It feels like people are missing… something… in their arguments about scav karma. People either seem to think positive karma is very good (it isn't, it makes your scav 20% as useful as a PMC instead of 10% but you're still making a fraction of what you would by taking a 2-3x bigger backpack on a trash geared PMC with no cooldown), or that negative karma should rightfully be very punishing. The thing is, the game is clearly built around PMC gameplay as the primary progression content. All traders/quests/guns/etc are locked behind PMC experience or rep, which you're giving up entirely (along with PMC skills) by doing scavs at all.
Why should the failsafe/throwaway run mechanic have a rigid, punishing framework? Scav karma will inherently never be very meaningful because the penalties and benefits focus on a gamemode that is already designed to be suboptimal. This is okay. It provides some minor progression and slight perks for people who cling heavily to scav runs, but there's really no sense in endlessly debating the precise balance of what amounts to an optional minigame. You are not entitled to friendliness from other scavs, you are not entitled to monotonically increasing karma, but ultimately it doesn't matter.
