A theory on the bounty hunter issue and, maybe, a possible, untested solution
Having seen many threads regarding the bounty hunter issues, I have come up with a theory (and bear in mind, that is ALL this is) on what exactly has happened. If anyone remembers MissingNo. from Pokemon, you would know that the famous glitch is a result of the game trying to call data that isn't there.
The same thing could've happened here. Let me explain: A commonality I have noticed is that the glitch occurs when Kili Orso is spawned/killed earlier than players are supposed to. He is supposed to be the 15th kill in the quest chain. What follows is strictly conjecture on my part. Because of this, upon his death, the game thinks you've killed the 14 other bounty hunters before him and stops them from spawning where they're supposed to. However, because these deaths aren't logged in the game's system, the 16th bounty hunter cannot be spawned/killed in the same way, effectively creating the paradox that the remaining hunters are both dead and alive, thus creating the soft-lock players are struggling with.
Unfortunately, I see no way this can be resolved (I wouldn't know for sure, I'm not a game developer) other than starting a fresh save (not NG+), getting to the point where you can spawn all hunters, NOT talking to Caij once until all other 14 hunters are dead, then spawning Kili once that's done. I haven't tested this myself, yet. It is, again, just a theory.
