Can someone please take time out of their day to try and help me figure out this problem with the reputation system?

[Sandalphon]

Ok, so I've noticed that no matter what I do to a particular faction or group that my reputation with them won't change at all, Like with the NCR I'll kill the whole Camp of Rangers and then my reputation will still be “merciful thug” or “Soft hearted devil”, Same thing with the legion even though I literally killed Caesar. I should be villainized with both groups and I checked to see if it was happening with every other Group that I have a reputation with and sure enough when I killed everyone in Novac and Goodsprings I was still idolized by them for some reason. Dose anyone know why this is?

PS. I know there's a glitch where a particular faction sometimes may reset to neutral but this seems different...

[SSSalvo]

It is most likely the same bug that happened to me,I fixed it by equipping a Legion armor,unequipping it,equipping a NCR armor,unequipping it too and then equipping a generic armor.Weird I know,worthy a try to see if anything change for you.
The only issue I have is that,I don't know why,the NCR shoot me since the start anyway even if I am accepted or neutral but after that armor swapping the karma started working back again.
The only way to visit those factions,if they are hostile,is with an equipment of their faction but a ranger or a chief will spot you.

[Ladez]

Reputation works off two scales, fame and infamy, which combine into an overall reputation rating. Both scales can be increased, but never decreased.

Here's a visualization of the fame (horizontal) and infamy (vertical) levels:

Neutral	Accepted	Liked	Idolized
Shunned	Mixed	Smiling Troublemaker	Good-Natured Rascal
Hated	Sneering Punk	Unpredictable	Dark Hero
Vilified	Merciful Thug	Soft-Hearted Devil	Wild Child

In this grid, you can move horizontally right, and vertically down, but never the opposite directions. You can go from Accepted all the way down to Merciful Thug, but you can never go from Accepted to Vilified.

Put another way, if you've done anything that bumps your fame level with a faction, you can never become Vilified. If you've done anything that bumps your infamy level, you can never become Idolized.

As you can see above, Merciful Thug and Soft-Hearted Devil are both maximum infamy levels, so the only way you can change your reputation is by doing good deeds to reach a more neutral state. You cannot become more bad. But you can also not become less good.

[Sandalphon]

Damn, That's interesting. i did not know that's how it worked.

[Sandalphon]

so it's not a glitch then? That's just how the game works?

[Ladez]

With regards to this specific issue, no, not as far as I can tell. If you're at Merciful Thug or Soft-Hearted Devil, you're at max infamy level.

[psychotron666420]

The first part doesn't sound like a glitch, but if novac and goodsprings stay at idolized when you kill them, that's a glitch, because they should be able to drop to wild child after you get idolized.

[Ladez]

Yeah, I missed that. That certainly doesn't sound right.

[Sandalphon]

Yeah I've noticed a lot of little glitches in this specific playthrough especially. For some reason the reputation thing only started after I got done doing the dead money DLC, Probably not a correlation there though.