Bounty Hunters: An in-depth analysis.

[pwnforwildy]

Introduction

After playing on Asylum for a longer time, having explored most of the capabilities of the mod and earned enough money to enjoy your time, many seek the thrills of running in a big gang. Carrying high caliber rifles, rocking armored vehicles and above all enjoy big gang fights and tactical operations. Some others (and some that get bored of gang activities) try to stay within the cities. Enjoy themselves around an always refreshing group of players. Interacting with the APD on a higher level than just a shooting competition. And above all: have fun by just random interactions. This is where I stand. A solo player that made some friends in Kavala, also known as a pistol-banger. And I think the Bounty Hunter system should be tweaked, here's why.

 

Situation Sketch

Before we start, let's look at the situation we're talking about. Many of the veterans may be unfamiliar or rusty with the Kavala environment. Kavala is a place of chaos, a place where the new players have their baptism of fire. Pistols and SMGs excel in a city-environment, giving a lot of new players a good chance to take part in the never-ending war in Kavala. With the overwhelming presence of low-caliber weapons, the impact of armor speaks for itself. Partly because of this, the APD's is one of the strong rulers here. With almost no high-caliber rifles around, inexperienced players and small, unorganised groups the APD almost always has the upper hand. Now some players can choose to become a bounty hunter, gaining almost all the perks of the APD and causing a huge imbalance between civilians in Kavala. I will discuss the problems with the general behavior of bounty hunters later, lets first sketch the general loadouts.

Loadout Balance

Here, we'll sketch the general loadout and availability of weapons for civilians, bounty hunters and the APD. In Kavala, regular civilians get their guns from the gunstore they have no armor available. Bounty hunters buy their weapons at the bounty hunter store. See table below.

Civilians	Bounty Hunters	Altis Police Departement
Rook 9mm	P07 9mm	P07 9mm
PDW 9mm	Vermin .45 ACP	MX 6.5
SDAR 5.56 (Illegal)	TRG 5.56
	Tactical Vest	Tactical Vest

 

We're mainly looking at the imbalance between bounty hunters and civilians here. As you can note from the table, almost all the weapons of bounty hunters outscale the civilian weapons. The Rook and P07 are on the same level. Vermin is better than a PDW and the SDAR, in my opinion. On top of the increased fire-power, bounty hunters get a tactical vest. This is especially powerful against the lower-caliber rifles and the SDAR that has little to no penetration. It will absorb multiple shots and will give you a huge edge. The imbalance is clear, why do bounty hunters get this huge power spike?

 

Interacting with Bounty Hunters

As for patch 6.4.0 bounty hunters will start getting you as their bounty from $2,000 and onwards. To put this in perspective this is 2 vehicular manslaughters (very common in Kavala), a lockpick attempt and a succesful grand theft, a manslaughter or a robbery. Basically any petty crime will have bounty hunters following you. I will go into this further in a later paragraph. So you may ask yourself, what is different from a bounty hunter having you as their target, or the APD looking for you? Well, there are a few big differences. The first, and most obvious, bounty hunters RP minimally, most of the time there's merely a "Hands up" or "Surrender I'm a bounty hunter". Whereas an officer of the APD will always announce themselves properly and RP the situation out. Besides the minimal RP, bounty hunters have the anonymity to them. A regular civilian could be a bounty hunter hunting you, they don't have to have the bounty hunter emblem enabled, which can only be seen close by anyway. In contrast, the APD has skinned cars and specific outfits. Another phenomenon under bounty hunters is what I named grouping. Once fighting the a bounty hunter and one manages to kill one, many bounty hunters feel as if they're one big group of bounty hunters and will step in without warning (Similar to the APD). Whether they are actually in a group or not is hard to prove. This way you will have little to no chance to get away.

 

Who's side are bounty hunter really on?

Bounty hunters were meant to be supporters of the law. Hunting highly wanted criminals and making the world a safer place. But are they really? No, of course not. Bounty hunters are criminals in disguise. They will not go out of their way to not do crimes or to not be violent. They will definitely not go out of their way to get the police involved when dealing with someone that is not their bounty. The difference is, they can do their petty crimes without getting manslaughter charges, and will more often than not make use of the taser to use as an offensive weapon and not for hunting their bounty. Now there is a rule that if a bounty hunter is caught abusing their taser they will be punished with instant jailtime and thus causing them to lose their license. This seems fair to me, but more often than not the APD doesn't seem to care, and will most of the time let them off with a warning. Now if you will do the same with a rook, you'll get a manslaughter and you will have to RP your way out with the police, not to mention the amount of bounty hunters that will come after you.

 

The core problems with bounty hunters

The way bounty hunters are designed right now are doomed to destroy any sort of RP. Remember the tweaks to the police system where money is shared between officers to reduce the amount of money-hungry robo-cops? This is exactly what bounty hunters are. You can't really tell them they're wrong. They don't even have an option to pardon low bounty players, or give them a ticket instead. They often act entitled, and give them a reason not to. They are often allowed to keep their high powered (relatively) rifles unholstered and are almost untouchable by civilians and are pretty much above the law.

One of the biggest problems I haven't yet touched on: Fighting bounty hunters. When a fight in Kavala is won, it is common practise to 'camp' the body so they can't be revived. This makes for a lot of respawning. This plays into the bounty hunters own cards as following. When you know a bounty hunter is after you and you actually win the fight, you'll get a 5k charge for manslaughter at minimum. Additional charges can be killing medics that try to revive, or killing the person again after revive. Given that no matter how bad the bounty hunter's skill is compared to yours, eventually he'll be the one that will come on top. If you gain a 10k bounty per death, this basically means the bounty hunter can spend up to 10k EVERY death without losing money in the end. To equal the civilian gear, you'd need maybe 2-3k. Even if you win a battle, you will lose the war.

The boundaries for the system right now don't seem right to me. You will be in danger of being sent to jail for small crimes, as mentioned before. Crimes which you can often get a pardon for when RPing with the APD, isn't that what the server is about after all? Not to mention that some officers will give a bounty hunter their target, even though you're trying to explain your charges, or pay a reduced ticket with the officer. Being sent to jail for a self defence manslaughter and losing your firearm license and your load out is not an uncommon occurrence. It very frustrating and just doesn't seem right in general. Honestly, with all these negative impacts it has on RP I am questioning myself they should even exist in the form they are in now.

 

I would like to hear your opinions about the matter of bounty hunters. I am not sure who is on the team that is actually in charge of making game-related decisions, but I'd like you to come out and explain why bounty hunters are balanced the way they are and whether you agree with the arguments I brought up. Please keep in mind I took the time to write this down because I care about this mod. Discussion with the community is the way to improve everyone's experience.

 

TL;DR Fuck the bounty hunters :^)

 

[Atmosphere]

haha "anal"ysis

[TNT]

To sum it up, you are mad at bounty hunters cause they are ruining your kavala pistol-banging experience?

[Goofy]

I dont see the problem here... What are you trying to accomplish? Make money, buy an MK and just kill them and move on with your life.

[pwnforwildy]

7 minutes ago, TNT said:

To sum it up, you are mad at bounty hunters cause they are ruining your kavala pistol-banging experience?

Pretty much.

5 minutes ago, Goofy said:

I dont see the problem here... What are you trying to accomplish? Make money, buy an MK and just kill them and move on with your life.

Good banter, not really a solution to the problem though. Not sure if you're seriously open for discussion but i'll give it a shot anyway.

If you truly dont understand the problem, I advise you to read again. I have almost literally wrote an essay describing the problems I have with the current bounty hunter system. 

I have enough money to buy MKs but as I explained in the original post kavala is not a place where a marksman rifle, which an MK is, has optimal efficiency. Besides, getting hold of an MK isn't something done in seconds, not to speak of costs. People with an MK may have a small advantage over a single person, but with all the small corners, loads of hiding places, and fast respawning I can assure you its not something that will be efficiently working here. 

[FireMelon]

What he is saying, which I was just thinking about yesterday, is that there is no danger or consequence anymore to being a bounty hunter unlike being a cop or a rebel. A bounty hunter can run around all day with his gun out and no one can tell if he is a bounty hunter or just a normal civ also they get free passes from cops to be able to do so. This gives them advantage against everyone who doesn't want to be a bounty hunter which is starting to ruin the RP of the serves. The reason is now anyone that wants to make easy money can just get a bounty hunters license and run around with a hidden badge then down/arrest people with little to none RP besides "You are my bounty, hands up" pew pew you are down and going to jail. But before when they couldn't hide their emblems most bounty hunters were people who wanted to bounty hunt because everyone knew they were bounty hunters and they couldn't just walk up to you and down you before you realize who they are or what they are doing. So my opinion is get rid of being able to hide the emblem so people actually know who is trying to bounty hunt and makes it a challenge to go after people.

[Reformed epTic]

2 minutes ago, FireMelon said:

What he is saying, which I was just thinking about yesterday, is that there is no danger or consequence anymore to being a bounty hunter unlike being a cop or a rebel. A bounty hunter can run around all day with his gun out and no one can tell if he is a bounty hunter or just a normal civ also they get free passes from cops to be able to do so. This gives them advantage against everyone who doesn't want to be a bounty hunter which is starting to ruin the RP of the serves. The reason is now anyone that wants to make easy money can just get a bounty hunters license and run around with a hidden badge then down/arrest people with little to none RP besides "You are my bounty, hands up" pew pew you are down and going to jail. But before when they couldn't hide their emblems most bounty hunters were people who wanted to bounty hunt because everyone knew they were bounty hunters and they couldn't just walk up to you and down you before you realize who they are or what they are doing. So my opinion is get rid of being able to hide the emblem so people actually know who is trying to bounty hunt and makes it a challenge to go after people.

 

You fucking bleed money as a bounty hunter, it's not as easy as you think.

[Budbringer]

1 minute ago, FireMelon said:

What he is saying, which I was just thinking about yesterday, is that there is no danger or consequence anymore to being a bounty hunter unlike being a cop or a rebel. A bounty hunter can run around all day with his gun out and no one can tell if he is a bounty hunter or just a normal civ also they get free passes from cops to be able to do so. This gives them advantage against everyone who doesn't want to be a bounty hunter which is starting to ruin the RP of the serves. The reason is now anyone that wants to make easy money can just get a bounty hunters license and run around with a hidden badge then down/arrest people with little to none RP besides "You are my bounty, hands up" pew pew you are down and going to jail. But before when they couldn't hide their emblems most bounty hunters were people who wanted to bounty hunt because everyone knew they were bounty hunters and they couldn't just walk up to you and down you before you realize who they are or what they are doing. So my opinion is get rid of being able to hide the emblem so people actually know who is trying to bounty hunt and makes it a challenge to go after people.

Even though they dont have the shield out, you should be able to see that he is a BH from seeing his tac vest or downing weapons. Also, if you are wanted and are afraid of being caught, try to avoid populated areas. You shouldnt feel safe being in a town wanted

[FireMelon]

Just now, epTic said:

 

You fucking bleed money as a bounty hunter, it's not as easy as you think.

my first day bounty hunting I made 80k in 3 hours....

[Reformed epTic]

1 minute ago, FireMelon said:

my first day bounty hunting I made 80k in 3 hours....

80k in 3 hours isn't shit dude. 

[FireMelon]

3 minutes ago, epTic said:

80k in 3 hours isn't shit dude. 

so I buy one loadout for maybe max 10k and then go and make 80k, how is that hard? lol

Edited February 25, 2016 by FireMelon

[Reformed epTic]

Just now, FireMelon said:

so I buy one loadout for maybe max 10k and then go and make 70k, how is that hard? lol

Or, I could hop onto a server at 3am and do drug runs and make 2x or even 3x that money in 30-45 mins. 

[FireMelon]

Just now, epTic said:

Or, I could hop onto a server at 3am and do drug runs and make 2x or even 3x that money in 30-45 mins. 

what does that have to do with being a BH and "bleeding money"?

[pwnforwildy]

1 hour ago, Budbringer said:

Even though they dont have the shield out, you should be able to see that he is a BH from seeing his tac vest or downing weapons. Also, if you are wanted and are afraid of being caught, try to avoid populated areas. You shouldnt feel safe being in a town wanted

Tactical vests can be worn by civs aswell as bounty hunters. Either way, you can't compare bounty hunter clothing with police clothing. They are not one big group, you dont know who to stay away from and who will stay out of an escalation. If you want to be disguised as a bountyhunter you can just holster a P07 and tada you're a civ. I'm open for a fight and I'm not afraid to be caught, thats not the point. The point im trying to make is that considering the differences between civs and bounty hunters (both legal) is HUGE. And As I pointed out near the end, killing them only helps them gain more money when they actually catch you in the end.

Staying away from populated areas is not adressing the problem, but dodging it instead. No one wants to drive around in his car all day. We're looking to have fun and RP, especially in kavala, see first paragraph. Being hunted for some petty crimes or a 'selfdefense' manslaughter isnt fun, and takes away the RP from the APD part of Asylum. 

Edited February 25, 2016 by pwnforwildy

[pwnforwildy]

1 hour ago, epTic said:

Or, I could hop onto a server at 3am and do drug runs and make 2x or even 3x that money in 30-45 mins. 

Honestly, for me its not even about the money. I got enough cash to burn for a long time. It's just another thing that adds to the the pile of advantages bountyhunters already have.

[Reformed epTic]

1 hour ago, FireMelon said:

what does that have to do with being a BH and "bleeding money"?

You mean being out gunned, out numbered, and having absolutely no tactical advantages? 

[pwnforwildy]

Just now, epTic said:

You mean being out gunned, out numbered, and having absolutely no tactical advantages? 

I wrote about 1500 words in the first post about the advantages of bounty hunters. Including numbers, anonymity, load out. But also social advantages as no charges, always have your gun out etc. Read it man.

[Reformed epTic]

Just now, pwnforwildy said:

I wrote about 1500 words in the first post about the advantages of bounty hunters. Including numbers, anonymity, load out. But also social advantages as no charges, always have your gun out etc. Read it man.

If you're getting caught by a bounty hunter, it boils down to 1 of 2 things. 

1) You're afk in a city 

2) You, or your friends have shitty aim. 

Bounty hunters have to announce themselves, are usually solo, and are severely outgunned. 

The ability for bounty hunters to restrain people without them surrendering was removed because of rebels afking in cities and getting butthurt, and you want to further nerf them? 

[pwnforwildy]

Just now, epTic said:

If you're getting caught by a bounty hunter, it boils down to 1 of 2 things. 

1) You're afk in a city 

2) You, or your friends have shitty aim. 

Bounty hunters have to announce themselves, are usually solo, and are severely outgunned. 

The ability for bounty hunters to restrain people without them surrendering was removed because of rebels afking in cities and getting butthurt, and you want to further nerf them? 

I'll quote it for you.

2 hours ago, pwnforwildy said:

We're mainly looking at the imbalance between bounty hunters and civilians here. As you can note from the table, almost all the weapons of bounty hunters outscale the civilian weapons. The Rook and P07 are on the same level. Vermin is better than a PDW and the SDAR, in my opinion. On top of the increased fire-power, bounty hunters get a tactical vest. This is especially powerful against the lower-caliber rifles and the SDAR that has little to no penetration. It will absorb multiple shots and will give you a huge edge. The imbalance is clear, why do bounty hunters get this huge power spike?

2 hours ago, pwnforwildy said:

One of the biggest problems I haven't yet touched on: Fighting bounty hunters. When a fight in Kavala is won, it is common practise to 'camp' the body so they can't be revived. This makes for a lot of respawning. This plays into the bounty hunters own cards as following. When you know a bounty hunter is after you and you actually win the fight, you'll get a 5k charge for manslaughter at minimum. Additional charges can be killing medics that try to revive, or killing the person again after revive. Given that no matter how bad the bounty hunter's skill is compared to yours, eventually he'll be the one that will come on top. If you gain a 10k bounty per death, this basically means the bounty hunter can spend up to 10k EVERY death without losing money in the end. To equal the civilian gear, you'd need maybe 2-3k. Even if you win a battle, you will lose the war.

Numbers are probably different in each case. But it will be hard to make a case against load out. If you lose to a rook as a bounty hunter I think you're the one to be ashamed. But hey, you can just respawn and your bounty even gained charges! 

[Reformed epTic]

The SDAR chews through vests, if it can shoot thru a police vest it can shoot thru a tac vest. 

You have the ability to buy a large gun just as everyone else, it sounds like you're just pissed off because you're too lazy and or poor to buy anything other than a Rook and those damn bounty hunters are there to stop your RDM fest in Kavala. 

[blinky]

1 hour ago, epTic said:

Or, I could hop onto a server at 3am and do drug runs and make 2x or even 3x that money in 30-45 mins. 

Oh please, fuck off with that.  You can't even do a complete drug run in 30 min regardless of the server pop let alone 3 runs in 30 min. lmao

[Reformed epTic]

Just now, blinky said:

Oh please, fuck off with that.  You can't even do a complete drug run in 30 min regardless of the server pop let alone 3 runs in 30 min. lmao

You can most definitely do a heroin run in 30-45 mins 

[blinky]

6 minutes ago, epTic said:

You can most definitely do a heroin run in 30-45 mins 

Yes, with nothing larger than a offroad...

And you DEFINITELY aren't going to make anywhere near 80k, let alone 160k/240k which you stated was possible in the first comment.  

Just sayin, that's nowhere near possible.. Realistically, doing heroin, you'll make about 20k-30k MAX in 30 min. 

 

EDIT: And I apologize I misread your first comment as 2-3 drug runs in 30 minutes.  Regardless 2-3 times more than 80K is not possible so my comment still stands. 

Edited February 25, 2016 by blinky

[Ghost0fDawn]

On 2/25/2016 at 0:36 PM, FireMelon said:

What he is saying, which I was just thinking about yesterday, is that there is no danger or consequence anymore to being a bounty hunter unlike being a cop or a rebel. A bounty hunter can run around all day with his gun out and no one can tell if he is a bounty hunter or just a normal civ also they get free passes from cops to be able to do so. This gives them advantage against everyone who doesn't want to be a bounty hunter which is starting to ruin the RP of the serves. The reason is now anyone that wants to make easy money can just get a bounty hunters license and run around with a hidden badge then down/arrest people with little to none RP besides "You are my bounty, hands up" pew pew you are down and going to jail. But before when they couldn't hide their emblems most bounty hunters were people who wanted to bounty hunt because everyone knew they were bounty hunters and they couldn't just walk up to you and down you before you realize who they are or what they are doing. So my opinion is get rid of being able to hide the emblem so people actually know who is trying to bounty hunt and makes it a challenge to go after people.

As a cop, if I ask a bounty hunter to holster their weapon, I am often met with very defensive attitudes and non-compliance. "uhh, I'm a bounty hunter, I don't have to holster my weapon." That is most certainly not true. your weapon is to be holstered inside city limits no matter who you are. Bounty Hunters are not above the law and seem to think they are.

The sad thing is, usually when I tell them they are wrong and must holster their weapon, they try to tell me I am wrong. When you purchase a BH license, it states you are not to track wanted civs where cops are present without their permission, yet this doesn't exist. I actually got assaulted by a bounty hunter and he gave me non-reasonable time, downed me, and took me and my detainee. I asked him what he was doing and he said. "This guy is my bounty, I came to take him in." After explaining to him that I was an officer and that he is interfering with police business thus abusing his license, I offered him to let me and my detainee go and I would not charge him. He refused and said "No, I'm arresting him. He's my bounty. I'm keeping you in my truck until otherwise." I was actually laughing because the civs was in cop restraints and therefore could not be arrested by a BH. Either way, backup got there and he got shot out and died. GG.

[The Boss]

Too lazy to read the whole thread, but if you want lvl 1 armor as a civ, buy a rebreather, it offers the same level of protection as a tac vest.

[CyanogenCX]

I would like to point out that as a bounty hunter u can buy sdar and get the rounds from bounty hunter shop and it will down

[Chan Wong]

+1

Bounty hunting should be removed now that there is no age limit for APD.

Bounty hunter is basically a douchebag money-hungry cop. They cant pardon, give smaller tickets or parole. But they send straight to jail even if those charges were self defence or accident. 

BOUNTY HUNTER HAS NO RP AND WILL NEVER HAVE RP. Remove the cancer please.

[Reformed epTic]

17 minutes ago, Chan Wong said:

+1

Bounty hunting should be removed now that there is no age limit for APD.

Bounty hunter is basically a douchebag money-hungry cop. They cant pardon, give smaller tickets or parole. But they send straight to jail even if those charges were self defence or accident. 

BOUNTY HUNTER HAS NO RP AND WILL NEVER HAVE RP. Remove the cancer please.

Video evidence proves you're a liar. 
 

 

[Chan Wong]

48 minutes ago, epTic said:

Video evidence proves you're a liar. 
 

 

They are norwegians it sound like so ofc they're nice

[pwnforwildy]

4 hours ago, epTic said:

Video evidence proves you're a liar. 
 

 

Even the title of the video suggests its a rare case, and usually its just cancer.

[Eric916]

dammit and I wanted to be a bounty hunter... Lol

[TNT]

9 hours ago, epTic said:

Video evidence proves you're a liar. 
 

 

They are not being nice. They just don't know they can send people to jail at courthouse.

[The Boss]

22 hours ago, epTic said:

Video evidence proves you're a liar. 
 

 

One video proves he's a liar?

Go get a bounty, and try to rp with your captor, 98% chance he ignores you and sends you strait to jail for that $$$.

[Budbringer]

1 hour ago, The Boss said:

One video proves he's a liar?

Go get a bounty, and try to rp with your captor, 98% chance he ignores you and sends you strait to jail for that $$$.

It's not a bounty hunter job to rp your charges with you. His job is to arrest you, and if you are like me and Chau, steal your stuff and chop your vehicle also 

[The Boss]

18 minutes ago, Budbringer said:

It's not a bounty hunter job to rp your charges with you. His job is to arrest you, and if you are like me and Chau, steal your stuff and chop your vehicle also 

I never said it was :P. Just pointing out that the video is a rarity kappa

[Big Fred]

I wanted to dissect your post and counter your arguments, but since I lack a bit of time, I'm just going to leave this here:

1  . Bounty Hunters got buffed not very long ago, because their 9mm Sting were utterly useless against big-boy career criminals (rebels) and their 6.5mm and 7.62mm high power rifles. You should know this since as you stated yourself, or at least insinuated, you've been playing on Asylum for a longer time.

2. Weapons a civilian can get hold of will fire exactly the same range of ammunition as the Bounty Hunter weapons: from 9mm up to 5.56mm. The only difference is that the civ 5.56mm weapon is illegal and cannot fit a Scope (pro tip, use adaptive crosshair and don't be a gullible twat and buy those 20 round mags from that corrupt gun store clerk sign).

3. The Tac Vest is overrated. One (1!) good hit with a Rook in the head or in the knee will bypass any body armor of any Bounty Hunter and kill him instantly. I don't see how this is overpowered in any way, unless you're a worse potato than I am.

4. Paratus should raise the threshold on when you show up on the Bounty Hunter list to at least $5000. This would prevent people getting jailed for petty crimes like running a few paramedics over at the square, or lock-picking your girlfriends car because she forgot to give you the keys. 

 

There's probably more, but that's it for now.

[pwnforwildy]

4 hours ago, Big Fred said:

I wanted to dissect your post and counter your arguments, but since I lack a bit of time, I'm just going to leave this here:

1  . Bounty Hunters got buffed not very long ago, because their 9mm Sting were utterly useless against big-boy career criminals (rebels) and their 6.5mm and 7.62mm high power rifles. You should know this since as you stated yourself, or at least insinuated, you've been playing on Asylum for a longer time.

2. Weapons a civilian can get hold of will fire exactly the same range of ammunition as the Bounty Hunter weapons: from 9mm up to 5.56mm. The only difference is that the civ 5.56mm weapon is illegal and cannot fit a Scope (pro tip, use adaptive crosshair and don't be a gullible twat and buy those 20 round mags from that corrupt gun store clerk sign).

3. The Tac Vest is overrated. One (1!) good hit with a Rook in the head or in the knee will bypass any body armor of any Bounty Hunter and kill him instantly. I don't see how this is overpowered in any way, unless you're a worse potato than I am.

4. Paratus should raise the threshold on when you show up on the Bounty Hunter list to at least $5000. This would prevent people getting jailed for petty crimes like running a few paramedics over at the square, or lock-picking your girlfriends car because she forgot to give you the keys. 

 

There's probably more, but that's it for now.

Thank you for the answer!

Ofcourse, the first point you made is one of the first thing everyone thinks about. I haven't talked about this in the original post, sadly. I actually did some research on this, and went out of my way and asked some of the 'rebels' that run into bigger gangs (I think thats where most rebels are at, they rarely run alone) if they ever had any contact with bounty hunters while they were running with their gang. They told me it is a VERY rare occasion and succes is next to impossible. From this I made the conclusion that bounty hunters generally dont really deal with career rebels, even though they should now be geared to fight them (your point). What adds to this is that bountyhunters cannot restock, and in long-range battles the downing bullets will be less effective (rebels will just wake up after one minute). Also, bounty hunters taking down an Orca or an Ifrit will never happen. It is in the bounty hunter's own interest to not go near rebel gangs.

It doesn't take away though, that fighting a bounty hunter in a city-setting like Kavala is pretty much never-ending. As I pointed out before, killing a bounty hunter will give you a higher bounty, and if they will eventually catch you and receive a higher bounty payout. Also, increasing your bounty might attract other bounty hunters making the battle harder, and pretty much unwinnable. I think this is a core problem with the bounty hunter system, and should be worked at. Simply saying you should leave city areas when wanted doesn't solve the issue. No one wants to play a life simulator as a boring citizen that follows every rule possible.

When in an active firefight, it has been my experience that especially on close-range pistol fights aiming for the head/knees isnt that easy anymore.  I can't help but argue that if you change from 3/4th of the body 1 shot to about 1/3rd is a pretty big change.Maybe opinions on the power of the tactical vest are different for everyone, fair (Maybe I do have potato aim :P). But if the point is made that the tac vest adds little to nothing, why isnt it available for civilians to be used?

 

Edited February 29, 2016 by pwnforwildy

[Big Fred]

I find your take o  this whole issue either flawed or ill informed.

No offense intended. I just don't agree with your absolutes.

There's a lot of Bounty Hunters out there chasing after the bigger fishes in the rebel pond. Not everybody sticks around like a rash in Kavala.

Actually, in Kavala you'll mostly find newbie hunters learning the trade. Or the lazy ones. Or the crooked ones, with criminal intent, hiding behind a badge selling drugs to little children.

At least on S2. I don't know about the other servers, but I've seen some of the S2 hunters do crazy shit like storming the HQ and stealing criminals straight outta the hands of the APD.

 

Furthermore, I think you're forgetting one crucial point which haven't been touched yet: social networking and engineering.

Most people I know in Kavala follow some sort of moral compass and have a sense for survival. You can usually use either one to get along with them or push them around.

Sure, bagging a pistol banger for a lousy 5k bounty might seem worth it initially. But he'll be outta jail and back on the streets in Kavala within 10 minutes... the question is, will you (the BH I mean) still be there when he gets back with a grudge, a rook and maybe some friends as well?

Getting pistol banged by a 2k outfit and loose your 10k outfit gets tiresome after a while... Pistol Bangers can be your worst nightmare in Kavala, especially with text initiation.

Hell, even with direct VOIP initiation, you're probably going down before you even figured out who's yelling at you to put your hands up.

I've seen a lot of bounty hunters come and go in the streets of Kavala because they didn't follow the code or they pissed off the wrong crew.

[Sorrowing Butler]

One thing I would like to point out is that little chart leaves out the Rebel group. Most people playing as Civilians are doing so by choice. Going out, working at mining/drug running/excavating will get you plenty of money to zip in and out of a Rebel post and grab more powerful weaponry and armor than bounty hunters have access to. Considering as well the sheer amount of hatred I've encountered from most Rebels simply because I'm a BH, any time I go for a bounty I have to be extremely careful, more so than when I'm robbing people/stores. I've had rebels interfere with an arrest just because I'm a BH.

I tried bounty hunting a few months ago before the buffs, and quit almost immediately because going after anyone with decent weaponry and armor was suicide. The buffs aren't unreasonable.

If someone is running around Kavala as a pistol banger, harassing new players (I still remember when I joined the server *shiver*), why shouldn't bounty hunters be able to assist in keeping the peace?

And yes, a lot of bounty hunters aren't great at RP. Part of that is many times when I try to initiate RP, I get shot immediately, and a tac vest doesn't help a ton. Additionally, if you are a solo player like me, surprise and speed are often your best assets. You never know when someone is meta-gaming via TS or something and providing info on their location to a group member. Got nailed yesterday when a bounty conveyed to his gang where he was.

I don't believe that BH's are over-powered. Compared to an average Civilian, yes, they have access to better stuff. But compared to weapons both the Police and Rebels have, the BH's are still less powerful. And again, a Civilian is only a Civilian because they haven't purchased Rebel weapons.

[Dork]

On 2/25/2016 at 3:41 PM, epTic said:

80k in 3 hours isn't shit dude. 

i made 200k in 5 minutes, bought another rebels license...

Shits boring as fuck to roam the map and actually make decent money.