There are certain actions that are very neutrally gray, when you put alignment into it, it turns into right and wrong, good and evil. Some of the actions I did mainly because it benefits me personally, not because it's good or evil. On top of that, the idea that NPCs know your reputation even though they have never talked to you before seem a bit off. It's one thing if big actions would carry weights like slaughtering the entire settlement could lead to another group noticing it through the grapevines since there could be survivors, but everyone knows I mug an old lady in the middle of nowhere and add to my alignment is a bit off. If the gauge is only for your own personal benefits then there really isn't a need for that and developers should not dictate the morality of certain decisions since evil could do certain actions for their own benefits.
