Get rid of the Karma System?

Seasick

Seasick

First time out of the vault
Ok, before I get flamed, let me explain.

In Fallout 3, almost every choice you make is seen as 'Good' or 'Bad'. I went through the game with Good Karma, but then discovered Oasis. I planned to do the good ending, but then I found out there wasn't one. Deciding what to do at the end of this quest was the Hardest Decision I had to make, because there was no 'Good' Option nor was there a 'Bad' one. It was up to you to decide which was the right choice.

Same thing in Skyrim. You can justify killing a family, wiping out a town, slaughtering the homeless...It's up to you to decide what's good and evil.

Especially in a world like Fallout, I think this would work quite well.

Thoughts?
 
I don't think you'll get flamed for this, a lot of people think the karma system is inherently flawed. Reputation systems work well in Fallout, but "karma" just doesn't work conceptually, especially since it's applied to things no one witnesses.
 
Fallout suffers the same problem as KOTOR in that it is usually much easier to do the "Good" thing. "Bad" options usually only end the quest quicker but fuck you out of better things.

Such as- FO3 Broken Steel, if you bomb the BOS, not the Enclave (cause some of us like them better), you are pretty much fucked anywhere you go in downtown DC. And for what? "Callahan's Magnum" which isn't all that great.

Or, when you want "This Machine", you can end the sequence in 2 minutes if you rat Contreras out.

Thats my piece, I dislike it. Reputation is great, keep that
 
I agree with Brother None. Why would Fawkes not want tO join me when he has no idea that I murdered all of Megaton. However I think it should remain in the game. Not for any purpose but for the ending.
 
Yeah, "Karma" should only be there for allingment porpouses, but even then the system is flawed. Pick up enough food cans you are on the same level as a mass murderer, and the opposit would work too, there needs to be a limit on the penalisation by the nature of the action, like if you steal stuff you can only get so low on the karma meter, and giving bottles of water to the homeless would only let you advance a little. Havign almost irreversible karma hits.
 
I agree with Walpknut. I think a simple way to implement it is to put a max number of times a particular action is taken in account for the karma system, i.e., stealing affects your karma only x times, giving water to a homeless y times, and really serious things affects always, like killing innocent people.
Anyway, there must be something similar to karma for witnessed actions, although it should be more in the reputation side. Also, the case of Fawkes should be special in that the first time you meet him he has no knowledge of the outside world, so he should probably believe what you tell him (i.e., the first time you should be able to bypass the reputation check), but later, when he already was outside the vault, he should know the truth, so if you have a bad reputation with good people, he will not follow you.
 
To be honest, The karma system dosen't work well anymore. It was in F3 purely because there was no reputation system and to give the player some kind of ending. But yeah, steal a can and half of the wasteland is after you, that was one of the things I hated about F3 (not trying to put the game down, I loved it myself)
But as for New Vegas, there was no need for Karma. The reputation system is alot better then bloody Karma, for starters, it goes on the princible of indivualality (if that's a word) and makes the game more of an RPG.
The karma system is there to say wether you get a bad ending or not. So enough of my rambiling on how pointless Karma is, it's just a failed system thats all that needs to be improved on, hopefully Beth will fix the Karma system and I bring back Rep for F4.
 
Walpknut said:
Yeah, "Karma" should only be there for allingment porpouses, but even then the system is flawed. Pick up enough food cans you are on the same level as a mass murderer, and the opposit would work too, there needs to be a limit on the penalisation by the nature of the action, like if you steal stuff you can only get so low on the karma meter, and giving bottles of water to the homeless would only let you advance a little. Havign almost irreversible karma hits.
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Yeah that's its main problem, and also the fact that if you donate loose change to a church and give some water to a hobo and you go from being labelled Satan to a Saint.
 
brandonhart61 said:
Walpknut said:
Yeah, "Karma" should only be there for allingment porpouses, but even then the system is flawed. Pick up enough food cans you are on the same level as a mass murderer, and the opposit would work too, there needs to be a limit on the penalisation by the nature of the action, like if you steal stuff you can only get so low on the karma meter, and giving bottles of water to the homeless would only let you advance a little. Havign almost irreversible karma hits.
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Yeah that's its main problem, and also the fact that if you donate loose change to a church and give some water to a hobo and you go from being labelled Satan to a Saint.
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And that talks pretty bad about that church. They seem to know you mass murdered several towns and tried to kill children, but they don't suspect your money comes from evil doing, and accepts it anyway :lol:
 
I agree completely, and I won't beat a dead horse, so I'll summarize my opinion. Society dictates morality, and if each and every civilization in Fallout is uniquely different, then the only logical 'Karma' metre is reputation. The only one
 
At least KotR had some point, it just wasn't well implimented. It fits well with the philosophy of the setting. It even controls what abilities you can use. And unlike karma in Fallout 3 and NV which is an unseen thing, in Star Wars, a jedi or someone force trained can instantly tell wither or not you are 'light' or 'dark.' This could allow a character to tailor his response accordingly.

The problem in KotR wasn't the karma system, but the game is created generally for light sided characters (since all things in Star Wars Canon always end with light side victory.) If KotoR had a more open narrative, the game could support a more indepth karma system. But as it is, Dark Side seems like an afterthought rather than a rule of thumb. You're still on a quest the save the galaxy, with the only meaningful Dark Side choice being the end. During the game, Dark Side comes down to just generally smashing a little kids sand castle or refusing to help an old lady cross the street, instead of a more meaningful diversion in the main story.
 
When you can make decisions be something other than inherently good or evil, and it's only worth it to do it fully good, bad, or the rare neutral, it has its place, but the fact that hardly any games seem capable of achieving this, it should not be common.
 
I think karma should govern dialogue responses. If you're a murdering son of a bitch you should act like one during NPC interaction. Your misdeeds should shape your persona in dealing with others. I liked in fallout how you could be a complete ass to people, but it never made sense that I could'nt be that same dickhead during all my NPC interactions. The good karma player had the option to be good in all his NPC dialogues, not so for bad karma toons.
 
mobucks said:
I think karma should govern dialogue responses. If you're a murdering son of a bitch you should act like one during NPC interaction. Your misdeeds should shape your persona in dealing with others. I liked in fallout how you could be a complete ass to people, but it never made sense that I could'nt be that same dickhead during all my NPC interactions. The good karma player had the option to be good in all his NPC dialogues, not so for bad karma toons.
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I don't think karma should determine dialogue. I should choose if I respond in a negative or positive way. Karma is broke as is, so it should be removed, modified heavily, or simply make way for the Faction system. I liked the Faction mechanic in FNV very much. It seems like many people use mods to remove the Karma or alter it anyway, so it is clear that people don't care for it much. I liked it in Fallout 2, but after that it went downhill.
 
I liked how that worked in Fallout 2, too.
I think it should go with the reputation system, just tweak it a little, so things like a faction can get pissed if you mess with an ally faction, and such. With that taken into account, a karma system becomes almost completely useless, and can thus be removed.

BUT, about using "people don't care" as a guide is a bit silly, if you consider the second worst Fallout is the most sold in the whole series (and the worst of the ones considered to be canon). I don't think ad populum arguments are valid here.
 
Oppen said:
I liked how that worked in Fallout 2, too.
I think it should go with the reputation system, just tweak it a little, so things like a faction can get pissed if you mess with an ally faction, and such. With that taken into account, a karma system becomes almost completely useless, and can thus be removed.

BUT, about using "people don't care" as a guide is a bit silly, if you consider the second worst Fallout is the most sold in the whole series (and the worst of the ones considered to be canon). I don't think ad populum arguments are valid here.
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I'm not saying people don't care so just throw it out. It is obviously broken because we have debated it numerous times on these boards, and people want something different, so it should be changed a LOT. It is really useless ATM, and I know I ignore it completely, but I did not do that with the originals. If people go out of the way to alter the karma system (Like many have) then it may need to be reworked.
 
I know you want the option to react to NPCs as a good guy or a bad guy, at your whim, but from a RP perspective, I know I've had some toons walking around with some weird schizoid decision making processes going on. If you are a childkiller and robber (killed good/innocents) significantly more than you are good, a neat way to represent Karma would be to make your toon have a more assholish response menue. Most of the game should still be accessable, content wise, with some content exclusive to good/evil. I for one would think it was neat to perhaps be locked out of doing quests "out of the goodness of my heart" if Karma is too low. I would be forced to demand payment.

It's weird because I like the idea but when I read it it sounds like railroading which no one likes.
 
TorontRayne said:
Oppen said:
I liked how that worked in Fallout 2, too.
I think it should go with the reputation system, just tweak it a little, so things like a faction can get pissed if you mess with an ally faction, and such. With that taken into account, a karma system becomes almost completely useless, and can thus be removed.

BUT, about using "people don't care" as a guide is a bit silly, if you consider the second worst Fallout is the most sold in the whole series (and the worst of the ones considered to be canon). I don't think ad populum arguments are valid here.
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I'm not saying people don't care so just throw it out. It is obviously broken because we have debated it numerous times on these boards, and people want something different, so it should be changed a LOT. It is really useless ATM, and I know I ignore it completely, but I did not do that with the originals. If people go out of the way to alter the karma system (Like many have) then it may need to be reworked.
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Of course, and I expressed my agreement with that reasons, I didn't said that was the only one. But that's the only invalid one in the recent posts :P
 
But mobuck, what if your character is a hypocrite?
He might like to look badass even when he has the best karma around, or try to make you believe he's a selfless savior, even when he slaughtered a full orphanage two days ago.
EDIT: Maybe you could add a speech check for hypocrisy, and affect that way the dialogs, but then there would be a huge dialog tree.
 
yeah I know what you mean. maybe bad bad karma give even nastier responses options, like as a bonus, or in addition to regular good/evil. could work both ways too. great karma = better rep or better reward dialogue path while low shit karma= more kick ass responses and people fleeing town or some shit.
 
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