Like the title says. There are some rather odd inconsistencies in the Karma impacts from stealing. A typical example: After finishing the quest at the start area and becoming hated by the Power Gangers I go for a wander...I come across some powder gangers hanging around a house so unprovoked I shoot them all in the face and then strip them naked. Nothing wrong with that according to the game, which is fine, but then I pick up a pencil that's been flagged as belonging to the guys I just murdered and I get a message telling me I'm evil.

Probably going to require NVSE but any chance of anyone removing the karma penalty from stealing things from people who hate you?

Checking the "Evil" box on the faction ought to do it.

Well just because they hated you does not make it all right to just gun them down and take their things. You are a scavenger and they are scavengers, so what makes it ok for you to steal and not them?

IMO, the logic of karma is just fine. It is a morality meter. You cant go gun down people in cold blood and expect to be considered good.

Well yes, that's exactly my point. It's not that I want it to be OK to gun down anyone and take everything. It's that if I'm hated by a faction then according to the game it's completely fine if I charge into a room full of them, chop their leaders head off with a machete and then set the rest of them on fire...doing that gets me zero evil points. Then after I've stripped them all naked (still not evil) I go and look in their fridge BONG! You have lost karma! And that's just for looking, I havn't even taken anything yet.

So according to the games logic, looking in someones fridge is worse than settings them on fire. You see my issue? What I'm after is a mod that removes the karma penalty for taking things that are owned by NPCs which you wouldn't lose karma for killing.

A lot of the factions aren't evil but you need to choose one side or another. If you marked all the neutral factions as evil then it'd stop penalising you for stealing from people who weren't hostile.

Yes i found this utterly stupid aswell, Im an enemy of the power gangers, they shoot me on sight, and yet im still "bad" for looting the building they were using.. so according to the game, theft of a pencil is worse than murder of the pencils owner, i would love a mod that changes it so that any faction that is red, wont lose karma for stealing from them.

The problem however is:

The items in the surrounding area that are not guarded anymore shouldn't "belong" to anyone anymore.

No one is around to see you steal these items (because they are dead) so why are you getting a karma loss? It makes no sense.

I think you guys misunderstand karma. Karma is about overarching morality. It isn't about who you are friends with and who you are enemies with. The killing of a person is an act in and of itself. You will be penalized for killing them. Stealing things is a completely separate act. Stealing things isn't morally right. It doesn't matter if the person you are stealing from is your enemy or not. When a cop shoots and kills someone in their house, the don't rifle through that person's belongings and take what they want.

I think you misunderstand the issue. Again, I'll explain it as simply as I can. Picture the scene, there is man named Joe sitting at a table. He's wearing a hat, he's holding a knife, he's selling these fine leather jackets, on the table next to him he has a sandwich.

Joe doesn't like you.

Things that the game considers morally acceptable: (no karma loss)

Cut off Joe's head
Set him on fire
Cut off his arm, take his knife and then stab him with it
Steal his hat
Fence his leather jackets
Dismember him and then hit him with his own limbs

Things that the game finds morally unacceptable: (karma loss)

Eating his sandwich


Is that clear enough for you. Do you see the problem?

http://newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=34929 Applies to all thefts though.

Never mind, not worth arguing...

Not really what I'm after. I don't just want to arbitrarily remove restrictions. It's better how it is than with no punishment what so ever.




Please argue...I really want to hear your reasoning as to why you think picking up someones empty tin can deserves more karmic retribution than beating an unarmed man to death with a baseball bat.

I've noticed this, too.

I've gone into unoccupied houses, stolen everything that's not nailed down & took a Karma hit. It makes no sense.

As far as I can tell, NPC's don't care if your Karma says your Utterly Evil, as long as your on good terms with their Faction.

There is a FO3 cheat that modifies your Karma that will work in FO:NV, if you run into Karmic trouble (I'm not sure I'm allowed to post it in this Forum, otherwise I would).

But so far, I haven't had any issues with NPC's over my character being Evil, only because I steal a lot...

The karma, faction, and reputation systems in the game are very simplistic. The main thing is that karma loss scripting and logic isn't geared towards context. It cannot maintain a list of actions that have occurred and decide what is and isn't based on karma. There would have to be some serious workarounds done to make it context-sensitive. The game engine simply doesn't support anything more dynamic and complex.

Put it this way. Had you not killed those guys, would you still steal their stuff? Is it morally good to steal someones food when they don't have much to begin with? Your reason for killing them isn't an issue here, because whatever your reason, be it out of self defense or you are a cold-blooded killer, it is still morally wrong to steal peoples things. Now, you may not feel bad about doing so, but that does not mean it not morally wrong. And that is why you get bad karma from doing so.

Now if we look at the Fiends, they are a raider group wanting to kill you, [censored] you, eat you, skin you alive and dance around with it, they don't feel bad stealing, etc. They are a morally bad group. That is why killing them gains positive karma, because you are basically feeling good about potentially saving someones life.

The Powder Gang is just a group of convicts, not necessarily bad people morally, just that they were in prison. You did something to piss them off, so they hated you. Its no different then in real life, if someone doesn't like you, you aren't going to go steal their stuff.

The game understands 'morality' in - simplistic - absolute terms. The problem is, I think about my character's actions in relative terms.

So, the issue is not, 'Stealing should be morally good, or neutral, or bad.'

The problem is, why is it reasonable to be punished by the Karma system in the game for petty theft and NOT for:

Clubbing an 'innocent' person in the back of the head and taking the clothes off his/her back.
Or dismembering a family.
Or killing an entire town while they sleep.

This upsets my sense of realism in the game, and reminds me I'm playing by the sometimes arbitrary rules established in a piece of software. Which is maybe unavoidable (it's a freaking GAME after all), but is still a bit disappointing.

-HD

Again, you have completely missed the point most people are trying to make, the fact that MURDER is morally correct but theft isnt?

Plus, i disagree totally, i do not think it is morally wrong to steal from your enemy, infact its part of good tactics its called looting not theft.

Looting - plundering during riots or in wartime
Plundering - the act of stealing valuable things from a place
Stealing - the act of taking something from someone unlawfully
Theft - the act of stealing property

In short.
The act of taking property/valuable things from a place or from someone unlawfully during riots or in wartime.



Apparently everyone is missing the meaning of karma and how it works.

If you want to get bad karma from killing anyone, then just set them all to friendly or whatever the setting is.

:tops:

What has the law got to do with karma? i think its you who is misunderstanding the idea of karma, but this argument is pointless. People want this mod so a request was made, no one is asking that it be made offical or forcing you to use such a mod.

I just don't want to get bad karma from taking items that belong to people who are either:

1. dead in the surrounding area or no one is in the surrounding area to have seen me
2. already hate me as it is

The point being made (and i feel the same) is there is a discontinuity in the way karma is dealt with. Hostile is hostile... These groups reward karma because THEY ARE EVIL... makes sense (i dont like it but it makes sense). However, its also arguable that PEOPLE ARE PEOPLE, and thus killing is all the same. Evil is not a constant variable in our world, its a point of view. The legion thinks theyre doing the right thing, but to every one else, apparently crucifying ppl on telephone poles is frowned upon... Powder Puff Gangers have whatever silly reason they have to morally justify blowin stuff up i'm sure... Theyre still people right? Arnt we told killing is bad? Even if the murdered in question was a serial rapist/murder?

However, this game judges it okay, since getting by with out harming a hair is probably utterly impossible. However, stealing that raiders sugar bombs is a-okay... He plunders and raqes, right? Screw him, slice his willy off and throw him in the mole rat nest, then proceed to plunder his goods that he stole anyway.

Legion burns and crucifies people all day long... Gata have a hobby right? Some how though the same evil group, which is not only okay to kill, but GOOD to kill (murder is murder right?), but however its wrong to take the hammer they used earlier to nail people up on those telephone poles... Or the powder gangers and their funny name, with their dynamite... These were used to cause harm, but its not okay to disarm them of it... Except the raiders gun which he was about to shoot you with anyways... He's okay... Ya know that raider may very well have earned that pistol, little Timmy and all his allowance, before he learned how much more fun it was to shoot other people with it.

Its just inconsistent, which is both the problem and understandable. The engine for this is unfortunately simple. Its been used since (i think) before morrowind... Beth really needs a new engine but being small i dont see that. It doesnt innately have the ability to switch ownership on the fly (as the only morally right thing to take is the unowned object), and i'm not sure you can script this either... Maybe i'm no scripter... However, if they just did it as we understood the concept in real life, pretty much everything out there, regardless of who owned it, would be stealing, and is morally wrong. This would make for quite the miserable game when you realized shooting up the baddies didnt pay as well as you thought, specially after you left all their gear behind...

There are work arounds, but none exist in game... As it stands, it would be a hole new level of hard for the good guy, and it might not even be worth it anymore.

I know i personally, if in an environment that i needed to scavenge to say alive, if you tried to kill me, i'd just do you the same favor, then proceed to take whatever you owned (your dead, what do you need it?). As to what this game says, its only okay to take whatever you were physically holding onto upon the moment of your demise. So i can strip you down to your underwear (and beyond) and its all hokey dokey... until i grab your half eaten bowl of noodles (that you let go of to defend yourself from the incoming bullets), then its all bad again...

Inconsistent... Also not much to be done i'm afraid with out some hefty scripting... A big issue with this is, i dont believe there would be a way to get the factions to react to you stealing their items, while keeping the items in a neutral, stealable state.

The thing i find funny is people try to justify killing others which btw is still murder, but not take their stuff. These arnt just joe schmoes tryin to get along, theyre escaped convicts. They run around plundering towns, robbing people, whatever, same as those raiders. However, because theyre not raiders its not okay to steal from them... huh. I'm pretty sure that raider earned his stuff too, after he hacked it off the person before him. They dont JUST hate you, theyre as evil as any one else. So i dont see how it differs from taking that crazy raiders things.

Also, even if they arnt hostile (they'd totally just let you be most cases) its still okay to walk up to them, shake their hand, then cut it off. So what is okay about that? They wernt even going to hurt you. You outright attacked them while they were enjoyin themselves a cool drink of sunset sarsaparilla. That doesnt seem very nice, or morally correct.

You have a point. I ran across a powder ganger camp and was fired upon. I shot both of them in the face. Doing this gained me karma and vilified me with the powder gangers.

Then I took a few rounds of ammo and some shell casings from an ammo box. This lost me karma.

So why am I rewarded for killing them, and then punished for taking their things? It is illogical.

But karma is not a measurement of how other people look upon you, it is a measurement of how good and selfless your soul are. Therefore it does not matter if anyone else watches you do bad deeds, since you and your soul knows about it anyway.

Imo, the easiest way to solve it is to make it so that only stealing and killing from allied or neutral factions will give you a drop in karma, while doing the same against any hostile will not.

Agreed. Exactly right. Karma logic is broken.