Oh yeah, the Faction deal. That seems to make more sense as to why it could have been overlooked.




I think the most simple way that would carry the most impact towards balancing it is simply to remove karma gains from ghouls and fiends and add karma losses to certain neutral non-evil npcs. That should make it more the player's choice.

This is how Karma is currently set up:
Murder a Very Good NPC= lose 100 points
Murder a Good NPC= lose 50 points
Kill an Evil NPC= Gain 100 points (This is the category Fiends and Feral Ghouls fall under)
Kill a Very Evil NPC= Gain 2 points.
Steal something = lose 5 points.
This is insanely unbalanced, considering how many "Evil" NPCs there are compared to "Good" ones.

If you're on the PC, you can use the GECK to change these settings. Under the Gameplay menu, click settings, then in the filter field enter fKarmaMod. From there just change the values to whatever you want.

Not just some, ALL netural NPC's. (when not in combat, you shouldn't lose karma for killing a neutral soldier if you're fighting for a different faction)

The way the game works right now:

• Kill a good NPC you lose Karma - OK I'm with you there, killing a good person is a bad act
  
• Kill a bad NPC you gain Karma - Well when simplified this is ok, it certainly CAN be a good act to kill a bad person, but it's far from always. Bad guys kill other bad guys all the time for example, you would think that would make them all good considering Fallout's Karma system.
  
• Kill a neutral NPC your Karma stays the same - This is where it really goes to hell. Just because Old Lady Waterburton doesn't go out of her way to help orphans and sometimes sneaks a gulp of whisky when the bartender isn't looking doesn't mean you should just be able to murder her with no karmic consequences.

i dont understand why its ok to kill a powder ganger and loot his corpse but its considered stealing for me to loot the ammo box next to him..or to wipe out a whole legion encampment and loot the bodies but not their "belongings" in the footlockers..i mean i understand its stealing if your neutral with that faction but after they are dead and you killed them? its spoils of war and all that..come on...thats just lazy implementation..

That sounds good to me.



Old Lady Waterburton apparently has the same karmic signature as a Banana Yucca fruit.

But does she taste as delicious? That's down to opinion.

My opinion on Karma in combat, if you're not fighting 100 Mr. Burkes, there is no reason to gain 100 karma for killing off say....a generic NCR trooper.

Karma doesn't appear as if it's meant to do anything. The only reason I can surmise it exists is because it couldn't be properly excised. You want to know why taking stuff from Powder Gangers has a karma loss? Because it's classed as stealing and is supposed to make Powder Gangers hostile.

I say all this and hear rumors that karma effects your ending. And how some fiends, ghouls, and soldiers have specific karma values. So I can't hold onto my idea too strongly. It seems theres points where karma is intended, but other points where karma is just leftover.

Well, on my ending with Mr. House, it said that 'do to the couriers good actions in the wastes, he helped ensure Mr. House would not abuse his power.'

Also, with Good Karma, a dialogue choice with Legate Lanius comes up for a fair one on one duel.

Edit-Beyond ending slides and Lanius, I cannot think of anywhere that Karma steps into play outside of RP.

One or more companions will leave your side if you lose too much karma. We seem to be having the opposite problem, but that is another effect of it.

It can't be Cass. She doesn't strike me as being one of the companions riding on the Karma wagon.

Thanks for explaining this, I'm gonna try it out.

The worst IMO is that killing neutral NPCs doesn't give you any bad karma. I can live with killing powder gangers giving you good karma, but feral ghouls??

I'm gonna change it now, to something that makes more sense.

Feral Ghouls aren't neutral. According to the GECK, they're evil.

Yes, the karma system is seriously messed up. I was very bad and then after killing some Ghouls I was good. I take it as Karma is just plain useless, but since it's useless there is no problem stealing items when you can just easily get your karma back up if you wanted. They should really add Ghouls and Fiends just not to give good karma or just not as much karma.

My guess is that she tastes like anchovies and bengay.

Which is not all that different from the taste of 200 year Pork N' Beans, so everything works out.

I know that, I didn't mean to say they're neutral.

I just wanted to say that killing neutral NPCs results in no karma change and killing feral ghouls gives you bad karma are the things I hate most about the karma system.

I have always been under the impression that it should be far easier to be evil in just about every game. I always figured that if I kill Captain MacGoody Two Shoes I'd get a MASSIVE hit for evil, because all the good people will be so crushed. NV just happens to do this in the opposite direction, evil guys shoot at me, so I defend myself and I get a ton of good from it. Seems strange, but it is what it is.

Badly. Sad, but since karma has been in every Fallout they kind of have their hands tied. At least they don't have a preachy radio host who tells everyone how good/evil you are.

Fallout started the trend, sadly that trend has gotten more and more annoying.

At this point the karma system in FO:NV feels like gamesas/Obsidian have a bad case of "keeping up with the Joneses" syndrome and are ripping off Bioware's RPG setup.


The real thing that screws it is that there are hostile NPCs that you cannot go through the game avoiding that give positive karma when killed. that means if you actually want to be evil you can't just be immoral, to counteract the flood of positive karma coming in from fiend kills you have to be puppy-kicking orphan-burning evil. That or you have to game the system, by repeatedly opening but not hacking owned terminals and the like.

karmas broke...

Karma system in short?

NV Karma System= Lily without her medicine.

LILY SMASH!

there is no good or evil, there is only difference.