Fallout 76 » Discussions


Fallout 76 - Bounty System

Tags: #News 
  • July 5, 2018

    Hah, first post of a discussion by someone that isn't Paul :P I'm number two, I'm number two!

    Now to the serious stuff. So lately I've been really interested in the idea that's currently in play (As a note, I wanted to point out that Todd Howard himself has mentioned that there's a lot about the game that they're still working on so a lot of the information in this discussion won't be the same as it eventually is in-game, or perhaps even in-game at all), the Bounty and Wanted System.

    So the details aren't too complicated, in fact it functions in a very similar way to Fallout 4's. The idea is that if you commit a crime, which is essentially (as far as we know) assault and murder, you get some sort of bounty placed on you, I'm not sure if this is an automatic thing triggered by the world or something that is set up by players (we'll get into that later on) but the point is that your now 'wanted' and anyone who kills you gets a certain number of Caps for killing you. At this point, players that are Wanted can be seen by all other players, meaning it's actually kind of challenging to hide from everyone and makes the game really interesting if you wanted to create a 'Bounty Hunter' character. The more crimes the 'wanted' player commits, the higher the bounty and the more money you can get off killing them.

    This video isn't purely about the Bounty/Wanted system, but it examines it and a bunch of other information so it's worth watching. Thanks to LegacyKillaHD for the video.

    At the moment that's really the extent of what's known about this sysytem, I don't believe it's been fully shown off, rather it's only been talked about in an interview. However, you have to admit that this is an interesting system, and I believe, the perfeect way to handle players that murder other players. To work in with this, I'm not sure if this means the only 'legal' PvP is going to be some sort of Duel system similar to what I know ESO has done in the past (not sure if it's still a thing) or maybe limited to certain areas, I don't know West Virginia but surely there's a football stadium or something that could operate as a PvP arena. The other benefit here, is that a player's Stash seems to be invisibile, meaning as long as you've stashed your items away, there's no way for other players to steal your stuff....I don't know about your inventory, if that drops on death, but it's all good stuff as far as I'm concerned.

    What do you think of this new Bounty/Wanted System?

    Okay, and before I leave I...technically this could be a second discussion, but I wanted to exmaine the idea of player-run Bounty Halls, and how interesting that could be. Now, naturally I think there's a fair argument to be made that a World-Run system is better because it limits the chance for people to be dicks about it (setting bounties on players that haven't done anything or something along those lines...though I suppose that can be countered pretty easily if you set up a tracker to make sure someone has killed another player) but the idea to me is fascinating. Image, if you get killed by BockClocker109, and then went to the player-run bounty office and set a reward using your own money just to get the guy killed. The game has some sort of system in place meaning it has to have actually happened (so you can't set it on anyone) and then boom, players can pick up your bounties and go kill whoever you've placed it on, come back to the Bounty House, and boom...system run by players that works.

    On a more intersting note, you also have the people running the Bounty Office, they're players as well, and obviously take a portion of the cut (because duh) but they could have their own 'official Bounty Hunters' who are people specialized in PvP to hunt down other players, and boom you've got a whole economical feature in the game that's a bit more than just 'selling weapons and items'. I don't know, just something interesting I thought of and wanted to throw out there. 

  • Member
    July 6, 2018

    I wonder if this bounty system is what we were seeing in the E3 reveal when the one player killed another and he received caps for doing so.

    Also while it's not really on topic... I remember watching a video recently where they talked about an interview Todd did where he said character's below level 5 would not be able to participate in pvp to try and avoid high level players constantly killing new ones. 

  • July 6, 2018

    I wonder if this bounty system is what we were seeing in the E3 reveal when the one player killed another and he received caps for doing so.

    Also while it's not really on topic... I remember watching a video recently where they talked about an interview Todd did where he said character's below level 5 would not be able to participate in pvp to try and avoid high level players constantly killing new ones. 

    That'd probably be it, in some limited capacity at least...honestly I can barely remember the E3 reveal at this point, so many videos are kinda blurring together :P

    But yeah, that seems like a really solid idea, sort of like ESO's Level 10 restriction before you can head off to Cyrodiil or...well actually just about any MMO I can recall has some sort of level restriction, though I don't recall many that are essentially PvP everywhere, usually games tend to have PvP Zones and consider that plenty. But the more information we get the less terrible a few of these systems seem, the better designed everything feels to hit a good middle spot between being fun and letting you murder people.

  • Officer
    July 6, 2018

    It's definitely been confirmed by Pete Hines that you can't be killed in PvP below Level 5. So that's one restriction that we know about.

    The details of the 'bounty system' are sketchy at the moment, and as DB says these kinds of things are still very much a work-in-progress right now and will probably be tweaked through the BETA and likely beyond.

    What I hope will happen is that any player who murders another player will immediately get a large bounty placed on their head on the map and via an ingame notification. Players who hunt down the bounty target would get caps (at the very least) and possibly a unique or legendary item. I don't see much incentive to trek right across the other side of the map to kill someone to get 50 caps! (Remember that pathetic rewards you got for the bounty quest in Skyrim? 'You've done us a great service... here is 100 gold' Wow... Thanks!!! lol)

    I guess that they are hoping to make it so that anyone thinking of committing randm murder thinks twice before doing so, because the downside makes it not worthwhile. So, maybe it will be

    1. You can't take any loot from the person you kill

    2. You get a large bounty on your head and other players will take revenge

    3. The other players get chance to get a rare item that, by definition, you won't be able to acquire - thus disadvantaging you going forward

    Works for me!

    It could also be (speculating) that there might be other downsides. For example, although it has been said that you won't lose loot if you are murdered, perhaps that won't apply to those who are killed via a bounty. So those who complete the bounty to can help themselves to stuff from the murderers inventory. That would be awesome!

  • July 6, 2018

    What I hope will happen is that any player who murders another player will immediately get a large bounty placed on their head on the map and via an ingame notification. Players who hunt down the bounty target would get caps (at the very least) and possibly a unique or legendary item. I don't see much incentive to trek right across the other side of the map to kill someone to get 50 caps! (Remember that pathetic rewards you got for the bounty quest in Skyrim? 'You've done us a great service... here is 100 gold' Wow... Thanks!!! lol)

    I guess that they are hoping to make it so that anyone thinking of committing randm murder thinks twice before doing so, because the downside makes it not worthwhile. So, maybe it will be

    1. You can't take any loot from the person you kill

    2. You get a large bounty on your head and other players will take revenge

    3. The other players get chance to get a rare item that, by definition, you won't be able to acquire - thus disadvantaging you going forward

    Works for me!

    It could also be (speculating) that there might be other downsides. For example, although it has been said that you won't lose loot if you are murdered, perhaps that won't apply to those who are killed via a bounty. So those who complete the bounty to can help themselves to stuff from the murderers inventory. That would be awesome!

    Yeah that's pretty much what I'm thinking, I doubt there would be a guarenteed chance to get a Legendary Item but I do think it would make sense to have an increasing chance based on the bounty (and all better than standard enemies). Not entirely sure, I think it'd be a little bit much to get a Legendary Item everytime you killed a criminal, but then I don't know how rare people killing each other is going to be or really Legendary items at all. 

    But yeah, definitely something more than just caps or, that idea of getting anything that's in the 'Wanted' player's inventory when they die. That'd be a really neat, and not entirely overpowered reward that would really set them back quite a bit. 

  • Member
    July 6, 2018
    Given Bethesda's track record with bugs, I'm willing to bet someone will find a way to force bounties unto players and continuously gank them.
  • July 6, 2018
    Given Bethesda's track record with bugs, I'm willing to bet someone will find a way to force bounties unto players and continuously gank them.

    If that's the system, it wouldn't surprise me at all :P