Bioware.

They do karma a LOT better than Fallout ever has. Sadly, Bioware is owned by EA now, which means Electronic Arts sales representatives in Dragon age along with poor DLC options.

"Hey, you're the guy that goes around helping people, right? Here, have a stimpack..."

Works for me....

If you are "...the guy who goes around wiping out entire population centres..." do they give you a primed grenade or a .44 to the head?

I just discovered that Karma does have at least a small part to play in the game. Don't know if this qualifies as a spoiler, so....

According to karma, performing positive actions results in a good condition in one's experience, whereas a negative action results in a bad effect. The effects may be seen immediately or delayed.

Killing anyone, good or evil, is still murder and *not* a good thing.

It's funny how killing powder gangers gives you karma, but stealing from them takes it away xD. palm -> face

This is a very good thread. It actually made me think (not an easy task :drool: )

I have always had issues with the FO Karma system. It is poorly implemented—I think primarily as a sop to players who want to play as evil. Fortunately it matters very little to the over-all game.

What does matter to game play is Reputation. That is somewhat better implemented.

As for karma, it is pretty much objective and absolute, rather than subjective and relative. However, not knowing the relative values ascribed to various actions along with total points accrued makes it difficult to ascertain how the game is judging you.

This subject is rife with philosophical as well as religious questions and the value of injecting it in the game at all has been and remains dubious.

My main problem with karma in both Fallout 3 and New Vegas is that people somehow know that I've stolen things or killed people even though no one else was around. Reputation should only be affected if people witness your actions, and this is the stat that should affect how people react to you. All actions should also be affected karma, but I'm not sure what effects it should have. Perhaps more beneficial random encounters could occur if your karma is good.

You killed civilians for bad karma and is surprised for getting good karma for killing fiends and feral ghouls?

I disagree.

I kill every wandering merchant I come across and have never taken a karma hit even though I'm murdering innocent people in cold blood. I also kill anyone who walks up to me to warn me of danger (like the guy outside of Nellis) or about star bottle caps, etc. - still no karma hit.

I want to be evil just to see the evil ending, but the game makes this very difficult unless I waste time stealing 100s of pieces of junk (and stealing empty cans is not making the wastes better btw).

If stealing is always "stealing" and thus deserving of negative karma, than murdering a non-hostile character should always be murder regardless of how evil they are.

I think the F03 karma mechanic made a little more sense in that respect and they should have stuck to it - i.e. no negative karma for killing raiders = no negative karma for killing ghouls / fiends.

JUST LIKE AN EX-WIFE!

Hah.

You have the choice of whether or not to kill a civilian - they do not roam the wastes in mobs hostile to the player. You are not given the choice of whether to kill a Fiend or Feral Ghoul because they are hostile. Therefore, the game is essentially forcing you to gain karma. This is seen as a problem since it harms the ability to interact with NPCs and some companions in the way some players may have envisioned. Removing karma gains from killing Ghouls and Fiends would solve some of this problem, I think.

They're not animals.
They're still people.
Karma should still be in place.
Makes no sense to not gain good karma for putting a feral ghoul out of it's misery or a Fiend who raqes and tortures people for fun.
If you don't wanna gain it then don't kill them.
Simply sneak around them or something.

I agree

Yeah Karma seems broken, its extremely hard to be evil in New Vegas. Ive massacred entire settlement and lost no Karma. It should be easy to be bad and hard to be good, not the other way around.

Dictionary

Good - Killing and stealing against more bad guys than good guys.

syn. Killing lots of good people, but then, killing even more bad people.

Lurn2read bible

Karma works like a point system, unlike the reputation system which is incredibly difficult to explain, so I will explain the karma points:


Points
Killing standard Bad/Evil characters: 0 Pt
Killing Leader/Very Bad characters: +100 Pts
Killing Innocent/Good or non-aligned creatures: -25 Pts
Killing Innocent/Good or non-aligned civilians: -100 Pts
Stealing from Innocent/Good or non aligned character: -5 Pts ( for each item stolen )
Good quest arc: X≥ 50 Pts
Evil quest arc: X≥ -50Pts
Donating caps: X=Caps Donated.

Also, in the arc karma system you can generally tell the level of points by the karma picture on the top-left.
Positive karma obviously increases from your level to up to Very Good.
Conversely Negative karma decreases from your level down to Very Evil.

Karma:
Very Evil: -1000 ≥ X ≥ -750
Evil: -749 ≥ X ≥ -250
Neutral: -249 ≥ X ≥ 249
Very Good: 250 ≥ X ≥ 749
Very Good: 1000 ≥ X ≥ 750

Whilst you do not know your exact points, its a good comparison to use the above. For example say you donate 2000 caps to someone, no matter what your rating you will go to Very Good, from then say you kill 8 innocent civilians, this will decrease so that 1000 - 800 = 200 therefore Good, 4 more = 200 - 400 = -200 therefore Evil, etc.

Hope this helps.

Reno

So you think it makes sense to have players have to take the SNEAK skill, regardless of their build, to sneak around hostile mobs, because their character is evil and they wouldn't want to have to gain karma for killing things? So, it's ok to not have large swaths of the map available to evil characters because they must turn and run, or skirt miles of territory, just to avoid gaining karma by killing things?

I just want to get it right - that this immersion-destroying waste of time and energy is what you think is the most fair and sensible implementation ... not simply removing karma gains on a few creatures that weren't there in the previous title? Right.

I'm not even considering how good/evil it is, how sound the justification or rationale to kill a Ghoul or Fiend is, because the karma system is not even nuanced enough to handle complex ideas ... I'm just talking about the gameplay ramifications.

I want to add to this, that the karma system in FONV is even more ridiculous than previous fallout games. Killing random feral ghouls for karma gain, but yet i kill someone for their sasparilla stars and no Karma loss???? :shrug:

Ditto, another "they tried to balance it but made it worse than it was". I say drop Karmic gain from killing enemies. I'll do a quest or two purely evil, I'll finally get my bad karma, then when I kill a few fiends I'm back to neutral or even good.

Well, killing someone for their stars is WJWD, so is cool.

Pffft...maybe if (unlike me) you can ignore the Karma Vendors outside the majrr cities handing out good karma for water, and the lame "Don't like your current karma? Take this insta-change perk!" perks. You can argue that those weren't part of the system, but they were implemented and still made the idea of Karma a joke by allowing an in-game method to adjust Karma to desired levels at will.



See above, those ridiculous perks were part of the "Fallout 3 Karma system."



Which brings us back to the answer- scrap Karma entirely, especially if the developers are going to brag game after game that there are no "good"" or "evil" factions, only shades of gray. Reputation, and Karma is up to you to decide- is being held in high esteem by the Legion a good thing, or a bad thing?

Does Karma actually do anything in game?

Yes.

I hope my effort helped, AshJ all Karma does in NV is alter your ending.
EDIT: I forgot karma affects which companions accompany you as well.

Reputation is the bigger influence/factor in NV, and it is really somewhat tedious in explaining.

Reno

I know of at least one companion (there may be others) that will leave your company if your karma falls too much. It's not just the ending.