Hopefully you could take the time to review a system that I have come up with that I think would add an interesting dynamic to the game. Let me first start by saying that I applaud you for what I believe to be an unbelievably balanced PVP system at the moment. I am still skeptical that this was just luck but with possibly the most raiding experience in this game I can say that every time I encounter a base I feel that the risk/time that I have to invest in my character to breach a base almost always equals the time/energy that a player had to invest to build it. On a quick side-note I will also say that I have YET to find a base in the darkness that I cannot breach. There is certainly more risk and each time I raid one I have to set up a "Satellite" operation to where I KO myself to the darkness etc. etc. but I feel that all the pain I go through to wipe out a darkness settlement is deserving due to the fact that the people living in those settlements had to put up with horrible humour regeneration etc. etc. the whole time they lived there so of course I should have huge risks and huge time investments to take out their base. But I digress.... Onto my idea (complete with concept art mind you!)
Objective
You may ask why I am suggesting what might appear as a major overhaul to a system I am so fond of and believe is working so well? The answer is simple. "community". In many cases the perception will outweigh the reality and right now I feel that the perception of the community is that justice is either too difficult or too risky. Not to mention I feel that my constant abuse of getting paid to kill myself is now reaching absurd levels. There is of course an argument that the forums can be used as the primary communication HUB for ranger/anti-ranger activities but I argue that there IS a viable way (and more importantly practical way from a coding standpoint) to implement an in-game system that can eliminate some of the deception by griefers yet still maintain the harmony we currently experience. But most importantly I believe it will BUILD the community by allowing more meaningful interaction between players.
The Wanted Area
These signs would function essentially as the "Stalls" of Boston in terms of the Wanted System. I purposely capped them @ 10. There is an argument that by "capping" the number of people who can be officially "wanted" at any given time will have a negative effect on somebody who seeks justice but finds that all available posters are occupied. However, the same argument can be made that those who want to set up legitimate Stall-Trading are also adversly effected by the limited supply. Just like there is now a "Secondary Market" for trade stalls this will create an increase in Community outreach. If the wanted posters are "full" then players will be reaching out to bounty hunters (and possibly becoming one themselves) to try to meet the demand for Justice. I feel that if there was an unlimited queue of Wanted Posters it would be overwhelming and an inaccurate representation of demand for bounty hunters.
The Scalping System
I would like to thank the noob who gave his life to make this screenshot possible which I literally alt-tabbed to get while writing this thread. Now of course we need some mechanic in-game for proof of kill. My proposition is the entire bounty/warrant system is ONLY around a murder. Players cannot pay for KO, claim destruction, etc. etc. Mainly because the loopholes are too great. I would gladly KO myself on an ALT to collect a partial bounty. However, MOST players would not MURDER themselves for the bounty and even if they did then there is an argument that justice was still served as the murderer is still in-fact dead. Out of habbit I have labled these "tokens" of a kill "scalps". There are few aspects that I would like to highlight on this system.
#1: The animation to harvest the scalp can be the same as the butcher animation.
#2: The Time it takes to acquire the scalp should be equivalent to a metal axe on a tree. Why so long? It adds an entire new dynamic to just ganking somebody and actually having the upper-hand long enough to scalp them. If you kill somebody on a claim you would then have to have the bile left gather the scalp. There could be an entire series of drama that arises from players logging on alts to defend their scalps to spite their enemies from getting a trophy and save themselves from the embarassment. I'm on the fence if the scalp should only be obtainable by the person with the killing blow but either way this in itself I believe is an interesting system.
#3: The scalps are of course lootable items similar to scents. This again has more implications than it first seems. Serial Killers have a tendency to keep tokens of their kills. A great example of this can be viewed here: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1054. These screenshots are as much trophys and tokens as they are for entertainment. This makes killing the cupboard that holds a scalp collection just yet another blow to the killer if indeed he is tracked back home. If I had an in-game collection of all my pretty scalps I assure you it would be in a scalp-vault. The mere existance of "Scalp Vaults" would be hilarious in my opinion. The scalps themselves should have the name of the victim as at this time I see little benefit to the keeping the dead anonymous. I've toyed around with the idea of having the scalps to even have some kind of no-trade feature so only the murderer can interact with them but I loathe the idea of no-trade items of any kind in a sandbox game. My main reason for wanting to limit the trade is I do not want the serial killers to have the ability to alt-vault the items. I feel alt-vaulting in general is a whole new topic that needs attention. In the lands of Salem... nothing should be 1000% safe.
So the scalping aspect of this alone adds a new level of bragging rights and dynamic even without a bounty system but some form of kill verification would be required to property implement the bounty system which is why I brought it up here. Scalps would of course be tradeable to the poster to remove it and retrieve all the silver currently in it.
The Finances
Finances? How does it work? My gut-shot approach is 250s minimum bid. If you can't go get a new character to kill 66 crickets to pay to see your previous murderers dead then you probably didn't care enough to make a bounty in the first place. With 250s you may interact with the poster and officially place the bounty. Now of course 250 is a MINIMUM. There would be no cap on what somebody is willing to pay to see justice. Also the Posters would be different from the stalls as they would be essentially coded/owned by the WANTED. Meaning that just because ONE person makes a bounty on a person does not mean that the rest of the community cannot add to it. Once a character is wanted any number of players may add to the bounty. This will also cause an increased level of ease for the wanted to be killed (more on this next topic). I've toyed around with making the posters themselves drain some random amount of silver every week for a silver-soak and to make sure that somebody who is wanted has sustained interest in being killed. Not sure what the right number for that would be though.
The Tracking System
This is where it gets interesting and this is the only "balance" change that I see but I feel it is worth it. I feel that somebody willing to cough up the big bucks to see somebody killed should gain some advantage on killing the person. I'm sure many will argue with that point but hopefully people can respect that I am on the LOSING side of this change and I still recommend it. Once you put your 250s into the poster (just like a town bell) you may ALSO place a Summonable piece of Evidence into the poster as well. Now anybody with a Warrant and a bounty has EASY access to their summonable scents right there in Boston! I don't believe it is game breaking but I imagine more justice would be served if there was not the "take me to the scene of the crime" aspect. Now of course the scene of the crime is still relevant for those not willing to pay but for those who want to make it as easy as possible to see this person burn simply drop a scent in the poster and any and all can retrieve a copy.
Now taking this a step further. I think its pretty much public knowledge that I have a HV in the darkness. My PVPing works like this. PORT TO BOSTON...... Run hours in the OPPOSITE direction of my HV. Leave 999999 scents. Post screenshots and LOL. This is important to realize because any smart ranger will simply gather the 9999 scents, port to boston, and track from there. I bring this up because my game-change revolves around the premise that giving players the ability to track criminals from Boston is not only reasonable its essentially what happens the majority of the time anyway. I propose that when a player retrieves the evidence from the poster they ALSO get 10 minutes of tracking time from boston. I also propose that EVERY TIME a NEW player puts 250s with a DIFFERENT scent in the poster the amount of tracking time ANY ranger can get from boston goes up 10m. So if you have 6 different players all raided. They all put in 250s and the scent (keep in mind somebody still has to do the work of going to the crime and dropping the scent off in boston poster) then essentially any ranger who clicks "Accept Contract" on the poster will get 60 minutes of tracking.
60 minutes of tracking is not enough time to find a darkness HV. But guess what... The ranger can run 60 minutes towards the HV. When tracking runs out make a leanto. Port to boston. Pick up a new 60 minutes. Port back to leanto. And essentially just keep doing that over and over until they get there. pain in the @$$? Of course? Worth it to see justice served? Probabaly. Does it make tracking criminals easier YES. Enough so that the Chief will stop leaving scents? Absolutely not! Keep in mind the big push here is that the more people that bounty up somebody the easier and easier it will be for the rangers to find them. This should encourage players to do their part and pay the bounty to the poster when they are hit.
The Inspection System
Again I absolutely LOVE the anonymous nature of this game. That being said I believe its obvious I've gone through great lengths to NEGATE my opportunities to be anonymous. I shudder to imagine the server populations if I simply changed costume every day and threw on a mask. While I may take the high road here I fear for what happens when we get some players who don't. Any educated forum posting player knows better than the follow the chief to a magical pot of gold at the end of a rainbow based simply on his appearance.
This is a simple and somewhat silly change but I do think its one for the better. Give a picture on the poster of the player (generated from the random physical attribute properties that I am sure are already stored in a database somewhere). Also on each character creation do a simple /random number generation between 20 and 45 for age, 4' 4" and 6'6" for heigh and of course weight options for males/females. This will have no real bearing on the character models but WILL give some (very close to unique) identifying properties to a person.
Add a menu click option for "inspect" on the radial menu if somebody wants to inspect a player. Notice a grey'd out the purses and keys shoudl probably be off limits too. The rest of the information is irrelevant really. The key here is that for those who actually WANT to put in the effort to check peoples measurements they could in fact match up those numbers with a wanted poster and get a memorize off on the bad-guy even if he changes outfits. This could also be an entirely new dynamic where players tell people to look out for the 32 yr old 5'7" 185lb dude. The game is still relatively anonymous and this only gives a slight advantage to those paranoid enough to "inspect" every player and reference a notepad on their desk with players measurements to be wary of. But anybody on that level of paranoia should be rewarded for their diligence and not scalped simply because I changed outfits.
The Leader Boards
This is more for the general fun of it all but I think there should be 3 billboards with the top 10 rankings on the server:
#1: Top 10 Highest Bounties of all Time.
#2: Top 10 Current Bounties.
#3: Top 10 Rangers who have made the most bounties
Nothing but bragging rights really but fun none-the-less and may encourage some more rangers if there is a leaderboard.
The Inheritance
The top 10 Bounty stats should be based on the Family tree or "lineage" of a player/account. Meaning that you can Inherit those stats. I see two benefits here.
#1 it gives another level of meaning and "persistance" to your character after pema-death by giving one more thing to inherit.
#2: Players would be less inclined to build up multiple murder guys on multiple accounts as their "score" in terms of bounties would then no longer be cumulative. With a F2P game and free alt accounts its always good to have an incentive to keep players invested in one account over many.
Conclusion
There you have it. My disclaimer is I have never played H&H and spend way too much time taking players to my unicorn stables in the flower meadows outside boston than to develop a concept any more than this. This is simply the opinions of somebody who has killed more players and been paid more silver to kill himself than I care to count. I am no longer setting my alarm to wake up at night to check my HV and while I am more rested as a result I do feel guilty. Maybe these changes even the playing field and bring the community closer together. Or maybe they are complete crap. Either way I can say I tried
.Chief PeePooKaKa
MM Tribe
