Bounty system

  • Tyrrhena
    Sailor

    Have you guys considered adding a pirate bounty system to SoT?

    I imagine it working something like this: every player who is part of a crew on a ship that sinks or steals from another player ship would get a personal bounty added by the game that stays with them across servers, and that personal bounty would pool together with their other crew mates to form their ship's bounty. If another crew manages to sink their ship (ie not by PVE) or if they scuttle then they would claim the ship's and consequently the players of that ship's bounties.

    The bounty level of the ship could be indicated visually either by different tiers of coloured flags, and perhaps even in extreme circumstances the reaper's mark or some other indication on the map?

    This is the idea in its simplist form, I'm sure there would need to be other considerations in order to achieve the most benefit out of this mechanic. Perhaps the bounty is only added from cashing in stolen treasure and not simply just from ship kills. Also maybe the ship won't have a bounty if the majority of players in a ship's crew don't have bounties to stop innocents being targeted because of the past actions of one player.

    Anyway the idea was to incentivise players to hunt down notorious pirates rather than just flee, and make PVPers stand to lose something even if it's just bragging rights about their high bounty.

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  • InboundBomb
    Commander
    Insider

    @tyrrhena Many have suggested these bounties and there hasn't been a foolproof way of not causing trouble for the innocents that may join the ship in a random crew as you stated. I've always liked the idea because my crew and I are those devils that PVP A LOT! Maybe if you yourself will show up in the game like an Ashen Guardian that could single out the player itself for the deeds they have done. I don't know.

  • UltmateRagnarok
    Master

    @tyrrhena

    The game cannot determine who is responsible for sinking another. Say I have a ship, completing a stronghold event. Another ship comes up and attacks, so we use one of the many available kegs and some cannonballs to sink them. The game now gives me a bounty, rather than the aggressor, because I sank them. Now, they can keep coming back and being sunk again and again and get rewarded for it.
    Alternatively, say I am watching a ship-to-ship battle off in the distance. I'm doing other things, but keeping an eye on them as they drift nearer. They arrive nearby, and one of them runs into my ship, damaging both. The holes added to the ones from the other ship's attacks now count towards me sinking the ship, when I did nothing.
    Say I meet someone friendly, and we form an alliance. They sink with a lot of treasure on board due to some PvE event or another, so I pick it up to save it from the depths. Later, we split it evenly to sell at an outpost, but every piece I sell that they dug up is considered stolen.

    As it is now, the game can't really function properly with bounties, nor is it a required feature - pirates are perfectly capable of amassing treasure from their enemies and raising the Reaper's Mark, or some other flag showing hostile intent.

  • Bjorn Fjordnord
    Rogue
    Insider

    I LOVE the thought of a bounty system in the game but don't think it'd be possible if the game assigned bounties automatically.

    What might make it more interesting is sort of a "Ferryman's Bounty" system where if you get killed by X player, the game notes that, then there's a board on the Ferry of the Damned where you can offer up a bounty from your own gold/dubloons. Bounty hunters would then see various bounties and their values as well as rough map coordinates after equipping the bounty hunter flag. Once the bounty is complete, the hunter collects their reward (maybe from an avatar of the player who set the bounty, or even the player directly if on the same server), and moves along to the next bounty or whatever they want to.. er.. pirate about with.

    If the game's able to note who killed who last then I think that would limit abuse of this system, not to mention bragging rights for being the player with the highest bounty, or largest number of bounties at a given time. If executed well I think bounties could add a lot of richness to the game, provide players who don't like PvE a way to get potential revenge against someone who killed them, give PvP loving players a series of targets to fight with greater motivation to go for them, and give players who like to kill others in game just for the lulz a new means to measure how many people they've upset.

    It's a win-win-win!

  • Schwammlgott
    Champion

    @bjorn-fjordnord this won't work...let's say we are 8 people managing to get on the same server, to get more and more money we kill each other that often so we can get the high bounty...this will be abused so much

  • Galactic Geek
    Seafarer
    Founder

    Bounties are already in the game...

    ...if you put some thought into it.

    Let's say you get sunk by some unscrupulous pirates and want revenge. Grab some hefty loot, and offer it to all of the other ships that you encounter if they sink your nemesis. If they do, then pay them for achieving your bounty requirements.

  • Schwammlgott
    Champion

    @galactic-geek sagte in Bounty system:

    Bounties are already in the game...

    ...if you put some thought into it.

    Let's say you get sunk by some unscrupulous pirates and want revenge. Grab some hefty loot, and offer it to all of the other ships that you encounter if they sink your nemesis. If they do, then pay them for achieving your bounty requirements.

    This is the meaning of a sandbox game!

  • Minhoca SoT
    Legend
    Insider
    Founder

    @ultmateragnarok said in Bounty system:

    @tyrrhena

    The game cannot determine who is responsible for sinking another.

    Even using the arena system?

  • UltmateRagnarok
    Master

    @targasbr

    The Arena system doesn't award sinking, because it can't determine what factor actually sunk the ship. It rewards cannonball hits, player kills, and counts ship losses, but doesn't count ship sinks.

  • Bjorn Fjordnord
    Rogue
    Insider

    @schwammlgott That may happen if someone is trying to bounty hunt exclusively I suppose, but they'd of course be limited to the number of bounties available as well as whether or not it'd be worth their time. i.e. do I want to spend 30 minutes looking for this ship for 200 gold, or do I want to server hop and look for the guy who will get me 20,000 gold and 500 dubloons? There's a possibility for abuse sure but if people can only place a bounty against a player who just killed them then it seems like only a small likelihood to me. Someone who wants to have a huge bounty isn't going to let themselves get killed and lose that bounty just for sake of getting one person killed by someone else.

    Also, if 8 players are just keeping together on the same server, since none of the money comes from the game but from other players they wouldn't be able to farm additional gold this way. I think it'd be even better if the player who completed the bounty only got maybe 80-90% of the total bounty (the rest going to the guild or whoever), then all those players would be doing is slowly draining their own gold stores, leading them to go need to do other missions to get more.

  • Minhoca SoT
    Legend
    Insider
    Founder

    @ultmateragnarok I had forgot this one, thanks!

  • Bjorn Fjordnord
    Rogue
    Insider

    @galactic-geek This is a very good point, though I hope players doing that would have enough sense to stash their loot on an island rather than sail port to port saying "I have all this loot on my ship, please kill this other player and not me and you can have it!" ;)

  • SurveyorPete
    Legend
    Insider

    @targasbr

    The game cannot determine who is responsible for sinking another.
    Even using the arena system?

    Yes, even in Arena. That is why you do not get silver for "sinking" another ship. When a ship sinks, it LOSES 1000 silver (because many factors could have contributed to that sinking). You do get silver for getting individual cannon shots home.

    See also: https://www.seaofthieves.com/forum/topic/78013/water-sinks-ships

  • CoffeeLight5545
    Legend
    Insider

    @tyrrhena

    I like the bounty system but how to implement it is the question.

    I would suggest adding NPC ships, settlements and plantations that can be attacked. If you attack them you will incur a bounty where bounty hunter ships full of NPC would hunt you down. If you sink the bounty hunter ship, your bounty would increase and you would be marked on the map. Another crew can even be able to pick up a voyage to hunt you down. The mark would disappear after you sink.

    I would even add a new faction “The Rogue Privateers” This faction would reward players for sinking skeleton ships and sinking players ships with a bounty.

  • UltmateRagnarok
    Master

    @coffeelight5545

    We have NPC ships, they're controlled by skeletons and are actually sentient NPCs in their own right. They have roaming neutral treasure ship, ambush ships, fleets to attack, and well-defended fortresses to siege.

  • Tyrrhena
    Sailor

    Firstly just want to say that I appreciate the thoughtful replies and discussion.

    You're right that it would be hard for the game to determine who sank what ship. Though it seems that loot is tracked if it's stolen or not there are problems like finding loot that previously belonged to another crew that sunk from some other cause.

    How to implement it does seem to be the big question.

  • CoffeeLight5545
    Legend
    Insider

    @ultmateragnarok said in Bounty system:

    @coffeelight5545

    We have NPC ships, they're controlled by skeletons and are actually sentient NPCs in their own right. They have roaming neutral treasure ship, ambush ships, fleets to attack, and well-defended fortresses to siege.

    I am well aware that skeleton ships are NPC ships. However, if you attacked and sink them, wouldn’t people be glad to be rid of them? How can you incur a bounty if you sink something a navy would be happy to get rid of?

    In order to incur a bounty, you need HUMAN NPC, not skeleton NPC

    You could use the skeletons to raise your reputation in the new faction I suggested.

  • Cpt SockMonster
    Champion
    Insider

    A bounty system was confirmed by rare a few months ago.
    They even said there is already hints of it in todays build.

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