Good evening,

I consider myself a huge Fallout fan. I dabbled slightly in the earlier games, and like many others fell in love with FO3. It had its lumps, much like Oblivion did before it, but the true depth, scale and pure enjoyment you can experience from those games will be remembered lovingly for years to come.

I ravenously awaited NV's release, absorbing all the info I could from the web and magazines. The fixes looked good, more depth to certain things...all positives to me. When it came out and some of the larger publications reviews were not stellar, I worried a bit, but Hell, it's Fallout and I'm going to enjoy it. Which is true, for the most part. I am writing this post in hopes that some developer or community manager will pass it along to those who would address some issues. I don't want to rant, rave, or flame. I want to express two facets that really create a negative experience for me, and from reading other posts here, other players as well. I realize no game can be perfect and I already appreciate the bug fixes that have been addressed. Anyhow...

The Karma engine on this game is completely lopsided for those of a good persuasion. I am not alone in thinking this. Thankfully the community has already tested this for me and I can simply read along instead of going through the rigorous experiments of destroying every life in a town, and likewise consuming them in order to keep my dark reputation. ***SPOILERS AHEAD*** After finding my old BOS friends and going on a mission to help fix their bunker, I ran into my first encounter with the Fiends. Every Fiend I kill grants positive Karma. By the time I cleared this one vault of Fiends, my character pic was of Jesus, and I was Very Good. This irks me as I normally play RPG's first time through as a bad guy. Some like heroes, some like Villains. Some play Alliance Paladins, others Horde Warlocks...you know what I mean? I enjoy exploring the darker side of things, and FO3 was good at making me feel evil, but still care enough about the world to save it...sorta. As someone who sides with the Powder Gangers and Legion in FONV, it is extremely aggravating to finish one quest and my entire Karma line has been reversed. Not to mention now the Powder Ganger in Goodsprings won't side with me, which I assume is due to my Karma. The entire Karma engine is unbalanced and kills the immersion for the player. I kindly ask that there be some sort of fix...at the very least remove the +Karma for killing Fiends and Ghouls? Both would jump me regardless of Karma, I shouldn't be punished for fighting them with piles of positive Karma.

The second glaring problem comes with your followers. First off let me say thank you for the Companion Wheel. It's great and a much appreciated upgrade. Unfortunately, the passive button does not work in the least (I play on Xbox 360 I see I've yet to mention). Ed-E and Cass are my two followers, and anytime any enemy is near they rush off towards it. In vaults and dungeons this is terrible, and they immediately run down some hall, so instead of calmly and concisely working my way through each area, I'm running behind them playing catch up. Furthermore this gets them both killed often, which causes me to have to reload multiple times for each area, and I cannot possibly imagine going as a stealthy character (which again I normally did for FO3) if every new area greeted you with companions charging off to some new nest of bad guys. There is no other way to say it other than this facet of the game is broken. Aggressive/Passive yield the same results in behavior. Please address this issue for companions in the game as soon as you are able.

I would like to thank and commend the studio and publishers for a really great game in FONV. The depth in story and interactions with NPC's is really great, and it's truly a work of a lot of labor, so I realize how hard it is to get everything right. So many posts are "THIS GAME IS BROKEN RAWRRR RAGE!!!" and I don't think that's the case. So for once I wanted to post something reasonable, and implore the powers that be to address my concerns if they can. Thanks again for making some of my all time favorite games and keep up the great work!

I completely agree with you about the karma system, i mean its ok to kill a powder ganger but if you steal the water next to him you loose karma. I wish they just got rid of the system instead of implementing it like they did. Regardless of that it is still a fantastic game worth every penny.

I pretty much agree with all that, the karma system is totally backwards. There are also several weapon and inventory bugs. I hate how charisma is pretty much useless, I don't like energy weapons being nerfed either. I mean they are harder to maintain, harder to find ammo for but do not do as much damage as regular firearms? :blink:

Very well written. I completely agree about the karma system. :goodjob:

Completely agree with the karma thing. I usually end up just hiding behind something while Boone and Ed-E kill enemies that grant positive karma since having them do it doesn't net me karma. It's really annoying though. Were there ANY enemies in FO3 that netted positive karma besides maybe a few pure evil quest related guys?

:facepalm:

Anyway, yes I would agree with you in that the karma system is basically broken and should either be canned or re-imagined so that stealing your enemies' kitchenware doesn't make you a "bad" person meanwhile plotting factions against each other makes you "good".

I think overall people expected way to much from New Vegas.

After Fallout 3 came out, which came out of no where and was amazing, people expected New Vegas to be OMFG orgismic.

People are being way to picky about the game. New Vegas was hyped to much, and i think people were disappointed when the things they wanted were not in it, so it made it a "game with faults".

New Vegas has everything good about fallout 3 with some upgrades. Maybe not as much upgrades as we hoped. But give Obsidian and Bethesda a break. When we get to the level of "if i steal this guys cooking pan i shouldn't get punished". Then i think we are going to far.

I think people are being way too defensive over a game that, while good, has too many glaring faults that make long time fans of the franchise question whether any true QA was done.

So a guy expects me to trust him enough to stand next to someone he's going to shoot in the head. Then I go around assassinating an enemy general with a guy. Unleashing a dirty nuclear bomb on an enemy base camp with the guy. So I want to do his side quest. Just kidding, he doesn't trust me enough because he can't take my word since I was supposed to rescue some random hostages with him instead of doing it myself. np makes complete sense.

So this same guy that has been trained as a crack military sniper joins up with me and suddenly forgets everything he's ever learned. We get given a covert ops mission. Okay cool. *Be Passive* "I'll follow your lead". Nice. But wait, soon as a red dot appears on the compass, SNIPER SHOTS START RINGING OUT and he starts charging around corners, opening doors and rushing into rooms with a bolt action rifle into close quarters combat. np makes complete sense.

So I take a high powered sniper rifle with an armor piercing round, shoot some mutant in the head and he just gets angry and punches my face in. Alternatively, I could have just gave him a light shove which will render him completely unconscious then step on his leg twice which will cause it to completely explode and kill him. np makes complete sense.

I could launch a grenade at a mutant buffalo right in his ugly face and he will just charge me and knock me down. Alternatively, I could just take some fancy brass knuckles and punch him in the same face and it will launch him 90 yards back causing his head to explode in one shot. np makes complete sense.

Some random homeless civilian could be crying to me about how the Legion or some frenzied ghouls or some gang is terrorizing his home/city/town/family and he needs my help REALLY BADLY since i'm walking around with sniper rifles, shotguns, machetes, brass knuckles that launch mutant buffalo, and random explosives. But as soon as he sees me pick up his bag of chips that he's never going to eat (and i'm never given the option to pay him for even though I could obviously afford to), he becomes John Wayne and starts ripping stuff from my bags going "YO MAN THAT AIN'T YO STUFF SON." np makes complete sense

My luck is the exact opposite and that I am a villain hardcoe (as bad as karma can get). Now I must admit I am a compulsive thief and I have leveled about 3 times (80 kills or so) from sandman kills on generic npcs (good or evil, didn't matter). I guess my advice for you to become evil is steal everything like I do. I don't care about my karma, but I would prefer to be neutral or good rather than evil since the main evil I do is steal . Karma has very little affect towards the game and you shouldn't concern yourself with it anyways. Btw, I wiped out the Powder Gang and yet I'm marked as pure evil...



I don't have this issue unless it's an npc following me that I can't control (quest escorts usually). The companions are rather passive, but I'm also a 1 shot killer pretty much and I stealth always. Sniper round to the head (with AP and hallow rounds if need be) and no one is the wiser that I'm there. Personally I think they could nerf stealth because I'm way too overpowered with it.

The main point is that your flaws that you've found are actually insignificant or not even there. You are blowing something hugely insignificant out of proportion and can easily get by without worrying about these "game breakers", as you describe them.

I'm sitting with Boone as my companion and he's running headlong into rooms. Seems less than passive. Also calling bs on 1 shot kills. Sitting with a sniper rifle and an AP round, headshots on Deathclaws definitely don't 1 shot kill anything even if I console cheat sneak to 100. Probably should use an actual in game gun and not some god mode nuke gun.

Yes, for sure. I do think they recognized a problem with the karma system, I'm on pc so the mods are rolling out already.

bigcrazewolf

I one shot DCs all the time what are you talking about?

Theres a karma system in the game?

You one DCs with a Sniper Rifle? I have 100 Guns and the Sniper Rifle with AP rounds doesn't even come close to 1 shotting DCs with a head shot. Maybe you're thinking about the AM Rifle?

I love this game, but one thing that bugs me a little is Charisma, due to the fact that there are no speech checks with it, even with a low charisma you can still make get a high speech and barter skill which have speech checks... Even Luck have a speech check at one point!

I have encountered places where charisma could have had a speech check, at one point i had high enough speech so i could say to

nope definitly using a sniper. not the .50

If I get a sneak attack crit I can 1-shot DCs with my sniper rifle no problem.

You guys are reading too much into the Karma System.

First off, Karma means VERY little in this game compared to FO3 (where it was basically EVERYTHING).
Faction approval is all that REALLY matters in New Vegas. You can have an "Evil" character doing jobs for the NCR and a "Good" character working for the Legion if you really wanted, its totally possible.

Karma is basically just a measure of how good or bad of a person you are in general. Stealing is bad, so its negative karma, regardless of who you steal from. Powder Gangers are considered "bad guys" by most locals, hence good karma for killing them (you're basically a lawman if you're killing them). Murder overall is negative karma, unless you murder people who are themselves, murderers.

A "hired-gun" is likely to have low karma, but could still be Idolized by the NCR.

Karma is just a representation of your play-style, and barely effects the main game in any real way. No reason to complain about it.

Bloody Mess + Finess + Better Criticals + Meltdown + Luck 7 or higher

Enjoy blowing the living crap out of everything except deathclaws within three shots(usually one/two shots).

When I r@ped Ceaser with this setup- I blew up five of his guards with three plasma shots. (Meltdown is EXTREMELY powerful- and that "chain reaction" is no joke)

Huh? I must be missing their heads then. Off to the quarry to work on my aim.

Keep in mind not everyone play on Very Hard.

It is pretty easy to 1 shot anything in Normal Difficulty.

As for Karma. Who cares?

If you are truly evil, do you really care the world think of you as a good person because you slaughter all the evil doers for fun?

If you are truly evil, do you care about a little meter that mark you as good or evil?

Does Batman have Good Karma? or Punisher? or any of the Anti-heroes of Comic book? They are still considered "Good" or even "Heroes" by a lot of people because their evil deeds are outweight-ed by the good they bring to the world.

If you start thinking of Karma in those terms it makes more sense. Or if you truly want to be evil, then kill good people and bad people in equal measure. Otherwise you are just a Good person pretending to be bad - and not doing a very good job of it

I do the same, dude. Standard (non-unique) sniper w/ AP rounds. Sneak headshot = instant death.

I have to say, even though I knew responses like these were going to come, it literally blows my mind at the amount of trolling that happens in forums like these.

@Layman:

Seriously? I never said that there were "game breakers", I said a certain facet was broken, which is the case. To call someone else's complaint insignificant or simply not there is arrogant, as for me it kills the immersion and detracts from my overall experience in the game when the opposite was in effect in the last game. Not to mention that YES it DOES effect quests and followers, and they are followers and quests I wanted. So yes, It does effect the game. And no, they do exist. Hooray that you're not having the issues, but just because something doesn't exist in your little sphere of reality doesn't make it false. And I'm not blowing anything out of proportion, I calmly expressed my issues in hopes that little trolls wouldn't kill this thread and some developer might read it since it wasn't flames and inane BS. So next time try really reading something before making any sort of commentary, as it makes you appear extremely foolish.

@ everyone who is talking about guns, one shot kills, and deathclaws:

Please get off of this thread, it has nothing to do with what I'm describing.

No, I don't. Alliance Paladin? Like BoS? Horde Warlock?

I think those are World of Warcraft Terms. I don't play, but I recognize the names.

Oh, I thought that was a children's game, never touched it. Thanks