• TF2 Random Critical Hits: A Fair and Balanced Discussion
    669 replies, posted
Players on massive killstreaks have far less to fear than they otherwise would, because they're much more likely to oneshot any competition. You argued that random crits make stomping tactics less effective. But they objectively make stomping tactics more effective. The amount that the stomping player benefits from crits is far greater than the amount that the stomping player is at risk because of random crits. There's always a risk of the stomping player dying, with or without random crits. The difference is that the risk is much lower when the stomping player can kill enemies that much faster due to random crits. By saying that losing crits is a huge nerf to melee damage, you've shown that you fundamentally don't understand what effect crits have on melee balance. Look at classes like scout, heavy, and pyro. They would be completely unaffected by melee crits disappearing, because there's no case where you would prefer to use melee over their other options, even knowing they have crits. The scattergun is always going to be a better option than hitting somebody with a bat, even if you had no crits on your scattergun and fullcrits on your melee. Flamethrower and minigun also do such preposterous amounts of damage at close range that melee is only going to be used for utility, and not for damage output. Soldier sometimes can make use of melee crits, but only when out of RL clip and without a shotgun, because otherwise he has far better close range options. The ONLY time melee crits are going to be relevant is if the class in question lacks other effective close range options, like with demo, sniper, and medic. And we see the same effect with close-range classes becoming more effective at long range due to random crits, because they lack damage falloff. By removing random crits, you're not just 'nerfing melee', you're nerfing every class's ability to fight outside their normally effective range. Which is good. Classes need weaknesses. Demo should not be able to kill people easily at point blank, because vulnerability at point blank is really his main weakness. Heavy should never be able to kill people from across the map, because positioning yourself into mid to close range positions is a critical part of the class. Your suggestions show you really don't understand any of these balance concerns, because you want to keep melee crits as they are but nerf ranged crits by re-adding damage falloff to crits. This nerfs close ranges classes like heavy and pyro, who are new less effective at long range but don't benefit from melee crits, while buffing classes like demo and sniper, who are still powerful outside of their effective ranges because of melee crits but are relatively unaffected by crits having falloff because they have strong ranged options either way. Unlocks were added after random crits, but they were never actually designed with random crits in mind, as you can see with unavoidable shit like giant spammable loose cannon grenades that oneshot when they crit. My point was that most of the damage in this game is burst damage, and burst damage is incredibly unfair to fight when facing random crits (at least with minigun or flamethrower crits you theoretically have some amount of time to react, even though in practice you rarely have enough time to actually be able to play around them). Loch n load, direct hit, dragon's fury, loose cannon, crusader's crossbow, Force a Nature, Soda Popper, and other weapons that are more burst-damage focused than their stock counterparts are all good examples of this, being completely unfair to fight against with random crits. But more than that, all rocket launchers, all shotguns, all grenade launchers, all sticky launchers, all scatterguns, all melee, all do massive unavoidable one-shot damage when they get crits. It's not some small issue with a few cherry-picked weapons, it's fundamental to the entire design of the game. TF2 is first and foremost a game about burst damage. On the point of nocrit weapons, it's pretty obvious in almost every case that they weren't made as nocrit weapons because the weapons were too powerful and needed a nerf, they were made as nocrit weapons for consistency's sake. The eyelander and other swords aren't nocrit because swords are way too good and need a legitimate downside, they're nocrit because they're inherently tied to a forced crit mechanic, charging. Valve avoided giving them crits because they knew that players would be confused and annoyed when they got killed by random crits on an enemy that otherwise has predictable crits. Nobody would be sure if they had died because of random crits or because of forced crits. Notice that for almost every single weapon with forced crits, even underpowered/mediocre ones like persian persuader or the ambassador, they also don't do random crits. It's because that stat exists for consistency's sake, not because those weapons need to be gimped to make up for them being too powerful. Every weapon that has no random crits as a stat has a real downside that's they actually use to balance that weapon. You're not going to see all the engineers flock to the frontier justice because of no random crits, because the real reason to choose shotgun over FJ is the clip size. There's a few edge cases, like the guillotine that doesn't do random crits (that's only because it used to do forced crits, and they never removed the stat) and the caber (that's only because crits are specifically bullshit on the caber), but in both of those cases you'd be pretty hard pressed to argue that those mediocre weapons would be overpowered if there weren't any random crits. The ONLY case I can think of, of a weapon where no random crits is a stat that legitimately might affect your choice on whether to equip it, is the Southern Hospitality. So yes, I'll concede, without random crits, one already poorly-designed boring weapon becomes too good without random crits. A weapon that already needed a rework, now will need a rework more heavily. So get rid of random crits, but rework the Southern Hospitality. I don't think that's an insurmountable balance problem that prevents random crits from being removed. Crits don't force you to play smarter, they force you to play defensively because you can lose players at any time without any way to prevent it. If this hypothetical pub team is actually coordinated like you're implying then when you lose a player due to random bullshit, you then have to retreat until you have equal numbers again. That's the only real counter to having fewer players alive. That's a boring, stale game where one team waits defensively until some random bullshit crocket kills an enemy and then they push in with an advantage. Funny that you bring up overwatch, because that kind of stale campy bullshit is exactly how overwatch plays. Let's not fuck around the bush though, pubs aren't that coordinated, and the situation where your whole team is coordinated enough to capitalize on crits or retreat when they lose a player isn't even vaguely realistic. In reality, both teams run in, everybody fights in little skirmishes around the point until one team is dead, and then the winning team caps. And in that scenario, you don't get any new strategic depth from random crits, you only get the loss of depth in individual player interactions by fights ending before they've properly begun. If you're getting spawn locked, no, you won't be experimenting. That's my whole point. Random crits make getting spawn locked happen more frequently, so you get to do interesting things less frequently. I'm sorry to say this, but if you actually find random kills more fun and satisfying than earned kills, you're simply not the demographic that valve wants to direct this game towards anymore. Valve wants to expand the game to appeal to people who want to make full use of the depth of mechanical and tactical depth that the game has. They've been very clear about this, their main goal with their design decisions right now is to bridge the gap between casual and competitive and make it a tighter, more skill based game.
As much as I enjoy getting the occasional cheeky one hit, they're not a game feature I think needs to exist anymore, and I wouldn't shed any tears if they got taken out.
Crits as a mechanic should always be controlled and determined when it should be used by the player, like with the shields, Kritz, and any other item that 100% guarantees a critical hit based on a condition. To make it a random chance at any percentage removes that control from the player, and doesn't sit well with those who want a fair fight because it was by chance that they win or lose a fight instead of it being a match of skill.
Nobody is saying that critical hits as a mechanic are bad. They're not. And add diversity in power levels and challenge to the game, namely with the kritzkrieg, which is supposed to be as powerful as the stock medigun, but often isn't due to dying for no reason to random crits, while you're in the denying the effectiveness of earned ones. That's ass-backwards. Randomized ones are a dumb RTD funhouse kinda element that have no place whatsoever in the main game. In fact, there, that's the solution for random critical hits. Turn it into a merasmus spell. Nolan North: "And now mortals, fear the unpredictable terror of... RANDOM CRITICAL HITS!" * ghost fort bell tolls*
"Why do you believe it is good for the team with the greater skill to win?" holy fuck literally close this thread, we've reached unbelievable highs i can't even fathom this
If that is true then there are no legitimate anti-crit arguments except "I don't like them". What evidence are you talking about in regards to RNG being nonconformitive to a skill based game? That is the word of valve, but given completely out of context. Here is the actual blog post (from 2013): Team Fortress 2 The thing is that Kaiga left out some info: That blog post does not mention random crits or even randomness or crits at all. They were talking about weapon balance. There is nothing to indicate they had random crits in mind when making that post. So what exactly did jill say? Can you link to it? How does random crits relate to that stuff? Random crits are fair for the reason that a perfect coin flip is fair, and that almost every casino game isn't. The chance works the same for each player. Why are R-crits antithetical to the point of the game? Note that by "cold truth" Kaiga really means his personal opinion given with very little (or no) supporting evidence.
I dont know why you keeps saying that coin flips is same as random crits, because the ratio of getting heads to tails in a coin flip is always 1:1 while the chance of getting random crits to not getting random crits can vary from 2:98 up to 12:88 so they're not even remotely similar. And even if everyone has the same power to receive random crits, there are other factors that affects the chance towards individual players that'd handicap some players to get the maximum chance of random crits. So the chance doesnt work the same for each player, it just has the potential to work the same for each player which rarely happens due to imbalance in individual player skills. also could you stop making more questions or repeat whatever you said and actually make some counterarguments
Consider CS:GO. It is a game highly based on skill, even the spray has a preset pattern. It's got a big competitive scene too. Well, it still has randomness. There is obvious stuff like shooting while running. But even stuff like the ak-47 has inaccuracy when firing a single shot when crouched, it's not a lot but it's still there. Every weapon does increased damage on headshots as well. This means you can have the outcome of encounters decided by random chance. So someone can miss a perfectly aimed shot, and someone who had their aim off can get a kill. It also results in amusing stuff like: Someone headshots you from the other side of the map, but with a shotgun.
moving accuracy can be controlled and is an important skill. ak47 first shot never misses. nearly all weapons have fall-off just like tf2. shotguns will never do that unless the enemy has literally 2 hp left.
They aren't exactly the same. The level of probability of getting a specific thing matters less than if it is even or not. The chance of rolling an specific number on a (perfect) die is 1/6. Suppose a game where the players takes turns rolling the die for a certain number of rounds, and the one who gets more fives at the ends wins. This would be a fair game, as each one has the same chance of victory (yes, even though there is a chance of a tie). The definition of fair in most games assumes equal player skill, or that each person is using the optimal strategy. A 100 meter straight race is fair game, but putting a toddler against Ussain bolt in that race would be an unfair matchup. Tic-Tac-Toe is a fair game, as if both players use perfect strategy it will always end in a tie. However people often win at tic-tac-toe.
Alright students and fellow observers. Today we're going to do something a little different than the usual futile reply to a post like this. Let's break all this down barney style. Look at this post. Then look at his accusation at the bottom. Then look back at the post. Almost pure questions. Ones that have been answered countless times in the past and this very thread here pages ago. Even stating that the entire argument of the opponent is personal opinion, despite pages and threads worth of shared sentiments by other users, as well as years worth of discussion and commentary that can all be magically whisked away with that one line. But the "ASIC Questioning" style of argument here requires the user to simply pretend none of this exists for the sake of the argument. Truly fascinating. Claims of out-of-context mateiral, when the very subject is game balance and fairness of user interactions, as if he's pretending that isn't the case to bolster his attack: that random crits would come from somewhere other than the mentioned weapons, or have an influence on something other than the mentioned interactions. I think it's safe to say we've found ourselves a prime example of the "templar" archetype. The inevitable response post, quoting this and accusing me of doing the very same thing I'm accusing him of (psychological projection, a defense mechanism) will prove this. Just be patient, wait for the reply. It will 100% come in heated fashion, as users like these hav zero usable self control, and can be easily manipulated to respond in grand fashion, ignorant of all criticisms levied against them, as if they were some final champion of intelligence and wisdom, surrounded by enemies who all just so happens to disagree in the same way. Let's have a watch.
Whenever I kill someone with a random crit it feels like I'm robbed of a personal combat between me and an enemy.  They aren't fun to fight against nor giving them. I have won an innumerable amounts of duels due to farting a random crocket against the enemy. I know they are personal reasons more than an argument, but I feel people have told everything wrong about RC on this topic, and I just wanted to give my two cents on the topic. I hope they are slowly phased out of the game, so Casual players don't feel the abrupt ending so harshly. Or at least explain why they are doing it with a SFM Short.  
Yes, its an important skill. However it's controlled by stopping movement, or using the walk button (usually the Shift key). If you are still moving around at full speed it will still be innacurate. The thing is that most of the other stuff you said here is actually wrong. Ak-47 first shot is accurate, but it can miss. While it's not the main point, this video demonstrates that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0rlCJ047Ds The XM104 would require them to have lower health, as it can't do a 1shot kill via headshot. The nova on the other hand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVrHgCs6fQc These guys may also have had full health: nova 1tap GIF | Create, Discover and Share on Gfycat GlobalOffensive GIF | Create, Discover and Share on Gfycat
But does any of that relate to the main topic of random crits? So far, people have said a number of different topics: The same anti-crit arguments about them being an antithesis to a game striving to have a credible competitive enviroment, how random crits turn otherwise fair battles into a diceroll that neither party can prepare for while the pro-crit arguments state that the random crits provide a fun, chaotic experience that is befitting the combat in TF2. And yes, I have to agree: There's nothing like blasting away a group of people with a single shot. Some have even gone as far as said that they should not be removed because they've been there since launch, because of achievements being tied into them and how they'd break horribly if random crits cease to exist. But Valve has gone back on their original designs a whole number of times, achievements included. Had Valve held onto design choices because "they've been there", we'd still have a Sandman that can fully stun through Ubercharge, Natascha that stops people dead on their tracks the moment a single bullet hits them and a Backburner that gives you more health and can't airblast. But they still reworked these things because they brought forth some severe problems, especially the Sandman's stun ability which effectively negated an Ubercharge push with m2 (The launch version didn't have a mininum range for its stun to take effect, mind you) or just had drawbacks that overshadowed the benefits (not having airblast is a big penalty and launch version of Bonk slowed you once the effect ended) To say that things should stay because they've been that way is honestly a stupid thing to say. I could make a big list of weapons and other changes that have been made to address people's concerns and issues about things (Battalions used to have Soldier take damage to charge it!!) and we can debate whether or not those changes have been good or not but that is entirely irrelevant to the main topic. It could be that the perception of competitive TF2 is what people have put together from the 6s community: Nocrits, the traditional 6s team, 5cp only. And people don't like this idea because they either feel that TF2 by itself is a 'casual' game and doesn't even need a competitive mode or they just don't like the hypothetical scenario of that 6s business seeping into the part of TF2 they enjoy. Valve's got one hell of a job in store if they intend to find some kinda middleground between the Competitive and the Casual audience and this obviously puts random crits in everyone's crosshairs (the damn things have been a sore subject for 10 years now, after all) And it's also why Valve put up the poll asking about the opinions people have about random crits in-game: Whether or not anything comes out of that poll is a whole other story (I do hope that they publicize the results at the end, tho: it would be interesting to see how those results hold up to the other polls)
Fun is subjective, you can't have something that is objectively fun (or unfun). By the very definition of Objective, things such as "stuff people find fun" can not be objective. Consider as well that there are people who say they enjoy random crits.
Those Nova gifs are notable specifically because the sheer amount of RNG in them is insane. You could try for hours and not get those shots to land. Also, the only reason that even works at all is Nova pellets have zero damage falloff. Literally zero, they do the same damage out to 2048 (or 4096, I forget) units and then just promptly disappear. Skimming your points about CS in general seems to me that you really don't understand the game if you're trying to relate it to TF2 in any usable way. The fact that you think first shot AK RNG is relevant is actually kind of funny, or that shiftwalking is in any way effective for reducing inaccuracy unless you're literally touching the other players model.
I didn't bring up CS:GO because the game was similar to TF2. The guy I was initially responding to brought up League of legends, which is even more different from TF2. I brought it up as an example of RNG in a competitive skill based game. Why is the ak-47 point irrelevant? I said that shiftwalking can control the accuracy, I didn't say it was a good method for doing so.
Again you're missing the POINT of why RNG was added to CS. It increases the skill ceiling by punishing players with bad movement because their shots wont be accurate and they will lose a lot more duels than they would otherwise. It's the whole reason why movement as a part of your mechanical aim skill exists in CS. The way RNG is implemented in TF2 actually lowers the skill ceiling. It gives bad players a free win in duels that they would otherwise lose, punishing the good player for no good fault of their own other than not being lucky, whilst yes the better player has the same chance of getting the crits, it benefits them on the whole a lot less since they are going to be winning the duel without them most of the time anyway. It adds nothing to the game in the way of mechanical depth, just that sometimes someone becomes a fucking god of death for two seconds.
Would saying "Your argument is invalid because BANANA" be acceptable? Anyways, The issue is that you made a circular argument. You first said "RNG is not affected by skill". Then to address the  argument that crit chance increase is affect by skill, you also said "that argument is invalid because it is RNG". This is a circular argument because to counter arguments against the first statement, you referred back to the first statement. The very thing which was being disputed. Another example of circular reasoning is this: Someone says "The king is always telling the truth", and they say "any examples of the king lying are invalid because the king always tells the truth".
RNG influencing outcomes as drastically as TF2 does inherently is a game of chance. You fundamentally are incapable of turning a game of chance into a game of skill unless you raise that chance to 100%. Just because you can bump a 2% chance up to 10% chance through skillful play (ie dealing damage) doesn't deny the fact that it's still a game of chance. Go bugger off to a casino if you want a game of chance.
We're talking about TF2, stop comparing random crits to other things and make some points in the context of TF2. It's not a valid argument if you say "It works on other things so it must be fine in TF2" or repeat whatever your argument was but written in a slightly different way. The difference in probability isnt the problem, the constant change in probability leading to uneven probability between players is. You're only thinking about the random crits mechanic only and assuming that every single player has the 12% chance all the time but that's never the case because of how TF2 plays. Nobody will constantly be in fight because of things like respawn time, healing behind dispensers, moving towards objectives and players' general behavior so no one will be able to have the 12% crit chance all the time, leading to uneven random crit chance between players, even if their skill level is equal.
Some things to note about dota2: (The actual term is pseudo-random distribution, pseudo rng is really all RNG that a computer uses). Not all RNG in dota 2 actually uses PRD. IIRC damage spread, and spawns are still rng. There are also a few abilities that still use the non PRNG, such as Crystal Maiden's ult. PRD makes it less likely for streaks to happen due to how it changes the chance. Though crazy streaks happen nonetheless and can notably mess with the outcome of a fight (I had a video clip that came to mind, but I can't find it). Melee in TF2 having a higher crit chance than ranged makes sense to me. Melee is kind of bad otherwise. You can also have a good sense of when a melee has a high crit risk, due to that. Screwing with random crits is probably less work for them than removing them and changing more stuff. We don't know what they are planning to do with those poll results yet, but valve is lazy so you can at least expect them to take a while to do anything.
Why do you believe that random crits are not inherently flawed?
removing randomcrits literally requires the tf team to remove a single number trust me it isnt about effort
people always talk about how weapons with the "no random critical hits" downside would somehow become op if all random crits were removed, but they never give actual evidence or proof that shows this
As you know, some people believe that random crits are flawed as they are in the game now. However there is a considerable difference between that and believing that the idea of random crits is inherently flawed. To believe that the idea of random crits is inherently flawed, means that you believe all possible implementations of them are flawed. To prove this belief is true, would be (for most practical purposes) impossible. You would have to show that all possible implementations of random crits are flawed. To believe that the idea of random crits is not inherently flawed, means that you believe that there is (at least) 1 possible implementation of random crits that is not flawed. This belief is much easier prove true. You just have to show that there is one possible implementation of random crits that is not flawed. The second belief is a saner default belief. This is because, it requires you to make a much smaller assumption than the first belief. Another thing to note is this: If someone believes that Random crits are not inherently flawed, that does NOT also mean they believe the idea of random crits is inherently flawless. The two beliefs are not the same. The former belief means that there are possible implementations of random crits that are not flawed, even if some are flawed. The latter belief would mean that there it is NOT POSSIBLE for an implementation of random crits to be flawed. As a side note, what some people think of as a flaw would not be a flaw to others. It's subjective to some extent.
you know when you take the a philosophy 101 class you're supposed to go to the lecture after "We can't really know anything" and also go to the lecture where they say "Therefore, induction and abduction are usually more useful than deduction"
The aliens kidnapped Socrates?
He speaks like someone who is attempting to leverage intro-level philosophy, but didn't pay very much attention in the course. ASIC can be objectively disproven by making a logic table or two with all the if then statements, but thats entirely too much work for him to reply by questioning the nature of truth as an escape argument...
When you consider the possibility of an inherent flaw in random crits, you don't start thinking about the rather infinite and minute variations that could befall such a system. Like you said, that's a wasted effort. You do, however, simply narrow down your POV to the random crits that currently exist in TF2 and then you can start considering the alternatives and what they would do to both the random crits mechanic and the pace of the overall game. People have said that random crits turn fights into a diceroll and some people like it, some don't (it also gives melee weapons an advantage because of their bonus chance to crit) This may come across as a flawed idea when people start feeling like your mechanic is actively hampering their enjoyment of the game while the other party claims that there's nothing wrong with the mechanic and the naysayers are just salty (people also did this when the Gas Passer's explode on ignite effectively ruined MvM's difficulty, they all mysteriously shut up after the nerf) Now let's look at some alternatives: A change like this would make some weapons arguably better than others, if not only by the fact that they affect your chances for a critical hit. Trying to balance weapons around this would get nowhere (and crit damage already is only doubled, IIRC) So attempting to change the random crits with a change like this would not be the most suitable way to address people's complaints: this is a change that doesn't achieve anything beyond adding an additional mechanic to the game when it's not really necessary to begin with. Then there are people (Metaru in this thread) who've suggested dropping random crits from all but melee weapons and removing damage dealing affecting your chance to crit. This, in practice, is removing random crits alltogether but keeping them for melee weapons so that they still have their uses in those high-risk bottle offensives and also turning the random crit into an actual random crit (which theoretically will lead us to a case of someone swinging a lot of crits or none at all but I'm not too sure about the effects of that since it's a melee weapon in TF2) This is probably attempting to be some kinda compromise between the people who want random crits removed and the ones that don't want that to happen. But keeping them only on melee weapons is a rather poor compromise (the anti-crit people get their way and not a lot of classes really pull out their melee weapons in battle save for a select few) but I must admit that if random crits would be altered again, I could see this as an option rather than just flat-out removing them. Feel free to throw in your two cents about this: What kind of alternatives or adjustments to the current random crits mechanic could satisfy the people against them and the people speaking for them?
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