I think fame/infamy was not handled very well in oblivion. It seemed way to easy to become infamous, but more challenging to become more famous. Also, it seemed the only upside to having a large fame level was that the guards were on your side, no NPC's would bow at your feet or anything.

And being infamous seemed to only make the guards hate you, no citizens would run in fear from you. Hopefully this is improved in Skyrim.

What do you think? How should this be improved. (I searched the forums, I don't believe there is a topic about this)

Edit: It did slightly improve/take away disposition, but it didn't help very much with anything

I think that there should be kind of a bar with 2 sides.

left side - Infamy
right side - Fame

It kidn of contradicts having 80 infamy and 70 fame.

I'd think it much better to be just a little bit infamous.

Take for example you are a known murderer, which gives you 40 infamy. But then you go on and save skyrim from the inpending doom of dragon rage. it gives you 60 fame.

so all in all you just have 20 Fame.

And I'd really like to have more effects other than the greetings.

Niker

Fame and infamy that are location-specific would be kinda cool. If I kill a major political figure in one town, they should hate me, but if I save another from a dragon, they should love me.

Also, if I get too much infamy, it might be cool for shopkeepers to refuse to sell me anything, or even guards refuse to allow me through the front gates, requiring me to sneak in if I want in at all.

After a certain point, I certainly felt famous. Having a statue in Bruma, hearing people sing the Fall of Dagon to me, being recognized as the Champion of Cyrodiil, that was all nice. But then I never really felt infamous at all.

But they never really recognized you as the hero, sure you got the statue, but it always seemed like martin did everything. He did nothing, he told us what to do and we did all the hard work until the end, when he does one thing, then he gets all the credit

/rant

but I agree with the other things you said. Maybe once you are infamous enough, people will actually run in terror from you. That would be awesome, and it would actually make me feel feared.

I think it would be great if citizens would have extreme reactions to your fame/infamy level. They way they talked about the new radiant AI stuff I think that this will already be in the game. For instance if your famous and walk into a bar the owner might be ecstatic that you're visiting his bar and give you a free drink on the house, or if your infamous he could refuse to serve you or be reluctant to.

I really don't see how fame and infamy can be represented on a 1 dimensional plot; if i stop doing bad things does that mean that they never happened?

Personally I’d be more worried of the guy with equal fame and infamy, seems equally likely that he would save me or burn my house down (or burn my house down just to save me).

I want peasants to run in fear when they see me, cower and flee, lock there doors, hid there children, the guards coming to watch me, and then unleash hell apon them, calling demons and burning everything, killing and slaughtering all in my way, and then when the smoke clears, and the last body hits the ground.... i loot the place

What is the player but a soldier of Martin Septim? Martin didn't exactly put his life on the line as much as the player, but he spent countless hours--even staying up several nights in a row--studying books like the Mysterium Xarxes (which is apparently dangerous just to handle) in order to let the player know what was needed to defeat Mankar Camoran and stop the Oblivion Crisis. Without Martin, the player would be lost, with no way of deciphering the Xarxes and the world would be doomed.

and without the player, martin would have to rely on the blades, who were obviously too stupid to do anything. they have hundreds of soldiers at their disposal, but they only use about 20 people to defend martin in the battle for bruma.

Plus, martin wouldn't have known anything if we didn't tell him who he was.

I'm definitely not undermining all of what the player did. It was a mutually beneficial relationship. You got a statue, you got Imperial Dragon armor--something normally only worn by Emperors--and you became one of the few Champions of Cyrodiil! You even got a song written about you! I'd say the player got their fair share of fame. But you didn't actually stop Dagon from coming anyway. That was Martin who banished him back to Oblivion.

FONV faction reputations.

Sure saving the world is nice, bu the second I get drunk on mead and punch multiple people in the face until I murder an entire town.... That should make people think a little differently about me.

I actually found it was rather easy to become famous in Oblivion, due to the abundance of quests that increased your fame. Usually, even if my characters joined the Thieves Guild or Dark Brotherhood, their fame would still be higher than their infamy.

I wouldn't mind if instead of just one global fame/infamy value, we got something similar to New Vegas's reputation system, though, where you could have different reputations with different communities, so you could be hated in one part of the world while you're loved in another. I also hope that reputation will have a larger impact on the game, because in Oblivion, it seemed like fame and infamy really didn't matter that much, mostly, I only cared about it because if my character's infamy was higher than fame, I wouldn't be able to restore my attributes by praying at chapel alters. Hopefully, reputation will have a larger impact on how NPCs react to you, with the possibility of certain special benefits for having a positive reputation in a certain location, like discounts from the local merchants. It should also be tied with Radiant Story, being very famous OR infamous could lead to random encounters with assassins, for example, and characters could be more likely to give you really heroic tasks if you're famous. After all, you'd probably be reluctant to trust a known criminal to find your missing child for you. In the end, whether I'm famous or infamous, I want to feel like it has an impact on what my life in Skyrim is like.



The statue was kind of ruined by the fact that there's a good chance it wouldn't even be wearing the armor I was wearing at the time of the Battle of Bruma, and would instead become a fashion disaster, and the Imperial Dragon armor looked kind of nice, but really wasn't all that impressive in terms of abilities, by the time you completed the main quest, you'd probably be finding much better armors if you didn't abuse the leveling system, you'd think after all that trouble, I'd get a better suit of armor, at least, then again, in Morrowind, the reward for completeing the main quest wasn't great either, but at least you could get some nice items along the way, like Kagrenac's tools. And the title of Champion of Cyrodiil didn't really do much, people barely even acknowledged that I'm the Champion of Cyrodiil, I actually felt like I got more respect for being the Hero of Kvatch, at least people would talk about my deeds, even though it got a little annoying after a while when people were still talking about me saving Kvatch several months after I completed the quest.

Yeah, it was kind of a shame that the statue picked whatever gear it deemed the best that was in your inventory at the time. In future playthroughs I intentionally only brought specific gear into the Bruma Great Gate to ensure I go the statue I wanted.
And the Imperial Dragon armor is more for show, I think. It was intended to be amazing battle armor, but more a glamorous suit of armor.

I always wondered what ever happened to the Red Dragon Crown. Baurus says it's what people think of when they think of the Emperor rather than the Amulet of Kings, yet you never see it and I don't recall ever hearing of it any other time. I assume it's what Uriel is wearing in the final cutscene of Arena. Wonder what happened to it. I always wanted to see a mod of it but it never happened. Oh well.

ANYWAY...FAME/INFAMY. GOOD IDEA. EXPAND ON IT.

This is EXACTLY what the Fame/Infamy System is. Just no slider. It does exactly what you said, if you have 5 Fame and 10 Infamy The game treats this like 5 Infamy.

Personally, this is the ONLY thing I would rather see changed towards Fable. Not Fame and Infamy, but Evil and Good, with a side order of Fame. I want to be a nondescript killer, someone who is nice to his neighbors, a real friendly guy. Someone who has never done anything remarkable, nothing worth noting. And everyman who any neighbor would allow into their home in the dead of night...