~bad karma

[secksegai]

I've got a love/hate relationship with the Karma system myself. I like the idea, but often end up more frustrated with the implementation.

 

With the changes in New Vegas, I find myself much more willing to steal, as in my FO3 playthroughs I was effectively a saint who never earned a negative point (stealing wasn't an option). In NV, while I'm still reluctant to steal from certain folks (mainly poor good people), I went to town on the boomers (which I could easily justify considering all I did for them), and anyone else assuming the loot is well-worth the karma hit. Considering fiends are practically walking loot containers for me, it's not like boosting general karma is difficult.

[madman132]

It's one of the many many many maaaaany things Obsidian didn't do a very good Job at. In Fallout 3, some Stuff belonging to "evil" People was marked red, so they'd bash your Skull in if you just took something and they saw it (if they didn't attack you earlier, which they wont if you have a low karma level) but there wasn't a karma penalty attached to the Objects. Maybe because stealing from Raiders would just be "re-stealing".

 

Would be quite the same with the evil dudes in New Vegas. Obsidian tried to make some of the People a bit less evil and failed miserably. The Slaves have a broken Will and will soon have a broken Back. The Way it is portrayed, living under the Leadership of Cesar is a fate worse then death. Even the Background music and the Skybox try their best to make Fortification Hill a Place so depressing that it would make Hitler and Stalin cry bitter Tears.

So Obsidian didn't do a very good Job in portraying the Villains. They're saturday morning cartoon villains.

 

I don't think stealing from them should get you a karma Penalty.

 

Obsidian could've just thrown the karma system out altogether and it wouldn't do much; some Quest would have to be made differently because you can't just walk up to certain Fiends being quest NPCs.

There's this one Quest that would require a "Drop of Point" where you put the Questobject instead of giving it to the quest NPC.

 

In essence, throwing out the Karma system altogether and making the Game work would require less effort then making the Karma system work.

 

To do that, you'd have to make every karma penalty of every object in possession of every bad guy go away. And then you may want to lessen the karma penalty on possessions of the "not so evil" Guys. How "evil" are the great Khans? They raid Caravans but at least they don't go around torturing and killing People for Fun.

 

It would require a bit of Work to fix the Karma System instead of just throwing it out. Well, Karma's a Bi...

:rolleyes:

[kukenike]

I hate karma sistem (in fact I love it xD) because its similar to real life morality, totally illogical :thumbsup:

[Park77]

Definitely a flawed system, but I gotta say I, for one, think the game is more fun with than without

[WCGxApoc]

 

I used to sell anything that wasn't bolted down. Apparently that's what a paragon does

 

This.

 

Where's mah slave collars? Gotta find new ways to ditch these cheese dick titles.

[NXT1984]

The karma in this game must be glitched... I always eat corpses to decrease hunger and heal my player character, I steal everything I find useful, no matter what faction or anything else. And my character's karma is always "very good"...

[pob255]

Lets face it in all computer rpg's you always end up playing a psychopathic kleptomaniac, killing almost any thing that moves and nicking anything that's not bolted down.

It's always been the main stay of rpg's.

 

The whole kama + faction system is rather odd, you want one or the other, not both.

 

You can disguise yourself as a member of the powder gangers, go around sneak killing them, you gain kama and don't lose faction points with them.

loot their corpses, no kama or faction change

Nick stuff they've put on a table and you lose kama (and I think faction points unless you are disguised)

 

it's been made worse in some ways as they tried to blur the lines slightly so factions like the NCR are not wholey good like the (BoS in Fallout3) (I've not had enough dealings with the legion to fully find out about them yet) but at the same time you've got this good/evil kama system.

yes you can balance your kama out by your actions but only by doing good and evil actions equally to balance it, there's no real neutral path, looking back at the original fallout 1&2 and even fallout 3 most of the quests had the option of accepting them from the goodness of your heart or demanding they pay you for your services, which generally ended in lower kama gains but more caps.

[zerrodefex]

Bad karma for picking stuff up in the Powder Ganger's HQ after you've slaughtered them but not Vipers etc. Bad karma for doing Caesar's footlocker or those Westside slaver dudes. This badly needed reappraising for this game.

 

At least Karma doesn't count for much of anything in this installment, it's all about the reputations instead. You don't get Mercs hunting you down out of the blue for being too nice or any of that nonsense like in Fallout 3, and so far after several playthroughs the only place I have seen [Karma] come up at all is in a certain conversation option when facing down Legate Lanius during the 2nd Battle of Hoover Dam.

[minngarm]

This reminds me of the biggest issue I had with FO3, the Karma result of your choice in the pitt storyline. I find that getting negative karma for saving a infants life and simply prolonging the suffering of people for just a few more years in order to obtain a cure without the outright murder of a new born, ignorant. Yet If you choose to take the child to its death to save the population sooner, rather then later, you get regarded as a saint.

 

 

I bring this up not only because the topic is the Karma system, but to prove a point that Karma in effect is based solely on our point of view. I would say bad karma for stealing from legion or ncr is fair, as stealing whats not yours is still stealing, even if its owner is a mass murderer. But killing a crucified man without even attempting medical assistance is not bad? I would think, as any healer knows, that trying even when it appears impossible is always worth a shot. You could basicly get lucky, and if not, you at least gave them the dignity of fighting for their lives.

 

Now in comparison of FO3 and NV, NV certainly has a lot less use for Karma, they took out a lot of the game mechanics that made you really feel your Karma level in FO3, or did they just bury it beneath a lot of other crap? Why not have it where if you have bad karma and a good reputation with the NCR, only certain main quests are available. Or good karma and good relations with the legion would force you to have to prove yourself with minor quests before being able to progress the main story? Something that wouldnt be so much player based, but based on the fluff of each faction you deal with, counting not just the rep, but your overall karma. Keep in mind this also makes a great use for neutral karma as you could get access to most content, and maybe even some exclusive content for neutral karma characters.

[frank lee]

I seems as if the Karma system needs overhauling or abandoning. The only way I could imagine it becoming useful would be starting the game with a challenge to calibrate it to the player, something like the goat test.

This gets a bit philosophical (and a lot, controversial) but it has been said that people like Adolf Hitler had NO negative karma for reasons like; he was completely insane, he believed he was doing the right thing and most controversially that he was a tool of the karma of his victims (we can all agree he was a f**king tool)

Anyhow the Karma system 'could' be a useful and entertaining aspect of gameplay if it was reconsidered and reimplemented but what we are playing with at the moment is just something left over from some other game.