So there I was playing an evil guy for a change. Killing some people who talked back to me in a bad way, sometimes just mindless murder, killing some NCR...
And I'm the saviour of the [censored] wastes. Why? Because killing some feral ghouls gives karma. Killing FIENDS give karma. No problem of that right? No. They are aggressive, so they attack you no matter what. Any good guy here knows "let's kill them since they attacked me" but if you are evil, your character clearly thinks the best way to handle the situation is to leave the fiends alone and run. After all they are evil too! Yay! Same thing for Benny, so my guy wants revenge. So I kill him with a [Terifying presence] dialogue even, and I gain karma...The only evil karma gains I've seen are either stealing, cannibalism, VERY rare quest possibilities, and random murders to friendly NPC:s in middle of towns.

Now, you might say "it doesn't matter in the game". You are wrong. Very wrong. At the end of the game your karma changes the ending. That's right, you are a guy who butchered the entire wasteland, but then killed the fiends? You are now a good and a kind person at the ending because your karma increased to paladin when killing the fiends. So what gives Bethesda/Obsidian? It's like you think "evil" means "cannibal who steals and only kills friendly people (Killing lowlife drugjunkies out of self-defence is righteous indeed)

I'd really like some responds to this. This is the only bug that everyone has, and is actually affecting it quite a bit without notice.
EDIT: I don't see how [snip] was so bad it needed to be censored. Especially in a forum of a game with lots of swearing.

I don't really see it as a bug. I mean, try to think of it in the way of how Karma in real life works, not how it should work in a game.

The reason why you get good karma for killing fiends and the like is because you're ridding the world of life threatening nuisances. Even though you're evil, you still did something that benefited the people of the Mojave Wasteland, so you gain some good karma for helping the wasteland in general. That's how it would be perceived in real life, so that's how that happens here.

As for the situation with Benny, again, you're benefiting New Vegas by getting rid of him. He was a corrupt man who wanted New Vegas all for himself no matter what.

As long as you're doing something which benefits people in some way, you will gain some good karma. If not getting a little drop of good karma is so important to you, then avoid confrontation with enemies that are a nuisance to most communities.

And also, it's not like it's extremely hard to gain bad Karma. Just steal some stuff or kill a few of the respawning townsfolk every so often. So with a small amount of effort, you can easily replace all of the good karma you received with bad karma.

As for game endings, do what is described above before the game ends and BOOM! New ending based on your current karma right there.

If you don't want to get Good Karma for killing Evil Things, then don't kill the Evil Things.

Another way to look at this is, why would an evil player do good by eliminating evil? That is at cross purposes.

Well if you're evil, Why would'nt you kill another bad guy?

I mean chances are he or she would kill you.

I agree that the Karma system is kind of wonky, but I'm playing an evil character at the moment and I'm having no trouble at all maintaining my evil alignment. My current save calls me "Evil Incarnate" at level 19.

It's very easy to do. I'm actually surprised at how many of the quests have an evil way to complete them.

Actually, to be more accurate, karma was there from day 1, in Fallout 1. However, I get the feeling the devs pretty much ignored the Karma system while they were working on New Vegas. The devs even said in previews "Reputation is more important than Karma" and hardly even brought up anything about the Karma system. If they were going to do that, they should have just cut it from the game entirely. The only thing I can think of why there is still Karma in the game is to follow Fallout tradition and to appease the long-time fans who've played Fallout 1 and 2 (like me).

If you want my opinion, though, now that they've implemented a reputation system they should just do away with Karma altogether.

Karma is not how people see you, it's how the universe sees you. So it's perfectly fine if you rid it of evil and it thinks you are actually swell. ^_^

I also think it's a concept that should be kicked out of the series for good, it's never been a particularly interesting or "fitting" mechanic.

That said, I think a lot of it in New Vegas could be fixed simply if enemies that attack you on sight don't give good or bad karma. Or at least not enemies that are *always* hostile to you.

That's not how being evil works. A tough-talking tempermental killing machine suddenly becoming docile and pacifistic around another evil individual because they also do bad things does not compute. Add the fact that the evil individual in question actively trying to kill the evil player further makes this option either unpalatable or impossible. When it comes down to it, we shouldn't have to make up weird arbitrary rules for ourselves to game the karma system, it should just make more sense.

Personally, I think giving karma for killing regular mobs is a bad implementation of an already deeply flawed system. Killing particular individuals should offer positive karma if you do it in a certain way, though. Similarly, having random piles of junk where there is no owner that gives negative karma when taking is ridiculous. My favorite is being penalized for stealing stuff from Powdergangers. Sure the point can be made that stealing from someone even if they're dead or evil is still bad, but that would mean you are only allowed to purchase items at vendors since looting dead bodies or scavenging would all be considered theft. It also creates a bit of a disconnect when the game is effectively saying that killing bad people is good! But stealing from bad people is bad!

I went back and checked: Yeah you're right. Damn that's embarassing, especially for a guy who picked Fallout 1 up on launch day. :blush2:
Eh, but given it's been more than a decade since I played the game I'm entitled to memory lapses like this. :angel:

Seriously, though: In Fallout 1 "Reputation" was functionally the same as "Karma" in every single way except name. The only thing they changed about it in Fallout 2... was the name. This is why I recall checking some tab in both Fallout 1 and 2 and it rating me as a paragon of goodness or a complete scumbag.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is that Karma, insofar as a numerical system that tells you how "good" or "evil" you are, should be dropped and "Reputation", as in the system that rates how various groups view your character, should be the only thing that really matters.

I think the system itself is somewhat serviceable, it just needs to be implemented better. Right now it's illogical in how it works, and that's not necessarily to blame Obsidian, I think some of the cases are just overlooked effects.

For instance, I get patched up by a kind man who goes out of his way to help me ... a stranger. Doc Mitchell, who most will agree is a pretty stand-up guy. I'd go so far as to say the universe would also view him favorably, he's got himself an overflowing bowl of good karma. Jokes on him though, because the guy he helped back on his feet with no benefit to himself can now walk through and systematically steal everything in the house and no one blinks an eye. The guy down at the store will buy it all too.

The universe startles awake and heaps its disapproval on my character for picking up a bent tin can inside the NCR correctional facility filled with convicts who rebelled, killed the guards and have raided Goodsprings and Primm though. Take some Pinyon Nuts on a table in the Great Khan's longhouse? You sir, are a monster!

It's just inconsistent and like I said, I fear that making things "red" to take was more a way of discouraging people from cleaning out folks houses right in from of them as they parrot out the same greeting to you over and over, and that has led to some pretty wonky situations that make you wonder why you're being penalized in situation A and congratulated in situation B. It's a bad way to use the system precisely because it gives some really discordant feedback to the player and that destroys the whole point of a system that's supposed to tell good from bad.

I'd actually be happy if they ditched Karma in future iterations and stuck with reputation. Let's face it, if the Feinds and Caesar's Legion think you are the bees knees, you know you're not a gentle soul who runs a rescue center for kittens and gives caps to the homeless. We can figure it out when we've done messed up things or done very nice things and of the overall balance of good to bad is tilting overwhelmingly in one direction or teetering near the center. You can't really have a truly "gray" moral choice when one of the two choices gives you a woeful bit of music with a horned vault boy grinning at you.

I actually really like the way that Arcanum implemented the system (I'm sure a number of Fallout fans will have played that game, so some of you will know what I'm talking about). Basically - killing non-evil people was always evil, regardless of how good you were. However, killing evil people was only considered "good" if they were more evil than you... which, if you were a really evil person, was rarely the case.

Does anyone know the amount of Good Karma you get for killing an evil character? Compared to doing a quest in an Evil Way? It may be that it is enough to do the quests evil and ignore the effects from killing random evilites.





True, if you are defending yourself, then there should be no impact on Karma. The game already does this by having an NPC that if you kill them before the appropriate dialog choices, you get dinged on Karma, however if the game puts them into combat based on what you have said, then it usually has no effect on Karma (that I have seen so far).

It would be harder to do this with Faction Members, as there are other mechanisms tied to what happens to them and how they feel about you.

Karma in this game is borked, it's fubared, it's knackered, it doesn't work properly. You can try to rationalise it as much as you like, you can try and argue it's delibarately designed this way, that it's a reflection of real-life's infinitely-complex world of moral grey, but to do so is delusional. The karma system is simply broken. I murder travelling merchants for chump change and I lose no karma. I wipe an entire settlement off the map and I lose no karma. I lose more karma for stealing a man's lunch than I do ending his life. Meanwhile, I kill Fiends as they sleep in their beds in order to strip their corpses of valuables and I gain karma. It's incredibly easy to get positive karma for killing people in this game, and almost impossible to get negative karma this way. If you're evil and you want to raise your karma level? Simple, just cut a swathe of death and destruction across the NW side of the map. Because obviously mass-murder is the key to absolution. :angel:

The karma system in Vegas is just a massive mess. Either have it working as it should or don't have it at all.

Still I think even fallout 3 had better karma system. Though some perks that gave evil/good karma to you were ridiculous, no aggressive mob gave karma and killing any non-aggressive non-evil gained evil karma. Besides, are there really any "blow up megaton" or "let out the ghouls" quests in new vegas? Only seen one like it, and it only lowered NCR reputation (oh no!)

Other than that new vegas is a better game in my opinion. But the karma makes me despise it a bit. I mean there could easily be a mod that removes the karma status of fiends and Benny ect. but the modders in the forum seem to be more busy making celebrity head morphs or something, since when I suggested it, no one cared. Screw gameplay, right. I guess I'll make my karma evil by the console or some crap, still feels like cheating but it's more damn realistic.

Playing with a good karma level is a fun and rewarding romp through meaningful quests. Evil karma level leaves you aimlessly wandering for someone to kill, not knowing if they have a negative karma quest line for you or not.

The game should have 2 starting options:

Good- Starts you in a caring environment w/ this doctor tending to your wounds and speaking gently about why you arrived in goodsprings.

Evil- Should start you in a slave pen of a legion work camp, and you progress through showing mercilessness and malicious behavior. I can imagine a fuzzy intro to the game as the courier wakes up with a bomb collar on his neck and being kicked by armored recruits. They put you in a work environment, and once the guards leave, the other inmates give conversation options that might progress you into your first act of cruelty, or w/ speech, your rise in ranks. Any number of possibilities for continuing EVIl storyline, but you are set forth on a completely different path than the good natured courier.

In my "Evil" game, I betrayed Goodsprings and killed everyone. I kill every NCR uniform I see and steal every worthwhile item I can find. And my karma reads savior of the wastes...... Something doesn't add up, or you have some really forgiving diety watching over the character.

"I want to have low karma" isn't a character concept. That's the part I find idiotic. You're getting so attached to your karma label that it's your goal.

Karma is all about whether or not you're making the wastes a better place to live. If you're killing jackasses, you're definitely making it a better place. You can be selfish and still make it a better world.

So Tale, you are saying that working with the legion should not give bad karma? Do they make the wastes a better place? It is not necessarily the karma label these people want, it is the CONTENT for the other branch.

EDIT: and obviously to fix the fiends to where they are a faction, or non karma related.

Still, though.. I don't understand why people struggle with their Karma. I was reading a thread on the Steam forums a while back where people were saying that they were having trouble keeping GOOD karma.

Positive and negative karma both seem easy enough to me.

Granted, I do fail a lot of quests due to being evil, but it's usually through legitimate dialog options or similar means. For example,

Doing so will give you a quest failed message and negative karma, but I see it as a legitimate way of completing the quest.

If you want to play evil, be freaking evil and don't worry about how you're "supposed" to play. It seems to work itself out.

I CANT BE EVIL!!!!

I've tried, oh believe me...everyone is dead, mccarran is in ruins, the legion is about to take over but I'm the muther [censored] paradigm of humanirty!!!!

Why?
Because a fiend tried to hit me with a pool cue, and moto-runner is a t-total asshat....


And suddenly I'm wasteland Jesus.....

Oh [censored]....CAESAR'S GONNA CRUCIFY ME!!!!!

The Legion do technically makes the wastes a better place. I wouldn't agree with many who argued it, but the argument exists.

It's content you want? There's plenty of content. You just want content that rewards you with evil karma as you expect evil karma to be presented. Just ignore the karma. The karma is nearly meaningless.


I find it hilarious that so many people seem to think starting fights with the NCR should be negative karma. Rank and file soldiers are karma neutral, only particularly evil or good members within the group are karma effecting. You want bad karma, go shoot up Vault 21 or Westside. Not McCarran.

Though usually rather conservative in regards to removing established stuff from Fallout or RPGs in general , I agree that karma doesn't work well (and never did).

Killing a mass-murderer for no other reason than the thrills of it is still evil. Giving generously to a beggar just to impress a girl is not a good deed but a selfish one.


Sure, for most people those deeds may turn out well, and they may celebrate you, but this is what reputation is meant for.

Karma is all about your ulterior motives, and those are very dificult to grasp; in a computer game much more so than in real life.

They enabled karma so you could be good or be evil by committing either good or evil acts. If it's not actually working that way, the solution is not to just tell people they shouldn't try to be evil and then laughably one up yourself by saying he shouldn't even expect options for evil karma to be presented. The karma is not actually meaningless to the game mechanics or story, by the way, you just have failed to recognize that it has meaning. This might be a new concept, but ignoring a problem doesn't make it non-existent.



You're contradicting yourself. First you informed us that "Karma is all about whether or not you're making the wastes a better place to live" and then quantified that as "killing jackasses". But soldiers are karma neutral? Huh. So when radiation transforms that karma neutral soldier into a ghoul (who also likely kills jackasses ... your justification for being a force for good), he suddenly grants good karma to whichever person offs him?
How about those karma neutral NCR soldiers killing off Feinds? Your argument is null.

While that is true, on the other hand, what pisses me off is that I bent over backwards to negotiate peaceful solutions between
factions and got ZILCH in the way of good karma. Feel ripped off, no recognition by the game what so ever. Sounds like
a future mod project.

Exactly, and this is the problem. Wiping entire settlements of blameless civilians off the map isn't making the wastes a better place to live, it's commiting an atrocity and should be reflected as such in the karma system. It isn't.