I believe) but the maximum skill-point loss at lowest levels of alignment would be about half your total skillpoints (500), which considering the time involved with grinding them back up, will, unless you are fairly effective with 0 skillpoints, disincentivice killers from maintaining their existance for very long, or outside of large, organized gank-groups that simply never or at least very rarely die.

This last one is honestly something I fear more than random gankers, organized griefers extorting smaller entities with brute force of numbers. I'm hoping to organize the more civilized players to act against this but as to how many are even interested in doing such...? Open world pvp does have a nasty tendency for attracting the worst kinds of bullies hoping to live out their power-fantasies.

But such is the way of things, life is feudal and all that.

Yours truly -The Pope