I'm planning on working on my own general overhaul of the karma system and how it interacts with your character, interactions, and the new Rep system.

I've got a lot of ideas down but am looking to hear how the community feels about the use of karma in the game and how it could be tweaked to make a more 3-dimensional experience and fun/challenging experience. Anything that particularly irks you? Something you'd want to see? How would you like to see it used to expand your character?


(( As a funny aside, I'm playing a new game and find the sniper build to be God-mode... there's just so something utterly wrong about me getting hoards of good karma by taking out poor defenseless Gangers from so far away they appear no bigger than a pixel inside the scope... ))

I already made a thread about this which had some differing opinions but personally is all I'd want to see changed in the karma system for purely logical reasons is

- Add a penalty for stealing from friendly factions
- Remove the penalty for stealing from hostile factions (not non-hostile evil factions, it would make sense but it would destroy the games balance)
- Remove the bonus for killing non-explicitly evil NPCs (ie Powder Gangers, Feral Ghouls etc)

Yeah, those are definitely on the to-do list.

Thanks for the feedback and mentioning you had a previous thread. I managed to find it off your profile and I'll probably pick through there too to see what people brought up.

If you do wind up making it, please don't fall into the trap that so many people in that thread did. Thinking that either Karma should be based on whether or not you're seen by an NPC (it wouldn't be Karma if that was the case) or the idea that losing karma for stealing from people you've just gained karma for shooting makes sense.

I went through the bulk of that thread, and a lot of it was a headache. lol

My goal will be to design karma to work as an "intangible" system - it won't have anything to do with how people perceive you. That is what Reputation is. It's more of how your character sees himself and wants to conduct himself. In the end, if I am successful, it will make the game less black and white.

Karma, in a sense, doesn't REALLY have an effect on gameplay, and that is what I want to change.

I wanted to spend some time bashing around ideas and learning the extent of just what I'll be able to do. Getting rid of the blaring issues like stealing from dead aggressive Powder Gangers and feral ghouls is at the top of my list, but there's also a lot I want to do down the road. I noticed that a lot of the quests (particularly early on) do not have any effect on karma, even though some of them require moral decisions. For that matter, many of the quests are one-dimensional -- they are designed to promote "good deeds", with the assumption that if you want to do bad deeds, you will ignore the quest altogether or fail it intentionally.

I want to avoid labeling a group 'more evil' over another, and morality is in the eye of the beholder. Just how I'll pull THAT off remains to be seen, but it's a goal.

Other effects I've considered working on would be to do conditionally-based perks, depending on you having high enough good or bad karma, or something similar to FO3's "Mediator" perk that could be taken at a new level.

While I'm not so sure that it will be possible to pull off just yet, I wanted to offer more dialogue choices based on your karma and rep in many areas -- i.e, are you snarky towards your non-aggressive enemies? Are you prone to putting a laser pistol in Mr. Merchant's face to convince him to give you a discount? Do you boast about your recent human barbeque, or do you just like giving out compliments or gifts? A much heavier, larger dialogue mod like this would probably come separate.

Just want to steer you clear of this misconception as well The fact that they're dead is irrelevant. Killing someone and THEN taking their stuff doesn't make the theft less "evil", if anything it makes it worse. Nor is stealing from the recently deceased morally acceptable, there is a reason grave robbing is illegal and you can't just walk into dead peoples houses and take whatever you want you know. You've also got to assume that if an area in the game is flagged with ownership on the items but there's no one around then those items belong to someone who just happens not to be at home within the logic of the game (even if no physical NPC exists). Areas that are abandoned intentionally have no ownership flags and are free for looting.

As for making Karma have more impact on the gameplay, can I suggest adding perks that give a % increase/decrease to your item values when trading and your damage when fighting NPCs of the opposing alignment. ie if you are good then evil traders will rip you off, but evil enemies would be easier to kill where as good traders will give you a discount while good NPC would be harder to kill. Something like a 1-2% bonus for each title rank (I think there are 5) nothing that would have a massive impact on balance, but would be a satisfying enough reward to make it feel worth while.

+1 to the perks-for-karma and karma dialogue option ideas :goodjob:

Hi Parhelion,

http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=35383

Karma should have an effect on your luck stat. Thats probably the closest we can get to real karma in this game.

Would totally one side the game. Assuming you mean good characters get bonus luck and evil characters get luck taken away. You don't want to punish people for their gameplay choices, that's bad game design.

Strongly Disagree. Good people can be very unlucky and evil people at times seem to have more luck then they deserve. Bad things happen to good people and good things to bad all the time. It seems a terrible choice to attach karma to luck.

I do definitely like the concept of removing the negative karma penalty due to stealing from your enemies. And it does make sense to especially remove if when stealing from evil factions, but I do see how that could be very lopsided. The no negative karma from enemies though allows for there to be a bit of honor amongst thieves. Could be kind of cool.

ATM I totally ignore the Karma and steal whatever I need and can get my hands on. If it's laying around they don't need it and hell, I'm saving the world so hachew em. They are all a bunch of selfish Btards anyway.

Might want to look up karma in a dictionary man.

It's not possible to please everyone, so rather than just taking suggestions, I would suggest that before you start your mod you set guidelines to exactly what angle you're taking on karma. The luck == karma thing is one example of something that both A: makes perfect sense, and B: isn't for everyone. I support it, but would suggest some other bonus for bad karma (My first reaction is a crit bonus to show your ruthlessness/lack of hesitation, but that's too similar to the bonus from luck). Regardless, definitely get a strong idea of your direction before changing anything.

I'v always hated how Karma effects your standing in a faction, especially when no one sees you do something bad/good and it's impossible for the faction to know you've done something wrong/good.

Example, if I steal a lot of stuff and no one see's me do it. Why should they all start to suddenly hate me?

As far as I know, Karma has absolutely zero effect on faction reputation. I've certainly stolen enough stuff from NCR/etc and I had no trouble maintaining my Idolized status with them.

Anyways, I'd completely remove any karma effect from attacking or stealing from a hostile NPC or faction. Attacking or stealing from any NPC or faction that is currently friendly to me should result in a karma penalty, no matter if they're 'good' or 'evil' people or not. 'Evil' dialogue choices and the like should also result in karma penalties, 'good' dialogue choices should result in positive karma, and you should not gain karma for doing a quest while constantly demanding money in return for service.

Actually, killing Ferals makes sense for getting positive karma, as you practically put them out of their misery. You just shorten their long and painful life.

No, that would be an appropriate reason for a Karma increase if you specifically did something like that via dialogue. It isn't appropriate if you just shoot them because they're charging at you and want to eat your brains.

I could use that logic to kill every wasteland I come across. Minus the eating brains bit. Honestly, I'd just like to see karma inserted into a second half of a reputation based system. Idea being you can be Idolized by the ncr, but people would recognize your a total klepto. How that would translate in the game is a tad more tricky. Perhaps an npc spawned to 'escort' you when you drop by various bases(Think fighters guild from oblivion)? Or happy adoring members of that faction cheering as you pass by.

As langy said, this would only apply if you specifically went out of your way to try and help someone who was being attacked by ghouls, or if you specifically knew they wanted to die, but that is not a situation that comes up in the game. Ghouls are effectively animals and as such would be most likely be happy just to survive without injury, so shooting them because they attack you is not a good deed on a metaphysical/karmic level, it's just survival and therefore you shouldn't be praised for it.

No, the system already has reputation statuses for variations of good and bad. Karma by design is a global thing that happens irregardless of anyone seeing you. If no one sees you, they should not "realize you're a total klepto". Personally I would like special faction statuses for stealing and such with various effects, but it has nothing to do with the karma system.

(Edit: By various reputation variations I mean that it's not linear. If you're idolized and do something bad, you'll get a status for "lots of good and some bad", not get knocked down to "does some good")

To expand on my previous post, I think you should actually lose Karma if you demand payment for stuff while you have Good Karma (in other words, if you've got good karma it should move you towards having Neutral karma, while if you've go bad Karma it shouldn't have any karmic effect upon you).

This Bright fellow would beg to differ

Wow, lots of activity today. Want to thank everyone who's spoken up so far. Want to also thank Kobu for his pre-emptive proof of concept.





This is something I've definitely considered, especially as part of the larger dependent dialogue/game-play mod.


Basically, what I'm going to have to end up doing is deciding on a baseline "morality code."

I am NOT certain at this point just what that will be, but it should be generally common sense and will likely be based on general concepts, such as Altruism and Honor, as opposed to societal norms. An example of an area of contention would be the theft of goods from dead people: in our society, grave-robbing is generally considered wrong, but if you grew up in a harsh wasteland, the idea of taking supplies off dead people may not be considered particularly evil as a whole (although it may strongly irritate people who see you do it and know the victim). The game doesn't really approach this, since you can loot bodies -- taking even the possessions of dead friendlies right in front of their family/friends -- and with the addition of graves in FONV, you can even DIG UP dead people to steal things without any karma loss. If, however, I decided to base the Moral Code on what I think would be more appropriate in post-apocalyptica, then to balance it out I'd have to make other things (like murdering people) hit harder: I don't want to ENCOURAGE just killing people to steal their stuff without the karma loss.

Something I wanted to come away from was gaining karma by murdering Bad Guys, or losing it by defending against "Good Guys". This is silly. Without the capability to "show mercy" in the game, successfully surrender, or disengage from combat (short of running away), there is no viable reason that you should gain or lose karma for self-defense. This shows with the feral ghouls, but it also means that if a pack of Rangers come flying at you from over a hill, only the most pompous, judgmental, self-righteous ***** in the world is going to blame you for shooting back. On the other side of the coin, I found it kind of silly that I amassed a legendary amount of Good Karma by sitting on a hill with a scoped varmint rifle and taking out almost every bad guy I could reach -- assuming I even KNEW they were bad guys from a mile away.

In the end, karma should reflect the deliberate choices you've made that are for or against the baseline moral code. I think this is BEST done by how you interact in dialogue, how you resolve quests, and how you behave pre-emptively (i.e, killing villagers outright, vs. killing them in self-defense).

Agreed, for the most part. I think just making it so you can steal/kill from a faction/person that's hostile to you with no karmic effect would work well (along with making it so any attack upon someone who is not actively hostile against you grants you negative karma). That should be a nice, simple, clean rule. Graverobbing (as in actually digging up graves) should give you negative karma, too (can you actually do that in this game, though? I never did find a shovel in my first playthrough). That should be the entirety of what you need to do to karma outside of dialogue.