I think this is a good change for those that attack "up" to test a player, or more. It does tho open up an interesting scenario as well, where a leveling partner out of range, could be attacked up, by losing to them for the 24 hour period. Or battled up. Will put a new spin on leveling partners in the near future!
Are higher level characters able to randomly bounty any lower level character without being attacked first, or would a lower level be required to actually attack them first? I ask this because I'd expect bounty/attack to work in the same ways.
Nope we can "treat" anybody we want with bounties. One of the good benefits of being a high level Setting a bounty restriction will make the 1000 placed bounties achievement become impossible.
why so? It just makes it more difficult because you're only able to bounty people around your level (the ones with the income possibly as large as your own). Now you could just bounty random people hundreds of levels below you, which in my opinion is just as bad as just attacking them directly.