Fallout 3: Gathering Good Karma

@Mad Mantis: I think I see now... It's not necessarily bad to have a church you can contribute to in game, it's that a church, or anything in Fallout should fall into some sort of gray area and not be considered simply good or bad. I can understand that. Though, I still think if I were to picture, let's say, a church built in Shady Sands by the locals, it really might not have any 'evil' to it, (areas like that were pretty simple) but other, more gray factions should also exist. A religious organization found all over the wastes SHOULD be more like the Children. I agree there.

Oh, and I also agree with you on the 'cheat' comment in general, not just dealing with the house. I mentioned it earlier, but there are a few too many benefits that feel just like cheats, earned or not. Mostly it's because there are so few negatives to everything. It just doesn't feel right, especially if that house is like you say. But...on the other hand, except for the storage (which is fine) it really wouldn't be much different from 'transporting' back to a town like we've always done and getting safe stuff there. The other defense I can give is if you get hurt, and then in the middle 'transporting' back to heal, you can run into a random encounter. (I don't know if you do or not in F3 while 'teleporting') Then at least it would be similar to being hurt, escaping, then traveling back across the old Fallout map in hopes you don't run into anything bad. Plus you use to be able to heal fairly quickly at higher levels just by running around on the map for a while. So...maybe it won't be so bad/different from how it use to be as far as difficulty, just won't be anything new and profound.
 
Shady Sands wanted to eradicate Rad Scorpions,it was for there survival,but still,eradicate the entire spices in the vicinity,I don't think that's good more like utilitaristicly gray
 
Ah, bugs don't count! They are all evil! :mrgreen: Good point though, but the scorpions WERE attacking them like you said. (tended to attack everything) Still, it was the closest I could really get to an 'innocent' town. Junktown was pretty straightforward though...just had some nasty people in there.
 
In RPG-s I prefer playing with a neutral character that takes side which are more to his own advantage and not what world deem good or evil. Its clearly that this approach will be flawed in F3. But that is not a big surprise since not many games successfully implemented that approach.

As for stronghold, its obviously same thing they did in Morrowind. You choose a game path and receive a housing for reward. Wish you could have nice little house with white picket fence, tire swing hanging on radioactive tree, dog house for Dogmeat with bowl with his name on it and a shining Corvega in garage all neatly placed in a middle of wastleland.
 
It's obvious the karma system is core to the game and we're going to have to work with it, but I know I'll be thinking to myself, 'how does this guy know I'm so good/evil?', as well as when I commit an act, 'will this drop my karma?' (not to mention: 'who's defining this act as good/evil?')

I'd much prefer to have a reputation system where the questions are, 'Will this guy have heard about what I did over there?' and 'Will this affect my reputation at this place?'

I guess it comes down to suspension of disbelief.
 
@marko2te: That was my thought exactly: Bethesda good or bad, the whole choice thing (at least in my experience) still seems like a pretty new concept to modern gaming (heavy graphics, etc.) just because of things they have to implement nowadays like tons of voice actors/dialog and cinematics/graphical things. Fable is one of the few games I ever played that pulled it off fairly well, and even GTA is beginning to dabble in it. So...although a different system may be better, I am just happy to have any kind of in-depth moral system at all. IMHO, I don't think it's so bad. Despite negativity, this game really could have been turning out a lot worse.

I thought it was interesting how you mentioned the house with the white picket fence BTW. That would be so cool. I remember when they showed an image in F2 for the GECK of something similar, I was so ticked when I couldn't find that old 50's style house in game. I think I even tried operating one of the GECK's at one point just to make it appear. :cry:
 
F3 morality: LG(Brotherhood Paladin) TN(occasionally good killing spree murderer) CE(evil wannabe supermutant aka orc)
 
Like others have pointed out, I'm rather miffed to see all the talk from Beth on gray scale and neutrality, and then in the next breath they talk about the good guys and bad guys. I wonder if it will be the case of balancing acts like in many RPGs with good/evil scales. "Whoops, turns out that I've done to many good deeds and am now slipping towards the Good alignment, better make some Evil deeds so I can go back to being Neutral".
But yes, the karma system should've gone to its grave.

And also, BN touched upon this... I wonder if the game will offer these different paths and outcomes, but yet have rewards and consequences be the same. Through the Megaton example, obviously we can cut off a lot of quests (and open up new ones) which is nice and I guess the main consequence so to speak. But no matter what route we choose, we will get a house. And no matter what route we choose, it seems we will get Bounty Hunter/Mercenaries after us?

It's one small example, but I fear this type of design will show its head a lot in this game. I hope not though.
 
@remmah: Erm... mate, you do realise that he was talking about Vault Kid not being pale enough for a person that spent 18.79 terran years under artificial lightning and being too much hairy for a 19.zx year old? The mongols are on the other hand are people who live outdoors.

On Karma/Aligment/Reputation part: I would have liked to see all 3 of them implemented. Reputation could have worked for specific towns, persons (like being known as a protector lawman in one town and being hated by another town, which is not necessarily a rival town), Aligment would just be a base factor for your character, modifying your speech talent (you can still be bastard but if this person doesn't know it you can just act it out). Karma would just sit there recording every good and bad deed you have done, and it would just modify the game ending and similar sequences (like shooting or not shooting the overseer in FO).

Then again were you expecting a detailed system or game from beth. tb? This is just a big wasteland toolbox. With its tools to be released with the first expo or so.
 
when it comes to question of Karma and Reputation,Black isle was on good track with their local town/place reputation,in one place you could be idolized while in another hunted and hated,but Beth has completely rebuked this idea because it simply means more work,or maybe i am wrong and they implemented this?
 
mulaalia said:
when it comes to question of Karma and Reputation,Black isle was on good track with their local town/place reputation,in one place you could be idolized while in another hunted and hated,but Beth has completely rebuked this idea because it simply means more work,or maybe i am wrong and they implemented this?
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There has been no mention of town reputation in any previews. Wasn't seen in any Pip-Boy screenshots either.
 
Hmm ok what I think...

I like the idea of a place to stay given as a reward, but outfitting it with themes does not really go with the setting at all. I like the barber though, since I like shaping my character, both through skills and stats and appearance.

Redemption is good in theory, but I don't think it's implemented well. I mean I hope it's hard to gain redemption. Say if I kill a village, I hope it will take me much more than just donating some money to a church (and since when are churches 'good'? Especially in Fallout, that sect in FO1 wasn't really good, from my point of view) to get back on level terms with regards to karma.

The being neutral aspect is pretty nice, I hope it's been made well, I may choose to play it as a neutral if it's actually good, especially since there are some exclusive perks and advantages.

I also like there being a bounty on my head, so mercenaries or bounty hunters may try and have my ass.
 
Gentlemen said:
As long as the suite is way different from the house, I'm cool. It seems they really want you to have a sort of base.
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I kinda agree and disagree. If you blow up Megaton, then you should have to dig out a shelter or take one over from raiders...why automatically give you an apartment at Tenpenny towers? I think it would be more realistic for the guy to tell you that you have been paid and now to get out of his tower that he will contact you if he needs you again. After all a guy who just betrayed an entire town to you is still a traitor. Like Harkonnen says in Dune (I paraphrase) "Never trust a traitor, even one you create yourself."

Conversely, if the guy at Tenpenny towers offers you a mission that eventually offers you a house (by displacing a group of raiders or joining them) then that would be not so bad. I just don't like automatisms when it comes to quests. I think that the guy from IGN was making too many assumptions about alternate choice options. But I guess we'll see what it was all about later today.
 
only having karma and not implementing localized reputation is not only lazy design but also nullifies the idea of "shades of grey". here's an example:

city A benefits from natural circumstance X. City B has disadvantages because of X. city leader B who is supposed to be good gives you a quest to destroy X. If you do it, you'll get a karma raise and inhabitants of city A will praise you because you destroyed their benefit but have higher karma.

with localised reputation, this problem wouldn't occur. you could also implement a realistic "reputation distance": if you do something important, your reputation in the place where you did it will change a lot, and it will change a bit in nearby places. when you travel somewhere distant, people will never have heard of you before, except the place where you go is a settlement of the same faction perhaps.

this would be quite easy to implement, but add more complexity to gameplay. thus its easy to understand why beth didn't implement it: omgitstoohardtounderstaaaandforourtargetgrouplol.
 
marko2te said:
In RPG-s I prefer playing with a neutral character that takes side which are more to his own advantage and not what world deem good or evil.
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Last time I did that in Planescape: Torment, my alignment quickly shifted to Chaotic Evil.

If an evil character is selfish, a good one is selfless, then what is a neutral one like? The only thing I could fit there is dedication to some abstract concept, not people. Something like 'nature' for druids or knowledge for scholars.
 
pkt-zer0 said:
marko2te said:
In RPG-s I prefer playing with a neutral character that takes side which are more to his own advantage and not what world deem good or evil.
Click to expand...
Last time I did that in Planescape: Torment, my alignment quickly shifted to Chaotic Evil.

If an evil character is selfish, a good one is selfless, then what is a neutral one like? The only thing I could fit there is dedication to some abstract concept, not people. Something like 'nature' for druids or knowledge for scholars.
Click to expand...


"Neutral" Characters usually have an apathetic approach. It is abstract, in a way...

A principle in thinking that things will unfold naturally, and good/evil are different sides of the same coin.

My only recollection of any games where there was a neutral "system" that actually worked are: Fallout, Planescape, and Kotor 2.
 
Ausir said:
mulaalia said:
when it comes to question of Karma and Reputation,Black isle was on good track with their local town/place reputation,in one place you could be idolized while in another hunted and hated,but Beth has completely rebuked this idea because it simply means more work,or maybe i am wrong and they implemented this?
Click to expand...

There has been no mention of town reputation in any previews. Wasn't seen in any Pip-Boy screenshots either.
Click to expand...
There hasn't even been any mention about any other towns, yet, has there?
 
I love the combat snippets they showed in this video.

-Standing in the wide open in a 3 on 1 firefight and winning.
-Running backwards constantly and shooting

No, this isn't a FPS. :roll:
 
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