The Bounty Issue

Cylence · 2014-04-14 14:40:19

iceman wrote:

Yeah, Stefan and MMaster had the ideas of removing the house after a certain amount of time and reducing the bounty based on how many successful robberies there have been (respectively )

I actually like having broken houses around. Legacy of retired players. Easier money for those who care to map it out. A house you can set a surprise trap for everyone looking for money in that house. It's another aspect that I think is interesting.

iceman wrote:

I still really, really like Jason's idea for calculating "skill"- your bounty increases by a fraction of how much bounty money has been payed to the vault last. That means that broken houses don't build up large "bounty values", and robbing a house that has killed the best robbers in the game will give you a bigger bounty than robbing a uninspired turtle that cost the same amount of money.

I actually think turtle houses require as much skill to break. The dangerous houses trade off brute force cost for the possibility to kill. Which means it's cheaper to break. And I wouldn't call them uninspired, I've seen very interesting turtle houses. Although, I think the true skill measurement is getting to vaults that no one has gotten to (regardless of kills).

iceman · 2014-04-14 14:50:06

Cylence wrote:

I actually like having broken houses around. Legacy of retired players. Easier money for those who care to map it out. A house you can set a surprise trap for everyone looking for money in that house. It's another aspect that I think is interesting.

Yeah, I think I'd want broken houses to stay around- they just shouldn't give big bounties to people who rob them.

Cylence wrote:

I actually think turtle houses require as much skill to break. The dangerous houses trade off brute force cost for the possibility to kill. Which means it's cheaper to break. And I wouldn't call them uninspired, I've seen very interesting turtle houses. Although, I think the true skill measurement is getting to vaults that no one has gotten to (regardless of kills).

I can definitely see your points. Maybe a house's bounty value could increase based on tools brought in, as well as kills? That way, robbing a house that has withstood 5 $30k robberies would increase your bounty as much as one that caught several skillful robbers off guard and killed them.

pagedMov · 2014-04-14 14:52:53

iceman wrote:

Cylence wrote:
I actually like having broken houses around. Legacy of retired players. Easier money for those who care to map it out. A house you can set a surprise trap for everyone looking for money in that house. It's another aspect that I think is interesting.
Yeah, I think I'd want broken houses to stay around- they just shouldn't give big bounties to people who rob them.
Cylence wrote:
I actually think turtle houses require as much skill to break. The dangerous houses trade off brute force cost for the possibility to kill. Which means it's cheaper to break. And I wouldn't call them uninspired, I've seen very interesting turtle houses. Although, I think the true skill measurement is getting to vaults that no one has gotten to (regardless of kills).
I can definitely see your points. Maybe a house's bounty value could increase based on tools brought in, as well as kills? That way, robbing a house that has withstood 5 $30k robberies would increase your bounty as much as one that caught several skillful robbers off guard and killed them.

+1

Cylence · 2014-04-14 14:57:12

iceman wrote:

Yeah, I think I'd want broken houses to stay around- they just shouldn't give big bounties to people who rob them.

If you read my proposal above, broken houses won't provide additional bounties.

iceman wrote:

Maybe a house's bounty value could increase based on tools brought in, as well as kills? That way, robbing a house that has withstood 5 $30k robberies would increase your bounty as much as one that caught several skillful robbers off guard and killed them.

I like the idea of surviving more tooled attempts being recorded. You can always get more complicated, and I believe I provided a solution that is in the simplest form. I'd prefer it to be more complicated but more complications means more values to tweak when balancing. Please go over what I wrote and let me know what you think.

cullman · 2014-04-14 15:06:51

I have a proposal. I was doing some santa runs the other day, and I noticed a huge number of the sub $1000 houses have vaults in very easy locations sometimes right in view of the welcome mat, with super well protected wives and maybe total house value of just $46 or whatever. In my mind, these house were designed and are left in zombie state to transfer money between alts to avoid chills directly between their alts. For anyone that doesn't understand how this works, you take your alt account and fill it full of bounty or tools or whatever, take it into a broken house, die in there. While you have your main constantly refreshing on that house to run in right after. What if we did this....if a house is vault is broken, and someone dumps tools in it ESPECIALLY IF the bounty and or tools dump is greater than the previous value of the house, then that house does not immediately come back on the list for everybody. First, it pulls a random number 0-25 (you'd actually use a deck shuffle rather than a random) 0-25. If the first number is 0 then it allows any person who's name that starts with "A" to see the house. Then it waits 4-5 minutes. Then it pulls another random, number say the number 5, Now all players with names starting with the Letter F can now see the house. Then waits another 4-5 minutes and another 1/26th of the population can now see this newly enriched house and so on until 90 minutes later everyone can see the house. What do you guys think? It would make coordination near impossible, most of the time, some other random person would get your proposed inter-account transfer.

pagedMov · 2014-04-14 15:12:14

cullman wrote:

I have a proposal. I was doing some santa runs the other day, and I noticed a huge number of the sub $1000 houses have vaults in very easy locations sometimes right in view of the welcome mat, with super well protected wives and maybe total house value of just $46 or whatever. In my mind, these house were designed and are left in zombie state to transfer money between alts to avoid chills directly between their alts. For anyone that doesn't understand how this works, you take your alt account and fill it full of bounty or tools or whatever, take it into a broken house, die in there. While you have your main constantly refreshing on that house to run in right after. What if we did this....if a house is vault is broken, and someone dumps tools in it ESPECIALLY IF the bounty and or tools dump is greater than the previous value of the house, then that house does not immediately come back on the list for everybody. First, it pulls a random number 0-25 (you'd actually use a deck shuffle rather than a random) 0-25. If the first number is 0 then it allows any person who's name that starts with "A" to see the house. Then it waits 4-5 minutes. Then it pulls another random, number say the number 5, Now all players with names starting with the Letter F can now see the house. Then waits another 4-5 minutes and another 1/26th of the population can now see this newly enriched house and so on until 90 minutes later everyone can see the house. What do you guys think? It would make coordination near impossible, most of the time, some other random person would get your proposed inter-account transfer.

I kind of like the idea of everyone seeing different houses.
+1 to this

Cylence · 2014-04-14 15:19:10

cullman wrote:

I have a proposal... In my mind, these house were designed and are left in zombie state to transfer money between alts to avoid chills directly between their alts...

The discussion should focus on this idea

jasonrohrer wrote:

But we could construct a better measure of what a "good player" is and only build up bounties on players that match the better, more strict measure.

Your suggestion is working towards fixing the problem transferring huge bounties. Transferring wouldn't be a problem if bounties aren't easily created.

Jason started with a suggestion from a thread you started where it was mentioned that having it based off of house value would be better. He's trying to expand on this idea. Please try reading his suggestion and other people's suggestions and offering thoughts and ideas related to the goal of the thread.

GotABigTrap · 2014-04-14 15:25:32

I'm a bit worried about some of the proposed changes. Additionally, I don't quite understand many of the proposals.

I think that duel accounts are totally overstated, but I believe Jason is correct in pointing out that the bounty system is the biggest problem when it comes to free money. The only thing I don' agree with is that it is free money. I often focus a life on just bounty to see how high I can make it & it is not easy. First of all, every time you go clubbing, you put yourself at risk. Also, you will quickly wipe out any completely unprotected family. At this point, it costs more money and is more risky. Usually when I go broke I just gift the bounty to some lucky house (with at least some defence).

If anything, I think just make sure you cannot hit the same vault more than once every 24 hours. Additionally, lower the murder bounty to like 200 each. That way you only get 200$ added to your bounty for each killed. Since the tool you spend to add that bounty costs at least 200$, it isn't worth an investment for use in money transfer. Seriously, the problem is that it is like 1k per killed, so you can hit a 2k house and make a bounty of 3500. I have gifted 30k bounties before in just a few hours starting from 2k, but eventually I die in the process. If it was 200 per killed, a 2k house would be worth less bounty than cash stolen from it.

Last edited by GotABigTrap (2014-04-14 15:30:34)

cullman · 2014-04-14 15:33:06

Cylence wrote:

cullman wrote:
I have a proposal... In my mind, these house were designed and are left in zombie state to transfer money between alts to avoid chills directly between their alts...
The discussion should focus on this idea
jasonrohrer wrote:
But we could construct a better measure of what a "good player" is and only build up bounties on players that match the better, more strict measure.
Your suggestion is working towards fixing the problem transferring huge bounties. Transferring wouldn't be a problem if bounties aren't easily created.
Jason started with a suggestion from a thread you started where it was mentioned that having it based off of house value would be better. He's trying to expand on this idea. Please try reading his suggestion and other people's suggestions and offering thoughts and ideas related to the goal of the thread.

I am just trying to help. Yes, the original suggestion helps with the bounty transfer. It does not stop tool transfer, or even harder to generate bounties of the future transfers. This suggestion is in line with solving some of the same problems, and I don't think having these zombie houses show up slower to other players would impact the game for legit players at all. No one complained when we talked about removing the zombie houses all together, and this seems to be a less impactful version of that idea.

Sorry I annoyed you with my friendship.

iceman · 2014-04-14 15:33:25

Cylence - Although I really like the simplicity of your solution, I would prefer increasing the house's bounty based on actual activity in the house, not just as time passes. Basically, a house that has lots of people die or waste money robbing it *should* increase the robbers bounty more than a house that everybody ignores.

Cullman - I think it would be better to discuss that on a different thread, since it's not really about changing the bounty system. Things get messy and hard to understand when people are discussing different things at the same time in a thread

eppfel · 2014-04-14 15:38:16

GotABigTrap wrote:

... Additionally, lower the murder bounty to like 200 each. ...

Already taken care of

jasonrohrer wrote:

ANYWAY... just to get the ball rolling, I've turned off bounty increments for murders.

First I thought this keeps the family too safe, but actually I just killed a kid to create permanent damage to a house, so my scouting tools were'nt wasted. I'm a bad man.

cullman · 2014-04-14 15:42:17

GotABigTrap wrote:

I'm a bit worried about some of the proposed changes. Additionally, I don't quite understand many of the proposals.
I think that duel accounts are totally overstated, but I believe Jason is correct in pointing out that the bounty system is the biggest problem when it comes to free money. The only thing I don' agree with is that it is free money. I often focus a life on just bounty to see how high I can make it & it is not easy. First of all, every time you go clubbing, you put yourself at risk. Also, you will quickly wipe out any completely unprotected family. At this point, it costs more money and is more risky. Usually when I go broke I just gift the bounty to some lucky house (with at least some defence).
If anything, I think just make sure you cannot hit the same vault more than once every 24 hours. Additionally, lower the murder bounty to like 200 each. That way you only get 200$ added to your bounty for each killed. Since the tool you spend to add that bounty costs at least 200$, it isn't worth an investment for use in money transfer. Seriously, the problem is that it is like 1k per killed, so you can hit a 2k house and make a bounty of 3500. I have gifted 30k bounties before in just a few hours starting from 2k, but eventually I die in the process. If it was 200 per killed, a 2k house would be worth less bounty than cash stolen from it.

It's very easy to rack up $10k-$20k of bounties clubbing weak house family members in a night. The problem is not dying at the end. The problem is one person intentionally dying at the end in a house of another account they own. This is a often abused problem, I believe I have shown Jason proof of it's repeated abuse, which I think is why there are no more bounties on family killing at the moment. I even created a brand new model of a house, that the vault was in view of the welcome mat. It was a never seen design before. It looked like a leap of a faith but a cat off in the distance made the leap of faith not work at the last minute. The way you could self test is you had to make a child run over the panic button right as you were stepping from the electric floor to the pit. The whole point of this house was to entice a cheating dual account player to see that it was not easy for just anyone to rob, but it would be easy for anyone to rob with a wire cutter and a ladder. I played with the house for 2 hours, got about $3k in it, and left to do some real work. The house was also designed to commit you by having the wife jammed at the front door by the dead body of the other child. When I got back 2 hours later, someone had dropped $60k of bounty (someone who came in with a $50k bounty saw the wife commit trap, came back with a single dog meat and died). Then another $5k account came in and died. In my real houses I'm lucky if I see a $600 bounty every 3 days. In my little $3k trap house I saw $60k of bounties in 4 hours. Anyway, lo and behold a few seconds later Bishop Dale shows up with a wire cutter and a ladder having never been in the house before, and grabs the $60k. This is a huge problem and anyone that says otherwise either isn't looking at what is going on at the lower end houses or is in on the con and doesn't want it fixed.

cullman · 2014-04-14 15:45:15

iceman wrote:

Cullman - I think it would be better to discuss that on a different thread, since it's not really about changing the bounty system. Things get messy and hard to understand when people are discussing different things at the same time in a thread

Understood, however, please keep in mind I started this conversation and pointed out this problem. The reason I am expanding this conversation is because potentially this other proposal would allow us to take less draconian measures wrt to fixing the current bounty system, I see the problems as related.

Cylence · 2014-04-14 15:55:07

cullman wrote:

I am just trying to help...
Sorry I annoyed you with my friendship.

I know you are trying to help, and I appreciate the ideas, I'm just hoping to steer you towards the center issue. And no need to apologize, you weren't annoying me. I'm just excited that there may be a change to the bounty system and want your energy focused and that specific issue . Transferring or gifting of bounties may not be such an issue if the creation of bounties has changed.

iceman wrote:

Although I really like the simplicity of your solution, I would prefer increasing the house's bounty based on actual activity in the house, not just as time passes. Basically, a house that has lots of people die or waste money robbing it *should* increase the robbers bounty more than a house that everybody ignores.

Yeah, I agree with you and already said I liked more complication .
How about in addition to my formula. The bounty also goes up for the amount of tools brought in after a failed robbery attempt. Using the same variables:

After an unsuccessful (no robbery or murder) attempt,
B = B + (Z * (total value of tools brought in - 2000))
Z is the percentage of the tools total value (to keep it simple we'll say it's retail and not resale value).
The 2000 subtraction is there to prevent 2k dives to increase the value. (may have to check if this becomes negative and zero it out if so)

So... lets say Z = 5%. If someone comes in with 20k worth in tools and fails to commit a murder or theft, the bounty addition will increase by $900. (.05 * (20000 - 2000)).

iceman · 2014-04-14 16:07:21

cullman wrote:

Understood, however, please keep in mind I started this conversation and pointed out this problem. The reason I am expanding this conversation is because potentially this other proposal would allow us to take less draconian measures wrt to fixing the current bounty system, I see the problems as related.

I agree, they definitely are related. However, I'd say that this thread is about "What is the bounty system that is the least open to increasing a bounty skill-lessly", not "How can we prevent easy transfer of bounty money between alts". In fact, I think that the first problem is more important than the second. If you solve the first, the second is nearly unimportant, while if you solve easy transfer, a dual accounter would still be able to build up a huge bounty and transfer it- it would just take a bit more work. I'd still love to discuss the second question (and your proposed solution) - just not in this thread.

Also, I'd like a change to the bounty system even if there wasn't abuse using it. I think that a more varied bounty system would be more interesting to see just by itself.

Last edited by iceman (2014-04-14 16:07:49)

Lord0fHam · 2014-04-14 16:09:46

so are the bounties for killing family member now off or just lower? and what are they if they are lower?

Lord0fHam · 2014-04-14 16:11:31

also removing houses after a week is a horrible, horrible idea. I am going on a two week vacation this summer and my house would just be removed even though it's not broken.

TheRealCheese · 2014-04-14 16:12:40

Lord0fHam wrote:

also removing houses after a week is a horrible, horrible idea. I am going on a two week vacation this summer and my house would just be removed even though it's not broken.

But taking them off the list after a week or so of no resets wouldn't be a bad idea. Not saying they should disappear for good, just not be visible to other players.

Last edited by TheRealCheese (2014-04-14 16:12:58)

cullman · 2014-04-14 16:13:08

Lord0fHam wrote:

so are the bounties for killing family member now off or just lower? and what are they if they are lower?

They are off.

Cylence · 2014-04-14 16:21:01

GotABigTrap wrote:

I'm a bit worried about some of the proposed changes. Additionally, I don't quite understand many of the proposals

I'll try to plug in some numbers so my proposal is easier to understand:

quick summary refer to the original post for full details.
Bounty Addition (B): the number added to a thief's bounty upon murder/theft.
Time Interval (TI): set amount of time to increase the Bounty Addition (B)
Bounty Increase (BI): This is the total value of the house plus the value we assign to paintings (X) multiplied by some percentage (Y).
the formula: BI = ((X * number of paintings) + house listing value) * Y

Lets say we set the value of paintings, X at $5000 each.
And we want the percentage, Y = 1%
And we want a Time Interval, TI every 6 hours.

A house with 2 paintings and $10000 is made fresh (unlikely but lets just keep it simple for now) and will pay $0 to someone how robs or murders in it.

Every 6 hours, if there has been no theft or robbery, the added bounty for murdering or robbing this house will be ((2 * 5000) + 10000) * .01 = $200.

Which means if the value of the house or painting don't change, then after a full day, the bounty addition the house would add is $800. If they do change, then it would add more or less. Obviously the longer a house has been around without a murder or theft, it would be bigger.

Note: if the value does change, the increments would as well. Meaning if a house drops in value (spent on tools) then its addition does as well.

Of course, Jason can change TI, X, Y to be however he wants. I also proposed Z after my discussion with iceman. Z = percentage of tool value brought in minus 2000.

Lord0fHam · 2014-04-14 16:47:38

also i think making all these changes would cause there to be not enough money in an already small economy. it can take days to get a couple of bounties, and if they are only $10, that would suck.

pagedMov · 2014-04-14 16:48:42

I think I just had a good idea. When I was playing Borderlands a couple of seconds ago, I started thinking about this thread. Then I started thinking about money. Then I thought: what if there was something like taxes in place? With something that would take away a certain amount of money per x amount of time, people would probably be more compelled to go rob someone on their main account, since robbing on their alt wouldn't help the tax problem. This idea's kind of flawed, but I think it could work if we took bounty dumping out of the equation.

Last edited by pagedMov (2014-04-14 16:49:25)

iceman · 2014-04-14 16:51:31

Let me follow Cylence's example and just summarize what my current favorite solution is:

Pending Bounty(PB): How much a house's bounty is worth (i.e. how much robbing it will increase your bounty).
B: A robber's bounty

Bounties start at $100, pending bounties start at $0.

If a robber dies in a house, the owner recieves $B, and PB goes up by B/2
If a robber brings T amount of tools, PB goes up by T/100
If a robber reaches the vault, his bounty goes up by PB, and PB is reset to 0
(Maybe) If the owner resets his house, PB is reset as well

Basically, PB is a measure of how "good" that house is, while B is how "good" a robber is. A house is considered "better" as people die in it (the better the robber was, the better the house is considered) and as they fail to brute force it. Robbing a "good" house means a robber is "good" as well, and killing a "good" robber will give you much more money than an untested one.

Obviously, the numbers could (and should) be changed, but there's only 4 of them. Starting bounty and pending bounty, what fraction of a bounty gets added to a pending bounty, and what fraction of tools get added to the pending bounty.

I'd also like if there was a system to tell how much a robber had to lose, based on both his house's cost and his wealth, and adjust the bounty payout accordingly, but that's independent of how to calculate a robber's bounty/"ability" (you could use Cylence's method to calculate bounty, and then adjust the payout).

Anyways, I have to go, so I don't have enough time to give examples. I'm just wondering, Cylence, if you could explain exactly why you prefer your solution over this one (I'll do the same when I have time).

Cylence · 2014-04-14 16:53:23

Lord0fHam wrote:

also i think making all these changes would cause there to be not enough money in an already small economy. it can take days to get a couple of bounties, and if they are only $10, that would suck.

My suggestion is only changing the addition that robbing a vault or murdering gives. Jason can play with the initial starting bounty ($100) to increase or decrease the economy flow. I know it used to be $200 and even $50.

pagedMov · 2014-04-14 17:05:37

iceman wrote:

Let me follow Cylence's example and just summarize what my current favorite solution is:

Pending Bounty(PB): How much a house's bounty is worth (i.e. how much robbing it will increase your bounty).
B: A robber's bounty
Bounties start at $100, pending bounties start at $0.
If a robber dies in a house, the owner recieves $B, and PB goes up by B/2
If a robber brings T amount of tools, PB goes up by T/100
If a robber reaches the vault, his bounty goes up by PB, and PB is reset to 0
(Maybe) If the owner resets his house, PB is reset as well

Basically, PB is a measure of how "good" that house is, while B is how "good" a robber is. A house is considered "better" as people die in it (the better the robber was, the better the house is considered) and as they fail to brute force it. Robbing a "good" house means a robber is "good" as well, and killing a "good" robber will give you much more money than an untested one.
Obviously, the numbers could (and should) be changed, but there's only 4 of them. Starting bounty and pending bounty, what fraction of a bounty gets added to a pending bounty, and what fraction of tools get added to the pending bounty.

I'd also like if there was a system to tell how much a robber had to lose, based on both his house's cost and his wealth, and adjust the bounty payout accordingly, but that's independent of how to calculate a robber's bounty/"ability" (you could use Cylence's method to calculate bounty, and then adjust the payout).

Anyways, I have to go, so I don't have enough time to give examples. I'm just wondering, Cylence, if you could explain exactly why you prefer your solution over this one (I'll do the same when I have time).

+1000
Althought the reset house = reset PB isn't exactly a good idea though

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