Over on Stratics on the UO Stygian Abyss forum, this posters thread has caused a very deep debate on a lot of Tram/Fel issues.



I have seen allot of people post some great ideas for what they would like to see with the new expansion, but I was wondering why not bring something back? The old Bounty system was fun IMO, yet was removed. Seems the reason I have been given was due to the violent method, envolving chopping heads off and getting a teen ratting for the game.

Anyway, I figured why not suggest bringing it back into the game, it seemed to be more of a positive then a negative to the game IMO. I am sure they would have to brush the system up a bit, but in whole it would take little time or effort to add it back in. Any thoughts or ideas about this? I know its not considered "New" but would be a nice thing to have back in the game with the expansion.


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I'd like to see it brought back. I liked being able to take head of someone. I wonder if the change was made because of the fact that you could take the head of because of the means you took to get it(chopping the whole body up). If it was the latter, then I would like to see a different system for aquiring the head, like using a bladed weapon on an animal causes leather and meat on the corpse. Using a bladed weapon on a human would place it's head on it's corpse for looting. This is not as blatenly violent since it is practically unnoticable to the passer by.


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Ok here's my take on this.

You must meet the following criteria to qualify to place a bounty on a murderer.

*you cant have any short or long term murder counts
*you can only place a bounty on someone that has murdered you within the past week.
*You must report the murderer (give him a count)
*You have to give the minimum amount required to place a bounty of 25k. The maximum amount will be 1 mil.
*You can in fact place a bounty on a blue character if he murdered you and you gave him a count


The following is what i feel should be done to collect the bounty

*you must use a bladed weapon to carve the murderers body (much like skinning an animal)
*if the murderer has a bounty you will receive a message stating 'you retrieve the head of and collect for his bounty'. (no actual heads will appear in you pack, they do have to retain a certain rating)
*The gold will appear in your bank box.
*bodies of murderers on the ground are eligible to be claimed (carved) by anyone whether they killed him or not.
*both reds and blues that do NOT have bounties placed on there heads are eligible to collect bounties. (bounty hunters are people of all sorts, good and no so good)
*bounties can not be collected by someone that is in the same guild as the murderer. They can't even collect on an unguilded char that has a guilded char on the same account.
*bounties can not be collected by a char that has the same account info as the murderer. (in other words he cant collect on himself on a second account)
*once you collect a bounty on someone you are not eligible to collect a bounty on that murderer again for 30 days.


What happens when a bounty is collected

*the winner of the bounty will receive half of every gold piece spent on the bounty. The other half will go towards the criminal justice system. (nice gold sink) If the murderer has a 3 mil bounty from multiple victims then the reward for the collector will be 1.5 mil.
*the murderer will immediately go into stat loss (much like the faction stat loss wich is not permenent)
*the stat loss will last 30 minutes for every 25k spent on the bounty up to 12 hours max per collection.
*the stat loss counter will continue to count down even when the murderer is logged out of the game.
*multiple bounties on one murderer will be allowed however when multiple bounties takes stat loss over 12 hours then the cap will kick in.


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RTL

I play a red 99% of the time, am active in factions, and play siege, so my idea may not exactly fit in with a production shard.

This is how i would do bounties.

I would tie a bounty in with a pvp system.

Anybody can place a bounty, but only certain people (bounty hunters) can collect a bounty. Becoming a bounty hunter would be just like joining factions. Have a bounty hunter stone or something and have the hunters register. You join individually as a bounty hunter, not as a guild. Once they join, they are able to collect whatever bounties are imposed by whoever. It would be good to also accept individual bounties. Ie. Accepting Player A's Bounty request of 500k to kill Castor. You can accept as many as you want.

However blue bounty hunters will now be orange to all the people who have bounties placed on their head, as if there was a state of war. Bounty hunters will also not be able to call in guards. (hey bounty hunters are unsavory characters also).

You kill me as a bounty hunter, fine, you collect a bounty and put me in stat for 20 min. I kill a bounty hunter, i get some kind of reward, plus now you are in stat for 20, just like factions.

I dont think the reward should be 100% of a bounty. Say Player A puts 500K on my head, and Player B accepts that bounty. Say he kills me, well, he should get say 10% of the outstanding bounty or 50K. Now i have 450K on my head for others to get.

But say i kill Player B, i get the 10%.

It would also be good for the person placing the bounty to get something. Like points to be spent somewhere, like a museum or such to use, for every successful claim of the bounty. Maybe like double the points you would get for the museum as if you donated the gold their outright.

I would also think that it would be good to place a bounty on a bounty hunter, maybe revenge for the red who was killed by the hunter.

The bounty system can be a fun system to play with, but you need to eliminate some of UO's inherent barriers.

You need to remove the ability to stand in a guardzone and basically pot shot a red with a bounty. The bounty hunter system does this. (all it is is modified factioned stone)

You need to offer some type of reward for the people who have the bounties on their heads. (basically a modified insurance system. 10% of outstanding bounty )

You need to put a time reward in. If i lose the fight, i am out for 20 min, if i kill you, your out for 20. A real victor in a fight.



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The shift of color thing is a neat idea.. A Bounty hunter being a different color to the bounty...

But should they shift the color of the guy with the bounty to something everyone else can see too. Sort of a sign of being 'Notorious' so to speak.

Could a spell like 'incognito' shield you from the color system? Either on a bounty or the hunter.

Anywho - just some thoughts..

Cathat


Dave "CatHat" Brown -
UO Character and Environment Artist -
EA Mythic -


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Be sure to read up on all the posts there .

That'd be awesome if they brought it back (I missed out on it).

But it would need some serious tweeking to make sure it didn't get exploited.

I always reported people that PK'd me but I was never a bounty hunter. I definitely like the idea of bounties. Would love to see them brought back.

I like the idea of bounties. that would be pretty cool.

I lost my head plenty back in the day on Ches. I think the bounty system could be a great sub-game like plants. Perhaps instead of collecting the bounty you can have an option when the "murderer" is killed, instead of him dying and one collecting the reward, you can opt to have him spend time in a public stockade in the center of town for X amount of time.

LoL, that's a nice idea Silverfoot, but I doubt they'd lock anyone up like that, unless it was just an NPC with the same name as the murderer who's head has been collected.

I love the idea of bringing back bounties, also the stuff about highlighting to the hunted, stat, rewarding both sides, and reward points for a museum type thing...i believe it would encourage alot of people to try out pvp...the reward point thing surely would

Or they could have headless NPC's wandering around with the players name *grins*

I recall visiting a friend at Dreamworks Studio back when UO just launched. Everyone was into inter-office Bountys on each other - Even went so far as to hand make old scroll work wanted posters printed out & posted around the studio. LOL
Rofl

fun


:grin: :grin: :grin:


Cathat

I got a kick out of bounty hunting back in the day. Those are some interesting ideas too.