Should Frontier revise the 'Kill Stealing' fix?

[Colas]

Just do like WoW does now (after using the other methods):
Monitor the damage and award the kill to the attacker that did most damage.

One could imagine getting a % of the bounty proportional to the damage done.

Actually, WoW does this only for "rare" monsters. For the run-of-the-mill mobs, the first player to hit the mob "tags" it and get the kill. This is to avoid "kill stealing", so that people can be left alone with their prey. But I don't think it would work well in Elite, as there is less drawback in "tagging" many opponents (in Wow they get really after you and this can be tricky)

I voted "yes" to revise in this direction, not to revert to the previous sitaution taht is much worse in my opinion.

 

[Bigcheese]

I've encountered this before - makes total sense now! I thought it was just a bug.

I'm all for reducing the timer, but it still leads to in-game inconsistencies. Let's look at other games:

Battlefield series
Kill shots get the credit, everything else is an assist, graded on damage.

Call of Duty series
Again, Kill shots get the credit, everything else is an assist, graded on damage.

World of Warcraft
First person to attack locks the target as their kill, everyone who assists and is in a group get's a chunk of EXP proportional to their effort.

EvE Online
Again, free for all - Killing Blow gets the credit, everyone else is an assist. (please note: not played for a while, may be inaccurate!)

There's a fairly obvious pattern there, I'm not saying it's the right one for this particular game, but I am saying that there's usually no need to invent a wheel that has already been invented

Now imagine that there were always npcs around trying to steal the kill and could actually do so.

It would be so stupid lol.

 

[sswam]

Should Frontier revise the 'Kill Stealing' fix?

Frontier should have thoroughly debugged their game, then allowed us to thoroughly test the stable version of the game, rinse and repeat, before starting with the $20,000 competitions. In reality, this game is still at the "beta" stage at best.

It's unfortunate that the winners of the competition will win by exploiting broken and unfinished game mechanics. It's some sort of cheating, but Frontier defines the rules of the game and it's not the player's fault that those rules are all borked up. I don't really care about the competition since I'm not in the running, and not interested in grinding anyhow! I'm a Sidewinder pilot and I'm proud of it... for me this is an RPG game about freedom and variety of experience.

 

[Rearden]

I was under the impression this wasn't an actual fix but a workaround until they get a proper fix? Is it actually mentioned anywhere that this is now the final implementation ?

 

[sswam]

The killing shot always getting 100% of the credit for the kill is and always was a stupid idea.

I made a large amount of money in my weak little sidewinder, just waiting as a neutral while a pack of NPC bounty hunters wore down a large ship, then when it's down to 1% or 2% I delivered the finishing blows and got the bounty. Yes that was kind of fun, but it is also total nonsense. Can you imagine pulling a stunt like that with Boba Fett? If someone did that in real life, the other bounty hunters would gang up to gun you down, legal or no! (and I was tempted to shoot the police for the same reason when they stole my kills, until I discovered the "do not report crimes against me" option). This "killshot" mechanism can drive good wholesome bounty hunters to become bloodthirsty pirates!

It should either be proportional to the hull damage delivered (among people who are still on the scene, I guess), or else the player or NPC who delivered the most hurt gets the whole bounty.

 

[BraVo]

If CMDRs are grouped, the bounty should be divided up to the group.

 

[Skenners]

NPCs and Big Bounties

As far as I'm concerned, I've got no problem with players having to fight tooth-and-nail for kills on ships and therefore bounties and such, so for me the player rivalry is just great.

What gets me going is how the local security forces fit in. Quick story:
Took up a hunt and kill mission (~15k reward), tracked the ship down and initiated combat (Anaconda, Elite). The plus was he was already wanted, so I thought "Sweet, I'll get the mission reward and then the bounty on top, heading for some big money off this kill."
So I whittle him down and down and down until around 60% hull. Then the local forces show up.
"Brilliant! Now his fire will be distracted!"
I maintain distance just to be safe, but nothing more than about 1.5km at any time, maintaining a constant stream of lasers and multi-cannons, most of which hit their mark. I've got him now.
Suddenly, the target explodes. "Oh great, I blew his power plant!"
...
Nothing. He went from about 35% to 0% in an instant. I'm guessing the game did some sort of process were it decided I wasn't doing anything so the forces just blew it up. I was not happy. They'd taken my kill, of which I did about 50% damage totally alone and before their even showed up. That meant I was about 10k out-of-pocket for repairs etc.
Still had the mission, so after a resupply I went out and, luckily enough, found him again.
Same process, no police this time, and he got the better of me. Eject. Mission gone.
So all in all, 40k payout for no reward at all, for a kill I had under control the first time through.

The point of all this is, whilst I have no problem with players contesting for kills, I do have a great problem with players putting in time and effort to take a big ship down, only to have it deleted by the authorities and have nothing to show for it. This is why I feel that a proportion-damage-distributed bounty system should apply, at least for encounters only involving one player. Because I will be honest, after this experience it's made me less enthused at the idea of the high-paying missions since there is this risk of denial and thus chipped away a little at my love for the game.

I'm sure I'm not the only one to have experienced something like this, and I really do hope that someone at Frontier might take notice and give it a little thought. Or just shoot it down. Their call.

 

[CaptainKremmen]

My opinion is that this is a bad mechanic.

[video=youtube_share;gedlD81J7Hk]http://youtu.be/gedlD81J7Hk[/video]

 

[Andi]

It was a fix, no need to break it again.