TF2 Random Critical Hits: A Fair and Balanced Discussion
669 replies, posted
ASIC I'm serious now, stop talking to me.
Seriously, please do not lock this thread
It's like a ball pit in a restaurant where you can dump the children when you want to have adult conversations. Now and then, you can check if the kids are still in there and enjoying themselves, but it's not a place to be.
Apparently I'm in the minority here, but I happen to think that critical hits make games more interesting, as they can result in the occasional lucky shot that makes things less formulaic. It's true that it could result in the team who played worse winning now and then, but with most matches, I imagine the critical hits are fairly close between both teams, as if you roll a die 500 times, you tend to find that the random element is almost non-existent cumulatively.
random crits are as interesting as getting your balls sucked by a raccoon tbh
it felt good but youre getting your balls caressed an animal
thats just plain wrong in the long term
how would you know how that feels?
uh oh
I see. So you wanted to be banned this whole time?
Kaiga has made 48 posts in this thread.
You can look through them here Search
40 of these posts have accused me of something, mocked me, or insulted me in some way. That is about 83% of his posts in this thread.
What he is doing is definitely covered under one of flaming, spam, shitposting, or trolling.
If you are wondering, here are the 8 posts where he doesn't do any of that.
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What would you guys think of a chess game where something like the starting layout for both sides is randomized?
It could be fun, but the way you described that hypothetical mechanic is too vague. You should be more specific.
If it is something like "you roll the hundred sided dice during your turn, and if its a 1 or 2, you then roll on the chess piece chart to see the piece you lose". Then I would guess the chance is too low for it to be fun.
If it is something like you roll the 2% chance for every piece on your turn (except the king, since you can't capture it), then the mechanic would be more interesting. Although rolling the Di(c)e that much would take some time.
Note that the chance of losing all your chess pieces at once to that mechanic would be 0.0000000000000000000000032768% (0.02 to the power of 15). So it is possible, but significantly unlikely.
Whether a game is about chance or skill is not something that is a binary option, it is a scale. It wouldn't be a game of pure chance, skill would still play a heavy roll.
What is the definition of fair you are using?
Chess is a game of perfect information. To introduce a mechanic that purposefully obfuscates that is to ruin what makes chess chess. Also it doesn't require you lose all of your pieces for your strategy to fall apart, all it takes is 1 (and if you know how to play chess, your strategy hinges on having 2 or more pieces sectioning out the board so you can take enemy pieces and trap the king). If you lose any of those crucial pieces at the wrong time guess what you lose a significant amount of board control through no fault of your own and there isn't jack shit you could've done about it.
good thing you'll never have an identical battle scenario happen 500 times in a row then.
low probability isn't important. what's important is that fresh soldier walking out of spawn will shoot a crocket at you despite having literally done nothing beforehand.
I've not played TF2 in at least 4 years, so I don't know if things have changed, but I never found critical hits to be too much of an issue back then, that's all. It also allows interesting weapons like the Kritskrieg, or whatever it's called.
Basically, a game has perfect information if any player can see all events that have occurred.
So a game like chess but with a fog of war (like in some RTS/TBS computer games) would not have perfect information, as some past events would be hidden.
Randomness does not necessarily mean a game will hide past events. So a game with randomness can still have perfect information.*
Why do you think would that ruin chess?
Why are you applying the strategy for normal chess to something that you think is rather different?
Also, what do you think of this:
*By some definitions. Note that some mathematicians do consider games with randomness to not qualify as having perfect information.
If you want a person to avoid talking to you, then you should not talk about them.
We aren't talking about the Kritzkrieg, or any item that gives you critical hits for doing something (though some of those need changing). We are entirely talking about Random Critical Hits, where, without any indication, the enemy fires one, and you die, without being able to do anything.
Why are you so sure that I would just contradict you?
Look at the times someone actually tried to post evidence. I explained how they were wrong.
facepunch, please take note.
When you stop responding to asic, and don't answer his endless questions like i have here, he becomes desperate for attention, and obsessed with his detractors like a textbook paranoia case.
To illustrate this, he had quoted me several times from past posts which have already been replied to either by myself or other users, in an attempt to continue this dumpster fire of a thread, because he does not want it to end, despite his reputation and credibility bottoming out further with ever post.
Obsessed with me, even to the point of digging through, counting, and providing a link to my post history.
Who DOES that?
This wanton desperation is made real by the fact that not only did i do the one thing he can't stand (not engaging his endless, circular, and flawed rhetoric), but also the fact that of of those posts he's listed, they've been overwhelmingly better-recieved than any of his, so he feels the need to attack them,and bring me down to his level, as it were.he
The reason I've been so critical of ASIC is, in addition to his irrational quest for attention and validation needing to end for the good of facepunch and random crit debates in general, a vast majority of his posts are quite simply offensive to logic ( "why should the better team win?" "Can you prove why i said that", etc.), which at this point reflects poorly on the tf2 community itself.
I've spent years being a member of this community, as both an administrator and a player, and helping it grow with events and designing content for it. And to see shitshows like this flame on unchecked, quite frankly upsets me on a fundamental level.
You know what the difference is between my posts and yours are, asic? They are not accusations of some fallacy ridden claim; they are literal observations of your lack of argumentation skill and knowledge of balance.
Which, by themselves are not bad, as if you're willing to drop the validation quest, i would be happy to help you learn some better rhetoric tools and principles of game design theory.
Even after all this, I'll still gladly work with you on that and extend the olive branch.
At any rate, i don't think there's much else to say, even in this thread anymore after this really long post. I simply felt the need to inform the rest of you in light of this attempt to paint me as some reverse-asic.
I am going to, and i wish you all would too-
==========STOP RESPONDING TO ASIC============
Kaiga, how do we determine if someone is obsessed? Let's suppose that someone is obsessed if they apply extraordinary effort to trivial things.
You said it's obsessive to look through someone's post history. It only took me about 5 (maybe 10) minutes to look through your entire post history in this thread. This is not at all a great length to go to.
You have been insulting me and accusing me of things in this thread for over a month. You do not want to provide evidence for this. You do not want to take it elsewhere.
I have asked you to stop doing this on multiple occasions the first time was over a month ago. You have not stopped.
Random crits don't need to be enabled for the Kritzkrieg to work.
"A fair game is basically defined as one that is not biased towards any player. Another way to put it is that a fair game is one where both players have an equal chance to win, when they are playing under the perfect strategy. This definition is functionally the same as the first, but it is usually a bit clearer." - ASIC
Man, it's almost as if ASIC disproved himself a while ago.
ASIC, the way you did that is by saying that a fair game isn't one that's biased towards any one player.
The second someone gets a random crit, it's biased towards the player who was granted it by random chance.
Just because both teams have equal chance to get a random instant kill doesn't mean it's fair, no matter how much you feel like it is. It is not. That is fact.
I want you to think about what you are saying.
Is a game unfair because it can become biased towards one player over the other player, after the game has started?
If the advantage manifests through no volition of the players, then yes.
Why is that unfair? What do you define fairness as?
Actors that behave outside of the scope of common knowledge with no reasonable or direct forms of communication or indication to any players until it is too late.
In a game of perfect information (ie Chess) this would be some outside factor that neither player can anticipate such as a diceroll.
In a game of imperfect information, this varies depending on what bredth of information is at an individual's disposal and whether it's possible for them to spec things out and anticipate them. In a game like an RTS, this would be done in the form of scouting.
In a game with imperfect-but-shared information, players are left to make wagers based on the information they have in front of them about the rest of the playspace. In Poker this is to take account of your hand's contents, your previous hand's contents, previously played cards in the discard pile, and making mathematical projections about what hands your opponents have based on the actions they are taking (drawing cards, betting, any tells they may have). While this is possible to train yourself to take the best mathematical opportunities, the game itself is unfair since even someone with the best-developed strategy is depending entirely on getting the right card draws if they aren't able to use their betting strategy to get people to fall for your bluffs.
In a game with no information, player actions and results are dictated by a singular diceroll or card draw and there isn't anything they can do about it to anticipate. This is your CandyLand, rock paper scissors, coin flips, and this is where random crits are.
azic is the prime audience of valve's intent with rcrits years ago.
This wasn't exactly what I was asking about. You already told me you think randomness is unfair because it is separate from player choice.
Anyways, what is your definition of fair? Something like a game or situation that is only influenced by player choice and starting position? A game where everything can be anticipated?
(Random crits can be anticipated due to the chance changing involved.)
Ok. What you mean by this?
"A fair game is basically defined as one that is not biased towards any player."
That is what I define it as.
Doesn't matter if the advantage is given before or after the match starts, with random crits it's inherently random, and you can't predict it.
Therefore, unfair.
Is unfair map balance also an issue? Yes, but that's not the discussion we're having.
Random crits are as they describe in the title, RANDOM. Random x3 damage is UNFAIR. I don't know how this is such a hard concept to grasp for you.
You said randomness is unfair because you can't predict it. So let us talk about other things you can't predict. If you don't know what move your opponent is going to make, does that make the game unfair? Why does being unable to predict something make a game biased?
Another question for you:
If someone can gain an advantage (due to skill) after the game starts, is that game fair?
I did not bring up map balance.
ASIC brought up dota a lot and I think one thing to note how the randomness of dota works, not just how its PRNG but in another way.
Crits and bashes in dota 2 are tied to 2 things: Either a skill, or an item. Everyone can buy the item, but only certain heroes have the skill. There is an initial cost invested for each of these things. Either in gold, as in the case of Deadalus which anyone can by (but is not good on everyone) or by picking a hero who's balanced around having the crit which might have an associated downside to it and requires levels to obtain them, which you sacrifice skill points you could've used on other skills. Or in less direct terms, you pick Phantom Assassin and you have little killing power in the laning phase because you need to hit level 6 before you can get crits and start having power, but the crit scales really, really well.
Overall here there's a pattern: the randomness and power of crits is balanced by 2 factors: Pseudo-RNG, which makes them more consistent and less unpredictable, and more importantly, it necessitates investment to get these things in the first place. No character can just randomly do a shitton of damage for no reason. They got that large burst of damage because they did something to earn it through their actual gameplay and have it as a direct consequence of that. You know your opponent can crit and you know when they can't crit, there's actual factors you can account for and have SOME control over how to approach the situation.
Contrast with TF2, where you're having a normal fight and then suddenly a gibusvision soldier shoots a crocket from 20 miles away that you didn't notice and you eat shit in a way that couldn't even realistically be accounted for.
I don't think the ambassador needed to get nerfed.
Solved games can be interesting to play, and watch. Tic-tac-toe, Connect 4, Checkers, and so on are games that have been solved but are still played.
TF2 isn't exactly a solved game.
Chess isn't a solved game, but Interestingly there are versions of it with randomness like Fischer Random chess (which was developed by a former world champion)
.
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