Bounty Hunting & Jails - Official Feedback Thread


  • DymStudios - CEO

    Hi all,

    this is the official thread to discuss the Bounty Hunting & Jailing system.

    You can bring your own point of view as a PvP player (PK or not) and/or as a PvE player, but please do not degenerate this discussion into the usual "you're a griefer" / "you're a carebear" quarrel. This thread has been opened to discuss a specific system, not to discuss PvP in MMOs in general. This is also not a place for bickering between enemy PvP guilds.

    Before posting, please read the following:

    • Any system that generates gold out of nowhere is exploitable with a friend (inb4 the suggestion "let's make the bounty hunter gain money and the criminal lose nothing").
    • We don't have the resources to develop super-sophisticated systems. The team is small and the core features to implement many! 🙂
    • Syndesia is a lawful planet. The criminal system exists to make player killing against new players, new characters that are just gaining knowledge, and so on extremely inconvenient, while keeping high-level hostile behavior possible, but risky. If you want a place with no consequences, Tartaros will be the planet for you!

    Let us hear you opinion and let's get to the best system possible as quickly as we can!

    Best,
    Jacopo



  • I think the system is good, just the gold values should be tuned. Bail for someone with very little karma should be a lot less and someone with max karma should be more. Probably something like 800 gold for 0 to -200 karma, -200 to- 400 1000g, -400 to -600 1200g and so on.


  • TF#12 - PEOPLE'S HERALD

    The bounty hunting system is fine as it is, it's a good thing to have something that promotes good players to go against reds. The jail time and bail is fine as it is i would say (can be teweaked anyways). Maybe add something that you can't login another evil char at the meantime.


  • TF#1 - WHISPERER

    I like the idea of a bounty system very much. But I think the bail out is too low at the moment. There has to be a balance between what a pve'ler can grind, a pk'er can loot out of pk'ing and what a sheriff can make through bounties.


  • Wiki Editor

    I think to have a bounty hunting system on Syndesia is a great idea in general.
    Because thats a possibility to bring justice to the evil ones.
    PVP should be lawful on Syndesia, if someone decide just to gank every good aligned player who is just outside to pick up flowers, should count with consquences.
    Without it, we would lose for this test all the PVE player, because they can't step out of towns anymore without getting killed almost instant. For reason, that we have PVP player who think ganking is a nice and funny thing. 😛

    If the criminal is getting catched by a bounty hunter, he has to take a break or have to pay for. That means, if you decide to be evil, you have to count for, that you get taken out for a while. Fair enough, because if you decide to annoy others, you should also have an "annoyement".
    If the time he has to be in jail or the money he has to pay to step out of the jail is fair enough, thats the task to figure out this (and maybe next) test.

    My concerns/suggestions about the actual system:

    • time is maybe too high and will keep PVP player away, since the consequence is quite hard
    • maybe depending the amount of money on the time they have to spend
    • maybe giving PVP player PVP only zones, where they can PVP each other without fear of Bounty-Hunting, that they can test the PVP fights without fear to get jailed. Means as long we don't have Tartaros, create an "Tartaros" Arena for unlawful PVP. (got answered by @Shivashanti i forgot about, you don't need to be a criminal to have good PVP)

  • TF#12 - PEOPLE'S HERALD

    @Kralith said

    • maybe giving PVP player PVP only zones, where they can PVP each other without fear of Bounty-Hunting, that they can test the PVP fights without fear to get jailed. Means as long we don't have Tartaros, create an "Tartaros" Arena for unlawful PVP.

    well in that case they can just join a militia and meet somewhere off the hotspots


  • TF#7 - AMBASSADOR

    The minimum punishments need to be reduced. As it currently stands, as soon as someone flags evil, they hit 0 karma, and then if they get killed by a bounty hunter they get sent straight to jail for at least 24hours or have to pay 2k gold. This is a ridiculously large amount as a MINIMUM punishment. For example, someone can flag as evil, then walk out of town, get killed and then instantly need 2k gold or their character gets locked for 24 hours in jail. They don't even need to have initiated any attack. If someone flagged as evil to try to steal a cart and then got killed, they would already have too severe of a sentence. Keep in mind, I am not talking about the max negative karma players who are running around killing others. I'm talking about the MINIMUM sentence, not the max.

    At least in terms of temporarily for the testing period, the minimum sentence needs to be reduced!!! The alpha test sessions are limited time, being jailed for 24 hours during a 30 day test is brutal. Gold sink would make more sense when servers are up forever, but right now they are not.

    Someone at 0 karma should have a much lighter sentence than someone at -6000 karma. This also provides more incentive for the really high level hostile players to want to engage in risky PVE as well. They will need to try to kill mobs to lessen their negative karma, or else risk the maximum sentence. I think that provides more intriguing gameplay instead of just high level hostile players jumping out at new players to kill them and then disappearing without a trace.

    Keeping my own personal preferred playstyle out of this one xD this is my specific feedback for the current law system. I'm waiting also to see how interesting it will be that you cannot be a bounty hunter and in a militia at the same time. How many will join a militia to pvp then?

    [Edit] I plan to do a more in-detail critique later on after testing more.


  • TF#1 - WHISPERER

    @Prometheus said in Bounty Hunting & Jails - Official Feedback Thread:

    • Syndesia is a lawful planet. The criminal system exists to make player killing against new players, new characters that are just gaining knowledge, and so on extremely inconvenient, while keeping high-level hostile behavior possible, but risky. If you want a place with no consequences, Tartaros will be the planet for you!

    This is a great premise that justifies a robust bounty/prison system. Crime should be a viable playstyle on Syndesia, but extremely risky for the criminal in question.

    Since Fractured is a video game and criminals can either respawn after character death or the player can hop into an alt character, the game will have to incorporate creative mechanics to deter widespread crime.

    Taking a player's playtime from them as a punishment for those crimes seems to be the only effective deterrence a game can possibly come up with, so I personally support prohibitively expensive real-time sentences.

    Some potential issues I see include:

    • Criminals bailing themselves out of prison. Some of the zerg guilds are evil and likely have the resources to fund criminals so that they can casually bail themselves out of jail if they're caught. To help combat this, perhaps the prisoner should be further inconvenienced by having to call for an ally, guild mate, or friend to bail them out in person.

    • The existence of alts seems to undermine the playtime penalty. Many players use alts and it seems quite likely that an imprisoned criminal who can't bail themselves out or get someone else to do so will simply jump onto an alt and continue to play unmolested. Perhaps the penalty should span the entire account?

    • A player currently doesn't actually have to commit a crime to merit a potential bounty. Per @Harleyyelrah, simply flagging up for PvP means that you earn a bounty. This is far too extreme and criminalizes potential action as opposed to real action. A character should actually have to engage in criminal behavior to earn the consequences.


  • TF#8 - GENERAL AMBASSADOR

    The idea is awesome but the time is insane 24-48h its just 2 much, people will just make alt characters to play well they are in jail so the system wont even work right, u can make a alt character in 1 day and have full skills and ready to fight so u dont even have to care about ur jail character and by the time that1 goes to jail ur other1 is already out LOL also if Evil players get punished by jail maybe if a Evil player kills a Bounty Hunter they should also get a CD on how long they can go out to hunt again.


  • TF#12 - PEOPLE'S HERALD

    So I think the most important thing to remember here is that Dynamight Studios is a small studio and they have two goals

    • 1: Make an amazing open-world sandbox MMORPG that is
    • 2: Economically viable

    Now some people are going to say that open-world sandbox should have no rules, that anyone should be able to be killed at any time. That is a perfectly fair opinion, but we have to remember that in order for Dynamight to achieve goal 2, they have to accommodate to three different sets of people

    • 1: PvEers - Who range from Carebears with no Teeth who will never fight back to people who don’t like PvP but will fight back. These people prefer PvE content exclusively.

    • 2: PvXers - These people will PvP, they will PvE, they do it all

    • 3: PvPers - Who range from people who want good fights, to people who say they want good fights but who really want to gank (aka murder) people and ruin their time.

    Now where the biggest contention is coming from is when you have the Carebears with no Teeth and the Gankers trying to figure out who should get what they want.

    Well, in Fractured everyone gets a little of what they want

    Carebears have Arborus
    Gankers have Tartaros

    And then there is Syndesia and what do we do with this?

    Well some people would opt for the New World system where you have to opt in for PvP. As we have seen in New World this hasn’t been received well.

    Some people would opt for just being able to kill whoever whenever. That already has gotten pushback.

    Dynamight has made the PvP Alignment and Crime intentions known since March 21st, 2018 at 4:15 pm
    https://fracturedmmo.com/feature-spotlight-6-pvp-alignment-crime/ So I was a little surprised to see how much people are confused by this.

    With that said, do I think that 24-48 hours of jail time is an acceptable number? No. I think that is insane. I think at most it should be 10 minutes (1k negative karma) to 100 minutes (10,000) negative karma.

    I also think that 2,000 - 6,000 gold according to Karma is badly worked.

    • First - it just encourages people to farm mobs that drop high gold value. Yes I’m looking at you 2 handed greatsword plate wearer who is killing goblins in Goblins hills and mages can’t get their Fireball or Fire Totem.

    • Second - Gold really has very little value to begin with right now. There really isn’t a robust player economy where gold is needed. You can generate that 2k gold or more in an hour.

    • Third - Zerg guild will just have slush funds of bail money since the gold is generated from nothingness.

    What I would propose is that the militia system be emphasized more. People who want to actually PvP (not you gankers, I know you won't want this) should be encouraged to join the militias. What that encouragement is, I cannot say since I do not know all the systems Dynamight Intends.

    Reduce, but do not remove the penalty time for what happens when you randomly murder someone. The 10 minutes to 100 minutes would be enough to cause people to sit out for murder.

    If that doesn’t reduce the amount of mindless ganking, then we would end up with a situation where it would have to be opt in PvP (unless you are a militia) or the full loot drop rules would have to change. Otherwise, there won’t be enough people who play the game, and no matter how hard Dynamight tries they won’t be able to reach goal 2.

    Remember, no matter what happens Dynamight has to make enough money to pay salaries, cover expenses, and you know maybe make a little profit in there somewhere.

    I know the gankers want to think the game belongs to them, but let’s look at numbers and face facts, without a healthy population of people buying Cosmetics and VIP subscriptions, Dynamight just doesn’t make money. A game like this needs a healthy population, especially a healthy population of casuals and carebears.

    If we can’t agree to that, it doesn’t matter what suggestions we come up with.


  • Content Creator

    1. I fully support a Bounty system
    2. I'm actually a PvE player, but I will say, the 2k for a first offense on someone with basically -1 karma is a little steep, as is 24 hrs for that character, so I might initiate something where if you have a Karma score of less than -100 Evil, your first trip to jail cost you like 600gp and 12 hrs jail time. If your Karmic debt reaches beyond -100, then bump it immediately to the 2k and 24 hrs and scale from there. This way the player just experimenting with the possibility of doing some evil can get that first strike slap on the wrist.
    3. In the above proposed modification, you only get that 'Newly Evil 1 Strike' leeway once, and after that, your treated like any other criminal.

    As for the situation with Alts, I see nothing wrong with an Evil player going in on their Alt account while they are in Jail...generally, you only get like 3 Alts, if all 3 end up in Jail, they are stuck unable to play, but otherwise, they can go do non-evil acts with an Alt, which isn't adding to the negativity.


  • TF#12 - PEOPLE'S HERALD

    Idea of a bounty system is good. What isnt good is that ideas rarely work as intended. Gankers and PvP fanatics wont care, proven by the "will just use alt" and "zergs will just pay" arguments.

    First: As others said, the low end of the bails should be lower, 2k for just flagging up is too much (kinda "presumption of innocence" principle). Top end of the bails should be drastically higher. "Hardcore criminals" and criminal zergs that thrive on ganking need to feel the damage.

    Second: Issue of alts. We all know these will get abused. So do the following, tie the bail (not prison time) to the account. Already has one character in jail? Multiply the bail with each jailed character for all characters. Second jailed character? Double bail for both. Third jailed character? Triple jail for all three. As for jail time, only double/triple on the newly jailed ones (first character only a day, second 2 days, third 3days). If you want to abuse the alts and be a criminal on Syndesia, be prepared to pay for it, if not, go to Tartaros, obviously more suited for the desired playstyle.

    If you want it to prevent some ganking, it needs to punish, not put you in a corner for 10minutes and take couple gold coins.

    Third: I didnt want to bring it up here as it would derail the feedback/convo so heres a link: https://forum.fracturedmmo.com/topic/13812/change-to-syndesia-the-true-mix-of-pve-and-pvp


  • Moderator

    Mostly agree with what was said.

    2k and 24 hours is just too much for simply flagging. The minimum penalty should be much much lower.

    I disagree on the concept that big zerg guilds will trivially bail out their members. Remember that every time they bail out someone, they are giving big cash to a bounty hunter. The more profits come from bounty hunting, the more bounty hunters there will be. Also, farming gold is not THAT easy.



  • @spoletta said in Bounty Hunting & Jails - Official Feedback Thread:

    Mostly agree with what was said.

    2k and 24 hours is just too much for simply flagging. The minimum penalty should be much much lower.

    I disagree on the concept that big zerg guilds will trivially bail out their members. Remember that every time they bail out someone, they are giving big cash to a bounty hunter. The more profits come from bounty hunting, the more bounty hunters there will be. Also, farming gold is not THAT easy.

    spoletta stated my exact thoughts. +1


  • TF#1 - WHISPERER

    El sistema de caza recompensas en general esta muy bien estructurado, asi siempre hay una variante para evitar el pk extremo contra jugadores menos intensos en ese aspecto, dejare mis sugerencias de como yo lo implementaria:

    • Recompensa por karma - 0 / -1000 (500g) -1001 / -2000 (1000g) y asi sucesivamente hasta -10000
    • Reduciria el tiempo de encarcelamiento 12h / 24h dependiendo el karma 12h hasta -3000 / 24h -3000 a -10000 ( evitariamos que mucha gente abadone el juego por largas esperas para salir de la carcel por ser un jugador independiente, 12/24h horas las veo suficientes para obligar ha pagar una fianza)
    • Los cazarecompensas tendrian una duracion de contrato de 24h, una vez finalizado el contrato tendria que esperar 48h para volver hacer un contrato. ( asi obligas a los que solo quieren ser caza recompensas ha interactuar con el juego de manera indirecta antes de hacer un cometido)

  • TF#1 - WHISPERER

    Its supposed to be a planet for both pve and pvp but right now its so heavily unbalanced that the only pvp against a sheriff you will see is if they evil know they can win, this creates a system where you will either see people running from fights or unfair ganking. (if i see someone with sheriff tag, why would i take the fight if the only reward i get is his loot, while his reward is jailing me for 2 days getting my loot and getting the bounty gold) HIGHLY unbalanced.

    Also 24-48 hours is way too long of a time period 10-100 minutes would work way better, "temp banning" people from the game from doing pvp in a pvp game is insane, they should get punished for doing pvp in a lawful world but dont push them away from playing the game because they litterly cant.

    Gold, i know alot of the pve'ers have alot of money beacuse they sit all day farming, but us who pvp we dont farm all day and use alot of the money to travel so we are not rich in any way, so a 6k bail is very expensive, and if there is gonna be added more things to spend your money on in the future you cant efford to pk, which would make that would completely stagnant.


  • TF#8 - GENERAL AMBASSADOR

    @SirAlbion the only thing I agree on is the fact that jail actually puts you out of the game completely, techincally banning you, unless you're willing to play an alt while you wait for your sentence.
    It would be nice if you could do something while in jail, like forced labor, mining resources for the community, or something like that to keep you busy somehow.

    That said, it's necessary to have harsh punishment on a balanced world for PvP against unwilling targets.
    You can PvP as much as you can steal in RL, but if you get catched you pay for it and it is just fair.
    About the invested time, when ganking you're probably "destroying" days of work for the average PvEr you kill, so it's not like days in jail would be unfair, again given the fact that you can play something somehow.


  • TF#12 - PEOPLE'S HERALD

    @Prometheus

    I think the bounty system is fine. Most the grief you are getting are from people who should be playing Tartoros and not Syndesia in the first place. However, I do also agree with @Jahlon that the amount for bail may be a bit too steep for minor infractions, though major infractions should be heavily punished. It's the first go around for the bailout system, so of course there would be problems and we will just have to figure out the proper balance needed.

    With that said, I disagree with @Jahlon in the time behind bars.... I think it is perfectly fine for a day or 2 behind bars for major infractions... minor infractions... yeah.. half an hour increments would be satisfactory.

    So, your crime system is fine... it just needs a few adjustments is all.


  • TF#8 - GENERAL AMBASSADOR

    Yes ! @GreatValdus
    The idea of having to 'work off your crime' is interesting, but how to implement?
    A 'jailed' character is given 'convict' label which prevents them from equipping any armor/weapon (other than stone mallet) and they must meet a quota of 40 ore/stone before loosing the label?
    While a nice idea it would be very hard to implement and way too punishing.

    A scaled time/gold system would be my vote.
    Also have karma be account based to prevent alt abuse.
    The lower your account karma the higher the penalties for all your characters.


  • Wiki Editor

    @Jahlon said in Bounty Hunting & Jails - Official Feedback Thread:

    With that said, do I think that 24-48 hours of jail time is an acceptable number? No. I think that is insane. I think at most it should be 10 minutes (1k negative karma) to 100 minutes (10,000) negative karma.

    While the rest of your written words are quite accurate, these values are absolutely too low.
    10-100 Minutes, well that will lead to never payed money to get out of the jail, they just would wait the 10 Minutes or eat something, go to bath or just play a twink, till the 100 minutes are over. While you call 24-48 hours insane, is your suggested time just a joke, then you can drop the jail totally, it would not have any worth.
    I also believe 24hours minimum is too much, but i would start at least at 12 hours.
    Otherwise it would not be any real punishment and criminal PVPer would just laugh about that.


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