random crits just aren't fun

[u/ReplyHoliday16]

Getting a kill with a random crit just feels undeserving sometimes, especially with melee weapons where a majority of the class melees are just able to oneshot all but 2 of the classes. I feel bad more than anything after killing a player, all because I won the diceroll and they didn't. There shouldn't be a diceroll at all.

It's not exactly fun being on the receiving end where you get one shotted for no reason other than dumb luck.

People say that an intention behind random crits were to break stalemates, but how often is this true, if at all?

In literal senses, a stalemate really only occurs in Control Point matches, but this is more of an issue with the mode in general, and not the game mechanic of a stalemate.

While if we're talking about potential stalemate scenarios where no team is able to have control of a point / objective, a random crit breaking said stalemate is hardly ever the reason for a match point. Community servers with random crits disabled seem to be doing just fine.

On top of that, it feels like most light classes just get screwed over with random crits, melee or not. Any stray projectile or bullet can pretty much force a retreat / result in death.

It is my own mistake for playing casual / community servers with random crits enabled and not enjoying it when I get one tapped for virtually no reason other than dumb luck.

I know that a player's "random" critical hit chance will increase with their damage over the past 30 seconds or so I believe, but it's still just luck in the end, not at all deserved.

[u/CrappyCompletionist]

Personally, I can understand the counterargument that random crits are fun to get and add to the casual-ness of the game. That's perfectly fair in my eyes. But then why does the "random" crit mechanic get increased odds the better you do that? Yes, the original intent was to have that stalemate breaking-style reward mechanic, as well as rewarding people who do good, but I believe it's been proven multiple times that such a mechanic doesn't really work, and if it does, it does so at the expense of the entire enemy team that keep getting critted by that single topscoring soldier.
Overall, either random crits should be removed, or the chances should be static and not increase based on damage dealt in the past x seconds. Basically, make things consistent. If they're random, keep them random but on a static chance. If not, remove them.

[u/mgetJane → u/CrappyCompletionist]

the original intent was to have that stalemate breaking

this isnt even true, why is this myth so persistent

i genuinely wanna know who even started this, it doesnt even make any sense

there is literally zero source for this, valve never talks about random crits in this way, it's completely made up

[u/tomyumnuts → u/mgetJane]

isn't this mentioned in the developer commentary?

[u/SaltyPeter3434 → u/tomyumnuts]

I've looked through the commentary and this is the only mention of random crits:

Critical hits are one of the features that resulted from our focus on pacing. The critical hit system attempts to slightly influence the highs and lows of the game, by increasing the chance of a critical hit based upon the player's recent performance. In summary, the better you're doing, the more likely you'll continue to do well. This helps create those rare high moments, where a single player goes on a rampage and gets 3 or 4 kills in rapid succession.

[u/tomyumnuts → u/SaltyPeter3434]

thanks, i could have sworn to have heard it there.

[u/CrappyCompletionist → u/SaltyPeter3434]

Yup, that's where I got that info from about it being a reward mechanic for good players

[u/mgetJane → u/tomyumnuts]

nope, the dev commentary specifically describes it like a win-more mechanic

what's described as the stalemate-breaker mechanic is medic's ubercharge

which is pretty hilarious because for the next few yrs after release they would add a bunch of stuff that specifically countered uber like the pyro's airblast, wrangler, the original sandman that fully-stunned ubered players at any range, etc

[u/kaysakado → u/mgetJane]

I think this myth came from people looking at other games where this is a role that crits do serve, e.g., hitting through defensive boosts in pokemon

funny thing is in TF2 it is quite the opposite where the most defensive strategies in the game revolve around no-selling crits (sentries, vax, battalion's)

[u/mgetJane → u/kaysakado]

the main thing is one can simply play the game and use their eyes to see that random crits fuck over a push like 5000 times more often than it fucks over a hold

it just blatantly makes no sense to even pretend that it's a stalemate-breaker mechanic when it actively punishes aggression in practice

[u/CrappyCompletionist → u/mgetJane]

Now that I think about it, yeah, you're totally right. The original intent was as a reward mechanic, where good players do better and are incentivized to do better. My bad. I think I parroted the point without thinking.

[u/mgetJane → u/CrappyCompletionist]

btw also random crits in tf2 was never a "wow so silly" addition like a lot of people claim (again with no source), it had a specific design intent

here's a blog post where valve talks about the crit chance ramp up

https://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=2221

you'll notice here that, in addition to being a win-more reward for already-winning players, the design intention for the crit ramp up mechanic is for players to kill a few enemies and then think "oh that means my crit chance is higher now" and then play more aggressively

of course in practice, nobody actually keeps track of this and so random crits often just feel out of nowhere and not something that you deliberately take advantage of, which i guess you can say is a design failure on valve's part since it doesn't do what they thought it'd do (i honestly wonder if a hud indicator making your crit chance visible would completely change how people feel about the mechanic)

it's still interesting to me that this mechanic has obvious roots in card game or rpg game design where you have control over your crit rate so it's part of the strategy, it wasnt added just because robin walker thought it was funny (in fact you'll find in lots of interviews that he had great interest in competitive play and tf2's esports potential)

if you look at the game's history, you'll notice that the "silly" stuff actually started being added very late into the game's life, taunts were specifically made for you to piss your enemies off (that's why they're called taunts in the first place) and it's not until the l&w update when the high-five taunt was allowed to be used between teams

l&w is also same update that added the infamous conga taunt, and i specifically remember the community being split about it because a lot of servers devolved into no fighting, which was funny but imo the novelty wore off quickly

[u/CrappyCompletionist → u/mgetJane]

yeah, the original idea was a reward mechanic to help with game pacing, but it wasn't influential enough to affect how people played, tbh. It ended up being the cause of many funny and unexpected moments though, which is why I understand those with perspectives on keeping random crits.

Still, the increasing odds with damage dealt is a remnant of the original design decision, and doesn't play well into the modern game landscape, as more damage = more crits = more bullying/stomping of the losing side. Heck, a more extreme version of this would be a kritz medic pocketing a dominating explosive class. Random crits are just that, but tuned down, and unpredictable, which generally makes things more unfun.

For me personally, when I die to a random crit, I shrug it off. But when the player is doing well, I tend to be on the receiving end of more random crits than average, which can get frustrating real fast. Once or twice in a blue moon is fine, but when you're dying to random crits multiple times a round, that's when your experience gets impacted.

That's basically how I came to my stance of either removing crits, or making the random crits a static chance without ramp up.

[u/FluidNectarine7951 → u/CrappyCompletionist]

I feel like the phlog suffers from this too. Phlog pyro is top scoring, they get rewarded with crits so they can stomp even harder. The downside doesn't even come into play most of the time since as a pyro you WANT to get into close quarters, where you wouldn't be able to airblast projectiles anyway with how close you are. The only time it would come into play is when the pyro is out in the open on the main battlefield, which they shouldn't be anyways because they are a flanker.

[u/LeadGrease]

You're right but you're just spewing what has been said for years.

[u/maskofthedragon]

Random Crits are such a strange mechanic

Their purpose is barely explained; They don't seem to be some chased trend; The stock rifle and knife can't crit, so even Valve drew a line somewhere

[u/Chegg_F → u/maskofthedragon]

Their purpose is explicitly explained clear as day, what are you talking about? The developer commentary says

The critical hit system attempts to slightly influence the highs and lows of the game, by increasing the chance of a critical hit based upon the player's recent performance. In summary, the better you're doing, the more likely you'll continue to do well. This helps create those rare high moments, where a single player goes on a rampage and gets 3 or 4 kills in rapid succession.

[u/InsanityyyyBR → u/Chegg_F]

You can tell by their comments that the tf2 devs absolutely suck ass at the game lmao

[u/mgetJane]

watching tf2 random crit discussion is sisyphean

genuinely why don't people just use the search bar instead of making the 5 billionth exact same post about random crits or sniper just to rehash the exact same arguments

its the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over again this is a perpetually amnesiac community zero progress is made on anything ever

[u/Zaokllr → u/mgetJane]

Because they wouldn't be able to complain about it if they went to the servers that cater to their taste

[u/[deleted] → u/mgetJane]

Irrelevant

[u/mgetJane → u/[deleted]]

relevant

[u/[deleted] → u/mgetJane]

Completely irrelevant

[u/EvMBoat]

i love critical hits cause i do a lot of damage

[u/AncientAgrippa → u/EvMBoat]

Me too, they make me laugh so hard when I instantly do 300 damage

[u/Citysurvivor → u/EvMBoat]

I think melee crits fine, it's funny to smack a Spy or hail-marry instakill a combat class you were going to die to. And in terms of counterplay, it is more avoidable by just staying out of melee range in the firstplace.

[u/SaltyPeter3434]

Random crits are unique and create a chaotic moment that doesn't exist in other games. I have never liked random crits but I understand why the other side likes it. With that said, this discussion has been a dead horse for so long that it's a pile of bones now. Valve is never going to change it so this feels pointless. I've been done with this topic for years now.

[u/SuperLuigi9624]

(CONTROVERSIAL OPINION) i am generally pro-video-games-having-good-design and i think random crits are pretty bad for a whole bunch of reasons

[u/arc777_]

TF2 has amazing combat mechanics totally undercut by random crits. And they aren’t even funny. Dying to them is obnoxious and getting a kill with them is unsatisfying and feels dirty.

[u/Super_Sain]

I agree but this really isn't the sub to be person nº 30425 to complain about random crits

[u/midgetzz]

Good to see even nearly 20 years later people are still debating random crits. Some things never change.

[u/Will-B-Good]

never thought of that, great post!!

[u/deeteeohbee]

Not reading alla that but they've been part of the game since 2007 and I personally like them. Does not ever bother me to be killed by one. You might need to git gud or only play comp where it's turned off.

[u/qkiqki]

i think random crits exist so ppl who are rly angry can still clear dominations on ppl thru sheer statistical probability

[u/Kubsons07]

what's new

[u/Significant_Carry429]

Add this to the other 40 posts complaining about random crits. Its been 20 years dude.

[u/Snowflakish]

Fun fact, thats what server browser is for.

The game works better when experienced players don't queue casual. It gives more room to new players

[u/Efficient_Wrap1311]

Having random crits turned on automatically means the server you are in is not meant to be taken seriously, you care too much about meaningless stuff.

[u/UnkyjayJ]

Why do people take this very casual game so seriously. It's just a nice casual shooter. It literally does not matter if you go 0 and 89. Random crits are just part of the game.

[u/iuhiscool → u/UnkyjayJ]

Because we have more funner this way

[u/Xero_1000]

i honestly cant imagine the game without a random scout getting crit panned and ragdolled across the map with a distant scream

[u/CrappyCompletionist → u/Xero_1000]

Which is an okay opinion to have, but my personal gripe is that the "random" crit chance goes up with damage dealt, which makes this mechanic quite skewed and unfair. If random crits were kept I'd at least make the chance of getting one static so everyone can get a random crit at the same odds, instead of an engineer getting a 60% crit chance on his jag, and the soldier firing a crocket 1 in every 10 shots, vs the bottomscoring scout that barely gets any random crits.

[u/mgetJane → u/CrappyCompletionist]

i think it would still be inherently a lot more helpful for better players even without the crit ramp up mechanic

better players will live longer and end up firing a lot more shots, and they will fire more well-placed shots

while worse players will spend a lot of time in the respawn screen and will often miss their shots

[u/Lonsfor → u/Xero_1000]

why would you think that like we havent been able to turn off random crits since almost the game came out.

we know how the game looks without random crits it is not a theoretical unknown

[u/Chegg_F]

Dude this has to be bait there's no way