This is actually one of my specialist subjects that I’ve been trying to fix for ages. The underlying issue is that Obsidian changed the convention from Fallout 3. It was the case in FO3 that killing evil characters awarded no karma, killing very evil characters awarded -50 karma, and murdering non-evil characters was -100. In New Vegas, this was changed to have different values for very evil, evil, neutral, good, and very good. Note the key differences: in Fallout 3, you have to “murder”, not simply kill, and it applies to all non-evil characters, which includes neutral and good/very good. By “murder” the engine seems to interpret that as if you start the fight first. These changes causes a whole host of issues that Obsidian didn’t foresee. In FO3, civilians could be neutral if they were just average joes. They would logically give negative karma if killed. However, in Fallout NV, they would need to be good to give negative karma if killed. Some NPCs such as doctors were already assigned to good, so if normal civilians were changed to be good too, there would be nothing separating them. Some of the differences in the early implemented NPCs are probably due to them starting out differently when creating NPCs before realising this flaw. It’s pretty obvious that Obsidian did this so that the main factions could be neutral and not cause karma changes when they were killed. JSawyer tried to fix this, but probably made it worse, since he made all prostitutes good (the same as doctors) whilst leaving the vast majority of other civilians as neutral. Now prostitutes are better people than most wastelanders apparently. There’s also a more fundamental issue with the karma system, which seems to be a bug. Sometimes you simply just don’t get any karma for killing people. You can test this by killing fiends with something like JSawyer installed. The game is very inconsistent on whether it decides it actually give you positive karma. The same goes for killing civilians. I believe this might be related to faction crime flags and the game incorrectly deciding that you’ve murdered or not murdered an NPC. I never got to the bottom of that, so that’s why I never released a mod to realign NPC karma values. It was sort of pointless with the underlying bug.
@Rudolf I wouldn't be surprised if it *was* taken into account, but it was so low on the totem pole of gamebreaking problems it couldn't feasibly be worked on during company hours. Josh Sawyer did try to fix it on his own with the Jsawyer mod after all, so at the very least, he knew it was an issue.
Karma was a vestigial appendage in New Vegas, the reputation system was a far more advanced form of reputation tracking, Karma became a Companion reputation system
Interesting take. I think, in practice, you are totally correct. Could it be made useful? In new vegas you can't really play an evil character if you want to complete the most amount of quests. Maybe if bad karma unlocked fiend shops or if the khans were an evil only faction without necessarily being a Legion faction.
@@thomasstone4283 I don't think Karma is really salvageable because you'd have the question of "who is keeping track of you and what you do" it makes sense for each city and faction to have their reputation but it makes no sense that the entire wasteland knows how of much of a good or bad boy you are without Three Dog stalking you and reporting it. That's why it could only really work as a Companion reputation system (though modern games would just have companions have their own individual reputation systems)
@@cyberninjazero5659you could replace karma with some sort of "global fame/infamy" system Some actions like killing random civillians are objectively evil while other like saving people from raiders arent all that ambiguous This system would add all your "positive" and "negative" reputation points from all factions into a single stat (negative reputation points dont substract the positives) In theory this system should also ignore petty crimes that reduce reputation like stealing garbage or minor good actions like giving a hobo 10 caps just so you cant abuse the systen, global fame would only take into account reputation points that you get from major quests
@@thomasstone4283 I realize it is probably in the realm of exploits but aren’t there Karma sinks in new Vegas. Like there are in fallout three like basically you can figure out how to repeat something over and over that gives you negative karma in fallout three you can do this with a certain quest I forget which one but if you keep selecting a certain dialogue option over and over you lose karma
i think its super weird how "evil" in fallout 3 is treated like everyone is just on the same side. like the slavers in paradise falls just assume you're cool and on their side because youve murdered a bunch of people?
@@daskampffredchen9242 I feel like the dudes at paradise falls would be like “damn I’ve heard about this guy, this motherfucker is crazy…. And dangerous. Maybe we can hire him!” Lol
*drug a priest so a woman can grape him *You gained karma* *Avenge the people of Tenpenny tower after they were masacred by a psychopathic ghoul *You lost karma*
I like Sawyer's interpretation of the system. It seems to essentially boil down to unnecessary cruelty vs unnecessary mercy. If you're going to have a system like this without trying to push the player one way or another, this is probably the best interpretation to have
I disagree with him about moore though. Yeah those deaths are easy to avoid....for the courier. But look at it from her perspective. The Khans were a glorified raider gang that has been plaguing the NCR since shady sands. The only reason peace is possible now is because the NCR is too big for the khans to fight and too merciful to wipe them out. And if you listen to Bitter Root and Manny, both former khans, Khan society is all kinds of fucked up. The Brotherhood are essentially a doomsday cult that hoards technology waiting for the rest of the world to die so that they will inherit the earth. Oh and they violently attack anyone ho has technology they want. Only one branch on the east coat actually tried to fix the world and the SECOND their leaders mysteriously died, they basically became the imperium of man from 40k. The kings are a violent street gang that have been roughing up NCR charity workers for distributing food to their citizens. And they brutally beat every envoy the NCR sent to get a peaceful resolution. From her perspective, she's asking a private military contractor to take out a historical foe who has spat on every mercy the NCR has offered and is currently allied with their greatest enemy, a street gang that attacks humanitarian efforts and refuses to negotiate, and a cult of gun fetishists who think nobody but them should have access to high technology. Then said PMC goes behind her back and over her head to directly contravene her orders in order to get peace with groups that the NCR has no guarantee won't turn on them. I get that she's making this more personal than it needs to be but look at it from her perspective and she's being quite reasonable.
@@RXdash78not to mention that Crocker is useless, Hsu and Dhatri can't get anything done with barely soldiers, Kimball is a puppet, and Oliver is a self righteous yes man. Moore is one of the few commanding officers actually trying.
It's either do you want to save these puppies or let them die in a meat grinder? I like that in fallout 4 many quests you actually have rewards,if you are good you get good relationship with people and compliance if you are evil you get something they have for example being a terrible person on "diamond city blues" will make you rich i like when being evil rewards you because otherwise there is no reason whatsoever to be (yes i praised fallout 4 come on hate comments)
@@erikerik3823I actually completely agree with being evil being incentivized by money being a good thing that 4 did. In nv I noticed being an evil bastard was just so much more hard to "roleplay" as given there was hardly reward in many of the cases. The only way I was able to roleplay successfully as a violent bastard was by being a lazy bounty hunter that liked things done quick so instead of befriending the boomers/ncr he found out the safest and quickest way to eliminate them all. Caps or rewards would have gone a long way to open up more possible roleplay scenarios though.
@@calamaribowl8683meh, still useless. Played as stealth cannibal kleptomaniac and still have good carma that moment i travelled to fiends territory. I probably could have maintained negative carma by eating everything, but oh gosh i hate that animation. Even worse than that one animal pelt from far cry 3/4 for me
Karma is one of those mechanics that is interesting to use but it's just too hard to translate into gameplay. Even Reputation, which is more realistic and expanded, tends to boil down to "have X positive reputation to get reward" experience.
True. Sadly NV crew needed more dev time or a chance at a new Fallout game to expand on reputation system. Aka you being able to get quests or more dialogue choices [NCR] etc
How is it that RPGs have alignment systems that are actually two-dimensional rather than just one-dimensional, and they manage just fine? I hate this narrative of Obsidian as a pariah. The truth is they just didn't know what to do with the mechanic that was in the series since the very first game, and didn't think ahead to either use it or just remove it. The world is not out to get them, they're just not that good. I was going to say that Obsidian is not the true Fallout, but then I had an epiphany. The entire series is schizophrenic. There was never a time in the history where two main Fallout games were made consecutively by the same core team. The core principles are muddled and forgotten. To be perfectly honest, I think the series is best enjoyed when looking at it from an outside perspective. As a trainwreck that it is.
@@ChadVulpes I love it when people can't tell the difference between an anime pfp and a video game character pfp that just so happens to uses an art style similar to anime because *gasp!* It was made in Japan! Totally doesn't oust them as a xenophobe.
I remember killing boxcars on my very first playthrough with an incinerator I got from the convict boss in Primm and I think I spent a good 30 minutes laughing at the fact I gained karma for burning a crippled man to death while I watched him scream in agony in slow motion.
@@danielsurvivor1372 Yeah, a sort of miniboss. More health, leather armor, and armed with a heavy incinerator. He's in the first floor of the casino Beagle being held hostage in, in the dining room.
I always thought it was sensible for feral ghouls to give good karma because you're putting former humans out of their misery. That's why I like the ghoul quest in fallout 4 for the brotherhood of steel
There's no mind left to be in misery. The higher mental faculties that would have allowed them to identity self and recognize their own suffering has deteriorated hence the term "feral". They simply act on animal instinct and most likely an aggression caused by brain damage there's really nothing left of them to suffer. The idea of not wanting to kill them is dumb though. For a faction that's all about technology they manage to recruit a bunch of idiots, I guess logic and reason aren't part of their teachings. Just a bunch of techno tribal fools.
@@danielsurvivor1372Because like one commenter said before the Karma system is a vestigial leftover from Bethesdas simplified lazy world building in Fallout.
I always Roleplay neutral Courier in new Vegas there is a bunch good I do but I defs have a twisted side now that I’ve done a few playthroughs I think fallout new Vegas protagonist is perfect as neutral just out of how many people see u as a vessel for opportunity they can mold I think if your neutral canonically that’d make sense you’d just kinda play devils advocate by agreeing and being somewhere in the middle feel like fo3 it’d be cannon the Vault dweller would be good cuz James is a doctor trying to save the wastes
Personally, I like the focus on Reputations over Karma in New Vegas. And by the early 2010s, Karma trackers were so rote in games that it felt like a real evolution, not a simple substitution. But I do think they could have done some interesting things regarding Karma. Then again, the lack of moralizing in New Vegas can be part of why the world is so captivating to players. Removing Karma entirely may have been the right call.
I agree, I think reputation is a much better way to achieve what the karma system was doing. I mostly ignore the karma in NV and just look at how factions view me. I think Karma systems force morality too much. The main time new Vegas is really guilty of this imo is when you kill fiends and powder gangers.
@@TheDeadWannabe Already did that at level 4, thanx for playing try again. Not enough items to steal in the whole game to balance out fiend and ghoul kills. I have already had a playthrough ruined by good karma kills, cannibal perk is MY solution. My OP was a comment about the benefits to the Cannibal perk on an evil playthrough. I am NOT soliciting advice, do not need any. Only advice I need is a mod for removing the karma gain for killing--available for Xboxone. BTW...I know it doesn't exist.
Recently Schizo Elijah spoke briefly in one of his videos that Karma in New Vegas is more flawed and shallow than Fallout 3, which caused a lot of confusion. This video explains everything perfectly about how and why the Karma system is indeed flawed in New Vegas.
Probably has something to do with it more so being broken than flawed. Either way the faction reputation system is leagues better than the karma system for NV
I've always thought that ghoulified soldiers at Searchlight were not actually evil, but you gain karma for putting them out of their misery and them being marked as evil in the engine is just a mechanical simplification.
It clearly wasn't really focused on at all and was only in New Vegas because it's an extra feature from F03 that would've been a pain to get rid of. The Faction Rep system does its job 1000X better anyways.
I actually like Neil having evil karma. It implies a lot about him, and since he definitely has a history of working under the master it's not difficult to imagine he's done some missed up things.
I think the whole issue with the karma system is that it just works on a binary sliding scale. To truly make the karma system actually good it would have to be something like the reputation system, but also, judging morality from an objective perspective everyone is going to agree with is always going to be difficult unless the answer is staring you in the face.
@@BillehBobJoe bad karma actually did matter in fallout 2 since the bounty hunters would sometimes carry extremely rare late game weapons, like the super sledge. in fallout 3 having good karma was really good as it lets you join the regulators, rewarding you for basically doing what you've always been doing (killing raiders) with extra caps and exp. was kinda weird though when you gained karma for killing a raider, lost karma for eating his corpse, but then gained karma again for selling his finger to the regulators.
@@windhelmguard5295 regulators is the perk lawbringer otherwise its an unmarked location. But I don’t remember gaining karma for killing raiders and enclave who do drop the finger Two random facts lawbringer gives access to a unique raider with special knuckle weapon in the dc cementary And the leader of the regulators has a 10mm pistol that does over twice the damage of the sniper. But she cant die and never uses the pistol in combat
its one of the few things they totally half assed. obsidian made a great enough game. not everything needs to be polished to a mirror finish that being said, i feel like playtesting should of revealed killing feral ghouls turns you into the lord and savior of the wasteland.
The issue with Karma is that the choices are given a binary good or bad outcome. It's essentially shoehorned beliefs. If you disagree with the karma outcome, it's too bad. There's no discussion to be had.
@@exiledhebrew1994 what if they deserve it? What if they were going to kill even more people? Is massacring the Legion bad? It gives good karma. Is massacring the enclave bad? That gives good karma too. What about killing the ghouls that try to kill everyone in Tennpenny Tower? If you do, you get bad karma and 3 Dogg talks shit about you on the radio.
@@PresAlexWhit killing legion soldiers is good; but massacring all legion, even slaves and merchants, is bad. Not everyone under a legion flag agreed with their ways. Killing all the Ghouls in ten penny tower is morally wrong because not all of them were genocidal, only Roy Phillips was. Killing him can be somewhat justified, but wiping out a whole settlement is not. Killing Enclave soldiers is good; but enclave are always hostile like raiders, and attack the innocent on sight; forfeiting their right to life.
I noticed Evil and Very Evil Karma in NV does lock you out of some quests, and Good and Very Good Karma probably gets you into some quests as well. An early example was when I decided to just rob every house in Goodsprings blind on one character, but all those little -5 Karma hit per stolen item quickly added up, getting me into Very Evil territory in minutes. Since I was doing an evil run anyway, I went to side with the Powder Gangers to take the town over. To my shock, I was so evil that the Powder Ganger contact said "Something about you is off, I just can't trust you, sorry" and I was actually locked out of the quest. While yes, Reputation is far more important in NV than Karma, it does still have effects with NPC's and quests, so it's not completely vestigial.
The Karma system isn't necessarily bad, it's just way too simple for a big RPG with huge narrative implications for anything. Like as mentioned in the video Boxcar is a great example, I think it's a bit weird to give karma for just killing NPCs who are already hostile to you or whatever, but even if you accept killing all Powder Gangers is evil, it's obviously abhorrent to kill one who's of no threat to anyone by virtue of being a cripple. But the karma system isn't set up for context, killing an evil character is always good, so unless a dev flips their karma too good, it makes it good to kill them, but then you have someone who is likely a murderer/bandit with good karma. It just needs to be way more open ended, and more time given to the morality of every little action, like stealing a gun from the Powder Gangers shouldn't be an evil action, but it should still be stealing.
I'm doing an NCR playthrough where I killed of BoS, the great Khans, and the Powder Gangers. The game said I was neutral, then all of a sudden they're saying that I'm an evil karma devil lmao
Not entirely true, if someone is part of the gang and supporting them in a way to be considered part of them they are likely contributing to hurting others. There where two instances in real life where 1 person saying no stopped a nuclear weapon from being used. Heck if you've seen how some people make due with injuries some cripples could kill you.
1:58 There are deathclaws that a capable of speech as part of an experiment. Whether or not this means that other death claws are capable of higher thinking is another question, but they are presumably capable of some concept of right and wrong.
Deathclaws *totally* could have karma - some of them have human+ intelligence! Most* (or all) were killed by the Enclave in Fallout 2, but I can't imagine some deathclaws would evolve on their own outside of experiments. Great video!
It's a shame that you didn't ask Josh Sawyer for WHY Mr House is set as good karma character. Neutral seems like a perfect fit, like Caesar, you can make good arguements for why Mr House ending is best or worst, and yet game's karma suggests it's evil to kill him, aka all path besides Mr House one are evil bcus they force you to kill him. Maybe one day you can ask NV devs why they set Mr House karma to good in the first place. Was he meant to be a different character? Or is it set to good karma because at one point you were able to peacefully dethrone him in NCR path?
Apparently there is a leftover in the GECK revealing that it was possible for House to surrender to the NCR (and hilariously - start paying taxes) and become an NCR citizen. But this was probably cut because no Megacorpo CEO would kneel to taxes and faction choices were made to have "no compromises" to prevent an "objectively good" or "objectively bad" route.
@@Steelion69 i can see why they didnt want a "best and worst" ending but faction compromises sound cool as fuck and doesn't necessarily mean theres a best ending. Like you just couldn't have every faction kumbaya together but forcing house to compromise with the NCR by blowing up his robots just makes sense and is a good option for non lethal playthroughs. maybe could even make a legion version of the quest and blow up the robots under the fort and either destroy or secure the chip then offer House position of Consul of vegas if he sides with caesar during the battle.
Due to the gray area of NV's choices I think they should have made killing grant negative karma, if the target was at least karmic neutral and not an automaton or animal. Good karma would be feasible to endgame with speech checks allowing you to bypass Lanius.
The way I see it for Deathclaws, it's less about if they are morally evil or not for a creature and more of "You killed this deathly dangerous creature which makes it safe for others" Unless they really did just actually make a mistake
And not matter how much karma you have, and on what side you are, while you have good reputation with the faction you're good, example freeside, don't care if you are good or evil, you're still Courier for the eyes of everyone, meanwhile if you're liked/idolized in freeside no matter what karma you have, you will still get rewards from The Kings, and Ralph will still sells you his secret weapons
I think a faction marked Evil just means the player can steal from them without karma loss. Not sure where I picked that up, though, it could be wobbly.
You sure? I remember stealing from Powder Gangsters still nets you karma loss despite gaining you karma for killing em. Other example is you lose no karma for stealing from Silver Rush but you also not gain karma for killing them, so where did you get dat hunch?
the fact that you used FTL music as background is so confusing - I've literally spent a good minute or so trying to figure out whether I had it launched or not
Remember one bug I ended up wondering was related to the karma and rep systems was an instance,where I started with bad to neutral karma at best after discreetly taking out a few early no name ncr and traveling merchants. but having knocked out scores of legion ended up having good or better rep and very good karma with ncr and most factions in general except the legion,but past evil acts seemed to lead followers to act out. particularly on random merchants,think was since started out as more of a raider in the beginning. One time Veronica straight up oneshotted cass with a ballistic fist despite having perfect rep with the ncr and being idolized at that base. Just walked in the door and she just sprinted up and suckerpunch critted her. Happened in my last playthrough where Boone just capped a merchant in Novac at random so is the only non legion area pretty much that the current courier is not idolized in. Gonna go downhill in the final act though since is gonna be the wildcard ending.
I think this is fixed with the unofficial patch. I only play with that on and from what i noticed killing evil npcs rewards 5 karma, and 100 for very evil.
So this explains how I kept shifting between good/neutral when doing the independent ending (and after killing all NPCs in Goodsprings and Novac - a Kill Everything Run turned itself around lol)
you know i had never really thought about this my first playthrough i made all the good guy choices but killed almost everyone and i still had high karma i had assumed it had something to do with faction reputation overweighing it but never gave it much more thought
I think the karma system should be scrapped. It's overly binary, leads to weird situations where you're at the whims of the opinions of the quest designers and as Sawyer said, its antithetical to create scenarios that make the player think and question their ethics when you have to assign numerical good boy or bad egg points to their actions. Moreover, it's kind of immersion breaking how omniscient it makes everyone in the game towards your actions. You can't steal a spoon in stealth without the whole wasteland docking you points for it. Obsidian had the right idea with the reputation system and while they likely couldn't axe karma at the time for engine reasons, you can kinda tell they would've preferred to and I think future games should follow that line of thought.
Karma is still lowkey almost better than in F3 due to small fixed. 1) it not being as important 2) If you steal sumn and get caught, almost no NPC instantly kill you, they just take it back, which makes sense(though it makes no sense why player can't try to steal said item again) 3) It has less ridiculous karma taking or giving moments, besides ghouls and fiends. E.x. F3 takes you karma for killing Roy, one of the most evil ghoul mfs to exists in Fallout, since he will always massacre Tenpenny residents, even if you remove racists. While NV doesn't have such insane misalignments, maybe Niel having evil karma is closest we have and that one is probably engine issue. 4) that's about it xd
She's just evil, not ultra evil. And it makes sense she unnecessarily wants you to kill nearly all factions she sends you to deal with, how tf that's not evil? In kings quest she literally wants you to instigate conflict, that's a very good way to use karma. Lose karma for doing *unnecessarily evil* actions that you can't justify without sounding schizo or gain karma for doing unnecessarily good actions. Moore is evil because she's instigating violence for no good reason besides "ewwwwww"
It’s almost impossible in Fallout 3 to be anything but the Messiah because there are hardly any evil choices to make if you don’t blow up Megaton. You have to go out of your way to kill and steal everything to be even neutral.
Do you have any source links for the comments by JSawyer? Writing a masters thesis related to karma systems in games and would be helpful to have those
rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/an-archive-of-josh-sawyers-formspring-from-april-2010-through-march-2013-over-1-mb-of-text.128571/ A lot of his posts are here, tho there's probably also some stuff on SomethingAwful and Tumblr
I would say that Caesar should definitely have evil Karma, I'd even say Very Evil Karma. He has a certain degree of depth and humanity, but I don't that actually grants him much in terms of morality, in fact I think he's one of the eviler villains in the Fallout series.
Setting aside the issue of NPCs with nonsense alignments, a good way to do a karma system would be to put the caps on positive and negative karma as arbitrarily large, such as -60,000 instead of -100, but then put caps on how much different actions can affect karma, e.g. stealing can reduce your karma to a minimum of -X but murder can reduce your karma to a negative of -10X or something like that. Also, if there would also be very few actions which can push karma above the positive equivalent of the murder threshold, that would keep mass murderers from achieving good karma since repeated murders would push karma low enough that it would become infeasible to afterwards achieve positive karma through normal play.
Honestly, if it weren't for small parts of the game attached to the karma system (main one being ending slides), I would say strip it out entirely based on what the comments have said.
It makes sense for Karma to be underdeveloped in New Vegas, since it was just a rudimentary measurement for your reputation across the entire wasteland in Fallout 3. After adding a more formal rep system, I honestly think Obsidian might've been better off axeing karma entirely (as Fallout 4, which also includes multiple factions and a form of reputation, would later decide to do). Of course, rep can also be broken by knowledgeable players. Since you get all of your negative rep with the major factions reset after killing Benny, it's objectively best to do any extra content that will antagonise your endgame faction (including nuking it, naturally) before finishing the first act of the game.
I’ve gotta be one of the very few people who was happy that the karma system was made all but non-existent in new Vegas. I didn’t like the restriction it presented in 3. “Oh you want to have this person as your follower? Well too bad, your play-style doesn’t fit them.” If you don’t have a good or neutral play through on 3 you only get access to some of the worst followers in the game who end up dying in nearly any interaction with enemies.
I started uploading my gameplay clips and I wanted to ask do you put tags in your description or do you use the actual "tags" option in the editing section?
@@TriangleCity thanks for the help I appreciate it I just had some funny gameplay clips I've been sitting on for awhile and thought people would enjoy them
Better way to maintain evil karma is via stealing or cannibal perk. Kinda funny how you need a perk to actually lose karma for killing innocent ppl "Oh you know how you killed that poor guy? That's nothing, now EATING HIM IS *UNACCEPTABLE!1!1!2!* "
It's incredible we're all still so fascinated by this game. Truly one of the best games ever! God I wish Josh Sawyer, John Gonzalez, and Chris Avellone would all work on a FPS RPG together again.
Karma is one of those systems I'm honestly glad was dropped from the series. It really makes no sense for the game to assign you an arbitrary alignment based on a numeric value. That's always seemed a little odd in the context of Fallout and little too DND-like. It really doesn't add much to the game in the first place. I don't need a karma value to tell me that killing an entire town is bad, I can think for myself.
I always thought killing feral ghouls gave you good karma because you were putting them out of their misery or something. Now I notice is just all jank lol
I was a kid when Fallout 1 came out, didn't start playing until NV. I asked a friend, "what's up with 'karma'?" He said, "Ignore it. Steal everything and align yourself with good factions." So, I stole everything, killed House, and put myself in charge of New Vegas. Me run Bartertown 😁
I just wish they kept the Karma and Skill system the same in Fallout 4. Or at the very least I was hoping they kept the vast amount of weapons New Vegas had.
Watching this again... I won't lie some of this reasoning for giving Karma to some characters kinda feels a bit how to put it... Smug? Fart huffy? Unnecessarily complicated because they wanted to be all like "there's only moral Grey" kind of stuff? I won't lie this whole alignment thing just kinda seem to be a bit of an excuse for the devs to wax poetical about the whole "morality is subjective in the wastes" thing and meh... Never cared much for that argument
Hopefully in the next few months, but there's still a lot of research to do and I'm in the middle of a massive F3 project, along with quite a few unrelated smaller projects, so idk
There's no consistency lol I've had videos where I dropped a lot of f bombs that didn't get hit and others that have no cursing that did for no reason.
At this point i swear New Vegas is made of nothing but Cut and/or Unfinished Content. I mean that's 75 video now, congrats for that btw, here's to 100.
They clearly meant to replace Fallout 3's Karma with the Faction Reputation system... but somehow kept Karma in, anyway. Vestigial, as was quoted. They should probably have removed it from the Pipboy and just set everyone to neutral.
I think what Josh said about vestigial karma is so true. I hate karma systems in rpgs. The best system I ever saw was in Cyberpunk 2020, instead of "alignment" you have a series of in character motivations and desires. It's great for creating roleplay. Would you call a character like Garret from thief, a man whose a carrier thief. Stealing from EVERYONE, rich and poor alike. But doesn't kill people because he views it as unprofessional as a good character or an evil character? It's a stupid arbitrary designation that reduces roleplay from "What would my character want most out of this interaction" to "what would be the most evil thing in this interaction?"
