The TF2 blog was updated today with a look at the reason behind this past Monday's update.
As you may know, the way Crits work in Team Fortress 2 was tweaked slightly. The base chance to get a critical shot was lowered to 2%, a decrease from the old 5% chance. Valve explains why this, and other values, were changed in the last update.
As you may know, the way Crits work in Team Fortress 2 was tweaked slightly. The base chance to get a critical shot was lowered to 2%, a decrease from the old 5% chance. Valve explains why this, and other values, were changed in the last update.
In thinking about the change we wanted to make to critical hits, we decided that there was a point on the graph of particular interest to us, and that was the point at which your critical hit chance was as much a result of your performance as it was the base chance. If you look at at (A) on the old line, you'll see that point isn't reached until you've done 550 recent damage, a feat that occurs about as often as our backstab code works correctly. That point is reached at (B) on the new line, around the point where you've done 175 recent damage. This means that if you've just singlehandedly killed an enemy Demoman/Soldier/Pyro/Heavy, your next 20 seconds worth of crit chances are already more a result of that kill than the base chance. As a result, if you're a highly skilled player, you're going to fire significantly more critical hits than those around you. And remember, if you've just killed 2 or 3 enemies, now's the time to push!More of the behind-the-scenes thoughts on the critical changes can be found at the TF2 blog.