Fallout: New Vegas Reputation

Reputation in Fallout: New Vegas is a way to measure general feeling for your character in each principal towns and factions like Fallout 2, and will even give you access to new areas in the game.

Reputation can be modified by doing good or bad deeds, like completing quests or killing townsfolk or member of a faction. Your reputation with any given group is a measure of the combined total of Fame and Infamy that you have earned. The benefits and drawbacks of any given reputation depend of the group itself. You may receive discounts with merchants, provoke attacks from hired thugs, or simply be treated differently.

You can also equip faction clothing (e.g. NCR uniform) to impersonate a member of the faction the clothing belongs to, and will be considered one of them, meaning your reputation with the respective faction will be "neutral", regardless of their actual disposition towards you (i.e. a "vilified" reputation will turn into "neutral", as will a "Idolized" reputation, with all drawbacks a lower reputation brings!). Note that such a disguise will only work on common members of that faction and that officers, security guards and dogs will be able to see through it. Also, any member of a faction with a negative disposition towards the faction whose clothing you wear will attack you on sight as your true reputation with that faction will be ignored as long as you are disguised.

Reputation
There are two different scales of reputation (denoted 1 and 0 in the console), earned by doing helpful or harmful deeds, respectively, to the faction. The combined effects of the two scales result in an overall reputation that is either positive, neutral, or negative. In the table below, these are colored green, black, and red respectively.

Note that at this time there is no known way to erase past deeds(however you can start rumours in freeside that affect your reputation, just visit atomic wrangler citation needed). Your scores in the two scales only accumulate - neither ever goes down. In other words, while it's possible to move from 'Hated' to 'Sneering Punk', then 'Unpredictable', then 'Dark Hero' by doing more and more good deeds while avoiding bad ones, there's no way to move from 'Hated' back to 'Neutral' or from 'Hated' to 'Idolized.' Similarly, once a reputation of 'Wild Child' is earned, there's no ability to change it at all. However, two specific story events will erase negative reputation you have gained with the NCR or Caesar's Legion.

When disguised, none of your typical reputation levels apply. This is reflected in the absence of reputations in your PipBoy. However, certain NPCs, particularly guards, may see through your disguise and attack you if you are Vilified with their faction and are standing in close proximity.

Bugs
It is possible that the game doesn't register taking off faction armor properly when switching directly to another piece of armor. In that case your PipBoy will still show your reputations as if you were wearing faction armor. This may lead to confusion when the player is being attacked by previously friendly factions. Putting on any kind of faction armor and taking it off again usually restores the players faction standing.