Took a break from the oppressive dark evilness of the shadow realm overhaul, to make some changes to the bounty structure.
The reason for the changes? Bounty hunting was becoming the entire point of the game. Although I want the game to focus mainly on the masquerade, I thought it was getting over the top, with the recent trend of people just getting together on a chat once a night to hunt anyone who has a bounty of $1000, just for something fun to do. I don't want to screw over bounty hunters too much, however, so the changes might have nerfed them in some ways, but its not all bad news for them.
* Being seen feeding on a human now gives slightly less bounty-per-security point than it did before. The intention is that 3 medium screw-ups in 1 week should have you on the bounty list. 2 big screw ups in a day will still have you on the bounty list, but they will have to be bigger than before.
* Although newbies (less than level 7) are still slightly protected by the harsh bounty system, they are less protected than they were. This means that although you'll be getting less elders on the bounty list (from making like 1 single mistake!), you'll probably end up with a few more newbies, who constantly mess up (I do mean constantly).
* The bounty list now only shows people with $1500 or more bounties. Yeah, I'll let you hate me for that, but this might change back once there are more ways of lowering your personal bounty. I'll keep changing anything to do with security, as the community evolves and grows, so get used to it.
* The security level of the city now drops a little more each day than it did before, to account for the increasing population of the city.
* Summoning things in high security areas is still a huge masquerade violation, but not as harsh as it was before. Fadebeast summoning, for example, could give you a $2500 bounty for one single mistake. Now it's only likely to give half of that.
* Being seen fighting increases your bounty ever so slightly more than it did. The intention here is to forget about realism a little, and add to the gameplay. Work together to get people out of high-sec locations before attacking. Always be mindful of how public your attacks are. Adds to the strategy, I feel.
* Being seen fighting now has a much greater chance of alerting the Old Bill (British for cops
), and WILL increase your notoriety level with them.
* Gangster killing remains the same. As does cop-killing.
I'm sorry to any bounty hunters who are sad about these updates, but beta is beta, and I'm still trying to find a happy medium between realism and gameplay; between sadistic harsh shafting, and being kind to people who make dumb mistakes.
I'll post about the SR, death, and fadewalker updates as soon as they are done. In the mean time, you should be aware that getting yourself killed too many times will eventually make your character a weak, pathetic pile of useless (another reason for these changes).