It occurred to me the other day that everything that is wrong with the bounty system can be expressed in a single sentence:
"Bounties don't work because the payouts are worth more than the clones."
Now that implants are included in pod-mails, the market value of a destroyed clone is public knowledge; this has created an opportunity to implement a new bounty system. As the nature of the current problem is that a friend or an alt can claim an outstanding bounty, the fix is actually relatively straightforward; change the mechanics of bounty payment to only supply a portion of the value of each clone and treat the total bounty on a pilot's head as a payout pool.
With a proportional payout pool, pilots will no longer be able to take a bounty for themselves without suffering more in losses than payouts. By supplying small payments rather than a lump sum, a new incentive is created to keep podding a given pilot as long as there's money in the bounty pool.
Voila! The eternally broken bounty system is fixed!
This is a really good idea.
ReplyDeleteThis is brillant good idea.
ReplyDeleteGreat idea, Stan! I, too, had been contemplating a fix to this and had been focusing on API-verification of bounty collectors with the idea that you could use this to exclude corp/alliance members and alts from receiving the payout. Wouldn't stop anyone from creating unaffiliated trial accounts and losing their pod to a rookie ship, though.
ReplyDeleteYour idea seems like it would be a lot easier to implement and solves the pesky 'trial-account killer' problem! o7
Problem is does even this fixed bounty system make bounty hunting viable? Or will it just be "Ooooo that guy I just podded had a bounty!". Is it possible to make bounty hunting as a proffesion viable, or will it always just be a way to give someone who just popped someone you don't like a small reward? As soon as you offer rewards that are worth doing something to get, the alt/corp mate collection becomes very viable.
ReplyDelete