Intro

The community has been very vocal so far about bringing bounties into this game. Both passive players and aggressive players both have expressed their interest in a bounty system coming to the game to both bring the community together as well as add challenge. In this post, I’m going to break things down on why people want it, why it would work, and how bounties should work.

Why do people want bounties?

There’s multiple reasons people want them, and it comes from the camps of all types of Sea of Thieves players. Everyone benefits from it in a certain way, and on the whole it benefits the community.

The first type of people are those that prefer the PvE aspect of the game. People that like sailing around, killing skeletons, digging up treasure, chasing pigs. People that prefer this part of the game have asked about PvE servers, but it seems clear that isn’t the right answer. These types of players want bounties to try and deter crews from griefing other crews. Spawn killing and such would add a risk factor, and thus make the seas a bit less hostile without making it boring.

The second type are people who love the PvP. They love ship vs ship battles, they love flintlock fights, launching over to enemy ships is second nature, and betrayal at Skull Forts is their forte. These people aren’t griefers, they aren’t jerks, it’s just playing that aspect of the game and relishing in carnage. These crews want bounties because of the challenge. We’ve all played a game like GTA where sometimes we go on a rampage to get the cops on us to see how long we survive. Imagine getting a bounty on your crew and having 5 ships searching the map to find you and sink you. That puts you in a position where you would have the most amount of exhilarating “consensual” PvP. Sometimes (or all the time for some) it would be really fun to be the bad guy with the big target on your back.

The third type are people who don’t think there’s enough content and just want more to do in the game. This is a pretty simple one to explain. Pigs, chests, and skeletons not doing it for you? Get a bounty and wage war on the server, you versus everyone else. That not your cup of tea? Come together with other crews to police the waters of that terrifying galleon with blood red sails. Boom. More to do.

Why would bounties work?

The thing about bounties is that it deals with the issue of griefing or toxicity in the community without punishing those type of players directly. It makes it high risk, high reward. You can get the thrill of terrorizing a server and murdering everyone you meet, but then you have a giant target, literally and figuratively, on your back.

For the people who feel like victims, this gives you a fighting chance to make some gold without leaving the game and joining another server. Talk to passing ships or people on the Ferry of the Damned so that you can meet up and hunt down a common enemy. Get some gold and some revenge.

It also doesn’t alienate any parties. You can play the game exactly how you want, but it just adds an extra aspect to it. This makes it so the community isn’t stagnant. Everyone can work together or just go ham. It’s all up to your crew what they feel like doing when you raise the anchor.

How should bounties work?

I’m going to put this in point form so it’s not a wall o text, but rather clear and concise notes on the rules and mechanics of how bounties should function:

if your crew takes part in initiating combat against other players (YOU shoot first and kill them) you get a gold bounty on your crew. This means you wouldn’t get a bounty for defending yourself from another crew, but if you attack and kill people, boom, bounty.

bounties don’t kick in until your crew has sunk one ship and killed two enemy players unprovoked. This gives you a tiny amount of breathing room in case you “accidentally” kill someone or sink and steal from one ship. It’s just repeat offender that get bounties!

bounty goes up for every “innocent” rival crew member you kill after initiating combat (after bounties kick in). This goes up by a base gold amount, added up between all crew members, up to a certain gold amount.

bounty goes up for every ship you initiate attack on and sink, up to a certain gold amount.

when a crew has a bounty on them your ship’s sails glow and your character’s eyes glow. The brighter the glow, the higher the bounty. People know you’re a target and can choose whether or not they want to try and take you down. This also means you look totally epic if you have a bounty on you, so there’s another pro for the people who choose to play like that.

bounties are visible on a board on the Ferry of the Damned and on a board in the tavern at every outpost. The bounty keeps track of how many people they’ve killed, how many ships they’ve sunk, what their ship looks like (black hull, red sails, etc, and it updates), the bounty amount, and what outpost they last killed players nearest to (to give a hint where to start looking).

Bounties decay over time spent playing the game. Switching servers doesn’t get rid of it, you need to play the game and deal with the bounty being on your heads.

Each time a glowing ship is sunk, the bounty on the ship goes down unless they start attacking “innocent” ships, until the bounty disappears. This works in conjunction with the bounty time decay.

When crews come together to take out a bounty ship, they can only take part if they have no bounty on them at present. Glowing sail crews can’t just merc each other. This is about people who were either victims or just passive players who want to make gold taking down a scary glowing ship.

When a bounty ship is sunk, it marks a crew with a bounty token, one for each ship that actively took part in sinking the bounty ship. Participation in the bounty counts as either killing two members of the bounty ship’s crew, or hitting the bounty ship with three cannonballs. These tokens are TIED TO THE CREW. Crews in the game currently have a crew ID tied to the ship. There is one token given to each of the crews taking part in the sinking, and it is just a mark on the crew, so people can’t just kill you and take your bounty token. No betraying, no tomfoolery. You take part in it, you get rewards.

Tokens can be taken to the bounty board at any outpost and sold for gold for the crew, for the bounty amount. While no one can kill you and take your token, if your crew gets a bounty on them, you lose your token. There’s still a risk here. You need to get that token safely, quickly, and passively to an outpost. Play nice!

Conclusion

I’m sure I’m missing some things, and I’d love to hear everyone’s input. I was really surprised that a ton of people who go around killing people regularly in SoT want bounties too. So I tried to come up with the best mechanics and rules for how they should work, and why, so that no one feels alienated, attacked, or cheated. It also adds content and another way to play the game, to keep people complaining about lack of content happy. Thanks for any feedback, and I’ll see you out on the seas! ^__^;

Oh and if you like all the ideas (or most of them) please upvote this post so more people (and hopefully some folks from Rare) see it!