Stop me if this sounds at all familiar to anyone. I go to town and accidentally bump someone with my horse. He gets pissed and starts shooting at me, so I shoot back and kill him. Then all of the sudden the wanted thing pops up and I try to escape. They chase me down and start shooting at me, so I shoot back and kill a few cops. I eventually escape, but now I have a $60 bounty on my head -- fine, makes sense. I pay it off. I go back to town. Some dude tries to start some shit with me, so I tell him to go screw himself. He pulls out a gun and shoots at me, so I kill him. Once again, the cops are out to get me even though I didn't start the conflict, I just finished it. I try to escape, but this time I die. It restarts me at whatever checkpoint system it uses, and then it says I have a $50 bounty. But, I died. Why do I still have a bounty? Apparently, unless I'm missing something, that's not a bug. It's how the game is designed. You keep your bounties even if you die during the process.

And what compounds the problem is the horrendous controls. I'm about 20 hours in and I still can't get a hold of the controls when I have to operate under any sort of pressure -- outside of combat, I'm okay. This game is impressive in so many ways, but I find these issues to be incredibly frustrating. Am I the only one? I haven't seen too many other people mention this.

If bounties went away on death you could just rack up a giant bounty and get yourself killed and effectively pay it off for like 10 bucks. It also wouldn't work with the story. I've found that the easiest way to deal with accidental shit like that is just to run. As far as I can tell you don't get bounties on your head unless a lawman sees you do shit, so if you just run right away and get your wanted level dropped everything is fine.

Yeah, the bounty system seems weirdly unbalanced and potentially broken.

I robbed two different secret operations and ended up shooting lots of people and cops both times. I ended up with a bounty of $80 for one and $10 for the other. That seems wrong.

I also think that masking up to hide your identitiy is equally broken/bugged. I mask up, rob someone, get away without anyone seeing me. The onscreen prompt still always changes from unknown suspect to Arthur Morgan and I again end up with some random bounty on my head.

@ares42: I mainly just mean when you're in a particular encounter. Like I once tried to rob a train on my own, but I royally failed and racked up an 80 dollar bounty. When I died, I still had the bounty on my head, but had none of the few things I managed to steal before I died. I even wore the bandanna, but that apparently does not do the thing the description says it does. It's just super weird.

@sessh: I've heard that your outfit and horse are a factor too. Its not enough to just put the mask on. If you wear the same clothes and use the same horse into town as you do when you rob people, you'll get recognized.

I don't like how it works either and seems way too sensitive or not clear in what things will trigger it. I jumped out of a window, which was reported for vandalism, then the cops showed up and killed me. I had to pay the bounty after that.

It also doesn't seem all that realistic for some of the quests you stumble upon either. Someone was locked in a basement and asked me to help them, but the only way to get to them was to hold the store clerk up (rob) or trespass, which then automatically gives you a bounty or results in them calling for the Sheriff. You can't report the crime to the Sheriff or go about it any other way, as far as I could tell.

I just heard about this today, after a weekend of being confused on exactly how the Bandana works. And that's cool for sure..... but I don't remember anything in the game telling me I had to switch outfits and/or horses! It probably does in the "Help" menu or somesuch, but it'd be nice if it also said something under the bandana description, or a forced tutorial popup. Anything to bring that Very important tidbit to the player's attention as early as possible.

@mobiusfun: Huh, okay, that explains that then.

It's certainly interesting and kinda cool but also means even more micromanagement, which honestly, sucks.

It seems like any sort of petty crime is intensely discouraged.

Which I imagine of course is precisely the point but does just kind of discourage interacting with that system at all until forced to.

@mobiusfun: This was from a Reddit thread in which a user posted a video of him not getting recognized during a robbery. The user is under the impression that you have to change your clothes, change your horse, wear a bandanna, and put this whole getup together before being seen by anyone. This is not confirmed, though, and it's just as likely that the person got lucky with not being recognized. I'm seeing this spread a lot as if it is fact, but we really don't know yet.

@efesell: yeah which is crazy considering you’re literally playing the game as an outlaw and are encouraged via the story to commit crimes.

Well as to that I think it's actually sensible because the story does feel constantly like its yelling at you to stop fuckin' standing out and doing petty shit and when someone in your dumbass crew does it anyway it all goes terribly.

So yeah I understand why it's like this but also sometimes you just wanna go ham and have some fun.

I actively stay away from doing crimes unless the story has you doing it, and I never attack or antagonize anyone. While the story doesn't necessarily affect my choice wanting to do this, the story does seem to want you to be 'the good guy' until you can't during the story. The way Arthur is conflicted with it. I don't like that some of the main missions make you get bounties. I'm only 25 percent the way through the story, but still, money isn't in huge commodity yet, so when I get bounties, it really kind of sucks. Also, it kind of sucks when you're looting a bad guy, and some passerby notices it and runs off to tell the law; they don't always listen to you to calm down, so some might pull a gun on you which furthers me having to shoot them and my moral meter goes down. It has only happened once, but still. I don't really have an issue with it, to me it still goes back to the realism of the game and whether you like it or not. While it isn't realistic that you get killed and still have to pay a bounty, it's not realistic to die and then come back to life either. They have to make it so it's not so easy to get away with shit (or, they don't, but that's not really what they're going for in this game).

man the fact that you complain about the "horrendous controls" means this game is just not for you. its a methodical game where there are consequences for every action, unfortunately for you its not GTA, i happen to love it though. if you're comitting crimes without your mask on and without a fast escape you're gonna end up in shit. Hitting people with your horse is avoidable, just slow down, getting into shootouts is always avoidable, so dont, or be okay with cops and bounty hunters on you. bounty hunters show up but dont affect your bounty if you kill them, and most of the time the towns will ignore your bounty anyway, i have 225 in valentine, and they let me conduct my business, i do have to fend off the bounty hunters every 10 minutes or so, but they have good loot.

I'm surprised no-one has mentioned yet, but apparently you can talk to the cops and potentially talk down your crime? I heard this second hand and haven't had the chance to test, but if you don't do anything too serious (murder and actively attacking cops seem like "too serious"), then when the cops show up, you can "lock on" to them like anyone else - put your weapon away first! - and tell them your side of the story. "That guy hit me first, I was defending myself" and so on. This is also how you surrender and voluntarily go to jail if you can't talk your way out of it. Again, the crime has to be minor enough that the cops haven't switched to "bring him in in a body bag" mode. Might be worth testing. I know there are a few dumb mistakes that led to tens of dollars in bounties (not insignificant in early game) that I definitely would have preferred just sitting in prison for a few days.

Also, no, you aren't wrong. The bounty system seems obtuse to the point of comedy. I made a much more long-winded and crazy-person-sounding post about it myself.

Yeah, the bounty system is one of my only gripes with the game. It's simply too delicate, lawmen have x-ray vision and see Arthur through any number of potential disguises you wear. Doesn't matter if you roll into a new town with fresh duds and a full mask, different horse, random worn guns, whatever. Doesn't matter. Lawmen sees you from any distance, instantly tagged as Arthur Morgan. It seems like the only thing that matters is if you put on the mask before you do some dirty work, and then high-tail it out of there before the law shows up. That, or make sure whatever you are going to be doing is lucrative enough to outweigh the bounty you will accrue.

For example, robbing a train with a bunch of people in it is worth it. Lawmen will show up, they'll definitely see you, but you can make a lot of cash from looting the train and robbing every single person. My perfect train robbery was jumping to the front of the train from horseback and stopping it in the middle of a huge bridge. There was no way for lawmen to get to the train on horseback, so I had free reign to rob every mark in there. Between valuables and raw cash, I made over 200$ from one robbery. I only killed one lawman, and managed to get away, so my bounty was only like 50 or 60 bucks. If I gave a shit about bounty hunters, I could just pay that off and have made over 150 bucks, but bounty hunters are fun to murder, so I usually keep my bounty.

So in summary, try to plan an escape route and hit em' hard and fast. Get in, get out. Try to get out before the law shows up, and if they do, try not to kill any of them. Killing lawmen is the thing that really raises your bounty.

@gtb08: Maybe "horrendous" is too harsh, but I'm not the only one who's having a hard time with the controls. Plus, I really do love this game, when it's not pissing me off that is. I don't really have the horse problem anymore because I took Alex's advice and started to move at the pace the game wants me to move, but still -- this is the only game I've ever put 20 hours into without having a full grasp of the controls. Again, outside of combat it's fine, but the problem I'm having is whenever the game tries to translate that slow, methodical type of gameplay over to any sort of pressured situation, specifically combat. The number of times I have died by bounty hunters while on horseback because I was fiddling around with the controls, trying to heal because there's no difficulty slider (and 5 bounty hunters hitting you at once is rough) all while my horse keeps running in weird directions instead of just following the road is a lot.

When it comes to the bounties, I just can't get over the fact that they don't disappear when you die during the encounter in which you rack up the bounties in the first place, and especially when most of the time the encounter wasn't really my fault. Again, I love what this game is trying to go for, but boy...I just really wish there was a difficulty slider at the very least. But this game is long, and maybe by hour 60 I'll have it all down!

I've just been rolling around with as an outlaw murdering and pillaging with impunity, racking up \huge bounties that I have no intention of paying off in most counties. Feels like it fits the narrative well anyway given that you're supposed to be a "wanted" man... The bounty hunters really aren't bad at all. You can always see them coming on the minimap and run away if you don't feel like fighting.

@poobumbutt: Oh that's interesting, yeah I might do a hard save and try to figure that out!

@doctordonkey: Yeah that's fair. I need to practice with horse combat more, maybe try to get my dead eye leveled up too. One of the reasons I started this post was because I was trying to do a certain mission in a certain "wanted dead or alive" area and kept getting murdered by bounty hunters.

It doesn't seem to have much discernable logic to it but I figured you're just supposed to have bounties and be wanted in the places you've been.

the story missions give you big bounties so the game is just meant to be that way I suppose. trying to be clean in every district is a losing battle

It made me not want to play the game anymore, so I'd say it's broken. Obviously a lot went into making this game and it shows but I believe this game is overrated. There are no parts of this game that are enjoyable. Shooting is crap, hunting is crap, mini games are crap. Maybe it's just me.

If you get a ridiculous bounty then die, then why don’t you just reload to your previous save from before you started shit?

hopefully they balance it more with a patch

I robbed a back business in a store....no one saw, I walked out and then sheriffs appeared had to kill them in a shoot out ended up with $180 bounty basically crippled me got a bit to get saving.

I think it's just broken. Just today I had two instances of the system just seemingly putting a bounty on me for the hell of it.

The first time, I was actually turning in a bounty for the Sheriff. Got the target all tied up, brought him back to the Sheriff's office, and dropped him in the cell. The Sheriff gives me my money and then all of a sudden draws on me for seemingly no reason and I get a bounty for "disturbing the peace."

The second time I encountered a woman who was being abducted. I shot the guy who was kidnapping her, got her down off his horse and then untied her. Instead of thanking me, she freaked out, and immediately ran off to tell the cops and I got a bounty on my head for murder, presumably because she saw me kill the guy who was kidnapping her.

I walked my horse up to a mission giver and my horse stepped up some stairs and made a noise. As I got off the horse people freaked out and scattered and then the mission giver was locked. A Wanted sign pops up for "Animal Cruelty". I apparently hurt my horse somehow? I have no idea what I even did. My horse did not fall or take any damage. I take my horse and leave the red "wanted" area as the lawmen are magically on the scene within moments. They leave, I return, the mission remains locked and I know have a $5 bounty.

In another incident I came across a man that was standing over a dead body, with another dead body hanging from a carriage. The man sees me and tells me to get lost and puts his hand on his gun. I don't leave right away and he draws so I kill him. A witness runs off and I get Wanted for murder and have a $30 bounty.

Another time gang members blocked the road and wanted to rob me. I killed them. Someone sees me looting them and instantly takes off as a witness. I get another bounty.

I just don't understand how you can have any fun in this game sometimes. People attack you and are clearly criminals, yet you get wanted for defending yourself. Its beyond annoying.

But then you can do side missions where you just commit murder and everything is fine. Game feels all over the place at times. One moment I'm having an amazing time and the next I'm ready to turn the game off.

Played through most of the game with over $1000 in bounties in every state. Just deadeye a dozen bounty hunters/dogs in the face every so often and the game goes on as normal. I think it does get to the point where every time you leave a town there's a posse waiting for you but that's just a good ol' wild west time, really.

I had a particular egregious moment earlier where some thug started verbally harassing me literally 7 feet from a lawman in Saint Dennis. I antagonized him a couple times and he ended up drawing a knife and running at me. Instead of punching him right away, I figured I'd just dodge him while making my way towards the lawman. So here we are, dude just wildly stabbing at me and trying to murder me, while Mr. Lawman is two feet from us, staring directly at us, completely unfazed by the whole thing. This goes on for about a minute, while the lawman is literally dodging out of the away and stepping aside when we get too close to him. Eventually I saw "screw this" and punch Mr. knifey guy, my swing misses, and in the span of about 3 seconds this is what transpires:

Lawman shouts at me to stop, then proceeds to tell me I'm a dead man, pulls his gun on me, a 5 dollar bounty goes on my head, Mr. knifey guy transforms into Mr. shooty guy and pulls a gun on me, and then I visibly see two lawmen spawn out of thin air right in front of him and start shooting me. Now I've got the entire town on me in a matter of 3 seconds, because my fucking punch whiffed. What the absolute hell christ is that?

I wish this would get fixed, but something tells me it's ingrained too deeply into the clockwork that the bounty system runs on and would require a ton of work. Such a bummer when stuff like this happens, it really pulls you out of the game and makes you just not want to escalate things and pick defuse in every situation and move on.

Yea I ended up saying screw it and stop paying any bounty I get. Makes the game more fun #funner getting to murder bounty hunters that come for me constantly too

Yeah, the whole bounty/wanted system in this game is truly terrible.

One of the more egregious cases I've run into this game was when I walked into the saloon once in Valentine and had a guy bump into me immediately as I'm walking through the door and challenge me to a duel. Before I can finish reading the text in the top-left corner telling me this, a random guy out of nowhere punches me unprompted in the back of the head. This causes three different people in the saloon to turn hostile and immediately start shooting me. As I run away after having done nothing to respond to or provoke any of this, I get a bounty placed on my head.

Masks being virtually useless and lawmen spawning almost instantly in the middle of nowhere aren't great either.

@therealturk: Ya I tried hog tying the guy, and bringing him back to the Sheriff. Boy oh boy that didn't go over well at all. Here I am trying to go out of my way to do this man's dirty work, and he just thinks "Hey, let's just assume you're an asshole" and starts shooting at me.

Ugh...this game sometimes. I really wish it didn't look so good, so I could finally just put it down altogether because I hate nearly everything else about it. But it looks so. DAMN. GOOD.

I'm in Chapter 3 now, and I have some level of bounty pretty much everywhere I've been. I refuse to pay them unless necessary for story missions. It hasn't been all that bad, I've gotten into a few unfortunate situations but for the most part I am unaffected.

The bounty system in this game is fucking trash. I was in valentine and got confronted by some bad guys. I walk away and they start shooting and chasing me. I run into the sherrfis office and he kills them,i don't fire a single shot. I leave and get a $15 bounty on me that turns into $140 after I got chased for a long time and finally just started shooting them out of frustration.

@jmariv: I'm a good halfway through the game and have yet to pay a bounty. Sure, I've accrued bounties, pretty much everywhere in the game, but I refuse to pay a serious percentage of my total income for what is mostly stuff you either have to do on story missions, or are coerced into.

I find, and figured it would be, easier to deal with bounty posses, than have any hope of the bounty system making any real sense. Sure, I died quite a lot early on, but now I keep an eye on the circumference of the minimap and either gallop my horse the direction opposite where they are until they disappear, or find a suitable spot to hold my ground.

Truth be told, doing it this way is not only more immersive, but more realistic. The game starts out talking about it's time period as one which the land becomes one with laws, and outlaws are hunted down, which is a fairly accurate description of that time in the US. It seriously takes away from that realism if those posses suddenly stop hunting you if you just pay a bounty, especially after killing many people.

Bounty system is one of the issues that made me quit the game in the first time.

@ulfhedinn:

Like I said, the game is more interesting to play the less you partake in the nuances of the senseless bounty system. No need to let one aspect of the game ruin the whole experience.