When you kill or hurt civilians your reputation goes down, when you solve crime submissions or avert street crimes, your reputation goes up.
But: What is the actual point of the reputation? Does it have any influence on gameplay apart from being a motivator to do certain things and not hurt innocents?
With a low reputation, NPC's will sometimes recognize you and call the police.
With a higher rep, they'll still sometimes recognize you but they don't do anything game-altering. The comments they make are different.
Source: I had very low rep from running over so many pedestrians. I got sick of people randomly calling the police on me, so I stopped a bunch of crime and they stopped doing it.
I believe it also has a minor affect on the ending, but I haven't found a source to verify this yet.
This seems to be more of a social vibe thing than anything else as of yet. I am only in Act II now but I have started hearing news reports being broadcast about the character where he is being hailed as a good guy but police say assisting him is still a crime and so on.
None of the AI have 'assisted' me as of yet though and the reputation only seems to have an effect upon their comments they make when I am walking by them. They go Ooh and Ahh when I am high in reputation as opposed to "OMG I think that's him"! It has certainly not stopped people from calling the cops on me when I shoot my gun by accident.
I worked hard on my playthrough to maintain a good rep. with a full good rep, i never heard of Aiden in the news, police call on me were limited a lot, and the citizens had leniency toward my actions. It also effects the way some of the later missions play out. I've only seen the vigilante results though.
I've noticed that with my reputation up to the max, I'm a wanted 'criminal' and theres a warrant out for my arrest, but with the citizens on my side, no one has bothered calling the cops on me thus, that's why they have the reputation bar.
Here's what I learned, you stop crimes, you get more reputation, and people will be on your safe side, But that can go down real quick if you have a rough day and just want to start killing people, But to kill people without consequence, take a digital trip.
