Bounty Hunter

[Rorne]

The price and it's curve for highly used names could drop. Commonly shared and passed along ringers might become unplayable.

Yes I'd like to hire Steve Ringobane.

 

[Rorne]

Unless the idea really is to deter people from interacting with other players and to add extra headaches for GMs I'm not sure why we would want to deliberately add more even more pointless, annoying bullshit to the game. Oh man we can make people have to reload all their buff bots, fun times for all.

It would cause no exp debt and would be balanced by a prohibitive scaling price so if people want this done repeatedly they'll need to fork cash over.

I'm not even sure why GMs would ever need to get involved since I already said it would be limited to non-raid non-6man zones. That leaves possibly using it to kill someone who is at a "camp" you want but camps don't really exist and there would be a warning for the target as well as a delay so you couldn't abuse it for this reason and the whole point is to punish people so god forbid they spend like 10 minutes reloading their buffbot arsenal.

So it would be a deterrent against interacting with other players... unless you are a raider who can just solo the thing? Unless you happen to be afk I guess--though if you afk near guildmates/group members who could take care of it just as easily that would be no issue.

A deterrent against negative interaction maybe, sure people might just send one after you for the hell of it but all that means is they're down some cash and you're down what? The time it takes you to respawn and possibly rebuff or navigate back to where you were? The satisfaction isn't in any lasting repercussions it's just in the act of being able to tangibly lash out in some way. As far as raiders that is why I said there could be a variety of NPCs you could pick and choose from strategically vs who you are having them go up against.

What happens when the person you sic it at just zones away? What happens if they are offline for a few weeks? What happens if people just start hanging out in house instances or their home plane? How should it be triggered, exactly? Getting something that happens in one zone process to trigger something completely different for a specific person in a totally separate zone process sounds like a huge headache not even considering all the obvious issues that would surround it. What happens if you happen to be charmed when a bounty guy comes to get you and starts a chain NPC-aggro clusterfuck? What happens when the target is in the middle of a quest turn in and dies with their trade window open and loses their hard-earned quest pieces?

As far as how it would work couldn't you just have a flag put on the target that is removed upon death via the NPC and is checked whenever they enter a valid zone? And how many exp zones or otherwise employ charm etc and statistically what are the chances of the two events coinciding? And lets say the trade instance happens and you miss the dialog when the bounty hunter shows up to fight you we already reimburse quest pieces for stupidity people so this would be adding what, 5 more occurrences of that yearly?

 

[Rorne]

This is basically a virtual dunk tank and it would remove a lot of cash from the economy as well as probably burning out a lot of bad blood. If a minor chance of reward and bragging rights is not enough when weighed against dying and having to rebuff and run back to a zone I have some bad news about every single PVE encounter in this entire game.

I know this looks like an asshole idea when looked at superficially but it's such a fucking harmless minigame.

I'd also like to add regarding the GM headache you would have advanced warning that a bounty hunter was after you as a player (When you zone it could be like "You see a wanted poster with your face plastered on it" or something), whatever you do after that point is you accepting the future risk that he is going to come and fuck up your day.

 

[Rorne]

You can't tell me some people wouldn't petition every single time and raise a fuss.

Yeah I'd hate to see players petition for stupid little things unlike now. It's even possible in some circumstances you'd see people forego petitions they know are fruitless but make anyways and instead just put some money down for a cathartic ass beating of whoever they're mad at.

Or that people wouldn't find a way to be really obnoxious with it in no time (hey guys your guild's entire bot army has bounty hunters waiting for them when you log them in one by one so you'll have to take the time to gate them all back and wait off DF for each now wait for me while i level up a new alt to channel my cash into them for cheap bounties).

First off let me say this is a fantastic and devious use of the idea and I laughed a lot at it but say you set the initial bounty price for a player at 5kpp and doubled it each time. So for arguments sake you use roughly 4 buff bots for your guild that is 20kpp down right there at the cost of letting a bot sit in town for 5 extra minutes to let DF wear off (assuming the bounty hunter even spawns on the buff bot before you log him back off). I would seriously laugh my ass off if this was done to me.

How much of a punishment could it be if you guffaw at the suggestion that it would really affect anyone in the next breath?

Because it's more of a punishment than saying a mean word to them in a tell. It's more of a psychological thing than a penalizing in game thing. What is more rewarding? Telling Bridger all his posts are awful repeatedly or starting up a fund to have NPCs hunt him down (possibly one with a wisp model since he would be unable to see it although sadly the mop would probably need to be a bounty hunter exempt zone). There is also the psychological aspect of the entire thing where you won't know exactly when the NPC is coming but in the end you can seriously just afk in a zone and eat your death if you're that worried about it.

 

[Rorne]

Basically I don't see how this is anything more than a license for high-end raiders (who else is going to waste the money/time leveling up a new bot for it/has the pre-standing army of unused chars to get around timers/etc) to troll people with impunity. Why would we be building features around this?

Wait what do you need a new bot for? Also the timer and price would be dictated by the target not by the character used to hire. IE: First bounty I send after Abel would be initial price then second one ANYONE sends after him would be 2x that and lockout would be dependent on the last time someone sent a mob after him not who is doing the hiring.

 

[Rorne]

Resetting the price.

The price wouldn't be dictated by who is doing the hiring it would be dictated by who is being hunted with the variable of how many times they have been hunted prior thus kind of policing just how many times someone is willing to fork over to have some killed just by an ever increasing cost.

 

[Rorne]

Oh so basically once someone sends one or two at them they would have impunity anyway cuz it wouldn't be worth the price.

Maybe not for the individual but that doesn't mean you can't collection plate it with a few friends to hunt down someone you all dislike.

 

[Rorne]

Also in regards to difficulty for low tier raiders vs high tier raiders defending themselves a solution to that could be to provide an enlarged hiring pool if the target successfully defends themselves allowing you to contract on tougher NPCs.

 

[Minerios]

Hire someone to kill him for KSing you

No, that's the point.

The guy's an ass. He KS you.

You hire the assassin. He kills him.

The guy's an ass. He hires the assassin to kill you in retaliation.

Yaaaaaaaay. You were right. That's a very fun and harmless mini-game.

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From a rules perspective, how would paying a NPC to kill a PC be any different than to train a KoS NPC on a PC?

 

[Rorne]

No, that's the point.

The guy's an ass. He KS you.

You hire the assassin. He kills him.

The guy's an ass. He hires the assassin to kill you in retaliation.

Yaaaaaaaay. You were right. That's a very fun and harmless mini-game.

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From a rules perspective, how would paying a NPC to kill a PC be any different than to train a KoS NPC on a PC?

Because you have forewarning, it takes time, and no exp debt is associated with it.

 

[Boehm]

So the way for passive-aggressive geeks to work off nerd rage is to passive-aggressively hire an npc to kill the object of rage.

Excellent troll.

 

[Rorne]

So the way for passive-aggressive geeks to work off nerd rage is to passive-aggressively hire an npc to kill the object of rage.

Excellent troll.

No, currently it is to post

 

[vistachiri]

Uh I find it extremely hard to believe this would encourage anything other than the absolute worst behavior possible. Anyone hunting you is spending money to inconvenience you in an extremely minor way, while inconveniencing themselves in a fairly major way (plat loss). I'm pretty sure people would just be even bigger cocks to people they don't like than they already are in an effort to drain their finances. Not to mention the hilarity that would occur when you convince someone you don't like but are polite to that someone else you hate was talking shit about them, starting a war and killing two birds with one stone.

 

[Asura_WR]

I could see myself wasting 100k on this shit easy.

 

[Rorne]

Not to mention the hilarity that would occur when you convince someone you don't like but are polite to that someone else you hate was talking shit about them, starting a war and killing two birds with one stone.

Yeah it sounds great doesn't it?