Level your bounty - bug or ZOS troll?

Verbalinkontinenz

So hello Community,

recently i grinded up a twink on my second account, j4f - and made it with bounty this time.

I killed some random NPC on Level 20 or 25 back then in Deshaan until I had a Bounty of approximatly 35k. Since I planned to grind to lvl 50 and didnt have bigger interests in that char, I thought I could check some things regarding bounty. So often there had been some people, telling they they got high bounty "out of nowhere", without doing anything. I was laughing also...usually...the people know, from where they get that.

So this is what happened:

After I had that bounty of approx. 35k I went on grinding my level up. After a while I recognized, that my bounty has increased instead of falling some coins. I started to get nervous, did I kill an NPC or something like that. I was sure, I have been grinding in an area full of enemies and also that I didnt kill a friendly NPC. So I started watching it and searching for the reason.

All in all I recognized after logout and login later, that my bounty again, even beeing offline increased. That has been wrong perception, since your bounty in the bottom corner and the bounty in your profile aren't always the same. The bounty-counter in the bottom corner is a bit slow, so it took me again some level to recognize, that leveling your char increases your bounty. I even changed my settigs so couldnt attack friendly NPC.

So.....I managed to grind my char from lvl 30 to lvl 50 within one evening. So that bounty has been increased each level by 1.737g - I ended up on Lvl 49 with approx. 84k - 85k.

But then on lvl 50 I was really like...wooooow....

I didnt get only 1.737 extra.... I finally ended up on 113k bounty just by leveling my char.
My second account has 180CP. So I am wondering, wether gaining CP also increases your bounty.

I didnt get any higher bounty by getting an CP from 180 to 181. But maybe someone wants to check it, when you level CP from 10 to 160?

So my question is:

Its clear, that you get higher bounty from same action depending on your level. But does that also mean, that the bounty levels with you also is intended?
Till now I didnt get any answer on german board to this. But maybe here. Is that working as intended or a bug?

Nestor

Were you killing Livestock?

Verbalinkontinenz

No!

I killed for example dremora in coldharbour or zombies in coldharbour. Okay I will respect that question as question to secure the writer isnt totally dumb.

JamieAubrey

Damn, someone is punishing you for grinding. This is why I keep attack innocents off, just in case

DRXHarbinger

I think the more bounties you get the higher it scales in the long term.

Did TG quests with my NB that never had a bounty. After racking up a few ks worth I'm. Now getting 92 for every failed pick pocket and 900 for every murder (if it fails a few times at 95% the useless scum get shanked by blade of woe) it may scale with legermain though..stuck at level 16 for today. Will know more tomorrow if this is true, but it does increase. You certainly don't get that bounty at level 3. You get about 6 gold for an offense.

DocFrost72

I think your bounty is based entirely off level, crime, and applicable passives. So while it makes game sense your bounty went up leveling, it makes no practical sense.

But I mean by the same token, I deposited around a million gold on my imperial and my bosmer alt walks up and draws from it like it's all good, so sometimes "no sense" is necessary.

idk

Bounty amount is tied to character level. As you increase level you incressed the multiplier for the bounty.

Verbalinkontinenz

Well, just to make sure - I am not searching for a solution against my bounty, i just dont care for it, since i do not plan to play that char the next days or plan to make some quests with it, so the bounty will slowly decrease and all is fine - i just want to know, wether ZOS knows that and wethere it intended or not

DocFrost72

Verbalinkontinenz wrote: »

Well, just to make sure - I am not searching for a solution against my bounty, i just dont care for it, since i do not plan to play that char the next days or plan to make some quests with it, so the bounty will slowly decrease and all is fine - i just want to know, wether ZOS knows that and wethere it intended or not

I would say with confidence it is intended. Though, if you made a case, I'm sure you could argue that it shouldn't be. That, however, is something to /feedback. Less trolls that way

Verbalinkontinenz

DocFrost72 wrote: »

Verbalinkontinenz wrote: »

Well, just to make sure - I am not searching for a solution against my bounty, i just dont care for it, since i do not plan to play that char the next days or plan to make some quests with it, so the bounty will slowly decrease and all is fine - i just want to know, wether ZOS knows that and wethere it intended or not

I would say with confidence it is intended. Though, if you made a case, I'm sure you could argue that it shouldn't be. That, however, is something to /feedback. Less trolls that way

We could start to philosophize about that, since I also cant be punished with my 30 years for stuff, I did with 12 just because i aged too fast

Nestor

Verbalinkontinenz wrote: »

No!

I killed for example dremora in coldharbour or zombies in coldharbour. Okay I will respect that question as question to secure the writer isnt totally dumb.

No, it's not a dumb question as there are places in the game that people grind that also have Livestock nearby. While you typically can't AoE or target livestock with skills, they do go down with Light and Heavy Attacks. Being that the game targets what ever is closest to you with L or H attacks, this can happen more easily than you think.I racked up a bounty this way. Had some farmer chasing me too. Note, I have not killed, intentionally, any livestock in this game except on that one character.

Asardes

Some months ago the cool down was indeed much faster. It didn't matter if you stole, killed or ran from city guards, in a couple of hours you were clean again. If you ran outside town or in the outlaws refuge and logged out you would be clean next day even if you had a 10K bounty. Now If you kill NPCs or run from guards after you get caught the cool down for bounty states decreases on its own much slower than for property crimes. And the bounty itself is level dependent. So it's entirely possible to level your char, with bounty increasing from that faster than it's decreasing from cool-down. I think they introduced the change with DB, to actually make the passives from TG and DB lines matter - Scales of Pitiless Justice, Swiftly Forgotten, Clemency and Timely escape would be useless if you could lose the bounty like in the old days.

Verbalinkontinenz

Nestor wrote: »

Verbalinkontinenz wrote: »

No!

I killed for example dremora in coldharbour or zombies in coldharbour. Okay I will respect that question as question to secure the writer isnt totally dumb.

No, it's not a dumb question as there are places in the game that people grind that also have Livestock nearby. While you typically can't AoE or target livestock with skills, they do go down with Light and Heavy Attacks. Being that the game targets what ever is closest to you with L or H attacks, this can happen more easily than you think.I racked up a bounty this way. Had some farmer chasing me too. Note, I have not killed, intentionally, any livestock in this game except on that one character.

U cannot attack them when u check in your settings to spare out friendly NPC...i don't know how its called in english, I guess u know what I mean ^^ So as said, I really have been checking the areas I grinded and am sure, that this really didn't happen, because I was first also insecure if something like that happened. But nada

Asardes wrote: »

Some months ago the cool down was indeed much faster. It didn't matter if you stole, killed or ran from city guards, in a couple of hours you were clean again. If you ran outside town or in the outlaws refuge and logged out you would be clean next day even if you had a 10K bounty. Now If you kill NPCs or run from guards after you get caught the cool down for bounty states decreases on its own much slower than for property crimes. And the bounty itself is level dependent. So it's entirely possible to level your char, with bounty increasing from that faster than it's decreasing from cool-down. I think they introduced the change with DB, to actually make the passives from TG and DB lines matter - Scales of Pitiless Justice, Swiftly Forgotten, Clemency and Timely escape would be useless if you could lose the bounty like in the old days.

You think? I logged out approx 2 am german time, now it is 4:35 pm, my bounty at least fell 8k. Doesnt sound so much otherwise from your example from "back then".

Haxnschwammer

Has the Decreasing-tick also gone up?

I guess the mechanic is like that:

You do something and get X Bountyunits
Bountyunits get multiplied with level multiplier

So you start with level 10 = 35k and end with level 50 100k

Seems to match what happened.

Following the same logic the deacreasing tick should also be higher.
Every 3 minutes your bounty gets decreased by Y bountyunits (passive skill abilities not included).
This is a constant, but the amount will be changed by your level.
The bounty also decreases by a higher (gold)amount which means the time to go away should be the same.

I can't check that atm...

Cryptical

I feel this is a bug. Likely not intended.

Grinding is sorta skipping all the quests and events that are the game-as-constructed and leveling artificially fast, so they probably didn't factor rapid leveling into the bounty calculations.

I imagine that they would expect that a bounty will slow down leveling, as you have to slow down and creep around to avoid guards to do the game quests.

Enodoc

I can't say for certain, but I would think it is most likely intended. You get a higher bounty for a single crime at a higher level, and the bounty decay rate is higher for a higher level, so to ensure that these things remain in parity, the bounty will need to bump up a bit with each level too.

Verbalinkontinenz

u think so? to me it seems like someone didnt think about what happens, if someone levels up very fast with bounty. but all in all it also tells me, if i want to make some crimes and achievements i should do it on a very low char, to get away with that as cheap as possible.

Enodoc

Consider the alternative: if it didn't happen, levelling up would make your bounty disappear faster, and that doesn't sound like it would be intended.

SirAndy

Bounty scales with your level, that is intended ...

Verbalinkontinenz

Enodoc wrote: »

Consider the alternative: if it didn't happen, levelling up would make your bounty disappear faster, and that doesn't sound like it would be intended.

headscratch dunno O.O
yeah i know....or not. dunno...but its weird all in all, starting with 35k and ending up with 114k one day later ^^'

Capsaica

I'm guessing that this is an unintended consequence of an intended mechanic. Things cost less on lower level characters intentionally. Porting to wayshrines costs less and bounties are lower, for example.

A higher level character accrues a higher bounty for the same crime than a lower level character would get. For example, if stealing one item on a level 50 character gives you a 100 gold bounty, then a level 10 character might get a bounty of 20 for the same theft of a single item. As you level that level 10 character up to level 50 very rapidly, your bounty gets translated to the level 50 character's bounty of 100 per item stolen. Therefore, if you have a 10,000 gold bounty at level 20, your bounty would be 50,000 gold on a level 50 character that was instantly leveled to 50. Of course, some of your bounty will decay, even with speed leveling, so your base bounty is going down even as your bounty "level" is going up.

Those were just random numbers to explain the idea, not real in-game bounties.

The real question is how the game treats your increased bounty. If you have a bounty when you level up, and your bounty is leveled up as well, does the game treat that increased bounty as if you have committed another crime, and thus it resets the timer for bounty decay? That could help explain why it kept increasing, even with down time not committing a crime.

Apherius

113K bounty ? where is the problem xD just pay it and you will have a beautiful " achievement "

Cryptical

SirAndy wrote: »

Bounty scales with your level, that is intended ...

I want a link to support that.

bebynnag

I noticed that existing bounties scale as you level no idea if it is intended but i can confirm it happens

mine was on a much smaller scale, i got detected BOWing in kvatch (level 9), ran away from guard, travelled to sanctuary handed in quest which leveled me (to 10) & increased my bounty

Verbalinkontinenz

Apherius wrote: »

113K bounty ? where is the problem xD just pay it and you will have a beautiful " achievement "

nooooo. its not like i couldnt pay it....but...noooo haha