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How Critical Shots Work

by madlep on November 18th 2007

redcomet has posted some excellent experimentation and analysis into how critical hits work in Team Fortress 2 over at the steam forums. Finally we’re getting some light on this touchy subject. I’m still not a big crit fan, and I think I side with the camp that says they are too random and unbalance the game (except when I’m playing soldier. Then they rock).

This work definitely adds evidence to show that critical shots do in fact become more common the better you are doing.

Heres an excerpt:

Phase 4

Me shooting the bot mob 80 times consecutively. Picking up extra ammo as I go.

First Set
39 / 40 crits

Second Set
40 / 40 crits

Yes thats right, 100% crit rate after the first couple deaths. I could have kept going forever and consistently gotten crits. It seems that after you kill 2 or 3 players in a row, and very close to each other time-wise, you get a crit ‘booster’ which increases you crit chance by a certain amount for a few seconds. I did some more testing, killing two bots right away and firing at a wall and I was able to get 8 crits off, including reload time.

5 Comments »

madlep on November 18th 2007 in how to, team fortress 2

Stumble it!

5 Responses to “How Critical Shots Work”

fgbfx responded on 27 Jan 2008 at 1:30 pm #

Whoa, bots? how the hell did you get bots? also, great info…

no for serious, how the hell did you get bots?
madlep responded on 27 Jan 2008 at 2:02 pm #

AFAIK, they aren’t bots in the normal sense. They don’t have AI, and they don’t play the game and shoot back.

I think you can just spawn then, and then they stand there doing nothing (but you can shoot and kill them though).
Scott responded on 15 May 2008 at 3:45 am #

I know this is an old post, but just a point for clarity: These results are from redcomet’s custom server where the crit chance was set to 50% for the purposes of this test. This isn’t apparent from this shortened post, but it’s important in case anyone reads this and thinks that the 100% crit rate would happen in a normal game. Double kills definitely increase your crit rate, but it seems to just double the percentage chance.
THE MEDIC responded on 16 Nov 2008 at 12:09 pm #

DUMMKOPFS
SAC responded on 05 Dec 2008 at 5:11 pm #

@#4: What?

I love critz! Usually, when bombarding an enemy stronghold (where it’s hard for them to move around, say, in a room), as Demoman or Soldier, you can score a couple kills once the engine decides to give you one. Then with that, you can score even more!