The Bounty Hunting & Bounties tips, and general discussion thread

[Hethwill_Khan]

Is is just me starting to become sick with everyone using the name of the game (dangerous) as a blanket excuse for every stupid game design mistake the creators made.

Making things easy on the player is not a bad thing.. its about making concessions to the player so the game is more enjoyable for them and not waste their time having them do things that are plain boring.

ED right now is full of boring or punishing game mechanics. If anyone things this is good game design, they are badly mistaken.

As it is now, the only reason I am playing the game is to be ready for when the multiplayer part gets released, so we can have some actual multiplayer play with friends. For the single player experience, I would take Elite 2 or 3 over Dangerous. Considering how Elite 2 did fit on a single 3.5 floppy disk, not managing to achieve that level of entertainment is quite an amazing feat.

Stupid design mistake is giving us NPCs to hunt that barely fight back.

How does that work for you and your Punishing theory ?

Only the high reward assassination missions actually bring a NPC capable of some decent fight and is only because of their hull ship and array of systems.

 

[spacejumbofudge]

So what you're saying is I shouldn't disagree with the mechanic, I should just be better, but if I suggest getting rid of the clearly boring bit and making fighting harder (or easier kills less rewarding), then I'm making it too hard on new people? That's a really consistent argument you have there.

In future rather than assuming you're talking to a brick wall, maybe you should consider how persuasive your argument is and whether you're combining a poor argument with a tone that also alienates the audience.

 

[bitstorm]

I like it the way it is to be honest.

As a pilot you then have a bit more to think about and weigh up. Before going on that risky mission perhaps you want to cash in all your bounty vouchers.

Isn't there an inconsistency though. When you die don't the value of your existing vouchers go towards the cost of your new ship which would imply the vouchers survive through ship destruction?

I primarily play as a bounty hunter, and I like the design decision to lose bounties upon ship destruction. It just adds a sense of imperative and risk.

^^^ yes yes this, it ADDS to the game, like all other risk elements in ED

 

[spacejumbofudge]

Stupid design mistake is giving us NPCs to hunt that barely fight back.

How does that work for you and your Punishing theory ?

Only the high reward assassination missions actually bring a NPC capable of some decent fight and is only because of their hull ship and array of systems.

Hethwill_Khan, I think you and csebel aren't actually that far apart in opinion. You agreed that it could lose the boring bit if the fights were harder. I think csebel was sort of saying similar, just his reply clashed with yours

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I like it the way it is to be honest.

As a pilot you then have a bit more to think about and weigh up. Before going on that risky mission perhaps you want to cash in all your bounty vouchers.

Isn't there an inconsistency though. When you die don't the value of your existing vouchers go towards the cost of your new ship which would imply the vouchers survive through ship destruction?




^^^ yes yes this, it ADDS to the game, like all other risk elements in ED

Surely adding to the game would be what happens in a kill x pirates mission - it says you must kill them all or there is no reward. What I'm complaining about here is it saying 'you can have the reward, but the game is going to encourage lots of boring trips to bank each kill'.

It's not like I'm saying dying shouldn't make you lose a kill x pirates mission.

 

[Sandro Sammarco]

Hello Commanders!

Hey, hey, hey, let's keep things civil, please, or you'll get less interaction from me, for a start, and more interaction from moderators.

Having bounty claim vouchers be removed on death was a design decision to introduce some additional risk/reward management. Put simply, the more bounty claims your ship is carrying, the greater risk you take by not seeking to claim them.

We've got faith in this concept, so it's staying for the time being, though I accept it might not be to everyone's taste.

 

[3dom]

I primarily play as a bounty hunter, and I like the design decision to lose bounties upon ship destruction. It just adds a sense of imperative and risk.

I assume you like the sense of imperative and risk - so how about increasing ship insurance to 30-100% of its cost in case of loss in PvE/PvP combat? Just like in EVE Online.

Losing bounties upon exploding is the reason why I don't touch bounty hunting "profession" (+ bugs). Because everyone explodes sooner or later and I don't want to fly to station and back every 10 minutes just to turn in bounties before my next explosion - this process does not add anything to gameplay, it's just boring and it's a time sink - as if we were in subscription-based game where devs want you to stay and pay subscription fee for next month.

For buy2play game time sinks do not make any sense but it seems FD devs don't have too many clues about MMO games - they are clearly experimenting...

 

[TheOohChild]

I don't really consider it boring to turn in bounties. I started off in Federation space. Since I have started using the kill warrant scanner in anarchy zones, I have been picking up Empire bounties, and this has pushed me to explore new regions of space. It pushed me towards an Empire outpost system, and then it pushed me to search for anarchy zones in between federation and empire space, which led to me being in shouting distance from the slave uprising in Sorbago.

I assume you like the sense of imperative and risk - so how about increasing ship insurance to 30-100% of its cost in case of loss in PvE/PvP combat? Just like in EVE Online.

Losing bounties upon exploding is the reason why I don't touch bounty hunting "profession" (+ bugs). Because everyone explodes sooner or later and I don't want to fly to station and back every 10 minutes just to turn in bounties before my next explosion - this process does not add anything to gameplay, it's just boring and it's a time sink - as if we were in subscription-based game where devs want you to stay and pay subscription fee for next month.

For buy2play game time sinks do not make any sense but it seems FD devs don't have too many clues about MMO games - they are clearly experimenting...

Just pointing the obvious: your post is an exaggeration. Nobody turns in bounties every 10 minutes. My typical behavior is accruing hundreds of thousands of bounty credits, and then turning them in. If I get up to around 300,000 credits, then I start feeling like I am pushing my luck and I need to start searching for places to unload them. I will also decide to turn them in if I have a decent amount, and I need to end my play session for the night.

I just don't agree about it being a time sink. Like I said in this thread, it adds imperative and encourages exploration.

 

[spacejumbofudge]

I don't really consider it boring to turn in bounties. I started off in Federation space. Since I have started using the kill warrant scanner in anarchy zones, I have been picking up Empire bounties, and this has pushed me to explore new regions of space. It pushed me towards an Empire outpost system, and then it pushed me to search for anarchy zones in between federation and empire space, which led to me being in shouting distance from the slave uprising in Sorbago.

That's an interesting angle, but you could still get that if you have to be in the right system to turn in a bounty, rather than make the trip to a station. You could also add it to comms with cops, if the police are in the fight with me and I kill a wanted, I could contact the cop for my reward.

 

[Meths]

Its a great mechanic like old elite on the Amiga or st.

I'd spend hours killing pirates in anarchy systems.

But if i didn't dock and save all that hard earned bounties and kills would be lost.

Its exactly the same risk vs reward.

Suck it up.

 

[spacejumbofudge]

Its a great mechanic like old elite on the Amiga or st.

I'd spend hours killing pirates in anarchy systems.

But if i didn't dock and save all that hard earned bounties and kills would be lost.

Its exactly the same risk vs reward.

Suck it up.

I don't remember that in the originals, but I mainly traded so could be wrong.

 

[mojonaut]

Hello Commanders!

We've got faith in this concept, so it's staying for the time being, though I accept it might not be to everyone's taste.

It did come as a bit of a shock after not having it in Gamma.

While I'm ok with the concept as it now stands, isn't it unfair to the player that you lose your bounties on death but still retain any fines against you?

.

 

[1500]

It is just a time sink to make you have to play longer to get the same rewards. Either take more time to dock and turn in or risk losing them and starting over, either way it adds a time sink to the game to slow down players progress.

 

[talshiarr]

While I'm ok with the concept as it now stands, isn't it unfair to the player that you lose your bounties on death but still retain any fines against you?.

No more unfair than it would be for some griefer or smuggler to uncaringly rack up murder bounties and illegal cargo fines and then just commit suicide to wipe them all out once in a while.

 

[Meths]

It is just a time sink to make you have to play longer to get the same rewards. Either take more time to dock and turn in or risk losing them and starting over, either way it adds a time sink to the game to slow down players progress.

No it isn't.

Its like the original games, turning in your bounties is the same as saving. If you didn't save your game then the bounties and ship kills would be lost because you'd go back to your last save

 

[spacejumbofudge]

No it isn't.

Its like the original games, turning in your bounties is the same as saving. If you didn't save your game then the bounties and ship kills would be lost because you'd go back to your last save

You're slightly ignoring the point that in the old games you could save and reload. Not that I'm saying I want save scumming in, but you can't just compare a mechanic from the old game with the new as it's how all the parts add up to become a system that's important. Also, in the originals you could speed up time which made in system travel quicker.

 

[ervashi]

I love this idea! I got really excited just reading about this method of bounty hunting, I'd love to see more "hunting" involved (and less "fishing"!)

 

[Echostatic]

The way I figured it worked was that your ship's computer logs the kill, and you have to turn that information in at a station. Blow up before you can do that and your data is lost with the ship.

 

[Connatic]

It did come as a bit of a shock after not having it in Gamma.

While I'm ok with the concept as it now stands, isn't it unfair to the player that you lose your bounties on death but still retain any fines against you?

.

Of course it's fair. If you also lost fines, then killing yourself would be the easy way to get out of paying anything, since quite often your fines could cost more than your insurance payment.

It's all about risk and reward, making the death penalty matter. Don't treat this like a progression treadmill...treat it like a game.


For those of you that need some immersive logic to this...
The bounty vouchers are stored in your ships computer...if you ship blows up, it's gone. Fines and bounties are recorded in the criminal database, not on your ship. You dying doesn't make that go away.

 

[Renideo]

It is just a time sink to make you have to play longer to get the same rewards. Either take more time to dock and turn in or risk losing them and starting over, either way it adds a time sink to the game to slow down players progress.

Not really. The point is that there's an increasing disparity between the value lost from unclaimed bounties the longer you stay out, such that the time sunk into replacing those bounty vouchers already earned (not including the cost of losing your ship) grows the longer you go without cashing them.

A really confident player who is not risk averse can avoid handing in bounty vouchers as long as they want, especially if you almost never die in combat, but it's a risk-reward relationship. There's no necessary time sink, but you can conserve value by choosing to sink that time-- and the amount of value conserved is related to how value you have accrued prior to doing it.

If I think the chance of catastrophic loss is 0.00001, and the rebuy cost on say a cobra with good equipment is 120,000, then I rate the value of the risk at one or two credits, but I rate the lost time taken to go to a station much more highly. Therefore I won't do it prematurely. In fact the one time I did die between the start of gamma and now, I had about 55k in unclaimed bounties in the federation I had accumulated here and there over several days, but was far too far away from the federation to bother claiming. I'd been so unconcerned about dying that I'd figured I wouldn't make that trip until it was 150k or so, but as it happened I never did claim it. That's all part of the game.

 

[hiciacit]

If bounty hunters get to keep their tickets after death what about the traders and their cargo when they die? Should they be able to reclaim lost credits when their type 9 gets blown up full of gold or palladium ?

Bounties are data. Cargo is not. Bounties could be stored in your escape pod, or transmitted to official instances (the KW scanner illustrates it's not beyond the lore), while cargo cannot.