My Thoughts on Random Crits in TF2

[Music] so i think this is a topic that is long overdue for me but it's something that i figured i'd talk about now which is what is my stance on random crits in team fortress 2. now if you follow me on twitch you might have already heard me say before that i was actually very much for random crits in tf2 which make them as a surprise to some of you considering how many tf2 youtubers are adamantly against random crits but in recent times i've actually come to change my opinion on this i've pretty much gone from strongly insisting that random crits stay in tf2 to now no longer caring really whether they stay or are taken out entirely now i know this might not sound like a big deal to some of you but you have to understand how much of a strong supporter i was of random crits before it was going to take something pretty good to convince me otherwise and i believe now i have finally found that argument so throughout this video what i'd like to do is present my former arguments of why i used to support random crit so adamantly and then explain what changed my mind and hopefully this is convincing enough that some of you will consider changing your minds as well now obviously the random crits topic has been covered really well before by everyone's favorite engineer and so i wanted to make this clear before we get started i'm not going to copy dane's format here and make this some huge edited video where i basically just copy everything he did even if i do think it'd be pretty funny to have the demoman drunkenly voice over my points now now demo your line is what are random crits not i take painful redo the tape redo it but since they did such a great job of covering a variety of points when it came to arguing against random crits i'll be going off some of those points here and giving my opinions on them so starting with number one i actually do believe random crits are fun and do keep tf2 casual interesting for me and many others when we're playing a real action-packed game whether that be a shooter game or whether it be a fighting game like say the ufc series we do enjoy there being a little bit of unpredictability sure there are those that like to play their action games like pokemon where you could slowly assess how much damage you've taken then how much damage the enemy has taken and then formulate your next move based off of that but for me personally when i play an action based game i like the idea of a bit of unpredictability because that makes the game that much more realistic to me and that much more high stakes see in fights for instance one good hit can knock you out it doesn't really matter how well you're doing before that and similarly in war one wrong move can cost you your life and in tf2 although admittedly being very cartoonish and unrealistic it's still a war simulation game at the end of the day so for me personally i've really enjoyed this unique addition to team fortress 2 which speaking of unique brings me to my next point random crits are a unique mechanic to team fortress 2. now while you could argue this is either a good or a bad thing regardless it reigns true team fortress 2 has basically been the grandfather of many other shooter games since the idea of different classes existing in a shooter game all having different roles was something that was really only seen in team fortress at its time it was one of the things that stuck out about this game so much and really made it great and from there many other games have copied this formula since such as overwatch valorent paladins or even road company but even with all these different games taking ideas from team fortress 2 one thing we still have that is original to this game is random crits and in my opinion it's something that perhaps still makes this game memorable and stand out with the test of time but does this standalone feature actually help people enjoy tf2 or does it actually end up making people grow to dislike it after all what about the negativity bias well i don't want to cover this too much right now because we're going to come back to this later but to put it short here's the argument the theory of negativity bias is basically this that negative effects tend to have a greater impact on people than neutral or positive effects even if the amount of these positive and negative effects were of the same number so many people would argue that random crits unfairly killing players in the game could affect someone's experience of tf2 so much that it caused them to quit the game but i would argue that looking at how tf2 has grown over the years the negativity bias hasn't really affected tf2 that much at least not very effectively i mean after all if people hated random crits so much wouldn't we technically be seeing less and less players playing tf2 over time rather than this insane up train we've been getting for the past two years but again we're gonna come back to this so keep that argument in mind reason number four random crits often do break stalemates now as of the time of this recording i have over 6 000 hours in tf2 i've actually been playing this game on and off for about nine years now and believe it or not the majority of that time has been spent in casual tf2 so as you can imagine i've seen many many a casual lobby and from experience i can tell you i have seen random crits break some of the most dirty chokepoint hopeless holds i've even seen random crits just help a bad team get out of spawn when a much better team has pushed them back into their gates and while of course i completely agree that any good coordinated team should be able to break through a stalemate without the assistance of random crits let's be real here casual tf2 is not always the place for reliable teamwork so if some random chance occurrences could finally help those teams blow past a stalemate i think that that sometimes would make for a much more fun experience at least for the losing team some would argue that this isn't great for the game however because it isn't really helping the worst team really learn how to play the game properly but are rather just benefiting from a random occurrence which brings me to do random crits just end up teaching bad habits well in my opinion no although an algorithm obviously does exist for giving effective players more of a chance to get random crits for everyone else random crits seem to appear just as that random in fact they happen so infrequently and so unexpectedly that it seems unlikely that most anyone would think that they could just mimic that kind of action over and over and have the same outcome i mean it could happen that some player thinks a very bad strategy would work for them over and over but ultimately after the first few times of being utterly brutalized for repeating that horrible strategy i think most players would learn from it and move on then again this is a public free to play game so i guess we can't exactly stop room temperature iq players from existing and lastly random crits are silly and fun i do agree with uncle dane here that random crits are not nearly what makes tf2 such a funny interesting game first and foremost the characters themselves that would bring a lot of humor into tf2 but then you also have the hats the rag dolls the class subsets etc but that doesn't mean that random crits certainly don't help with that from time to time i mean come on you're gonna tell me watching a heavy die to a critical fish isn't funny that a sniper turning around and getting raked to death isn't funny or hell even the occasional sticky just making the entire team go boom like listen i know it may not always be the funnest thing for the person on the receiving end but for everyone else the humor is there it does add another silly aspect to the game and has for a long time helped make tf2 what it is today but now with all those reasons being said what would have possibly made me change my mind see my motto at random crits for the last two years has basically been this why not just keep it in casual i mean you have games like super smash bros where you can allow items when you play casually and just because the competitive players may not prefer those items doesn't mean that they should be taken out of the game entirely but here's what really came to change my mind as many of you know a few months ago uncle dane created a few servers of his own he named uncle topia in each server not only are players allowed to experience some really unique balance changes to the game like only being able to select a certain amount of each character but also random crits were disabled and so i tried these servers out for myself and the thing that really caught my attention after a while was this i never really missed playing with random crits in those servers sure the lack of random crits messed up my holiday punch a few times but come on that weapon's not always reliable anyway but besides that the games just felt great not only did it feel like the same funny goofy game i've always loved but it actually just felt better and more competitive and for the most part it seemed like everyone was having a great time so going back to that negativity bias i talked about before sure tf2 has clearly outlasted the players that left due to random crits we have grown to numbers that in actuality tf2 has never reached before which is great news however here's something to think about imagine if not only were we still growing those numbers but also we weren't losing any of the people that leave due to random crits my question to you is this then is it really worth keeping something that half the community hates that you probably wouldn't really miss either if it was gone that not being in the game barely changes the course of how the game plays at all i mean here's the thing if you don't believe me that you wouldn't miss it go out and try uncle dane servers right now for yourself see if you actually ever miss random crits being in the game or if it really just seems like the same game to you and if it does seem like the same game to you ask yourself this is it really worth keeping random crits in the game then so in conclusion that's why i no longer quite care whether crits stay or whether they go i honestly care more about a growing player base for this game so anyways i hope you like this video and i hope that this is convinced even some of the hardest random crit supporters to maybe change their minds but leave a comment below and let me know what you think about this whole debate whether you agree with me or don't agree because i obviously think this would be a really interesting discussion to bring back up and as always until next time this was big joey [Music] later

Channel: Big Joey

Views: 96,208

Rating: 4.8703437 out of 5

Keywords: random crits, random crits in tf2, team fortress 2, tf2, remove random crits, keep random crits, uncle dane, heavy gameplay tf2, heavy gameplay, tf2 heavy, tf2 spy, tf2 engineer, tf2 scout, tf2 pyro, tf2 demoman, tf2 soldier, tf2 medic, tf2 sniper, tf2 heavy main, big joey, tf2 big joey, tf2 custom maps, tf2 shoreleave, tf2 pro heavy, uncle dane random crits, valve, pc gaming, tf2 reddit, tf2 funny, tf2 memes, r/tf2, #tf2

Id: T89HFZBa0zA

Length: 9min 23sec (563 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 12 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/The_Town_Idiot1]

Did you repost this because Big Joey's post on the sub got removed?