How does (or should) Karma work in game?

If it's a spiritual thing, then I don't think it should matter if people see whatever it is you did to gain/loss it, but also NPC's should have no idea if you are good or bad (at least not based on Karma). If it's like rep then it should only change if someone saw you do the act and lives to tell about it. Then, as word gets around, NPC's should be able to react to it.

It always seemed to me that FO mixed these up some which really shouldn't happen IMO.

Is it a spiritual thing, between you and the Maker, that only you know about? Or is it more like a reputation where someone can met you and know you're a bad apple.

Thanks.

It shouldn't be there at all...

Rep has its uses though.

Neither should be in the game as "systems" like we got in Fo3 and NV.

I don't mind karma being an abstract thing that NPCs can "see"; at least to the extent that they can see you're evil, but won't necessarily know what exactly you've done. It does need an overhaul in how it's delivered, though; good karma should be harder to come by, and karma in general shouldn't be added by easily repetitive actions like stealing or entering/exiting an owned terminal over and over. Taking the good karma path should be hard; it should require more personal sacrifice, more complicated alternatives, and should occasionally screw you over for showing mercy to the wrong person.

As for reputation, I'd much rather it worked like Skyrim's regional crime tracker. It was just frustrating in New Vegas, and didn't always make logical sense. Does the Legion send a death squad to every schmuck that gets Shunned by them?

I'm not against the idea of factions paying attention to your actions, or reacting differently based on what you wear, but I'm not sure there needs to be a formalized system that measures it.

i wish they would make a real karma system like do enough bad things your luck stat starts to drop or vise versa but make the effect temporary.

I don't mind to standing Karma system, but Reputation I feel is a far more important thing.

It changes dynamics. Working with one faction may bring you in conflict with another, or not at all depending on the faction. Choosing sides in conflicts, who to support and who to turn your back on, which ideals and which acts to support. It's these things with Reputation that help the player shape the events of the world he gets involved in.

I kinda liked Vegas's system as it added variety. You could be a good/evil NCR, good evil House, good/evil Legion. You could be a hero to a faction but the game's endings took into account what type of person you were.

Problem #1: if there were a plausible reason why a particular NPC would 1) know who I am and 2) know what I have done, then systems like these might make sense. But I've never seen such a system yet. Typically, NPCs all over a game world appear to have access to a database containing accounts of every action I have taken. NPCs I have never met psychically know of my deeds. These systems need to be more sophisticated than what we have seen so far.

Problem #2: assuming, hypothetically, that a system could be crafted that did make sense, the system needs to serve a valid roleplaying purpose. There needs to be a reason why I should care what my reputation or Karma is. There should be serious repercussions to my actions. Some actions should block my progress in certain areas of the game later on. Some NPCs should stop talking to me, or even turn hostile. At extreme levels of Karma or reputation whole towns or regions of the game should become off-limits. Some quests (outside of the main quest, possibly) should be rendered unavailable.

If a Karma or reputation system only gets us better prices with merchants or controls which companions we can travel with, it is little more than a gimmick, in my opinion, and should not even be in a serious roleplaying game.

I don't think they are doing a reputation system like that again. They're probably going to continue down the route of using quests and the "Story Manager" to create better player-to-NPC and NPC-to-player interactions based on what the player has done in a given playthrough. Namely they're focused on streamlining and improving the systems surrounding player influence and recognition in the world, hoping to find a way to really nail "player reputation" without actually having to create an entirely separate and probably complex system governing reputation. They do have to modernize their gameplay systems every once in a while, especially those that needlessly eat away studio resources and/or never worked that well in the first place.

They also are focused on improving realism in various gameplay mechanics, and a reputation system that is outside the other gameplay systems like quests would likely make that complicated to implement while remaining realistic about it.

I always turned the Karma system off. To me, it made no sense that my actions witnessed by nobody should have impact on the way NPC's perceived me.

HOWEVER, if it was cool stat, which didn't intrude on the game like the current system with the annoying noise and notification, and was just a symbol in the pip-boy, as a nice little stat feature, I wouldn't mind it being there and monitoring my actions.

I think Rep should work just like F:NV.

Rep is great to have if we are gonna have multiple guilds and such that could become allies or enemies. Karma is basically useless honestly.