I have talked to a lot of people over XBL about weather they played as the good, bad, or the neutral. Most of them say they would like to play with Bad Karma because, they like killing people and stealing items. Personally I like to play Neutral because, I also like to steal things but then I also save more people than I kill. I know Karma really doesn't mean a lot in Fallout New Vegas than it does in Fallout 3. In New Vegas it's more focused on which faction you with rather than what your Karma is. But I would still like to know.

So? Good, Bad, or Neutral?

I do what I feel is right, which often means helping people while simultaneously stealing everything of value from under them.

Neutral. Why? Because Just Lucky I'm Alive.

Good, only because it's the easiest to maintain by far. I steal stuff from time to time, but it's ludicrously easy to get your karma back up to max. I mean, you get good karma for killing Fiends and feral ghouls! I think to be evil all the time you probably need to take the Cannibal perk.

You're not kidding. Even in my Caesar playthrough, where I committed atrocities, killed profligates innocent people in the name of demoralizing the NCR, and sided with the Legion at every possible turn, I still finished the game with the karmic rank of "messiah."

Why? Because I wiped out the Fiends in Vault 3, which apparently gives you so much good karma that you can never hope to bring it back down. I just remember looking up at crucified Benny and then opening my Pip-Boy to the screen that displays karma and finding that I was considered to be a "shield of hope."

Being good is too easy in this game! They really shouldn't have made enemies give so much karma when killed. Like c'mon!!! Killing geckos makes you a good person? I don't think killing innocent animals for the sole purpose of grinding up levels makes you "good."

To be "bad" you pretty much have to steal everything in sight.(including stuff in pockets) And you must consume human flesh every 2 hours as directed by your doctor.

What is funny is you gain more karma for killing an evil creature/person than you lose for eating them (cannibal) so it's a net gain. Also, stealing stuff has next to zero actual effect on karma. Aside from the message, the actual change is insignificant. There have been some mods that attempt to fix this. I wrote one myself and I use it all the time. It's called Bad Karma:

http://modsreloaded.com/bad-karma

Usually when I get to New Vegas around level 8 to 10 I'm either still neutral or just into the good spectrum, if I'm playing good. The readme shows the charts so you can see how this fixes it so karma loss from killing good people, stealing, cannibalism and such more than offsets the gains from killing evil people.

One thing of note, one of the difficulties with New Vegas, is how the game uses those variables to determine, "murder good folks." When you kill someone evil you often get a net karma gain (unless the creature or NPC is not flagged, which happens on many of the respawn ones). But when you kill good people there's no effect on karma. It only counts murder. So a quest like, "Run, Goodsprings Run," once the townsfolk turn hostile killing them does not have the major impact that it should. But if you were to murder Sunny Smiles outside of that quest you'd take a huge karma hit. It's a game engine thing that determines the difference between murder and killing, they're not treated the same even though they probably should be the same or similar.

The readme talks about that. It's a fundamental problem with the game design. But if you murder one or two good folks or steal a lot of stuff, you'll feel it.

But to answer the original question (almost forgot) I prefere Neutral. I often end up on the good side in the end, because neutrals wouldn't just go around murdering and stealing a lot for no good reason, but there have been times I tried being evil but I didn't like that as much.

actually there is a house in Nelson that is filled with hundreds of own books. Stealing around 150 I think will bring you down to Evil/Neutral. Happy Stealing everyone.

I play as neutral currently, but I don't steal either.

I always have Very Good Karma because I kill a lot of Fiends, but my playstyle is mostly Neutral. I do good stuff when it's the shortest way home but sometimes I just need to kick the dog, like going on a shotgun rampage at REPCONN.

Good

Cheers

I don't really pay attention to the Karma meter, but the choices I make depend entirely on my current character.

Hahaha, I'm usually evil by the time I hit the Mojave Outpost because I steal everything from Goodsprings and Primm. However, after that I'm quickly back to Good. As for the preference, Thought you died is a beast of a perk. Crit immunity (although that's shared between the three), +100 HP, and a 10% damage? Yes please.

Since karma is pretty pointless in FNV I don't care about it at all.
Neither do I about being "good" or "evil", I always roleplay to some extent, so my actions are in cause of what the character thinks is right to do, not what I want to do.