I came across this article on Catacombs, it’s a great article that touches base on critical shots. This is the quote:


Interviewer:
Did you design critical hits to provide a degree of access to people who don’t traditionally play shooters?

Valve:
A lot of people assume that they’re there to help new players. Some of it’s pacing. We looked at Counter-Strike, where you happen to get lucky at times and get five consecutive headshots. And then you talk about it for another three weeks.

Interviewer:
Is that luck or skill?

Valve:
It’s skill affecting luck. You can’t control the Gaussian distribution of fire when you pull the trigger, but skill is involved in centering that Gaussian distribution on an opponent’s head. The idea that there shouldn’t be any luck in an FPS is silly.

We created Team Fortress 2’s critical-hit system so that critical-hit chances increase over time based on performance. There’s the skill. If you’re a good player, you’ll always have a higher chance of hitting criticals than novices. On top of that, there’s the flat-out fact that crit chance is determined when you fire, right? You can miss crits.

Adding randomness increases the range of possible tactical skill options. Sometimes, the crazy thing works. If a game is 100 percent deterministic, then only one tactic works. The more randomness you add, the wider the range of options becomes. When your game is 100 percent random, every option is equally viable, right, which we don’t want either. So the critical-hit system was us saying we want to specifically tune this stuff, whereas it’s just fallen into place in the past.

Interviewer:
One side effect I see is similar to gambler’s logic. I call them old nerds’ tales. For example, someone insists the likelihood of hitting criticals increases when he’s out-numbered. Or that broken Demoman bottles do more damage.

Valve:
Yeah, people are generally terrible at establishing cause and effect where chance is involved. I’ve seen someone say, “I shot three crits after tauning. Tauning must cause crits.”

I for one love crits... but then i do usually play a quake 3 style solly and im a WoW head Rogue... so who can blame me