Church Donations raising karma actually makes sense

X

X12

It Wandered In From the Wastes
(this wont be a article of defending the game, dont worry, but rather an in depth look at something)

Ok, so everyone's aware that if you donate to churches (Children of Atom/ Saint Monica) your karma will be raised. Seems pretty stupid....until you remember "Pardoners". These people would offer to "cleanse you of your sins" for a price. Similar to paying a church to "raise your karma". A clever idea....implemented the wrong way. Also, technically having high karma even after doing horrible things wouldnt make you a "good person" no, it would make you a "villain with good publicity", if you pardon my use of tropes.

And while we are on the subject of karma, i use to think that infecting the water supply was "idiot evil".....until i realised your character is aware that the water would kill him, and could just choose to not drink Aqua Pura, instead just drinking the pure water you get from Wadsworth/ Godfrey. Now bombing the BoS, thus having TWO groups of power armored soldiers wanting to "pop a cap in your ass", THAT is idiot evil. What would be more evil is to keep the Brotherhood at your finger tips...."dance monkey, dance"
 
Didn't think it's stupid since it's game. lots of game has that system. but don't think it makes sense. if the church is famous among wasteland and have great influence among wasteland, it would make sense. but I don't think megaton's crazy church have great influence.
 
The idea behind karma wasn't to say that you were a "good" or "bad" person. It was a representation behind the idea that people had an intangible thing that would influence their fortune, for good or for ill, based on their actions. The idea wasn't that by doing a bunch of good deeds that you were a "good person", but rather that you had some "good karma" going for you. The concept was meant to exemplify the idea of "the ends justify the means", for one thing. You could be a none-too-particularly-great individual who utilizes shady and questionable methods to attain a positive goal, and that would mean you're working towards a good end, so you'd have good karma.

That was the IDEA of it all. But it's their implementation and representation that was all wrong. A few caps in a donation box is NOT "good karma", because that's just one act. That won't negate weeks worth of "bad karma", even if you repeat the process over and over. It's still the same "good deed". Karma was supposed to be influenced by the multitude of actions you took, and it was supposed to reflect the totality of your adventure. If you spent the ENTIRE game being selfless and giving and trusting and polite and so on, then you would have the maximum karma score possible, but a few misdeeds here and there and you'd never reach that height. The way it was implemented in FO3 was all wrong. Being able to violently alter your karma based on just a handful of deeds was absurd. Yes, if you slaughtered an entire town quite suddenly after having a career of benevolence, that would sharply impact your reputation for the worse, but it shouldn't be the same as +2000 dropping to -2000 overnight. Nor should a few hundred caps (of which you can easily amass THOUSANDS) in a Church's coffers be enough to raise -2000 to +2000 almost instantly, or worse, a few dozen bottles of water to the same thirsty dredge. Yet that's how the karma system works in FO3, and that's why it's stupid.
 
I dont think anyone actually read my thread, because no one commented on the "pardoner" aspect.
 
Because is a pretty stupid idea. And it turns Karma into some weird Catholic centric morality system.
 
Walpknut said:
Because is a pretty stupid idea. And it turns Karma into some weird Catholic centric morality system.
Click to expand...

Its not an "idea" its how i interpret the karma system.
 
The matter is what is karma?
is it? reputation among wasteland?
or matter of player's mind?
or score about you are good or evil.

if it is reputation, donation only affects inside of Megaton since other people don't believe it.

if it is matter of your mind...well only you can know
karma is raised or not. :lol:

if it is score, it won't make sense unless it is game.
there aren't no messae like "you gained 100 karma by donation" in real.

but I don't think every elements of game should be make sense.
it's game not a real simulator or reality.

IMO there's no reason to stick with karma system since reputaion plays better role than karma. as a experienced Fallout series' morality is gray. don't have to be black or white. so I think reputation is enough to replace karma.

for good deed, Utima 4 did very great job on that.
 
Baldur's Gate has the same donation concept for their reputation system... What they did to limit it a little was make it take more and more money for the same amount of increase the farther up the scale you got, and then made it flat out impossible to go all the way to maximum no matter how much you donated.

Then again, reputation also meant a bit more in BG (NPC's have less favorable reactions to you, party members get fed up and leave, Flaming Fist spawn and try to kill you, shops charge more/less or even won't sell to you at all, etc.), whereas karma in FO3 its pretty much meaningless except for initially hiring certain companions.
 
X12 said:
I dont think anyone actually read my thread, because no one commented on the "pardoner" aspect.
Click to expand...
Project that frustration when it actually APPLIES. It's not like your thread is several pages long or your posts are particularly lengthy that anyone COULDN'T read your "pardoner" idea. Of course we read it. I simply disregarded it because of its irrelevance, and others did the same for their own reasons. Do you know what pardoners did? They collected taxes. They didn't ACTUALLY cleanse you of your sins, nor did they head back to the Vatican, or the local church, or wherever they reported to, and reported who had been "pardoned". It was a ploy to receive money, just like carbon credits, today. Nothing was actually PARDONED. Why would such an absurd concept have any reasonable applications in the Fallout-verse related to karma? Donating caps to a box in a church will only apply to your KARMA because you've DONATED MONEY. You gave money out of pure generosity, so naturally if you believe in the concept of cosmic fate-altering karma, then that would mean you'll have good karma working for you, in the end. But that still doesn't exceed the point I already raised about it being one single act. Being "generous" over and over to the same cause doesn't equate to more good karma, that's just you showing favoritism, and if anything, enough of that would start to give you BAD karma over time.
 
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