I like this idea; perhaps the karma system could also be connected to the city appearance, so that a low-karma city would become more dirty and run-down as the citizens take less responsibility? Broken windows, evidence of crime and trash everywhere? Now that would be a real and tangible consequence…
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Yes, exactly! Imagine how realistic that would be, and much more feasible than punishments for bad karma!
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Please, please, let’s keep adding these cool ideas to the main thread or start new ones 
I feel like the devs are prioritizing things the same way they do in brainstorms (by quantity, not by upvotes…) Just imagining they might skip over some comments makes me nervous. I described a similar system on Discord earlier. I think I’ll start another thread a bit later, but I need to make a visualization first.
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Honestly I think they should give us an option to just disable it. I may make a new thread on this as it’s a slightly different focus from “here’s how to improve the system”.
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i wish the karma system would show actual consequences, when the karma is very low and a lot of people fall under the bad zoi category, the city should be more prone for crime and stuff
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I think an option to disable the managing portion and the penalty for bad karma would be nice, but reworking the system could be good along with that. If you make a post link it here!
Agreed! Others had said they wish having a bad overall karma had a greater effect on the city’s appearance and activity.
I agree, a low city karma should be something that the actually directly affects the player. With crime your Zoi can be walking down the street and get mugged or beat up. Imagine a Zoi getting a negative moodlet walking through certain neighborhoods because they don’t feel safe. How about being harassed by the cops because there has been an increase in crime and you look “suspicious” to them.
On a player’s home lot there could be more of a chance that your house can be burgled or vandalized. Having a porch pirate steal your packages or the stuff you ordered arrive damaged can be a result of negative carma. Or even your Zoi is more likely to get scammed online.
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We have sliders just like this in the game though? This isn’t even a full screenshot of all that you can do– you get to control if you city is one of more positive or negative karmic interactions, you get to control crime rate, sickness.. so much.
I kind of agree with the toggle for only active households but at the same time it makes the karma system kind of pointless if it only applies to the zois you play. I do like the neighborhood/social media app idea and I could see this being added with celebrities or something.. making influencing/influencers a thing.
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I don’t think they should get rid of Karma/Honor in the game.. yes in real life there are people with different moral standings but that does not make them immune from consequences. I don’t feel that this hinders you into playing as hyper good I think it’s just more realistic in the sense that actions have consequences and it is a life simulator. I think instead if you want to play a zoi that is a thief or into crime there should just be a skill level for how good at crime you are and you as the player need to make the right choices to not get them caught or seen in the act.. it makes the stakes much higher and like there is true payoff as well as consequence to the criminal lifestyle.
I do get that Karma is something that is part of their culture but I think even just making it a true “Honor” system and calling it Honor instead of Karma may be better but I don’t see them going back on it. Honor systems are not new and I think it could open the door to other religions being added into the game which is a huge part of life and getting to know others.
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I believe I mentioned that the global sliders shown in the screenshot should be kept, but they need to be made more impactful, like stats in Cities: Skylines. For example, if the Crime Rate is high, the city should feel unsafe: the local Chipper flooded with complaints, and actual crimes and arrests happening around the city. Same with Health — outbreaks, ambulances rushing around.
The problem with the Karma system is that it now tracks 255 Zois plus 12 residential lots, meaning around 300 independent agents in active simulation. That raises concerns about CPU load — I’m not sure if they’re using TimeSlice, AI LODs, or proxy logic, but the city stutters hard when clusters are loading. And for many players, they really care about is their own household.
But even with 250+ Zois, it’s still not enough to make the city feel truly populated. That’s why I suggested putting some of them into per-Zoi simulation — like in Sims 3 — and letting the rest act as ambient noise, driven purely by globally set logic. Alternatively, they could use crowd simulation, where multiple agents are simulated as part of a shared behavioral system. That would allow for managing 1000+ people on screen without killing performance — Assassin’s Creed: Unity is a good example.
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This would genuinely be so cool to implement, would make your choice with the city’s karma have an actual impact on your gameplay and storytelling! Love this idea!!
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I personally still disagree and feel like the game is not made for you to play morally ill characters, which isn’t true to life and therefore not true to how life simulation should be. Maybe that is because of the variance in culture and the idea of karma not being popular in my culture, but I think that an honour system that did not have any punishment or enforcing it was optional would be much better
The issue is that if we set these sliders to the lowest, there isn’t a huge difference. If I have low karma I want people being mugged in the street, seeing ambulance and police cruise down the road after people, parts of the city that are actually run down with broken windows and homeless, etc. More weight to the sliders would be nice
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I personally think that a both work fine, I’ve never experienced lag related issues however I think a more impactful mix of both would be the best route. And honestly, I’m not even that interested in the karma system of having to track my zois karma and make sure it stays good — so that aspect of it I’m hoping becomes optional.
However, the consequences to changing your city karma, social media posts being affected by it, seeing crime on the street, and more should definitely become the focus of the karma system.
Ahh, I understand now! I fully agree this would be great!
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i’d love this
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Even good people were trouble makers when they was young, and influences can carry people to become even more bad, look at our world some people believe what is fed to them from all media, and some don’t, some have good morals, some have bad morals, some change do to certain impacts in life and some don’t, this is reality, hopefully KRAFTON does fix the karma physics 