Hello pie rats!
Another day at work spent by thinking of new SoT features is behind me and once again it born it's fruit!
So what is it this time you ask?
Well... you read the title, so you already know. Yes, a bounty hunting "trading company".
Currently we have 2 main ways to make money in SoT.
One is all about going to different islands and digging up chests, the other about going to islands and killing some NPCs. I believe the next step is to make PVP profitable.
So how would the bounty hunting work?
- The system
Each player in the world of SoT would have a bounty on him. The amount would differ however.
Each player would start with a basic bounty of for example 50 gold.
For each player they kill (enemy) the bounty on their head would grow (possibly with a limit) until the player dies to another player in a pvp situation.
-With each player kill (on an enemy, not a crew member of your own), the bounty on your head grows by 50.
-With each ship you and your crew manage to sink, the bounty grows by a 100 or 150.
-With each chest, stolen from an enemy and sold for your own profit, the bounty on your head will grow for the amount of gold the chest was worth. This would give players who's treasures were stolen a comeback chance.
-Players themselves would be able to put additional bounties to any player using the other new feature I came up with. More lower down...
-Bounty would also rise with the amount of current crew members of the target.
-If you manage to kill a player with bounty on their head, you will need a token as a proof for the "trading company". This idea came from Its S****.'s post where he talks of scrolls dropping from the dead enemies to sell to actual trading companies. I'd however think that the proof token could even be like a finger or an ear (which I believe what actual bounty hunters used) but even if it was a scroll, it would only be possible to sell to the Bounty Hunter Guild.
-Last thing is that if you don't get a contract for the bounty, you get no token drop and no money. You'd need to go and take down the one actual person and vote for it, just like you'd vote for any other voyage with your team members.
This brings me to the next bit.
- Who, where, how?
Now in my humble opinion, bounty hunters aren't like the other companies.
They shouldn't have a shiny stall showing off their trade. The exact opposite actually.
- Who
I was thinking about this a lot and came to thinking that the person, should be covered by mystery. A long leather coat, face hidden in shade of the hood he's got on. The little of his face that you can see would be rough looking and well scarred and above that, in a complete darkness, his eyes would slightly glow with a yellow tint. All the clothes roughed out by countless battles and all in a dark, blood red style, the main colour of the BHG. Imagine a mix of Geralt, Star Lord and Ezio :D
- Where
Another important aspect of the b****s way of the bounty hunter is being loners.
They're exiles at the edge of society. Hated by many, even tho helping those in need.
Prohibited by law, yet completely necessary. And always as cool as their own heart.
You can't just go to the beach and look for a big sign that shouts "Murder business", not even in the pirate world. Or maybe especially not there...
If you really need this sort of thing done, you have to know where to look.
And that would be the dirtiest godforsaken and remote place on the high sees. The place so close that you can go there at any time, yet you will never do so anyway because it's simply too far from the most important source. Not to mention nobody honourable (if that's what the pirate laws can be called) would ever even touch such place.
Yes, it is The table at the darkest corner of the outpost tavern. Sitting alone, with only his trusty hit list (or a note book in this case) by the side.
- How
Now to the most important bit. How would it all work out.
The bounty voyages would be created for every enemy player on the same server as you and your crew. At first you could only go get the low level bounties (max 150 gold?) and as you would progress and get higher levels with the Bounty Hunter Guild, you could see also players with higher bounties on them. So the basics are similar as with the others.
You walk in, push the action button while aiming at him, he pops up a window with names of all the enemy players on your server + the information of how much you gonna get paid and the amount of current crew members of the target. This "price" would once again would be only an expected one, just like with the chests. The price would get lower in case crew members would DC from the target. However if the target gets killed by another player, the contract would disappear completely (either giving you your input cash back, or maybe not :D).
Once you would purchase your voyage and won the vote with your crew, you'd get a note similar to the one you get on skeleton hunts. This one however would be written in dark red (unclear if it's blood or just red ink) colour and overall have a bit different design.
The letter would only say one thing that would not change and never would get any other information added. The hint would be:
"The target X was last seen near the Y island"
This information would be true at the time of winning the vote for the voyage. You'd need to act quickly and search more than in other cases.
The last bit is obvious. You get your crew, find your target, and then... Who is your target? Ofc, from up close, you can see the names but from afar? That's where the next feature comes in...
- The player database aka "The Hit List"
Remember the little note book that the "contractee" has on the table next to him?
Here it finally comes to play. The intended use (apart from curiosity research) is to use it right after you bought your contract from the BHG guy.
So you click on the book. What next? well... it would somewhat magically open on the table. Without you moving it. It would also open right in the middle and there would be nothing written in. Then... you would type in the name of your target. Or any other for that matter. Whoever you're interested in. Let's say you search for me. You press "R" (as in the first letter of my name) and the first thing it does is that a profile of the first person in the game (any server, not just yours) starting with a letter "R" alphabetically comes up. That would be probably someone called simply R. then you go to "Re" and so it goes until you put in enough of the name to get to the right person. All of it would also appear in a really nice way, just like the little map in Harry Potter movies. Even the colour actually fits :o .
Well. So you get to my profile. What's there to be seen you ask?
Well, on the left side of the open book would be my profile (which would be partially generated by statistics and partially made of players own written stuff).
There you would see my nickname to begin with, number of kills, deaths possibly.
My own written description of myself. Similar to the ones we wrote here on the forums. Like "Retto Elbaroda, Captain of the Romp Raft, the high priest of the Red Otter Cult. Likes pizza and sushi....." and so on. There would be one or more badges you get for completing challenges (read "achievements"), and most importantly, your character ran through some in game filters so it looks like drawn with an ink pen. Also obviously name of your crew (Red Otter Cult) and whatever info Rare would decide is important or cool. Maybe the most used weapon and a pet? idk... whatever.
On the right page of the book would then be my (or whoever's you're searching for) ship.
Again, name at the top (Romp Raft) and the same filter would be used on it so it looks like it was drawn, it would show the most common crew mates that tend to come under your leadership on your... ship. Amount of ships sunk with your ship and times your ship was sunk by others. Maybe even distance it went for and again anything that Rare would like. So by looking into this we could get a direct information about the look of our targets, their ship, crew that we can expect to be with them.
And that is it for today. What do you think? Will anyone read all of this? I don't even know!
PS. There was some disinformation happening in the comments. Let me post it here for all so we don't repeat the same questions.
So some of you were thinking that the book is an unnecessary feature as the looks of your pirate and your ship can be changed, therefore the book would bring no advantage to you.
However, to be able to recognise your target is only one function of the book. The other, perhaps even more important is to let players look up other players. A feature to allow you to truly become a pirate legend. Be it your favourite streamer, a friend, a random pirate you just met or a completely random person, the book would show you their profile that they could partially customise with their own description, flag, nickname for their crew and so on, creating the character for their own legend. Becoming known would then be done by different "top player" lists inside the book. These would be shown for many different things. Be you one of the best killers, ship sinkers, explorers, treasure hunters, bounty hunters, animal carers or anything the Rare would come up with. This would ensure that no matter what your play style, you could always become great in what you like. The higher up the list, the more people would obviously click on your profile. And that's how a legend is born.
Another thing people say was why bother doing anything else when you can just sail around killing everyone and sinking ships for money.
Well. One thing is, you couldn't. As you would only cash out money for the bounty if you actually activated a bounty hunt voyage. Then you'd have to find the right person/ship and then retrieve the token they'd drop to get your money.
Another thing is, the amount of money was maybe not explained well enough higher up in the post.
This is not supposed to be a huge trading company that would outdo the other 3. The way I imagine it is that your bounty rises very slowly to the point where it becomes interesting for others. Let's say a decent player would get to 400 gold bounty on his head twice a week. In case no other player would kill them before reaching the maximum (400) bounty. So yes, you could go and only ever do bounty hunter quests, but it would probably be very slow compared to the other ways of getting your gold. It would however allow you, to go and do some PVP bounty hunt worth your time maybe two or three times a day. Obviously, the balance is the key. And I have no information, nor the need to get the exact numbers that would make it perfect. If Rare chose to implement this, they would have ways to get to the final numbers.
And lastly. A high bounty on your head would be a negative thing for most players.
A huge bounty on your head isn't supposed to make you a pirate legend.
Not only that, it cannot even if you wanted to.
Even if you choose to be the most evil pirate, your bounty would only grow until reaching some ceiling level. Then it would reset after someone would complete a bounty hunt on you. That would ensure that players wouldn't compete with each other in become the world most bounty hunted legend. There would be thousands of players with the same bounty on their head. And each second many would die just to start over from the base amount.
The greater part of this is however that it would actually add a sense of karma to the game. You might think twice the next time you see a docked ship with no pirate on it and no reason to take it down. As once you do, your bounty grows higher and the feel of fear from someone coming for you would grow along with it. Of course you may think that it's not a big deal. Even with a huge bounty on your head you die once and then nobody will care about you again anyway. But is that so? One thing is, what is the amount that is good enough for someone to take you down. 200? 300? And another. At any given moment you may be hunted by enemies. You know at some point they will come to get that bounty. But it can be any time. Now or in 3 days. Or in a month. And the longer you keep that bounty and the higher it gets, the worse you will feel carrying an expensive chest on your ship. Especially if you see that silhouette of a galleon at the horizon. So will you sink the poor guys ship or not, Is it worth the trouble? Again... the balance of bounty added on your head is the key.
Thank you for reading.
