Karma system (Needed or wasted)

lolpop109

lolpop109

Water Chip? Been There, Done That
Modder
So as you guys know I'm making a mod witch in involves making quests. This is also leading the karma system ..... NV does't use this system a whole lot but it is there. My mod will use the Karma more than NV did for background reference.

So basically I made this quests where your sort of forced (Can chose to not talk to character but this will lock out quests). Free choose I guess. To deliver a package to someone. When you hand the pack over he opens it and it blows up killing him and slight damaging the player (Depending on level + amour). But now the real question should negative karma be given for this ?. The PC does't know this is going to happen but should they be given it anyway !?

This has really got me thinking about how karma really gets muddled in grey area's. And basing people opions of the PC is sound in principal but wrong karma given out and really screw the whole scale of system
 
IMO, Karma is nearly useless thing upon the game, as it is fairly easy to "grind" it to be positive and negative (I'm looking at the water beggars and Fiends here), so choices like that are just irksome and leaves it really obvious to tell if you did bad or good thing. The karma notification appears as to remind you that what you did is bad or good, rather than let you think it yourself if you did a good or bad thing.

Because honestly, reputation system beats it over.
 
Yeah, i'm not a fan of the karma system too. Arbitrarily saying a character is either good or evil kind defeats the point of grey areas. Which is what the series is about.
 
Valdetiosi said:
IMO, Karma is nearly useless thing upon the game, as it is fairly easy to "grind" it to be positive and negative (I'm looking at the water beggars and Fiends here), so choices like that are just irksome and leaves it really obvious to tell if you did bad or good thing. The karma notification appears as to remind you that what you did is bad or good, rather than let you think it yourself if you did a good or bad thing.

Because honestly, reputation system beats it over.
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What about situations that happen outside of settlements though !? Or happen when no one witness it. For example you could kills some that ins't part of a faction. What then ? Yeah the reputation does beat it but its alittle harder to mod into the game
 
Norzan said:
Yeah, i'm not a fan of the karma system too. Arbitrarily saying a character is either good or evil kind defeats the point of grey areas. Which is what the series is about.
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Giving out Karma in certain situations does defeat the point of grey areas. But I think playing as a 'good' or 'bad' PC can good for RP and stuff related too it in theory. Some parts of FO3 karma felt more liked a dumbed down rep system rather than what it should be. It just that karma is generally exploitable in FO3 and defiantly NV so getting bad karma isn't generally something you worry about
 
lolpop109 said:
What about situations that happen outside of settlements though !? Or happen when no one witness it. For example you could kills some that ins't part of a faction. What then ? Yeah the reputation does beat it but its alittle harder to mod into the game
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Nothing? Like someone once said, if the tree falls off in the forest and nobody is hearing....
But that does bring up STALKER in my mind for some reason, while it doesn't really have any sort of karma system, the meanings of killing someone can affect the game balance. Kill off few Loners in the middle of nowhere? You get good loot from them but are propably in need of them, when there would be dangers to come, be it bandits or mutants, with no firepower other than what you have.
 
lolpop109 said:
Giving out Karma in certain situations does defeat the point of grey areas. But I think playing as a 'good' or 'bad' PC can good for RP and stuff related too it in theory. Some parts of FO3 karma felt more liked a dumbed down rep system rather than what it should be. It just that karma is generally exploitable in FO3 and defiantly NV so getting bad karma isn't generally something you worry about
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I was more referring to npcs. It's kind of dumb to say a npc is just good and another to be just evil. In a series where good people can be led to do evil things and vice-versa. Again, the karma system as a whole feels arbitrary and defeats the point of grey areas.

In my opinion, the reputation system is the best one to gauge how the wasteland reacts to you.
 
I don’t think karma is a waste. I think it just needs to be mechanically more interesting (and perhaps more ’active’ as a mechanic).

I always wished karma would be something that guided the PC towards certain kinds of behavior instead of simply being the reaction from the world. It makes more sense that it affects you instead of making others psychics about you. Like, if you did bad deeds and were prone to violent solutions, that’s where the character would get increasingly more (and more potent) options and the world would react accordingly, and on the other hand, he’d get locked away from more kindly options - and vice versa. Being neutral(ish) would always be an option so one can try to make amends or play an opportunist.

Obviously where the score is count, you can’t become a psychopath simply through pickpocketing, so that’d be controlled.

In short, instead of karma dictating how the world looks at you, it’d dictate how you are able to look at it.

I think it could be neat if done well.
 
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Kohno said:
I don’t think karma is a waste. I think it just needs to be mechanically more interesting (and perhaps more ’active’ as a mechanic).

I always wished karma would be something that guided the PC towards certain kinds of behavior instead of simply being the reaction from the world. It makes more sense that it affects you instead of making others psychics about you. Like, if you did bad deeds and were prone to violent solutions, that’s where the character would get increasingly more (and more potent) options, and on the other hand, he’d get locked away from more kindly options - and vice versa. Being neutral(ish) would always be an option so one can try to make amends or play an opportunist.
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That's an interesting idea, but surely it would nudge players towards a wholly good or wholly evil playthrough? Though with the neutral option always being there, and then being able to change direction from there, then there is always the chance to fall or redeem your character.
 
In the game I'm developing, 'Karma' is tied to what would be Luck in Fallout. Instead of being something you set, it changes based on how selfishly you act. It's a balance thing, so if you want to steal all the good stuff and screw people over to get ahead, you might have more money and better equipment than an altruistic player, but dice rolls will be significantly less in your favor.
 
I find that Reputation, while sometimes a bit silly, does the job just right. Especially if there's negative and positive with their respective effects. I'd point to Tyranny for a quite great example of this. Companions and factions have a "fear"/"reject" aside of the "favour"/"respect" and whatnot, but you can actually get your way with either extreme in most cases which is more than fitting to your role in the world. Each side of the balance doesn't actually rule itself out (you can be both fondly respected but also feared) and gives two unique active abilities, for the companion's case it's combined moves.

I do however still like the traditional karma. I'm unsure if I'd rather want it to be w core mechanic or a tangential stat. I guess my preferred state of it is one where it's the latter. There being negative and positive actions to commit doesn't completely take away from ambiguity. Curing the sick and feeding the poor or raping a priest and shooting cats aren't exactly morally muddy situations. Somewhere between Kohno and Chill's stances; a featured stat which doesn't really need much justification or weight to be put into it; just another character defining trait or quirk to be reminded of sometime. Aren't all skills and such that as well, in the end?

A case where it's more active I liked would probably be some of Arkane's recent games. Dishonored mostly redeems the fucked "morality system!" that was all the rage back then with being the main source of cause and consequence, affecting many events, major and minor further down the road, part of the actual gameplay deciding play stylesand plauthroughs and offering challenges of its own. It's also satisfactorily justified enough in the world building and again is tied into the narrative and the rest of the game. It's not masterfully done and there's been more than enough debate on the nonlethal assassination outcomes; is it really much worse to turn a noble lady into another's sex slave for her lifetime or send two men to their own silver mines than just kill them in an instant? But regardless, it does its job and it actually matters. The sequel would only fix the silly stuff and justify different play styles better. Prey is a bit less on the face with it and mostly just factors your amount of alien shit inside yourself, which is an inherent part of the "leveling" and upgrade system. It's more about your actions and reactivity but your alien-Ization has several gameplay effects as well and really comes into the narrative.
 
Kohno said:
I don’t think karma is a waste. I think it just needs to be mechanically more interesting (and perhaps more ’active’ as a mechanic).

I always wished karma would be something that guided the PC towards certain kinds of behavior instead of simply being the reaction from the world. It makes more sense that it affects you instead of making others psychics about you. Like, if you did bad deeds and were prone to violent solutions, that’s where the character would get increasingly more (and more potent) options and the world would react accordingly, and on the other hand, he’d get locked away from more kindly options - and vice versa. Being neutral(ish) would always be an option so one can try to make amends or play an opportunist.

Obviously where the score is count, you can’t become a psychopath simply through pickpocketing, so that’d be controlled.

In short, instead of karma dictating how the world looks at you, it’d dictate how you are able to look at it.

I think it could be neat if done well.
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So for example if your character had 'bad' karma you would get certain extra chooses in dialogue for example to make a situation more aggressive and/or insult a character. That option would't show unless you had bad karma to begin with the normal dialogue chooses available as well. Or even maybe certain quests only become available because of the nature of the PC.


I think this is different to way it mainly done now because all the options are given whatever your karma level and if you make the bad decision then you get the negative karma. So locking out certain choices stop the PC thinking what the best choices in terms of geting loot leveling up.

How do you think other skill could play into this though mainly talking via dialogue? Are you more likely to intimidate because how your acting. Can it buff the PC in any other ways. Will certain people like you more because of your karma levels. I know that kinda been done before but only really compainons in fallout 3 and NV. There's really not too many situations that people will act differently towards you because your karma level and I think it should give more dialogue options
 
Konho's post makes me think of West of Loathing I've been playing these months. A quest during the prologue can give player a moral "perk", which would enable some extra options in later quests. As for the bomb package quest in the OP, I think the amount of negative karma given should depend on if there's a slight hint for player. If player is completely ignorant of what he's delivering is a bomb, I don't think player should be given any negative karma, or at least only the minimum.
 
NovaRain said:
Konho's post makes me think of West of Loathing I've been playing these months. A quest during the prologue can give player a moral "perk", which would enable some extra options in later quests. As for the bomb package quest in the OP, I think the amount of negative karma given should depend on if there's a slight hint for player. If player is completely ignorant of what he's delivering is a bomb, I don't think player should be given any negative karma, or at least only the minimum.
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I guess ut would be very up to the authors' design philosophy. I probably would make it so that there's a skill check and/or have some foreboding clues to find far enough from sight. You could punish the player and/or the character for being oblivious or try and leave everything laid out.
 
My proposition: add the option to inspect the package.

-if PC just delivers the package- no karma.

-if PC has high enough Perception he can detect that there is something wrong with the package, but without proper knowledge (science/explosives) doesn't know what exactly.
If PC delivers package at this point- no karma.

-if PC has high enough Perception and Explosives/ Science he discovers that it's a bomb.
If PC delivers package at this point- karma loss.

-if PC finds out about the bomb and warns the victim- karma gain.
 
The Man From Nowhere said:
Does The Courier know it's rigged to explode?

If they don't, they shouldn't receive any karma at all.
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They know that the person asking them is slightly dodgy. And they have to go and meet and talk with him. But there told to just simply deliver the package.
Alphons said:
My proposition: add the option to inspect the package.

-if PC just delivers the package- no karma.

-if PC has high enough Perception he can detect that there is something wrong with the package, but without proper knowledge (science/explosives) doesn't know what exactly.
If PC delivers package at this point- no karma.

-if PC has high enough Perception and Explosives/ Science he discovers that it's a bomb.
If PC delivers package at this point- karma loss.

-if PC finds out about the bomb and warns the victim- karma gain.
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I like the idea although I don't really know how to script finding out that is a bomb. I think I could make an option choice that higher enough explosive skill you can try and warn the NPC but he opens it anyway. I think in this specific the NPC has to die
 
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