basically ever since I started playing L2 ive been having occasional occuring thoughts of someday starting a Bh clan (way off in future :p) where people in the clan could take on bounties that were put on other players heads. Anyone could place a bounty, no need to be in the clan to do that.
I know it sounds brutal lol, but also thought it could really be alot of fun although I dont really know how well a system like this would even be utilized by the general player community on my server (Gustin)
I had imagined something similiar to the old BH system on SWG where I could make a website and update new bounties placed, their amounts, etc - status, even allow descriptions of the marks and info leading to their possible elimination.
Even if enough people placed bounties to make it worth it, only thing I can think of also that would work for confirmation of a kill would be a screenshot, then allow that screen to be posted on the site for retrieval of bounty amount.
I would be looking wayy down the road at something like this, my char is only 43 right now and would need to really be very high level and very competent in the game before considering attempting such, but Im just curious what response the community might have towards such (hopefully not all negative :p lol)
I see this being used a potential scam; intentional or otherwise. BH Mr X goes off to kill his mark, goes red and the mark was actually a set-up. 20 of his friends turn and gank you.
Good luck if you go for it though. Sounds interesting.
Well although it sounds like a lot of fun, I know for sure that on my server (siegh) it would only be used to grief people.
You'd see the big shots pay huge amounts of ransom for the head of this or that little player that is annoying their sovereinity status or who ever could be a potential threat to them if allowed to go on...
It would have a nefast result to the majority of the player base just like the idea of having persona non grada for towns where the castle is in hands of players.
Again, the idea sounds like fun (keeping in mind LII is still a pvp game also) but it would have to be carefully thought out on how to avoid the cascade of spoiled gaming for those unable to give ransoms...
I see this being used a potential scam; intentional or otherwise. BH Mr X goes off to kill his mark, goes red and the mark was actually a set-up. 20 of his friends turn and gank you.
Good luck if you go for it though. Sounds interesting.
Indeed that aspect also ... Forgotten about the 'going red' LOL :D
shadowbane and eve both have mechanisms in place which enables you to track down players. SB needs you to be nearby to get him "on track", while in Eve you can find anyone from anywhere (and even see if they're online without needing to send them pm's) if you have the right gear and connections.
Only Eve has a bounty system, but it works pretty well. Players put a bounty on someone's head and whoever kills him gets the cash. There's usually a couple people with billions on them at any given time. If the bounty exceeds the cost of what you'd lose upon death, it's possible to have a friend kill you to collect the cash, but it's so much of a status symbol to be on top of that list that I'm not aware of many people who do it.
Not sure how well a bounty system would fit in L2, but I would definately love a way to track down other players. Running around randomly spamming /target macros is kinda tedious and boring.
All kinda moot with bsoe's and forcelogging though I guess.
UO had a bounty system, it worked great. I remember it was a contest for my clan to see who could be worth more dead than alive. There is a way to make it successful, I just don't remember exactly it worked. It sure made things fun.
carefully read all the posts, interesting stuff :)
Im sure there would be some issues to deal with, and the thought of just openly allowing everyone to hunt marks is an option as well rather than just a specific Bh clan - in fact, as I recall in SWG early days (during player run bounty system) they just made each player that wanted to take marks join the Bh website based bounty hunter group is all, that would probably be better allowing anyone to do it without having to join a new clan
No matter what was done, people will get angry over this, I spent 2 years as a bounty hunter on Swg and even tho during my time as a Bh the developers had re-implimented the Bh system again, so it was indeed Legit, people would very often get infuriated if they got killed for a bounty, heh, but, thats gaming for ya :)
Honestly in contrast to wahts been said here, in Swg bounty amount pretty much always reflected a players level and abilities - verrrry seldom saw lowbies getting high bounties where they would get creamed being defensless and all. Basically almost all of the marks were always max lvl players, that managed to motivate *someone* to be sure they got removed :p
Heck even as a bounty hunter I placed money on people during pvp just to encourage the system, although its no fun getting ganked for 1 mil, it still added a cool element to the game overall I thought.
its not going to work/be worth it
when you are in a clan with luck, a clan hall, on a death from an enemy you lose like .15-.20% ( i dont remember exact number, who is going to spend time to kill someone who is just going to lose that %, who cares!)
obviously every clan is going to declare war on you as soon as you kill one person
the only way for it to work is to not be in a clan to give out 4% losses
but you need to be very strong to do this, a group of all untagged nobles most likely
But if there is no penalty to the one that has the bounty on their heads I do not see much of a point. I guess it's all up to how you feel personally about the enemies demise.
I like to have them actually suffer :p.
I'm not against the idea. I just wish for all the kinks to be worked out way before the system goes into place. Otherwise it is most likely doomed to fail sad to say.
tbh the last thing this game needs is something to drive more players away from not being able to xp (those not pvp savy, who get bounties on their head)
If you kill someone that you're at war with, you get a point and they lose almost nothing.
If you pay a bounty for someone else to kill them, you don't get a point, but they'll lose 4x as much or burn a brez.
If it's like jkoster suggested 1-2 mil, that's about the range of b-rez price. I don't see this becoming a big aspect of server life, but hey it might add a bit of fun.
I think this is one of those things that would get really abused and mis-used. (As one example, we all know how the cursed sword thing has worked out, and I'm sure that the near instant tracking and locating of a player who got the sword is done by means that violate EULAs.)
If you pay a bounty for someone else to kill them, you don't get a point, but they'll lose 4x as much or burn a brez.
With clan luck and a clan hall a lot of that 4% is reduced. I would imagine not many lower players would have a bounty on their heads, but if they do regaining the XP isn't as bad. At higher levels you really should have these available to you. So really a lot of the death is off set.
Just some things to consider before going ahead with this idea.
I'm sure that there is a Clan on Bartz that take bounties called Red Mercenaries no idea how they work as I was one of their "contracts". Luckily for me I was a one off hit (have to say I bought it on myself...griefing outside of dion....yep I was bored :D) The toon that dropped me took screenshots and posted them on a website for the "Client" to view. They charged 1 mil for my PK however wouldn't tell me who the client was or let me hire them to return the favour...guess I'll have to do it my self...lol
Bountys have taken place in the game on various servers allready. This is players doing it on there own, and it works just fine.
The problem with any kind of "tracking" system is it would imbalance the open PVP world concept. Esspecialy with clan wars, etc.. tracking would make the whole world not safe in a clan war. Eg.. if your opposition is higher level/better gear.. your clan would then have zero chance at xping in peace. Part of the fun/challenge is being able to be elusive of ones enemys while tracking them down your self. An easy button is not needed, and it would ruin the fun and challenge of doing it on your own.
Sometimes I wonder at some of these suggestions on the boards... as it feels like those making them are not realy playing this game to it's fullest.
I responded last night, something happened it never went thru, weird -
Anyhow, sorry about late response, been very busy lately, I appreciate the feedback on this idea.
I dont want to make any impression that there is some lack of content in this game that this idea is trying to make up for, personally I feel there is a ton of content, and look VERY much forward to getting to high enough levels to participate in castle sieges and wars, and even later on tournaments. I put this up becuase I caught the 'bug' from swg as a bounty hunter, and simply loved the feeling of having a character that I could choose a mark, track him/her down and eliminate, and I have had this idea roaming around in my head here since then - especially considering players actually pulled it off by themselves in Swg until the Devs actually implimented a bounty hunter system, in fact the site that was originally used for the bounty system is prolly still for some vets still using it.
I dont think a tracking system would be neccessary in this game, and if there ever was, it would have to be limited of course only to the mark for the particular Bh'er, still, unlike Swg, this is only 1 planet, although Swg has a tracking system with probe droids etc, talking like 10 planets lol - I see no reason why it wouldnt be all that hard to track a mark, especially if people that put up bounties on other players are encouraged to provide any info - but really just a name is a huge start, there are many ways to gather info, from asking people to asking the mark itself lol :)
The penalties in this game for Pk'ing are kinda harsh, obviously no way around this, I guess it would just be up to the player wether or not the amount was worth the sacrifice.
Thanks for the time and input on this from everyone tho :)
Just a follow-up: on a diff game (WoW) my guild/clan teamed up with an opposing faction guild to make an event that kinda fit into this. It ended up being a lot of fun(and a good bit of work to set-up).
We each identified one member of the guild as the "target" and a general call-out was made that there'd be a reward for the first person to kill the target.
When we tried it at first, the target just walked around flagged for pvp (with a posse), and that didn't work out so well. So we announced a place the target would be (took Halaa) at a particular time, and had a big assault on the town while the other side defended (and then switched off). In WoW, pvp has absolutely no negative consequences, which I think helped make it work -- people losing exp makes them reluctant to play pvp.
The reward was 100g, which is about a day's income, with approx the purchasing power of 1M in lin2.
Thats cool, and a neat idea to actually have an 'event' where the time and local/area was setup for the hunt to take place.
Unless this concept were take take off hugely, where people frequented the Bh site to see if they had a bounty, chances are they would never know tho in this scenario.
Honestly, I think for this to work, and to get off the ground, there would have to be *very* large sums of money for the marks - but this is interesting - because in this game obviously alot of 'issues' that come up arent so much between specific players but specific clans, and maybe contracts could be -lol- put on not only specific players, but on an entire clan :) and then all of the sudden were talking about big money in a contract - but also there would be mroe complications there, in fact this opens a door to endless contract agreements between a player and the BH guild (i will just call it guild) - where again, all BH guild members are merely registered in the guild thru the BH site, and, any sort of contract may be signed, from taking out a certain number of those clan members before payment (or all) to something less 'ordinary' like infiltrating the clan to find out something, to I dont know, whatever, but area control would never be a signable job, for sure, ive heard about that and its plain wrong - I think someone getting killed once in a great while for a mark, not a big deal, forcing players out of a certain area that might be good for lvling/farming, thats plain wrong.
If The devs add in Garcia next up date (CT2), then we can definitely get our hands on Territory battles. Aden > Elmore > Garcia.
You could even break it down to: Oren > Aden Town > Giran > Hiene > Dion > Gludio. Rune > Schugartt > Goddard. Garcia > it's other territories.
Now say a player in Aden wants to earn some money tracking down a mark on a bounty list for Aden, but what if their bounty goes to Elmore. Maybe they should pay a tax to Elmore to be allowed to track their Bounty in their territory.
I like the idea of having an actual Bounty system incorporated into the game, cause right now PvP is far and in between. Fortress might help, but there needs to be something to bring the PvP out of people.
Heres some Idea's:
- You can place a mark.
- You can have a mark placed on you.
- It has to be by grade: no S grade killing B grade. etc.... C vs C, B vs B (you get the idea).
- The mark is territorial. IE: you place a mark in Aden, they leave Aden you have to place a mark in Elmore (rune).
- After you acquired a certain amount of Bounty marks you receive a reword. IE: you get your mark; you gain a reword (XP, SP, Adena....allow players to decied if XP is a better reword for them, would be nice for S graders that lack SP for top lvl skills).
- After so many marks you can acquire a Circlet that marks you as a bounty class (Novence, Adventure, Master, Grand Master, etc).
20 marks > Novence. 100 Marks > Adventure. 200 Marks > Master. 500 Marks > Grand Master. 1k Marks > etc...
- Karma rules shouldn't apply to the player, however a Pk will get added to their Pk count: so if I got 5 Pks, and kill a Mark I now have 6 PKs, But 0 Added Karma.
- However if they didn't flag back, then No Pk gets added to my PK count, but a PvP point is added.
An easy system that would add alot of fun back into PvP system, could even toy with the idea of adding in NO XP loss for the Mark.