Hey everyone,

I'm working on a system to balance out the payment of bounties in Falskaar, and I was hoping to get some input on what you guys and gals thought.

As you all know, in vanilla Skyrim you get 100 gold for turning in a bounty. It doesn't matter what you did, kill a bandit, kill a giant, or battle a mighty dragon. You get 100 gold. It also doesn't matter what level you are. Be you level 1, or level 80, you get 100 gold. My solution is simple, use some maths to do some calculating based on two factors: Type of bounty, and player level. Falskaar has 4 types of bounties: Bandit, Spriggan, Falmer, and Giant. The harder the 'type' of bounty, the more you get. I should also note that the bounties are unlocked by levels. (Giant level 20+, Spriggan 10+, and Falmer 18+ and a quest completed)

I wanted some input on a few things:

1. How much should level affect how much you get? Should a level 80 get 10,000 gold? Or should a level 80 only get like 500 gold?

2. How much should the type of bounty affect how much you get? Fighting bandits is rather basic, so you get 100 base gold (+ level bonus), but fighting a giant is much harder. Should fighting a giant get you a HUGE bonus (like 1000 gold?) or a far more minor bonus like 200-250 gold?

3. Should bounty amounts be rounded? Are you okay with getting random amounts of gold like '741' '357' '152', or would you rather always get a clean amount? I.e. '740' '350' '150' If clean, how much should I round by? 10 gold, 25 gold? 50 gold?

I'm hoping that I can get some great input to balance this out! Note, things in Falskaar are a bit more expensive than vanilla Skyrim, but people always say they have too much money so that may not excuse higher bounty rewards.

So, let me know what you guys think by voting, or better yet, posting!

Thanks,

Alexander

I'd say level shouldn't matter for reward amount, but should influence what types of bounty you get a bit. So you're a little bit more likely to get say a giant at level 60 than you are at level 1.

I think gold should scale based on hardness, somewhere between the amounts stated. Maybe 500-750 for a giant?

If it's an official bounty (i.e. from the authorities), then rewards should be divisible by 5 at least.

I should also note that the bounties are unlocked by levels. (Giant level 20+, Spriggan 10+, and Falmer 18+ and a quest completed) Bandit bounties are available at all levels.

1) Level shouldn't matter, the quest is the same regardless of level. Scaling it to the players level is a poor idea

2) Different enemies should give better rewards. A giant should certainly get a bigger reward, a dremora Lord even more so etc

3) Mix it up, rounding the values is too gamey and doesn't feel very organic if you get what I mean.

1) Skyrim already has a problem with too much money in the system without enough gold sinks, and I'd be happy to see Falskaar not pile on even more.

2) Some variance based on enemy type is fine, but a drastic value swing runs the risk of infringing on #1.

3) I don't really care what the value is. Negotiated terms are often unclean numbers.

So it looks like, so far at least, the only part of my suggested tweaks that you guys like is mildly different amounts for the various types of bounties. I'm glad I asked! That's also the simplest to set up.

Another alternative would be to decide who they're going to fight based on a mix of level and random chance - make it possible to fight really weak bandits worth 200 gp even at level 80, but a bit more rare than giant encounters, which could be worth 1000 gp. This would eliminate the 'leveling' effect of gold rewards, and keep them difficulty based - you're not getting overpaid, you just get better and more difficult bounties! When things slow down enough you end up with a contract to go in and clear out people who shouldn't even be a problem.

The way that the bounties are set up and started though, I don't think I can bias what the player gets with techniques like that. I have to do it like vanilla did, where the story manager starts up a quest based on simple conditions, in this case one of the four catagories (Out of which of the 4 the player is a high enough level for), then it assigns a random matching location.

is there anything stopping you from just putting the bounty values in an MCM slider?

The fact that my mod doesn't use an MCM?

Ooh, a sudden burst of people who want a more severe bonus for level... Interesting.

Problem is gold has such little value in the game because of how easy it is to obtain already. Adding to that by making it easy within your mod also though scaling reward based upon level is a bad idea.

It gives the overall feeling of gold being less valuable than it otherwise should be and ultimately doesn't make sense.

Good point. I suppose I also agree that the world shouldn't really scale in that area with you so much. I guess they wouldn't go, "You are a demigod who is helping us, here take all our money." They would pay the set price for the deed done, and that's that. So I wouldn't want to overembellish the player's glory...

My $.02 for what it's worth:

I don't think bounty rewards should be affected by character level. If I'm a level 10 character and I take out a Spriggan, I don't think I should get paid less than a level 15 or 20 character who takes out the same Spriggan. If anything, I should get paid MORE because it would be a harder fight for me at a lower level than at a higher level.

I *do* think that enemy toughness should be a factor, though - you'd have to pay me more to take on a dragon or giant than a bandit.

Regarding rounding, I put in that I didn't care if it was rounded or not.

Kind of depends on what mods you're using, though. When you use something like Cutthroat Merchants or SkyRe, gold suddenly becomes extremely useful at any given level. That's what I don't think it should be scaled but should still vary a decent amount depending on the enemy you're pitted up against. If I'm going to use my valuable resources and time to go out and kill a giant for you, the reward I get from you better be at least enough to cover the supplies it took to make the journey and prepare myself for battle.

Why not just add an MCM anyways? Don't the menu's simply not appear if the user isn't using MCM menus?

Or you could take the speechcraft route.

Give dialogue options for getting more or less money.

Demanding, intimidating, extorting, asking nicely, or just refusing reward or something.

Alexander is trying to make his mod as vanilla-friendly as possible. This includes using a minimum amount of additional resources, scripts, and changes to the overall feel of Skyrim. I imagine that he seeing adding an MCM menu as a step in the wrong direction if he wants to maintain this ideology while finalizing the mod.

Yeah, I'm only adding features and additional things if they really make a difference in the mod. I'm not going to mess learning about MCM and all that setup just for a bounty slider. If people really want that kind of control they can make a quick plugin that alters the amount you get from the bounties.

I want my mod to fit in with Vanilla Skyrim indeed, so I'll approach this from that angle. The one in which money is fairly common, so it appears I'll be rewarding the player less, but still enough to cover costs. I certainly wouldn't cheap out on them either.

Hmmm, big variety in opinion here. What about this - The total reward will be a mix of three things (I'll balance out the numbers, these are just example):

1. A base value depending on the type of bounty. I.e. something like 100 gold for Bandits, but 300 for giants.

2. A bonus for the player's level. Not huge. Maybe 10 gold per level? Enough to make the difference bigger for higher level people. A level 5 may get 200 gold, but a level 80 will get closer to 1,000.

3. A random bonus, this makes sure that the number is always a little bit random. I may calculate a random number to add 20 gold, or something like that. The bigger bounties (Giants, etc) will have a chance at larger random bonuses.

The result is a number that changes based on the bounty, the players level, and random addition/subtraction of money, without ever rewarding the player an absurd amount (Thousands), but also without leaving it bland like the vanilla setup. (Here's your 100 gold no matter what, go away)

Thoughts?

EDIT: Keep in mind that while rewarding a lot of gold is indeed a bad idea, rewarding barely any can be just as bad. Money is often used as an incentive, purely out of the vanity of getting money. In Skyrim I often got bored of bounties because my level 50 only made 100 gold off of them (Plus loot, which is leveled, but still). My solution means that even at higher levels you can get more relevant amounts of gold. So even if I don't necessarily want or need the gold, I can enjoy doing the bounties because I know I am being rewarded for doing so.

It just adds some underlying incentive to the gameplay, and will keep things interesting for higher level players. However, of course, I do want to be very careful not to over-reward them, saturating their gameplay with piles of money. As that destroys any remaining incentive and kills the fun factor pretty fast.

I think that last proposal's a good one Alexander. Level affecting pay is a factor in the real world too--even on some bounties. Bonuses based on seniority or experience are sometimes applied on contractual or similarly temporary services rendered, in part to keep more capable parties around and interested. And you're right, part of the value of pay is for vanity. Earning more does, to some extent, lend a sense of importance. Getting money isn't entirely about getting to spend it on things...

i like that idea, but i still think 10 gold per level is a bit too much, but the extra 800 at lvl 80 isn't too bad imo.

giants are harder to kill than bandits, so they should be worth more, but not lots and lots.

i wouldn't use the rounded numbers, it feels more like you've bartered the price to 452 for example.

in my perfect game a bandit would reward 100-300 and giants like 200-500.

i really like where you're heading with this!

if you store the data about bounty prices in global variables.
then send me a list of the EDID's and tell me whether they are integer or float globals, and their default values

then I'll send you the papyrus code for the menu.

its literally like 2 minutes to code.

Have you considered adding a time factor to the quest? If it's possible to record the time the quest started, and how long it takes to complete, you could then use that to calculate the leveled reward - incentives to get on the job right away.

I like that idea. Adds a feeling of urgency. Also means you can be like a professional bounty hunter, nothing makes something feel like a job quite like deadlines

- Hypno