Bounty system. My idea for how it should work.

  • GrymDraper
    Marauder
    Insider

    I've seen some posts asking for PVE.
    I don't think that is a good idea, allthough I can understand the frustration doing tall tales being in a cave and then havin your ship sunk.

    I've been thinking about a solution all week and this first thing i've worked with in my head is a bounty system. I'll try to be brief :O

    My idea is that the more you pillage and loot, the higher bounty you get.

    Each player has a personal bounty, and the crew has a total bounty.
    Different ways to recieve higher bounty:

    • The bounty is increased if you sell stolen loot. Example: Sell a stolen Captainschest and you recieve a 400bounty.

    This includes making tall tales item possible to sell for a low reward but for a high bounty. If player sells stolen tall tales item, they might recieve 200 gold, but a 1000 gold bounty increase.

    • When you are killed by a player and you go the to ferry of the damned, you are given a choice to put for example a 1000 gold to increase the bounty of the player that killed you.

    I've chosen these way to increase bounty because they are simple.

    Now to how you collect a bounty:

    There is a new faction in charge of the bounty collecting. When you visit these charachters, you can see the bountys of all crews on the server, from highest to lovest.

    You will be able to buy a bounty quest, where you are given little information about the crew you are going to sink. Perhaps the names of the player in the crew and what outpost they were last seen.

    Additional information can be bought: What kind of vessel (sloop, brig or galleon). What kind skin they have on sails, hull and so forth. Prices for information increases depending on how high the bounty is.

    The way to collect the bounty is a bit of a problem. One thought is that when you sink the wanted crews ship, the nameplate of the ship floats up and you can sell it to recieve, say 50% of the total crew bounty (We can hopefully name our ships soon).
    When you kill a wanted player, some sort of dogtag or possibly a skull drops which can be sold for maybe 10% of the players personal bounty.

    These percentage you collect is subtracted from the crew bounty making it decrase depending on many times you are hunted down and sunk.

    Now I thought about making this legend only material first, but then I thought NO. Maybe you could have a LVL demand for diffent bountys depening on the value. Example, to hunt down crews with a total of 100.000 gold or more you need to be Pirate Legend.

    I'll just post this in the current state it is in, Sorry for spelling errors and such but im sick and tired.

    Please comment with ideas and critique!

    Love
    sharktoothjake.

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  • Captain Coel
    Captain
    Insider

    @sharktoothjake why should pvp oriented players be targeted for their play style choice?

    Bounties have been discussed to death. They are a bad idea.

  • iTz Majman
    Lord
    Insider
    Founder

    @captain-coel

    Rare has already said they are gonna add some kind of bounty system already so clearly they think it's a good idea.

  • Captain Coel
    Captain
    Insider

    @itz-majman when? really curious here

  • entspeak
    Captain
    Insider

    @itz-majman Yeah, I’d love to see where they said this, too.

    @SharkToothJake This idea has been presented in pretty much a similar form since launch - which ya probably already knew. It was a bad idea then, it’s been a bad idea every time it’s brought up, and it remains a bad idea. It’s easily abused. For example, a Galleon crew tries to gank a good solo slooper. They fail and, while on the Ferry, each of them put a bounty on the player who was simply defending himself. If those players also had loot, the defending player gets a bounty for selling that loot. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

  • Capt Soul Beard
    Captain
    Insider

    Amazing Idea but I would like to add maybe each time you hunt a crew member you get less money to combat infinite player farming and when you sink a ship all members of that crew loose all of their bounty.

    And if you were previously wanted you can't place a bounty on the ship that sunk you to prevent infinite back and forth farming between friends.

  • BelyaevFox
    Rogue

    @captain-coel

    why should pvp oriented players be targeted for their play style choice?

    A play style without risk is cheap and bad game design.

    Bounties have been discussed to death. They are a bad idea.

    They have been discussed and many people like the idea of PvP players not having a free pass and actually getting challanged.

  • Arch iDeall
    Marauder

    @captain-coel Bounties are brilliant idea.

    Since the start of the game there has been one huge glaring issue. A fresh empty pvp ship that has nothing to lose can attack pve ship full of loot that has nothing to gain and everything to lose. The bounties would give the defenders a reward for the effort which would also provide motivation to defend instead of fleeing.

    For the bounties to work they have to follow few rules imo:

    1. Be automatic. You do piracy, you get the wanted points.
    2. The reward is instant. You kill the target, you get the gold to your account.
    3. Piracy against crews that have higher bounty give negative wanted points and the bounty rewards. Piracy against crews with similar or lower bounty increase the bounty.
    4. The bounty is persistant through sessions.
    5. There should be additional ways of decreasing the bounty - for example gifting "clean" treasure from PvE or Robin Hood style from higher-bounty crews to other players.
  • iTz Majman
    Lord
    Insider
    Founder

    @captain-coel @entspeak

    They got an answer in the Q&A a while back about a bounty system and they said that they are working on something close to a bounty system but no more info than that.

    If you check the most recent Q&A they did you can find it

  • entspeak
    Captain
    Insider

    @itz-majman said in Bounty system. My idea for how it should work.:

    @captain-coel @entspeak

    They got an answer in the Q&A a while back about a bounty system and they said that they are working on something close to a bounty system but no more info than that.

    If you check the most recent Q&A they did you can find it

    Forum Q&A? Where was this Q&A?

  • iTz Majman
    Lord
    Insider
    Founder

    @entspeak

    Yes, people could send questions and they answered some of them.

    Here is the question we are talking about:

    Question:

    Could setting bounties on other players work?

    Mike Chapman:

    We have some exciting thoughts here. In fact, there are small clues in the build right now and more coming soon. Hopefully, you’ll look back in the future and see the foreshadowing!

    You can find more questions and answers here: https://seaofthieveshub.com/blog/sea-of-thieves-qa-with-rare/

  • entspeak
    Captain
    Insider

    @itz-majman Yep. Just found it. I'm interested to find out what clues exist in the current build. If they can do it in a way that can't be abused... okay. But all of the suggestions put forth by the community to date have been flawed in that they can easily be abused.

    Hmmm... It may have something to do with the development of the Reaper's Hideout.

  • Venomous Sloth7
    Commander
    Insider

    Thanks @itz-majman. I missed that in the last Q&A. I'm like @Captain-Coel and @entspeak, I'm really interested in this and the clues they are speaking of. It would be a awesome thing to have in game but as the others have said I worry about the balance of it and it being implemented properly.

  • InboundBomb
    Commander
    Insider

    @iTz-Majman @entspeak @Captain-Coel
    My crew and I would like to purchase a bounty on ourselves when we start the game so we can get down to the business at hand.

  • Minhoca SoT
    Legend
    Insider
    Founder

    @sharktoothjake

    I really liked this idea and I believe it is the solution for a reward system. Unfortunately receiving rewards for sinking a ship would not work, but with your idea, I see no problems.

    However, I have a few questions:

    • In case players from different crews come together to kill each other and start putting rewards on each other in order to receive them in a simple way, how would we do? I believe that the solution here would be for the player to place the reward based on the money he has, in this case, paying from his own gold.

    • If the player attacked others, but kept the loot stolen and sold a little before leaving game, wouldn't this system be flawed?

    • Is there a "lock" that would prevent the player from placing the reward on any player? Suppose we have a problem with each other, I find you on the server but we don't fight and I die in another way to put a high reward on you just to disrupt your game. How would it work?

  • Captain Coel
    Captain
    Insider

    @belyaevfox The problem a bounty system other than the abuse is it can punish people for just being good at pvp. If you defend yourself and take the attackers treasure and sell it, you will end up with a bounty. How is this fair?

    @Archaell if you have an empty ship, you will have less supplies, and most players should be able to defend against a new ship. Again i will reiterate that being good at pvp would be a negative.

    We are all pirates, why should piracy be considered a bad thing?

  • Cpt SockMonster
    Legend
    Insider

    For the people looking for the source were rare stated they are working on a bounty system. here is one of them.

    There was another interview with Rare were they mentioned a bounty system along with a new PvP faction.

    Time - 1:20

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