[2022] Question about hunting events (Bounty)

Correct! Part of streamlining the event to make it possible on other servers was to have all volunteers use their own accounts. However, since it was the press-account name that told people who was a bounty and who was not a bounty in previous events, we needed a way to show it, so we made markers! This fixed several long-term problems the bounty event had:

Distributing hundreds of press accounts is very time consuming


"Policing" the press account users was tough since they had to be matched up against their user if they broke rules (time)


Distributing rewards for participation had to be done manually after the event was over (time)


Players could not track their progress in real-time and had to "count" the number of battles they played themselves


Teammates often considered the press accounts to be "bots" and saw them as a liability to have on their team

Now, a player should be perform any differently than they would on their normal account

Players in press accounts would put in lots of games but did not get to keep the CXP, FXP, credits, missions progress, or other things they earned

This was the biggest one for me. I did not like that players would miss out on missions and the economics of their games to volunteer.

Unfortunately, there were some upsides to the Press Accounts that are now lost:

Players liked being able to try ships they did not yet have on their own accounts


Being extra-targeted did not affect a person's stats if that is something they care about

Potentially, yes - but I suspect most Bounty volunteers will heed my warning and play more cautiously knowing that they will have a literal target on their back

I know. I am sorry about that. This was a necessary part of upgrading the event, I'm afraid. The good news is that there are a whole bunch of new possibilities for further in-game activities that can come about from this. We're already working on future iterations and how they can be slightly different to be more fun

Right? There is something oddly satisfying about getting a unique number in an ocean of uniformity and being like, "This is my bounty account. There are many like it, but this one is mine".

Technically they could, yes - but what I don't want to do is flood the server with a few specific ships in the case of "just a few rentals" and trying to add many rentals to that many accounts is a prohibitive amount of work.