there is no such thing as "evil" in tes! the only time evil is mentioned in tes, is when the ignorant people of tamriel tell you what they think is "evil," which is usually daedra!

No. Who is to judge what is good and what is bad?

Isn't that pretty much what fame/infamy did? The only differences that I noticed were that the karma system would (1) raise/lower depending on individual actions as opposed to how you completed quests/missions and (2) give you messages when you gained/lost karma as opposed to manually checking for fame/infamy. On the whole, I looked at karma as being a tweaked version of the fame/infamy system, which kind of worked OK for the FO games, but really doesn't belong in TES. I'm not going to be outrageously upset if it shows up, but I'm not going to miss it if it doesn't.

Don't want Good/Evil, don't want Karma, don't want Fame/Infamy...at least none as have been done before.

I'd like a highly-tweaked thoroughly-overhauled version of something like New Vegas' "Repuation" system which was admittedly similar to but not the same as Fame/Infamy. Everything based on:

1: Whether or not anyone sees you do it. If nobody sees it, it has no effect. Period. (If one factor has to be "most important," this is it. No "all-seeing overlord" rubbish.)
2: Who they logically would tell- with some mechanic to simulate how long it takes word of your deeds to spread, so you could conceivably "outrun the consequences" for a time.
3: Factions. If two factions are in opposition, an action that hinders one would make them mad and their "nemesis faction" happy.

Karma would make it seem like a Bioware rpg (to me). I dont want the game to tell me if im good or evil. I will know.

Edit: Fame/Infamy on the other hand show our standing in the eyes of others without trying to add a moral slant to it, which I think is better.

Works wonders? Hell no, in some instances, where I thought I was doing the right thing, it gives me bad Karma.. Why should a video game decide whether I'm good or bad? Leave that up to me.

I like Fame and Infamy better.

This isn't Fable.

And I'd rather keep the Fame/Infamy system that they had in Oblivion.

^ This.

I plan on being evil, as in fruit of the devil type of evil, so I don't want any kind of "karmic butt whoopin' " to come down on me at the least convenient moment... that's svck against a Dragon.

bliviongate:

No. No Karma, no "good" or "evil". Just reputation.

Exactly. Let that be for the player to decide. We don't need to freakin' hand-held all the time. This is another of those examples.

this

Keep fame and infamy, get rid of karma

If it's similar to Mass Effect's hero vs. anti hero system then I'm good with it: it never made sense to me that you could be the most abominable example of abuse of free will and yet the game is only told to expend enough effort to kill you as to make it "fair".

As for the game "telling you" that an action is evil. There are some actions that you can do in video games that you can't do in real life and it's important to remind people where that line is. Some games go too far and give you "good karma" for giving someone a few coins, or give you "bad karma" for stealing a loaf of bread.

It should be subtle, and should genuinely reflect the intended nature of the character, but should also be "hands-off" enough that those who really don't care aren't affected beyond any realistic interpretation of how people may react to an individual.

Fame/Infamy, or a reputation system should do the bulk of the work, but right and wrong do have their place. RPGs aren't a virtual "I'm too scared to be this much of an a** in real life" environment.

And as with all systems like this it makes no sense for an effect to take place if no-one knows about what you did.

I actually didn't like karma until RDR used it with fame. I have liked it ever since, because I like seeing the consequences for my actions. I know other games used it before, but I never really got into it until RDR. So ya I would like to see some sort of karma usage in skyrim.

They already confirmed that there is some system, in Todds words "Similiar to Karma in Fallout, but much better."

I'd love to see something like "karma" in a game, but game technology would have to be far beyond what it is now before it would really live up to what I'd want. "Karma," like "good" and "evil," is an immensely complex and subtle thing. One basic example - you have an opportunity to save the life of a man. If you don't act, he WILL die. If you do act, he WILL live. However, the action you must take to save his life will lead to the death of another person. What do you do? No matter what you do, somebody's going to die, and at least to the degree that you could prevent it by acting, you will be responsible for it. But any action you take will result in the same basic outcome - somebody's going to die.

In order for a game to accurately represent "karma," it would have to be able to differentiate between those two courses of action and weigh them properly. Do you get rewarded for saving a life or punished for being responsible for a death? Or both? I don't see any way that a game can make such a distinction. Heck - the point of the example is that it's not even really possible for a person to make such a distinction, or at least not in any universally true sense. So any attempt anyone might make to insert "karma" into a game is going to inevitably come up short - it's going to have to be simplified, and as soon as it is, you run into problems. The world has to be cast in black and white instead of shades of gray, in order to make it so that the game can "keep score," and that limits believeablity and complexity.

About the best they can do in a game is fame and infamy, which don't try to apply an objective measure to a fundamentally subjective thing, but instead just apply a subjective measure to it. The game doesn't decide if you're good or evil - it simply decides that this NPC believes that you're good or evil. And that's not only easier to do, but works better in the game anyway, since that can be easily used to affect the NPC's disposition to you, which is the important thing anyway.

The only real changes I'd like to see from the Oblivion system are to make the scale relative - infamy with an upright citizen should be the same as fame with a thief, for instance - and to make the numbers dependent not upon your actions, but upon the NPC's awareness of your actions. Those who have reason to suspect that you're a thief should react to that, while those who have no reason to suspect it should not.

Flawed argument.

The game does math functions all the time, doesnt mean i want to see it.

A hidden karma system would make the world seem more dynamic because things would be changing and you don't know why. Just because it is a single player game doesn't mean you should be the all knowing god.