Team Fortress 2 "Crits" Explained

Feb 13, 2008
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Team Fortress 2 "Crits" Explained


Over on the Team Fortress 2 blog [http://www.teamfortress.com/], Greg Cherlin explains how the new critical hit system makes your enemies cry some more.

The new patch, available on Tuesday, adds a lot of new user-requested features to the game including a new damage system for critical hits.

Statistician's Warning: Some of the numbers get complicated, so there's a brief outline at the end.

The critical system starts off by giving weapons a small chance to cause criticals: 15% for melee, 2% otherwise; then you add on a bonus compared to how much damage you've already done in the last 20 seconds, up to a 10% bonus. Which is what makes the Backburner [http://tf2wiki.net/wiki/Backburner] so toasty.

A few modifiers then come in. Rapid fire weapons like Natascha [http://www.steamgames.com/tf2/heavy/natascha.htm] trigger once per second instead of once per shot like normal weapons. Specialized weapons like the Spy's backstab or the Sniper rifle only get criticals on specific areas, and don't roll their chance at all.

The patch itself was designed to lower the amount of criticals, but make them more skill based. What happens now is that the base chance is dropped to 2% from 5% (If you're questioning this, so am I?), but the bonus builds faster(800 damage is max rather than 1600), albeit to a lower level.(10% bonus rather than 15%)

So, assuming I'm a Pyro under the old system, I'd have to burn through three or more enemies (550 damage) to double my chance of shotgun criticals. And the defending soldier is launching 5%(?) critical rockets all the time.

In the new system, I only have to incinerate a single Demoman (175 damage), switch to my shotgun and double chance criticals are coming my way. With the defending soldier only having a 2% chance to "crit" me.

Whilst this won't stop the "'nade spam" [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=nade+spam], it makes those who can stay alive longer far more dangerous in a firefight.

Good news for the poor Medic hiding behind the Heavy. "Ha ha! Oktoberfest!"

Source: Blues News [http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/board.pl?action=viewstory&threadid=95433]

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Baneat

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Jul 18, 2008
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Considering a soldier's high output of damage, I'm not looking forward to more crit rockets.
 

man-man

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Jan 21, 2008
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The changes are explained somewhat better on the official TF2 blog itself (http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=2221)

Crit chances are actually now lower across the board, but they've become more dependent on recent damage (as opposed to the base-line chance) The graph illustrates it best I think - your crit-chance under the new system is lower for all values of recent damage, improves more steeply from the lowered base-rate, but plateaus earlier.
 

man-man

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Jan 21, 2008
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The_root_of_all_evil said:
man-man said:
The changes are explained somewhat better on the official TF2 blog itself (http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=2221)
You mean the very first link in the post? /sigh
Well, if we're being pedantic, the first link in the post goes to the news article, and the second goes to the main page of the TF2 blog, which happens to currently be the post in question, but won't always be.

There is also the fact that the link in the post itself was just a part of the text, easily read over the top of, without calling attention to the fact that it had a better explanation than the one offered by the post. The real main point of me linking there was to save lazy people the effort of scrolling back up to the post to find a link they may not even know was there.

It's not as if webpage space is at a premium, a little redundancy can be a useful thing.
 

mrjinx

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Dec 31, 2008
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Sounds good. I guess I understand that in Public games criticals are often necessary for one team to win. (Goldrush?...)With crits off sometimes it's hard to get any kill streaks because of the nature of the game. I'm happier with the crits having the purpose of creating kills streaks rather than a free kill every now and then.

I still prefer crits be totally off though.
 
Feb 13, 2008
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mrjinx said:
I still prefer crits be totally off though.
Up against 4 Engineers on Goldrush, you really need them though.

What it does mean though is that rushes are far more valuable; your Medic/Heavy combo gets back to being more valuable than the boring Invul Medic/Demo 'nade spam.
 

xXGeckoXx

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Jan 29, 2009
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What i see in breif is a reward for killing or doing damage. I dont like at all.

One of the things i praise TF2 for is that it is an unselfish game where you dont actually care whether you die if it's for the slightest benefit to your team. It give's you the option to act as a target while an intelligence holder makes a dash for it. But if you rack up a ton of damage you wont want to die which increases the chance of glory killing which is very annoying. I had a CoD playing friend who continuously went soldier because you can kill most enemies KO with a good shot and do splash damage which makes it the perfect class for taking out 2 enemies on your own to no benefit for the team. I thing that soldiers are most useful in capture the base matches. I like the way that there is little punishment for failure except for the fact that your team has to wait 20 seconds or so for back up (but its nice to know some of your team mates are dead and you might be getting pwned now but in 15 seconds the heavy on your team will respawn and the enemies will be flattned under a row of bullets.) In this system it seems like dieing will become a dangerous combo-breaker to be avoided as to preserve your chance of getting crits (maybe pyro's would be an exception).
 
Feb 13, 2008
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Pyro's have always been an exception. :)

But, given that the boost only lasts over a short time, it gives those rushing a better chance of getting through, given the defence can't pump it out so much.

Now, as the Scout upgrade is coming soon as well, there may be something in here.
 

Dogstile

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xXGeckoXx said:
I had a CoD playing friend who continuously went soldier because you can kill most enemies KO with a good shot and do splash damage which makes it the perfect class for taking out 2 enemies on your own to no benefit for the team.
yeah, no benefit apart from giving your team-mates 15 seconds without that particular enemy pounding on them
 

TsunamiWombat

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dogstile said:
xXGeckoXx said:
I had a CoD playing friend who continuously went soldier because you can kill most enemies KO with a good shot and do splash damage which makes it the perfect class for taking out 2 enemies on your own to no benefit for the team.
yeah, no benefit apart from giving your team-mates 15 seconds without that particular enemy pounding on them
Infact I think thats kind of the ...point of the soldier class?
 
Feb 13, 2008
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TsunamiWombat said:
dogstile said:
yeah, no benefit apart from giving your team-mates 15 seconds without that particular enemy pounding on them
Infact I think thats kind of the ...point of the soldier class?
Some might say it's for clearing out lazy engineers or Invuln defence. Until, enter "Sandman" anyway.