Bounty Hunting - A Fun and Feasible Addition to Sea of Thieves

@tiltedtexan said in Bounty Hunting - A Fun and Feasible Addition to Sea of Thieves:

I've come up with many ideas just like the rest of the Sea of Thieves community, but I felt this one was good enough to make a post about. I've run it by countless crews and I've had nothing but positive feedback. What I'd like to introduce to you guys is bounty hunting. I'll explain exactly how and why it would work well in this game. I would love to hear your feedback.

Upon killing a player and/or sinking a ship, a player becomes wanted. This would place them on the wanted board at each outpost which would display a general image of that pirate's face and a wanted sign above it. Players at an outpost would be able to view this board. No other information would be given as this needs to be challenging (last seen, current location, etc...) Next to this board would be a bounty hunter NPC. This NPC would tell you that they will reward you if you bring them the soul of a wanted pirate. They would then give you an empty jar.

This jar would be an item kind of like an animal crate. You would then sail the seas and look for these wanted pirates (Yes, I know people would log out and stuff. There could be a way to see if they are wanted, perhaps their name could be red.) You must have the jar in your inventory and upon killing the wanted pirate you would collect their soul in the jar. This jar would be like any other skull/chest and could be taken by other players. You would then return to the outpost and give it to the bounty hunter NPC. I have no idea about rewards, but I would love to hear your ideas.

Edit: I wanted to add that perhaps this would encourage more of a hero/villain type gameplay because you would have to make the decision as to whether you wanted to kill people, resulting in being pursued by other players while you try to do your thing.

Instead of having a bounty hunter NPC, why not just make it an item you can give to ANY faction? Order of Souls would love to have it, for obvious reasons... Merchant alliance would love to have it, because an infamous pirate soul is worth a lot on the market... And Gold Hoarders would love to have it for the same reason the merhcant alliance would love to have it, worth a lot of gold on the market! :D

Provides an alternative way for people to level up their reputation, for isntance, not everyone enjoys catching chickens and feeding pigs for the merchant alliance, they find more fun in bounty hunting, so they level their merchant alliance via bounty hunting instead.

I also have my own take on bounty hunting:

Your crew gains a bounty level, indicated by the flag on your ships crows nest based on how many ships you've sunk...

The more ships you've sunk, the more valuable that flag is... You can turn that flag into ANY faction for reputation progress and a reasonable amount of gold.

Level 0 flag: White flag, default... Worth about 500 gold.
level 1 flag: darker flag, worht about 1000 gold?
level 2 flag: even darker, woth about 1500 gold
level 3 flag: Black flag, worth 2000 gold
level 4 flag: Red Flag, worth 2500 gold
level 5 flag: Unique Appearance, very flashy, attracts attention, legendary quality, 3000 gold.

Level 5 flag would have sunk 5 ships, for instance. This brings more substance to PvP as well as providing a steady progression for PvPers, and an incentive to attack other aggressive players... So whatever PvE players aren't interested in PvP has a better experience, overall, but they still aren't safe from pirates though... it also allows for alternative progression methods for people who don't like chasing chickens for the merchant alliance for example, you can just deliver in flags to whatever faction you want to progress with that faction.

The reason for the high gold reward is that these can only be obtained from player ships and they may put up an unusually challenging fight, so higher gold reward to compensate, of course i only used rough estimation, exact price-range can be tweaked by Rare.

This bounty system works perfectly, imo... I can only find ONE flaw... And that's how the game handles crews farming their own ship for flags... Though i suspect rare could fix that easily...

Bounty hunting is in fact extremely important for this game as it will serve as a sort of punishment for "bad guys". But the problem is that killing a player wont serve as a punishment. Death in SoT doesn't mean much. Death in SoT simply works like a respawn cooldown for the ship battles mechanics to work properly. A bounty must be related to sinking ships, not killing players, maybe when you sink the wanted player´s ship, something from the ship would be avaliable to pick up, maybe a plank with the name of the ship written on it or something like this, as it would be common that two players might fight for one bounty, there should be way of only one being able to reclaim it.

You talked about changing server, if your bounty is too high, it should persist with you, whatever server you join, even if MM players randomly join your ship (although they should somehow be aware that you are a wanted pirate)

Still, I dont think sinking a ship is enough punishment, if you stop to think, one might simply wait to be destroyed, and then: peace. In my opinion, if you are wanted, you should lose gold if your bounty is claimed. Also, the more you're worth, the more you would lose, the more you are worth, the longer the respawn cooldown would take, and why is that? simple.. If you have a really high bounty, that means that either you are griefing, either you are chuck norris, or you are simply cheating, who knows? Anyway, if you have a high bounty that means that you're hard to kill, and clearly your/your crew's skill is higher than the average skill level of the players in the session. Increasing the cooldown, gives other player an opportunity, completely balancing the game. You had your fun sinking ships as a bad guy, the good guy had his fun sinking you and avenging the other ones.

If you stop to think, that even give normal players a chance do sink cheaters ships. I know cheating isnt really much of a big deal in SoT atm, but cheating should be punished in every way as possible, and this would make cheaters to affect other players a little bit less.

How about instead of the bounties being added automatically a ship can choose to do a cargo run that places a bounty on their head.

So there are 2 new tents.

One is a black market tent where you're shipping weapons or stolen goods to other black market locations (far away and possibly 2 or 3 stops per voyage). These are high reward but high risk. Once you choose to take on this mission you have a bounty on your head and your sails turn to skull and cross bones.

The second is a naval tent, assigned to these seas to stop black market trading. You are working for them and help them take down any ships that are carrying black market goods. You bring the black sails back to them and they reward you for your help. If on an outpost you talk to this tent they will give you a report on if and how many ships are rumoured to be trading black market and where they were last spotted.

This would give players lots of fun trying to outrun everyone else on the server. You would need to play smart to keep your sails out of sight. Giving players a choice to do this also makes it more flexible and add a voyage type to the game. Plus it adds an event type for other players, as they can see a ship with a black flag and suddenly decide to take them on for the potential reward and satisfaction.