Is it just me, or does karma play a really small part in new vegas? there aren't really bad or good playstyles, you just work for Mr house, NCR or Legion to accomplish their own selfish goals, or you can take over and accomplish YOUR own selfish needs, making it feel like you are locked on neutral karma. Ofcourse, there is still the Homocide playstyle when you wait until your gear is good enough and then you kill pretty much everything, but i am not talking about that, i am talking about good and bad karma.
In fallout 3, you could work for the BoS, trying to accomplish a goal that would make the wasteland a better place, being the good karma path, or you can work for the enclave and purge the wasteland, being the evil path, and there are many quests on the way being clearly bad or good.
But it's just not visible in New Vegas. The only "good" faction in new vegas is the Followers, but that's just a minor faction.
Thoughts?

The karma system in general was flawed anyway. It didnt take into account you doing good deeds for selfish reasons among many other things. The reputation system is far better.

The karma system is a great asset to the game because it's another way to build your character to your liking, being the whole purpose of RPG.
The rep system is nice, but faction armor is so bull. It pisses me off you can't go around wearing Veteran armor or Centurion armor without pissing off the dogs or making some factions not like you.

But karma shouldnt change anything in the game world. Its purly personal. Reputation is more realistic because its a direct indication of how people see you and your actions. The legion doesnt like NCR and vice versa. So if somone from the legion sees you in NCR cloths, why WOULDN'T they attack you? They see you wearing the cloths of their enemy so the most logical deduction is you are aiding them. Same goes on the flip side.

Karma on the other hand is a mental state. Say you stole something, how would everyone know about that? They wouldnt. Only you knew, and how your mentality is wired determins if you regret stealing or not. If you don't regret it, then its not a hit on your karma. Karma is too subjective to really be used in games and should be left to the player themselves.

The karma system still has some uses in NV. If you open dialogue with Cass and you have low enough karma will cause her to complain about your behaviour. She will complain the second time you talk to her if your karma goes down and if your karma is at evil then she will leave the party with no way of convincing her to stay.

Karma is great and it's a pity that Obsidian totally ignores it. Fortunately, you can use the toolset yourself to add karma checks similar to skill/attribute checks to conversation. I added a couple of karma checks to the game - when talking to Emily about Benny, when talking to Martina after getting rid of the thugs, when talking to one of the locals at the Freeside Mormon fort (King quest), when talking to Melody about her bear, when talking to Lindsay (if the player is evil, she now says to Lindsay, " Your teddy's been snuffed out! I put a .50 MG bullet right in its stupid head!", hahaha!), when talking to Janet (if player is evil, she is forced to lie to Janet, getting her killed). Check out my Emily checks when she talks about Benny, this is really funny:

Player: [PERCEPTION] Did something... happen between you and Benny? (this one doesnt trigger properly in vanilla game, cause stupid Obsidian as always checks stats on subject instead of target, so instead of checking the player's perception, they check Emily's perception)

Emily: admits that she got layed by Benny

Player [female, Black Widow, got layed by Benny too, checking Tops quest here]: Uh, gross...Getting ridden by Benny is a pain in the ass! Umm, not that I ever...
Player [Cherchez perk]: Alcohol is the only way Benny could ever get any action from a smart girl like you.
Player [Alignment neutral/good]: Getting svcker punched by Benny happens to the best of us.
Player [Alignment evil]: Maybe you should chalk it up to being irresponsible and naive.

The first two responses give you high positive rep with the followers, the third a low bonus and the fourth a hit to your rep.

I liked the karma sytem in Fo3 but the problem was that its limits were too thin. The maximum and minimum of karma was -1000 (evil) to 1000 (good). If it was like 5000 you couldn't just make up genocide by giving free water for folks.

In New Vegas I noticed there is a horrid inflation of good karma around. Killing Fiends give you good karma? How the hell can you be evil in this game?

You pretty much compare ncr to brotherhood and legion to enclave. That sums it up pretty much. Good guys and bad guys. You work for ncr to make the desert a better place or work for legion to make it a worse place.

I don't understand your statement I guess...

Yep, I was actually shocked when I played my cannibal legion playthrough. I ate every corpse, murdered every1 at HELIOS one, Helped the Powder Gangers at the NCRCF, helped them take good springs, killed every prospecter I came across, murdered the traders at the grub 'n gulp, stole pretty much everything that wasn't nailed down and finally send the ghouls to a fiery death in their space ships by convincing the human looking ghoul to sabotage the project. I also deliverd Cass to Jean Baptiste and then went to mr. House. I thought let's check my Karma: "Protector of the Wastes" WTF?! At that point I actually stopped being evil cuz... what's the point?

Fallout 3 is the only game where karma really mattered. Every other Fallout game, even Tactics, had only a few karma checks.

I always understood 'karma' to also mean a sort of tally kept by 'the universe'... that encourages a well deserved comeuppance for bad karma, or a "good things come to good people" sort of reward for good karma. I did not take it to be a purely personal indication of conscience, guilt, or lack of.

That's BS, both the NCR and Legion are selfish tyrants who only care about their own and want to either absorb or kill everyone standing in their way.

That's how I understand it as well. Karma is in my mind how the universe in a metaphysical sense sees you and your soul. Where as Reputation is how you stand with a faction. The problem with NV is if you like being evil (Which I thankfully dont) the game is problematic since it pretty much throws karma like candies at a pinyata party.

In my current playthrough I'm only lvl 11, havent even started the legion questline yet, and I'm classified as an evil person( can't remember exactly the words, possible evil-doer or something of the sort) I have already stolen a plethora of items and don't see myself going back from evil.

When I talk to npcs they talk to me in disgust and ask me to leave every time. However I have very good rep with boomers and granted they all say things bad when I'm around but as soon as I open up a dialogue box they are all friendly.

I think karma checks would be amazing in the vanilla game. You can always fix speech and barter by leveling up but with karma checks i could see it being a little harder to make choices since they take more time to build back up or make worse.

Add the karma system in New Vegas to the list of tacked on, broken, and/or not fully realized features including but not limited to, Energy Weapons, Power Armor, and Caesar's Legion.

But at least if you want to play a Gun Toting, Light Armor Wearing, NCR supporting, Good Guy Cowboy type, you came to the right place. Hell, even if you don't you're almost shoehorned into playing that character anyway (karma for killing Ghouls and Fiends? wtf Obsidian).

Interesting you mention that, my current character is a pro-NCR technophile with cannibalistic tendencies who's also rotten to the core. Lots of corpse eating and stealing, and her karma has been at Very Evil almost the entire game. Then again I have been avoiding certain quest conclusions that increase karma, as this character is self-centered rather than the altruists I usually play, which has helped quite a bit as some of same are quite substantial.

It has required quite a bit of effort, especially compared to how I usually hit Very Good without even trying by the time I'm level 8, and she did rise to merely Evil when clearing out the Fiends blocking her path to Vault 3, but eating the resultant corpses got some of it back and the rest came when she stole everything not nailed down from Cottonwood Cove. As she's somewhat unstable she will eventually turn on the NCR (I planned ahead of time to go Independent), and then keeping max negative Karma will be fairly easy.

One thing I haven't done, which would probably help you out if you can manage it without getting ventilated in the process, is to steal everything littering the McCarran concourse area; at -5 per item, there has to be at least -400 Karma in the cafeteria alone, and that's only one portion of the cell. I do agree that the +karma for killing Fiends is grossly exaggerated, which is why I toned it down in my game; she'd still be at Very Evil right now, but would have risen to Neutral in the interim which would have been slightly annoying.

I once played as an evil Legion character who wiped out any settlement that had NCR in it for consistency sake. Forlorn Hope was a graveyard, the Mojave Outpost was completely wiped out, all of the NCR squatters in Freeside were killed, and then I look at my karma. "Messiah". Man what the hell? I completely wiped out even NCR civilians who are more or less INNOCENT and yet I'm a Messiah.

Then my current RP character is true neutral or chaotic good if we're talking about that kind of alignment. Guess what? Messiah. Really, getting good karma is so freakin easy that I could just do about 8 side quests correctly and I'd be in the good graces of everybody in the wastes. You know, whatever happened to...bad karma = easy to get, lots of consequences. Good karma = hard to get, get free useless stuff.

That's why I love the reputation system. It's much more realistic and when I shoot somebody who belongs to a faction, that faction dislikes me. And you know what's even better? I can do infiltration missions and sneak kill people without losing reputation, which is VERY realistic. What they don't know can't hurt me after all.

They should have gotten rid of it. Good and Evil is a limited perspective. The way it works in this game and IMO how it should work in the future is that you must think about the shortcomings of each faction and their good points and decide which you would support. In Fallout 3 for example the decision to insert FEV or not boiled down to "Hey, if I were to do this, it would be the more evil thing to do. I am playing an evil/good character and I should/n't do it.". Similar thing can happen with Paragon/Renegade from Mass Effect or as a real life example, political parties (US ones). People will conform to the Paragon/Renegade thing without thinking and people will vote either Democratic or Republican simply because that's their political party.




1. Energy Weapons fill a niche well. Rarer, however can often pack a punch and have simpler "one size fits all" ammo types. Very viable as an option.

2. I don't get the complaints about Power Armor. It's more powerful that Fallout 3 and is still a rare-but-powerful tool.

3. This one I agree with. I don't necessarily blame Obsidian however. I blame deadlines.

Your last thing though, I really really take issue with. You can easily play a fulfilled playthrough focusing on one combat type in the game, following any faction, and roleplay as any variety of attitudes and styles. I know because I've done it with . . . all of my playthroughs.

Hmm, thx for the tips might try that if I ever gonna RP with another DID character. However it's pretty stupid cuz the way the real world karma works is that it's easier to become some1 who is considered an [censored] *something u use on the toilet* than be appreciated tbh. Do chores and help out vs. shouting at children and tackling the elderly... U can help some1 out 100 times but if u shout at their kids... or worse, they ain't exactly gonna invite ya over for some coffee.

Karma is useless in New Vegas. My Very evil profile somehow became Good after deciding to kill some Fiends for loot.

That is actually what I find bizarrely NON-realistic. You can sneak-kill people, have them drop right under the feet of their comrades, and they wonlt even go into [Caution] state. You'd think the sight of friendly corpses being looted in front of their eyes would give them a pause!

Are you mad. People magically fall over dead from bullets to the head every day. It happened all the time back in Elementary School :laugh:

I thought it was entirely idiotic I still got bad karma from stealing from a faction I literally was kill on sight with. Reputation should also factor into karma, even with neutral factions. I'm hoping someone made a mod for this.

LoL.