UPDATE:I have a slightly different perspective after consulting a fellow inZOI player I’m friendly with. I’ve learned more about some of the issues with the existing karma system, so I have some improvements to suggest in another post after this original one.
Please restore the karma features of the game. I enjoyed managing karma. I enjoyed working toward good karma and winning the lottery by being good. I just enjoyed the system in general.
This 0.4 update has moved the game so much closer to the Sims clone by ripping away the karma features! The biggest thing that set this game apart from the Sims!
Just taken away and listed as an “Improvement” in the patch notes. inZOI - KRAFTON
Karma Improvements
Karma interactions have been merged into general interactions, and Karma score as well as Karma icons in conversation options have been removed.
The “Zoi Karma Status” section has been deleted from the Karma Report, and the Karma-related dialogue options have been removed from the “City Status Control” menu in City Management.
Two Karma-related donuts have also been removed from the Meow Store.
How is this an improvement?
So karma was always just meant for ghost play? Making it a feature for the living zois was just a gimmick or something to keep us engaged until you gutted it??
I was already upset about changes to personalities, but this update has taught me a very valuable lesson:
NEVER BUY AN EARLY ACCESS GAME AGAIN!
inZOI might as well be tagged as “bait and switch” on the Steam store.
Honest question: what do you think karma actually added to the game in terms of gameplay? Sure, it’s different from The Sims, but as far as I could see the only real in-game effect was to block off certain interactions behind a specific karma score. Is there any specific aspect you’d like to see brought back?
Also, karma isn’t gone altogether; it’s been made an integral part of ghost gameplay. If you’re looking for something different from The Sims, why not give that a try? I haven’t tried it myself yet but I definitely intend to, as it looks pretty interesting, even though I don’t normally like supernatural stuff. (We’re also getting a reincarnation option for dead Zois in future updates, which I’m guessing is related to karma somehow.)
Honest question:
Why do people buy games (even in early access) if the original USP doesn’t appeal to them? Don’t they realize that many others purchase them after carefully reviewing the showcase, roadmap, and planned mechanics presented through footage, and most importantly, treating those as core elements that define the game’s identity?
If it were a free demo… But people paid $40, and in the words of a Discord moderator:
They are allowed to have their opinion, and be upset that features they were promised when purchasing were removed.
Now to the base:
I often see my Zoi appear in a neutral frozen pose after switching (not quite an A-pose, but close). It’s unclear whether other walking Zois persist in their roles/routes, the game tends to spawn them all at one point, often in front of the camera.
So, it now seems likely that anything off-camera isn’t being simulated anymore. I might be wrong, but this feels like that M1-targeted optimization. The CPU on a powerful laptop now runs at just 17%.
I asked a genuine question, and you’re answering as if it were a rhetorical one. I actually understand the original USP regarding karma; I just think it wasn’t really showing up in the implementation. Telling the devs what specific things you liked about karma, and what you thought it added to the gameplay (by “you” I mean people in general, not you personally) is obviously more useful and actionable than just complaining that it was removed - especially as many other players were being very specific about the aspects they disliked.
All of this was published across both brainstorms +1, with links to forum threads. We wrote here, there. A whole “council” was assembled to break down how all the systems can interact. They say they read the forums? Well, here’s how the forum members thought from one of the most active, invested, and consistently engaged communities ever.
There’s the thing: Those threads have a lot of good ideas for how to improve karma, but not a lot about how the game currently benefits from it. No one really seems to think the karma system works in its current iteration, even the people defending it. And a lot of these suggestions are basically about using Karma to duplicate the ‘City Stability’ setting (or at least what that setting ought to be doing). It’s hardly surprising the devs have decided to de-emphasise karma mechanics for the moment while they work on other things.
I learned from a friend that there were very negative effects of playing a “bad” zoi. I didn’t know about these because I planned to play a character who was an absolute menace, but I wanted to try other things first. (I played a single-girl-finds-love story, briefly played a family, played my Let’s Play, and playing a new version of the family from gameplay #2).
My plan was to play a special character I made who is a Cahaya born-and-raised woman who was such a menace to society that she got exiled to the worst place on Earth: the nearly post-apocalyptic Dowon! But now I can’t play the nearly post-apocalyptic part but I can make a personality for her that’s very naughty.
Anyway, my friend said that if you had low karma, other zois wouldn’t socialize with your zoi and would just run away, and that there were some things bad karma zois couldn’t do that only good karma zois could.
I’ve asked for as much detail as they can give me so it’ll help me understand what needs improving in the karma system.
One thing I said to my friend just came to me while replying and asking for as much info as possible is this:
I think they cannot remove the soul of the game, but it sounds like a lot of adjustments should be made to accommodate all play styles.
My first suggestion I’ll make to the dev team is that they make it clear that we don’t need to “Scold” negative karma zois. It’s optional, and it should be clear that it makes it easier for that zoi to improve their karma for the next 24 hours. I had to learn that on the internet, but it should be clear in the game. There’s no need to punish or reward unless we want to.
Wouldn’t it be cool if we can check the zois who have terrible karma and see if it’s in their nature? The ones who are “bad” could be ignored or complimented. Why not make it go both ways?
Why should the demi-god-in-training have to be good? There could be a dark demi-god who rewards the terrible and scolds or ignores those who try to be good all the time! Okay, that’s gonna be one of my suggestions.
Can you please share more details about the negative aspects of the Karma system?
I think it needs to be improved, based on what I’ve learned about the negative experience for people who want to enjoy playing “bad” zois.
What the karma system adds in terms of gameplay certainly varies based on gameplay styles. I can only speak for myself.
For me, it is the soul of the game. It appeals to me as a person with spiritual beliefs that are in many ways in line with Korean beliefs.
Shamanism is an aspect I enjoy in the game, and my favourite character of all is a shaman. I’ve experimented with Smart Zoi to add to his behaviours/urges as a shaman, but Smart Zoi isn’t quite there yet. But he can meditate with cats now in Cahaya!!
I was playing where the city had very low karma settings in the city settings, and as he continued his work with meditating, working with the cats at the temple and animal encounters around town, I would gradually change the city settings until it reached Medium. Then the karmic energy would be balanced—as the cats tasked him to do.
I’m not interested in ghost play at this time. I know I will try it out at some point, but it’s not really my thing. So making karma a thing that only relates to ghost play isn’t the right thing to do, in my opinion.
OK, the ‘running away’ thing seems like a good example, and I agree with a lot of what you say here. IMO it would be much better for karma to work on an individual basis rather than a city-wide one, and the game should treat it neutrally rather than badgering players to be ‘good’ all the time. I do like your idea of a ‘cat shaman’ Zoi healing the low-karma city, but it’s in no way supported by the current gameplay, hence having to change the settings repeatedly to make it work.
Regarding negative aspects: I don’t personally tend to do a lot of ‘low karma’ actions, so this in itself hasn’t been an issue for me. The only way karma has affected my own gameplay is by blocking off actions which require a specific Karma score, which is mainly just annoying (especially when those actions are required for an Ambition goal) and also feels unrealistic. People IRL don’t need to do a lot of smaller good or bad things before they can do larger ones, and normally good people can sometimes do bad things or vice versa.
That said, I’ve seen plenty of complaints about negative karma from other players, mostly around the following issues:
They don’t want to have to manage the karma of every Zoi in the city. (It’s true you can turn down NPC karma interactions in the settings, but if most people are going to essentially ‘switch off’ city-wide karma, is there any real point in having it?)
They actually want to make dystopian cities, and felt the focus on improving karma (or punishing low karma) doesn’t support this.
They don’t like being nagged about low karma when playing criminals or just generally ‘bad’ Zois.
They don’t like having interactions gated off, as mentioned above.
My suggestion is to post some of what you said above on the Discord - specific things you actually liked about the karma system - and ask Kjun to clarify whether it’s being removed altogether or just reworked. Even if it’s gone, perhaps some of those things can be re-implemented in other ways, e.g. through city stability options or a gossip/reputation system. This is more likely to help than telling the devs you’re giving up on the game, as they may just assume they’ve lost you as a player regardless of what they do next.
That’s exactly what I’m going to do. I’m gathering information from other people because I didn’t even know how it was playing a “bad” zoi. I want to do that and do want to play a dystopian city with completely run-down appearance, no fire safety, high crime, preference for bad karma, etc.
There are plenty of reasons why the update has made me not want to buy another Early Access game, mind you. My disappointment comes from things I have expressed on the Discord in a post for Kjun. I liked the feature where our zoi’s friends would sometimes send them a surprise gift. Apparently people complained, so it was taken away instead of adding a toggle. It’s one example of a very small thing taken away, but it is among the list of other small and much larger things that have been taken away. The game changed so much in certain ways that it really highlighted the fact that the finished game might not appeal to me at all.
I’ve found things I love in the update that are not related to karma, and I’ll give feedback on those when I’ve been able to play the game for a few days. But I had to speak up about the shocking and very upsetting change. It doesn’t matter to everyone, but it matters a lot to some players.
It just needs to be fixed. It’s got to be fun to be “bad” too! It’s fiction and fun, and someone being a menace would absolutely be fun. It also has to be a positive feature for players who love it, and unobtrusive for players who would rather ignore it. Although it would still be a key component to ghost play.
I agree, though we’re not claiming to be famous game designers. But devs are accountable to buyers and must communicate upcoming plans, especially when launching Ghost Play, which was in development before Early Access and was introduced over 8 months ago as a continuation of during-life Karma into Afterlife. Launching it as a simple time-limited quest now with no inherited Karma status for cleansing or reincarnation made no sense.
Meanwhile, the AI Build gimmick (which almost everyone forgot and which could’ve easily waited until post-release), was submitted for voting on Discord and included in the build.
A roadmap and informing about upcoming changes is mandatory in Early Access. Based on other successful Early Access projects and my experience working in OBT (Open Beta Testing) pipelines, I find this process chaotic and inconsistent, and that’s not the players’ fault.
Karma doesn’t play a role with the ghost play?? I’m going to check that video right now.
Thank you so much for everything you do to share important information with everyone. It’s hard to keep up with everything, and I appreciate all your input and informative posts.
Afterlife Karma was (and remains) the Ghost’s sole need. According to the original concept, once fulfilled by adding the missing Karma Points, you leave the mortal world.
Does that mean if you use the limited time to play as a menacing ghost, they just vanish after their three days are up?
It looked like we could play a menacing ghost if we want to. I’ll try it someday, but I think it would be fun to try being a ghost on a karma redemption arc, or have fun causing chaos and mayhem.
But if you take the latter route and mess with all the other zois in every way possible, would the ghost adventure just end after three days without a narrative conclusion?
Does that mean if you use the limited time to play as a menacing ghost - true
they just vanish after their three days are up? - notexactly vanish, but you can only stay in ghost form for a limited time.
I did spoil one of the endings, but you can play through the quest yourself. Unfortunately, it’s not about earning missing points to inherited during-life karma.
Understood. Thanks for clearing up my questions. I’ll try it eventually (I try not to get my zois killed, so it’ll happen when it happens). By then, it could be completely different.
There are some neat features to the ghost play, but it isn’t exactly what I was expecting. I thought that living zois would also be able to interact with ghosts who are trapped in the city to help them move onto the afterlife. That’s probably a misunderstanding of things spoken about before the Early Access release, but I had a much different expectation for ghost play.
It’s interesting that the player can choose to play as a ghost when their zoi dies, but it would’ve also been interesting if living zois could find ghosts and help them move on. That’s something I would roleplay for sure. But I guess they only ever meant for it to be one-sided, as in the player’s zoi dies and they can play as the ghost for a limited time.
Based on what I saw in early previews, that’s not the same case. It felt more like gwishin from Korean interpretation. The ghost remains long enough to fulfill the Karma need and earn the right to reincarnate (though, traditionally, soul become a ghost only after 49 days.)
Ghost Play allowed switching between living Zoi and the ghost, and (I’m not claiming it definitively, but if I find the footage, I’ll share it) in some footage they even showed how it could be seen and interacted with. It was closer to November 2024.
I’ve always loved that edge between realism and subtle metaphysics in Eastern cultures. I was shaped by it since youth, and that’s what made Karma + Ghost Play Chain so desirable to me. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive the abandonment of concepts like that.
And others are once again asking for vampires, spirits from Sims 4 L&D, and so on. So for me, sadly, inZOI is no longer in focus, all that’s left are the footage. Feel free to ask about them
I barely got the chance to try the karma system due to issues migrating to Linux and the failure of my PCs’ motherboard (twice) but from what I hear it sounds like a cultural miscommunication issue.
Karma may mean something completely different to South Koreans than to Indians (as in “East India”, not Native Americans; sometimes the language drift in favor of equality confuses people), and/or mean something completely different than we perceive it in the Americas, Oceania and Europe.
If that is the case, the development team may have implemented karma as a system without realizing that applying that on a city-wide basis is neither fun nor culturally considerate. If that is not the reason, it’s simply not fun as was implemented. Either way, the situation is clearly somewhat justified, however…
Karma should be a feature because it makes the game have an identity of it’s own; A tech company that runs an artificial universe could, instead of simply providing a backdrop, play an instrumental part of our characters. It would be a simple checkbox, but the label is deceptively simple - “Story Mode for non-Autonomic Player Zois” - and allows the related lore of inZoi to be used with karma (karma itself could be a separate, prerequisite option; karma would be opt-out but story mode would be opt-in). Why? Because it would be part of a Zoi’s back story: If you enable it for a given Zoi when you create the Zoi, you’re an employee of AR Company and thus a sort of human demigod in a vague post-digital future where pocket realities can be created, and your karma specifically is a lynchpin of that reality, meaning what you do to be a bad person (if you choose to be) affects your arti-fisher kingdom itself. To decide what that means, the city stability slider defines your preferred “neutral”, where the more dystopian the neutral form, the closer bad karma brings your city to “The Stepford Wives”-style creepyness where the brightness returns but the city feels… off. The more optimistic the neutral, the more your city resembles the futuristic solarpunk utopia of the series’ lore rather than just a good city to live in. Not selecting Story Mode but using the karma system allows one to have similar game mechanics, but no story events related to being an employee of AR Company occur for that character.
After playing with ghosts for a bit it seems like that’s pretty much what they’re going for, except that reincarnation isn’t in the game yet. There’s still UI messages referring to Zois’ actions in life affecting their karma (see picture below for an example) and it’s also described as a condition for reincarnation. So either that’s coming back, or they just haven’t updated the UI yet.
Some more info regarding ghosts:
They actually have two needs, Karma and Vitality. Vitality allows them perform special ghost actions (unlocked by completing urges related to their death) and to interact with certain objects in the gameworld, such as electronics and musical instruments. It’s recharged by talking to other ghosts.
A few NPCs can actually see the playable ghost and and talk to them, but it’s hard to tell which ones without clicking on them. Maybe they have to have a certain mood, or a certain trait. There are only a few dialogue options at the moment.
You can refill karma by completing tasks for other ghosts - these are pretty short and simple as you’d expect, but some of the stories are quite sweet. I hope they’re going to add more tasks, as it could get pretty dull doing the same ones every time you play a ghost.
The taskgiver ghosts have additional dialogue options as well, but not enough yet IMO. With the other ghosts around town, all you can really do is ask about the cause of death - this should be changed so they all have the same options.
Once you’re tired of ghost play you can ‘ascend’ by talking to the Soul Guide in the funeral home. You have the choice to attend your own funeral first, and exchange some last goodbyes, regrets etc. with your family. Interestingly, I also saw an option to ‘stay longer’ though it was greyed out for me. Maybe this activates if the 3 days are almost up and your karma is low.
but I can make a personality for her that’s very naughty.
