Bounty hunting vs Bounty Farming

[Tigga]

So, after a bit of bouncing around looking at things I stumbled across a resource extraction site. Either this is an anmoly, or holy cow are these places mad for bounties. There wasn't really any hunting going on. Kill one wanted guy, scan a couple of ships, kill another. Repeat until bored. Made loads more cash than any other bounty "hunting" I'd done.

I actually feel this is rather an immersion killer. This isn't bounty hunting. Bounty hunting should be stepping in on a USS (or maybe some sort of distress beacon) to save a ship in trouble and claim the bounty on his attacker. It should be interdicting somebody with a bounty on their head to claim the prize. It shouldn't be going to a location to farm. This just feels silly.

It's a more general problem with "locations" I guess. I want to feel like the events in the game are a bit more logical rather than "here is a random ship floating in space" (USS) or, "here's a place that has no purpose but to facilitate fights" (Nav Beacon). Pirates should be at resource extractions to go after miners. Police shouldn't camp there, and bounty hunters shouldn't. Maybe paid as escorts, but not profitable to sit and wait for the money to come to you.

 

[Crell]

Pretty much every USS I've dropped in on has been dead since the patch (i.e full of clean NPCs). Similarly with the Nav beacons. Also noted I was getting 100 Cr Wanted for destroying wanted craft. I don't think I hit anything else. Happened on two occasions. Off to find an extraction site then

 

[Kitiara]

I actually feel this is rather an immersion killer. This isn't bounty hunting. Bounty hunting should be stepping in on a USS (or maybe some sort of distress beacon) to save a ship in trouble and claim the bounty on his attacker. It should be interdicting somebody with a bounty on their head to claim the prize. It shouldn't be going to a location to farm. This just feels silly.

Easy solution for you would be to avoid them then

We can all play as we choose.

 

[TheEponymousBob]

Not sure I follow you. If pirates are there to prey on miners, why wouldn't others go there to deal with them?

 

[oomwat]

This is only the same as farming the nav beacon ... but with rocks rather than a massive glowing thing

 

[Tigga]

Easy solution for you would be to avoid them then

We can all play as we choose.

Nope. Basic game design fail here. A lot of people find that it's not fun doing a task when they know they could be doing it more "efficiently" by doing it a different way. Not everybody, some people get a kick out of doing things the hard way, but if one method of "bounty hunting" is significantly stronger than other methods, and people know this, the other methods will become less fun.

Game design, and what people find fun, isn't always as black and white as people think it is. Some people don't even know what they themselves find fun.

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

Not sure I follow you. If pirates are there to prey on miners, why wouldn't others go there to deal with them?

The supply/demand balance is wrong. Sure, if a place were to attract pirates you'd go there to get some bounties, but very quickly the pirates would stop coming as they were always attacked by bounty hunters. The pirates in these locations never really get any piracy done - they're too busy fighting the police and bounty hunters - so they shouldn't come.

 

[LeeLeeBoomBoom]

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -


The supply/demand balance is wrong. Sure, if a place were to attract pirates you'd go there to get some bounties, but very quickly the pirates would stop coming as they were always attacked by bounty hunters. The pirates in these locations never really get any piracy done - they're too busy fighting the police and bounty hunters - so they shouldn't come.

That is a rather good point. You would think, at least some of the time, after a while word would get out that bounty hunters are being attracted to the area and they would stop going there for a while, or maybe get together to send in a larger group to deal with it.

 

[TheEponymousBob]

The supply/demand balance is wrong. Sure, if a place were to attract pirates you'd go there to get some bounties, but very quickly the pirates would stop coming as they were always attacked by bounty hunters. The pirates in these locations never really get any piracy done - they're too busy fighting the police and bounty hunters - so they shouldn't come.

Hmm—I can't say I agree. There are very few places one can safely pirate without incurring the hull cost of interdictions, and RESs have the advantage of offering some cover. It'd be nice if pirate activity in a specific zone varied according to bounty hunter presence (indeed it may already, for all I know, but if not, it'd be a nice enhancement for FD to consider), but I don't see it as broken, personally. YMMV.

 

[GlyphGryph]

Resource Extraction zones are actually pretty great for player pirates, so logically it makes sense they'd be there.

The only real problem is that the NPCs are pretty bad at pirating. I have seen a few succeed though! (And if you're a player miner, they are a constant threat and dumping your cargo is the easiest way to get rid of them, especially since you're a miner and can just mine more of whatever you were mining already)

 

[MASTER_DEATHDEALER]

Pretty much every USS I've dropped in on has been dead since the patch (i.e full of clean NPCs). Similarly with the Nav beacons. Also noted I was getting 100 Cr Wanted for destroying wanted craft. I don't think I hit anything else. Happened on two occasions. Off to find an extraction site then

me too!!!!!!! all the nav beacons are dead and USSs are useless. Even the extraction sites near me suck. Most of my 104 kills in the last 3-4 days r me pulling wanted ships out of SC.

 

[MASTER_DEATHDEALER]

So, after a bit of bouncing around looking at things I stumbled across a resource extraction site. Either this is an anmoly, or holy cow are these places mad for bounties. There wasn't really any hunting going on. Kill one wanted guy, scan a couple of ships, kill another. Repeat until bored. Made loads more cash than any other bounty "hunting" I'd done.

I actually feel this is rather an immersion killer. This isn't bounty hunting. Bounty hunting should be stepping in on a USS (or maybe some sort of distress beacon) to save a ship in trouble and claim the bounty on his attacker. It should be interdicting somebody with a bounty on their head to claim the prize. It shouldn't be going to a location to farm. This just feels silly.

It's a more general problem with "locations" I guess. I want to feel like the events in the game are a bit more logical rather than "here is a random ship floating in space" (USS) or, "here's a place that has no purpose but to facilitate fights" (Nav Beacon). Pirates should be at resource extractions to go after miners. Police shouldn't camp there, and bounty hunters shouldn't. Maybe paid as escorts, but not profitable to sit and wait for the money to come to you.

i wanna farm! where u farmin?

 

[Zenicetus]

I understand what you're getting at. Resource Extraction sites are something of a theme park for bounty hunting, very predictable. But I like those Extraction sites when I'm not in full Bounty Hunter mode, and just want a little combat fun as a break between other things, like missions or exploring. It's fun to fly around the rocks while fighting.

The "real" hunting in this game is searching for NPC or PC Wanted ships in supercruise and interdicting them, or taking hunting/assassination missions where you're up against a fairly strong ship with a high reward, and you have to hunt local USS's for them. That feels more like true bounty hunting to me, although the BB missions are also more predictable than they should be. Maybe we'll see this developed further in the game. But at least interdiction and BB missions are an alternative to the "theme park" hunting zones around Extraction sites and Nav beacons.

 

[Kitiara]

Nope. Basic game design fail here. A lot of people find that it's not fun doing a task when they know they could be doing it more "efficiently" by doing it a different way. Not everybody, some people get a kick out of doing things the hard way, but if one method of "bounty hunting" is significantly stronger than other methods, and people know this, the other methods will become less fun.

Game design, and what people find fun, isn't always as black and white as people think it is. Some people don't even know what they themselves find fun.

Seriously, they work fine for what some people want. If you want something different, go do something different.

If you can't have fun without min-maxing, you're ALWAYS going to grind the strictly most efficient way of doing anything. It doesn't matter what the design is, you'll put yourself on tight rails and limit your own exposure to content.

 

[Vulpes Fire]

I actually have a very "Firefly"-esk mentality when playing this game. Roam around a few systems, pick up an odd job, move some cargo, kill some pirates and smuggle what they drop (plus whatever salvage I find floating around in space). Actually found a rare good (ear slug I think it was) from a pirate drop after shooting his cargo hatch. As far as the Resource site goes, it didn't break my immersion at all this morning. I was constantly running into (and killing) people in purple pirate gang. In one USS I killed 2 before an anaconda came in causing me too high tail it out. Then when I entered a resource site there were about 3 of them pestering the locals. Seeing them as the scourge that they were I decided to wipe them out before headed back to a hanger with a black market to offload my cargo (one ear slug, one superconducter, and 2 semiconductors in my eagle).

The reason that it didn't break my immersion is because I didn't allow it to. I was in character of someone that just keeps flying in the big black taking comfort in the fact that no one can take the sky from me. I will eventually get a cobra and then settle into an exploration asp roaming the big black, but I am not in a hurry to get there. You only break the immersion if you get tied up into the "game" part of it.

I relate it to power leveling skills in a game like Elder Scrolls. Sure it's the quickest way to farm the game and get stronger, but to do that breaks character and pulls you out of what the game does really well by allowing you to get lost in a massive world. Resist the urge to power level. If you must farm something find something that fits the pilot that you see yourself as being and not just pick something that has been found to be the "best" way to min/max.

 

[BoldyBald]

I think the hunt down missions should get a huge buff in rewards. Currently it's easier to go into SC and scan blobs.. If wanted pops up, interdict, kill, profit.. rinse and repeat. More rewarding than searching for a specific target.

TL;DR version; Bounty Hunt missions should get buffed.

 

[crushdepth]

Farming bounties at an extraction site is the easy money right now. Heaps of 20k cobras and up. Only problem is the system security vessels keep going nuts and attacking me fpr no apparent reason.

 

[TheArtist]

Pretty much every USS I've dropped in on has been dead since the patch (i.e full of clean NPCs).

..and too much of the "Psst, want to change your mission target?"-proposals! So annoying..

 

[Tigga]

Seriously, they work fine for what some people want. If you want something different, go do something different.

If you can't have fun without min-maxing, you're ALWAYS going to grind the strictly most efficient way of doing anything. It doesn't matter what the design is, you'll put yourself on tight rails and limit your own exposure to content.

I want a number of paths to wealth, and I want them roughly balanced. This isn't the only place where one method of earning money far outperforms other ways which use similar techniques. There's getting the last 10% out of optimising you strategy (min-maxing), and then there's doing something that is 5x more profitable then the similar alternative.

 

[MASTER_DEATHDEALER]

..and too much of the "Psst, want to change your mission target?"-proposals! So annoying..

yea, turn these OFF!!!! i kill them if its an anarchy system!

 

[Zephyriel]

In the very last stage of gamma I was finally starting to make some serious buck with bounty hunting and it was great fun! Now At my same hunting place (a nav beacon in an anarchy) I have to wait 30 seconds without any other ship in the area, and when they finally spawn it's eagles and Sideys with less than 10k on their head... When I finally met a 110k Anaconda I no longer had enough ammo to take it down (my fault but it does illustrate how long it took before I had a serious bounty). In the last gamma I was hunting Pythons and Anacondas for 50k and 100k a pop, the fights were hard but the rewards worth it, now once again i'm struggling to make a living as a bounty hunter. Please FD put it back the way it was just before release, more juicy bounties!