Nearly impossible to be evil?

[Question2]

It seems very difficutl to be evil considering that almost every hostile human encounter gives you karma simply for defending yourself from robbers, highwaymen, etc.

Pretty much all quests give you tons of karma as well for choosing the best choices. I mean yea, you can be a dick and blow up gecko, or you can repair it for maximum xp/loot and vault city citzenship. Its pretty much a no brainer. Other "evil" choices like destroying whiskey bob's still are pointless because you can get the same reward for doing refueling the still, which also bumps up your town reputation.

Joining the slaver's guild doesnt make sense either...given how easy money is to get and the fact that it locks you out of so many quests, including making Sulik go hostile.

There are plenty of companions that wont join you fi you are evil, but i don't think there are any that will only join evil players.

 

[Jogre]

I agree that Fallout 2 (And Fallout New Vegas for that matter) dish out good karma too easily. It is pretty difficult to finish the game as an evil karma character without making utterly stupid decisions.

I personally think Fallout 1 handled this much, much better, in that the evil options were fairly straightforward: Help a crime lord wipe out his enemies, Destroy a tribe while they are weak for profit, Gain the support of a raider gang by proving you are ruthless. They were all understandable options that you could reasonably consider doing.

Fallout 2 makes evil options somewhat stupid and convoluted, for example with Gecko how you can blow a town up, or just not do that, and help them with there troubles, earning there respect and the respect of Vault City. One of those options is entirely pointless.

That being said I disagree with your other two points:

Joining the slaver's guild doesnt make sense either...given how easy money is to get and the fact that it locks you out of so many quests, including making Sulik go hostile.

I find that Slave Runs are the easiest way to make a profit in the game. Most quests are only doable once, hunting Geckos requires random encounters and Caravans/Brahmin runs have tough encounters involved.

Slave Runs have you fight a bunch of super easy enemies with 2 allies by your side, and then earn 1000 chips for doing so, and can be done an infinite number of times. It's basically a way to just spam dollars.

There are plenty of companions that wont join you fi you are evil, but i don't think there are any that will only join evil players.

Actually, I think this is one of the things Fallout 2 does well.

If you shoot up shopkeeps/take there shit, trade in slaves and stuff, you'll make a profit out of it, but most people won't trust you, or wont want to associate with you.

It makes sense that good companions wouldn't want to join evil characters, because it would involve them doing things that disgust them, however that being said it makes perfect sense for evil companions to join good characters, because they are still benefiting from being in an adventuring party.

If you made certain companions who would only join evil characters, it would feel very gamey and too much based on balance.

 

[Question2]

Most caravan encounters are extremely easy because you have several guards helping you. A "caraven fending off robbers/etc" encounter is extremely profitable...you can wait till both sides kill eah other off and walk in to loot the bodies. Anytime you need money, you can just walk around on the world map for a bit and kill human enemies for their guns to sell.

In comparison, becoming a slaver locks you out of so much content that its simply not worth doing at all for some early game cash.

There are plenty of reasons for why a companion would join an evil character...i mean, look at raiders, they wouldnt be following a good character would they?

 

[VeteranWarmongerer]

if you want to be truly evil (excuse my Necroposting) you would have to be an entirely different character than the "Chosen One" in order to accomplish this. you can try to be an Evil chosen one but you're still gonna be painted as the hero who saved the Arroyo tribe from The Enclave. yes there's the "but they wouldn't care about the chosen one! he's disposable! gotcha!" argument which is why I say you must not be him.


as my User name suggests a character, this "Veteran Warmongerer" would feel pure evil, as President Dick Richardson Jr. releases you from a secret cryostasis pod vault underneath Navarro (a similar experiment to the Vault 111 one) which instead of using the chamber occupants as an experiment, it is actually a preservation chamber for newly ranked Enclave personnel that came from the U.S. Commonwealth army (The Veteran Warmongerer had fought fluently in Alaska and China in the 32nd Combat Armor and 2nd T51b Power Armor divisions against the Communist Chinese, (making Lanius's inhumane murders look like childs play.)) and was promoted to become the bulk of this phantom portion of the government.


yes it would lead to the FEV virus infecting all, but this was supposed to be a cure against the irradiation. Veteran Warmongerer would not question the Enclave's true tasks. he would also convince the President to test other cures for the radiation in case the FEV isn't cutting it. And as a badass bonus for being this evil Warmongering threat and alteration of history, (Chosen One is your mortal enemy) you would have a personal Enclave video communicator to call in a dozen of the bulk of the Enclave's troops, and The characters Sgt Arch Dornan and Frank Horrigan would be your companions.

 

[TorontoReign]

Well the villain is always a hero to himself. True you can't be a real evil dickhead but any game where you are trying to save other people leans you to the anti hero scale at the very worst.

 

[VeteranWarmongerer]

Well the villain is always a hero to himself. True you can't be a real evil dickhead but any game where you are trying to save other people leans you to the anti hero scale at the very worst.

yet if you were truly evil, you would have joined the Enclave and let the Arroyo tribe continue doing forced labor for them.

 

[laclongquan]

It's an issue of market demand and gamers' base popular moral.

If you make a game that is easy to be evil, then it's hard to create marketing campaigns right from start. Then its' harder to do word of mouth promotion as well: nobody want to confess to being a player of EVIL game. Then it's impossible to increase sale of games: any gamers would surreptitious in playing this game.

In a way, it's easier to confess a player of porn/hentai games than a player of EVIL games. Note the number of porn-style games versus the number of EVIL games.

Sure, playing EVIL games sound cool in concept. In practice, not many gamers would fork out money for such a game.