Critical Hits - Redundant?

[Khunvyel]

After reading the topic title, please put down your crowbars, keyboards, sharp objects and other unpleasant torturing devices. This is not about me trying to whack down on something well established, but rather to put a different spin and thought on it. Might be going down and under within a day, but at least I spoke my mind.

 

Where do critical hits in games come from? As far as I can remember - and there is a small chance of me being wrong - is they were initially purposed as a chance-element for simulation based combat in any shape or form. One of the better known examples of critical hits was the RPG Dungeons and Dragons, which was more or less defining the genre by taking a step out from the classical Wargame community. Yet, the idea of critical hits is older than D&D.

 

This made me ask myself... how much are critical hits actually worth and how are they making sense when you already have a game that supports weak spots? These weak / vulnerable spots are the essence of what the statistical chance of "critical hits" are usually covering. Putting this into a meme it would be something like... "Yo dawg, I heard you like crits, so we added crit chance to crit spots spots so you can crit while you crit."

 

I don't know about you guys and girls, but it simply feels weird to me. The only chance I have in hitting weak spots is my aim, and that alone. Can I aim good enough to hit vital spots to cause more attrition or not? This has nothing to do with statistics and chance.

 

Granted, the current hitbox system would need to be improved to have more weak spots available. Those weak spots could actually start getting more distinguished and diverse. I do not know how much this would affect game performance by having so many different hit selections, since I don't know how the Evolution Engine works with that.

For example, a Grineer face with no helmet on would not be protected by armor, but rather have only the resistances of the flesh applied, including than damage multiplier up. Same would be for Corpus. They have shields, yes, but they also have very tough plating on parts of their body, which could well be the opposite of weak spots... being tough spots, which reduce the damage incoming just as armor does.

Other parts of Grineer Armor would be added as weak spot, for example the joints, providing less armor protection. Depending on their augmentations, certain limbs might simply be robotic instead of cloned flesh. Not going to go there to actually implement dismemberment during the enemy still living and all that, and I am already digressing a bit so let me get back on track;

 

What to do with crit damage and crit chance on the weapons, including inherent weapon stats?

I would not feel well to simply convert the crit multiplier to "dealing more damage on unprotected parts" Yes, for sure, it might be exactly the type of ammunition that really hurts there, so I am on the fence with this. I'd rather see the multipliers on weak spots in place, and add more to them, and in the same take remove crit chance & damage from all weapons entirely. Crit chance would be completely redundant thus.

 

What to do with mods which are aiming at both, crit chance and damage? That is a question which isn't quite ready to be answered. I'd rather have them converted to new mods going the lines of "+X damage on unprotected parts" and the like. But this is not the idea of the topic. The idea is, to simply ask around and see who else feels "weird" when we land "hits on weak spots" ... while hitting weak spots? And then see where it goes.

[taiiat]

perhaps.

[xXRampantXx]

Really all critical hits are in warframe is a way to cause players to vary their build.

[Beasy63]

This is a good idea but im also on the fence about it. I actually like the system in place now but we could expand the system youre talking about. I look at regular crits as special bullets in that barrel or clip and upping crit chance increases the amount of special bullets you have.

[(NSW)Omgwtfl9lbbl]

I'm on board with changing critical damage to simply extra damage vs. weakspot. That's how I've always felt it should be, anyway. However, a lot of weapons we have would no longer make a whole lot of sense, and would require a lot of massive rebalancing and straight up redesigning.

[Paradoxbomb]

I'm not entirely sure about removing Critical Hits entirely, although I do think they should remove the x4 damage multiplier from them and instead give each individual weapon their own weakspot multiplier (sniper rifles obviously being the best with x4).

 

From my personal experience of releveling my Vectis, I've realized that without dumping every crit mod you can into snipers, they're really lousy weapons. Even with crit mods sniping falls down to luck in this game (generally fair luck, but luck no less) where it should be unique from other crits weapons like the Soma or Vipers on it's own merits.

 

Crit mods should be the icing on the cake for a sniper build, not the integral element.

[Volt_Cruelerz]

Really all critical hits are in warframe is a way to cause players to vary their build.

not even that...  there's still always a best...  If anything, it just dillutes drop tables...

[nekrojiji]

This is a good idea but im also on the fence about it. I actually like the system in place now but we could expand the system youre talking about. I look at regular crits as special bullets in that barrel or clip and upping crit chance increases the amount of special bullets you have.

 

So we are like Flint Beastwood from HoN .... only that nut uses normal and special bullets randomly in the same clip.

[Khunvyel]

This is a good idea but im also on the fence about it. I actually like the system in place now but we could expand the system youre talking about. I look at regular crits as special bullets in that barrel or clip and upping crit chance increases the amount of special bullets you have.

I originally was thinking something along those lines as well. We are Tenno, and basically use supernatural abilities, so chances would be that our inherent chaotic nature affects our weapons. This is why I considered to put crit chance into the aforementioned "Focus" System, where the developers want to give us something to level beyond our 30 mark, strengthening the Tenno. Increasing the depth of affinity for a certain weapon type, or for all types alike. I am uncertain about this idea though, it is just a random thought of mine. It would give the Lore an interesting spin though.

 

 

 

Warframe is so lacking in lore that players have to stretch their imagination for everything.

But there are some things in videogames that are supposed to be free from logic.

An example is the name of Link in Legend of Zelda. It doesn't have to be "Link."

That's how I look at crits. Hitscan bullets can sorta work with crits concept, but there are non hitscan projectiles...

It's just a gamey mechanic.

Without wanting to spark a debate - because I mostly agree with you - I'd like to point out that "Natural logic" still should apply to a game. For example, I don't care that we became Tenno by going to a "Hellspace where science failed to work" and came out with magical abilities. This is part of the mysticism and is beyond our regular comprehension as it happens outside of our worldly parameters.

I DO care about and cringe every time how someone can cut off life support on a PLANETSIDE mission though... so there are two sides of the coin about logic. I view it as "reality vs. realism" if that makes any sense. The one thing can be proven each day by nature's laws and applicable physics. The other exists in the realm of plausibility. If it feels it COULD work or if it is properly obfuscated (like the Void) then why not?

I'd also wish hitscan bullets would cease to be hitscan and be a - very very fast moving - projectile like anything else. It would remove the idiocy of hiding beside a doorframe and still shoot people, even though your line of sight from muzzle to the enemy is 100% blocked.

 

 

 

I'm on board with changing critical damage to simply extra damage vs. weakspot. That's how I've always felt it should be, anyway. However, a lot of weapons we have would no longer make a whole lot of sense, and would require a lot of massive rebalancing and straight up redesigning.

Indeed, I didn't say it would be easy and neither did I start to throw in balance propositions to those, because I just wanted to get the idea out first. No need to effort into something that might not even be wanted in the first place :D

Plain theory says, that their base damage would be increased by a factor of how high their statistical damage including crits would be. So a weapon with 10 damage doing 100 shots and having a 20% crit chance with a x2 crit multiplier would have their base damage moved to 12. I am still not sure if a "weak spot multiplier" would be good on the weapon itself, I'd rather have those multipliers on the bodyparts. Say, head x3 , unarmored x2 etc.

It always bewilders me how ridiculous numbers get on weak spots upon crit but hey, what do I know. Not sinking my teeth into the balance mechanics aspect.

 

Still the lingering question would be "what to do with the mods that would be useless now". Well, straight up redesigning has to be the case. We've lost the "stagger" mods in favor for elemental proc mods, so we can totally make something completely different of them.

One suggestion would be the most obvious one, using the critdamage mod as "weak spot modifier" but then in turn this might just become another "mandatory" mod (how I hate those. because some are really not easy to get) which further affects damage, which FURTHER affects high level content. Granted, it would be a more skill based mod. It only works if you actually hit a weakspot, thus it is not just a straight up increase of your *cough* DPS.

I still keep my unrefined ideas about them down for the time being. There are many good mod ideas already, so they can be easily replacing them.

[Sixty5]

I'd say keep them in the game simply as a balance factor.

 

Take away the Soma's crit aspects and it becomes a terrible weapon. If you buffed its damage back up to make up for the loss you'd just have a simple high damage rifle, barely different from the others out there.

 

The point is less about crit lore, and more about differentiating between weapons and giving you more options. 

[Khunvyel]

If there is a weapon which performs similar to another by base stats and the only reason it performs better is due to its crit, then it fails to be an option. I will furthermore not drag the Soma into this, because this is not a topic about this weapon, and should not become one. This affects all weapons. But for the sake of the argument; the Soma is just a better version of the Grakata with a different (some say better) I/P/S spread. You can also say the Gorgon is the actual predecessor of the Soma because both have a windup time.

 

This also ties in to the fact that we have a tiered weapon system and should use it appropriately. This would automatically mean that some weapons are MEANT to be more powerful than others. You can basically set... 5 different areas within each tier, EXCLUDING a crit-based area;

1. lots of Impact damage
   
2. Lots of Puncture
   
3. Lots of Slash
   
4. Evenly distributed
   
5. lots of status chance

 

And those 5 can even be further split apart into dual mixes. Like impact+slash of the Strun. And then you are even further down in terms of specification. full auto? Semi-auto? Continuous? Shotgun?

 

When taking this into consideration, we actually still have a lot of weapons to fill a lot of niches on a lot of mastery ranks.

[(NSW)Omgwtfl9lbbl]

I'd say keep them in the game simply as a balance factor.

 

Take away the Soma's crit aspects and it becomes a terrible weapon. If you buffed its damage back up to make up for the loss you'd just have a simple high damage rifle, barely different from the others out there.

 

The point is less about crit lore, and more about differentiating between weapons and giving you more options. 

At the end of the day, the Soma really is nothing unique. Just because it is a crit weapon does not change how you actually use the gun at all.

 

In terms of actual gameplay, the Soma is simply an assault rifle with a small wind up time. If you gave the Karak the same wind up feature, there's no difference in their gameplay, despite one being a crit based rifle and the other a flat damage rifle.

 

Crit weapons really don't change how you play very much. In the end, it's just more damage to everywhere, like all other mods, without changing how the weapon actually handles.

[Azamagon]

I'm totally in on removing critical hit chance from the game. As your topic indeed says, they are redundant! Critical damage mods could surely become Weakspot multipliers. Far more interesting as a mod and far more situational, rather than obvious choice too. Which is good! I'd even start making suggestions right here, on how to make it work!

 

* All weapons normally have a weakspot multiplier of 1.0x. The weakspot of the enemy then also has an innate multiplier to that (headshots being 2.0x currently). The weapons multiplier and the target's multiplier... multiply with one another xD With most weapons, that obviously would lead to just 1 * 2 on weakspots, which is 2x.

* Critdamage mods become Weakspot multipliers. I'd say at least 10% bonus per rank, which would leave it at 60% bonus at max. That'd make the normal 1.0x WS-multipliers go up to 1.6x. Seems like reasonable numbers. If necessary, crank the numbers up a bit. At 1.6x multiplier, shooting a headshot on a target which has an innate 2x multiplier, that'd give us 1,6 * 2 = 3.2x the normal damage now! Now we're talking!

* Then there'd be "critweapons", like Soma, which turns into "weakspot weapons" instead. They have an innate higher WS-multiplier, of say, 2x or more. All of a sudden this weapon is now very powerful, HOWEVER it is reliant on your personal aiming skill to be powerful! This would also justify Soma's high accuracy! High tier weapons SHOULD be more specialized after all! Sure, base damage might need an increase on these weapons and all that, but still. It'd make the weapons more rewarding for careful aim.

* Corrupted mods like Hollow Point & Critical Delay should be +Weakspot multiplier and -RoF. Due to that, while you do have a negative on the mod, it actually is also a kind of helping trait for the weapon! Slower RoF generally helps you aim better (less recoil to handle). This would make those 2 mods far, far more interesting choices!

* Melee weapons need to be more aimable up and down with your mouse (hoping for this in Melee 2.0!), so you can actually aim for heads / weakspots with your own user input. Then we'd have "weakspot melee weapons" too! Now we are feeling truly ninja! ;)

* For those that miss the current critical hits, status chance could partially take its place. If status-procs, on top of their current effects also gave minicrits (say 25% damagebonus of the proccing element, DoT-proccing elements aside as the DoT already serves as a form of powerful "crit"bonus), we'd still have the current crit mechanic left in the game, just far less powerful / overpowered / necessary to mod for.

 

Honestly, this would make the game far better, in so many ways! :)

Edited March 19, 2014 by Azamagon

[Khunvyel]

* Melee weapons need to be more aimable up and down with your mouse (hoping for this in Melee 2.0!), so you can actually aim for heads / weakspots with your own user input. Then we'd have "weakspot melee weapons" too! Now we are feeling truly ninja! ;)

This is something I loathe since day 1 and the autotarget system doesn't really help you there. I really hope we get to aim vertically with M2.0

 

And to the crit topic again; what crits do are nothing but inflating the short-term satisfaction. Players have been educated since years that "bigger is better" and that is pretty sad. Most players simply want crit because "look at my high number!" Without even remotely thinking about how little this actually plays into effect. But after a while this satisfaction is completely unimportant and the crits just become part of the game and the total damage of your gun.

Tenthousands of damage on a single shot on a single target mean nothing in the bigger scheme of things. Yes, some people get enjoyment out of this and get excited by insanely huge numbers. Not going to test these waters of self esteem in this topic.

 

Crit chance simply adds damage to the cloud of bullets raining mayhem on the battlefield. Removing it and improving on weak spots instead will put more emphasis on aiming. I also believe there are a multitude of ways to incorporate this into Melee 2.0 as well. I wait for quite a while now secretly for a charged wall attack or a charged stealth attack.

[Methanoid]

Really all critical hits are in warframe is a way to cause players to vary their build.

 

there isnt much to vary, if a weapon has natural high crit, you crit build it, if not then you dont, wheres the variety in that?  esp when there arent many weapons that you can crit build.

[Khunvyel]

I've pondering the following about the topic at hand;

 

If I opt to remove crits, and add the lost damage potential as base damage, I'm removing a certain behaviour and feel of a weapon, no matter if it changes something in the long run or not. This could be an issue. Yes it might free up mod slots, or rather allow other previously non-crit weapons to benefit from extra damage on weakspot mods, but in a nutshell it decreases the feel for something different. To counter this, I might need to go deeper than that. There could be more scope done for this idea once I release my " Damage 2.5 draft " which (among other things) puts more emphasis on resistance distribution, so weapons get more character when using them against different factions. This might offset the "loss" of the sentiment "to crit or not to crit?" by immediately making a weapon perform visibly different in terms of damage when it comes to different factions.

[Azamagon]

I've pondering the following about the topic at hand;

 

If I opt to remove crits, and add the lost damage potential as base damage, I'm removing a certain behaviour and feel of a weapon, no matter if it changes something in the long run or not. This could be an issue. Yes it might free up mod slots, or rather allow other previously non-crit weapons to benefit from extra damage on weakspot mods, but in a nutshell it decreases the feel for something different. To counter this, I might need to go deeper than that. There could be more scope done for this idea once I release my " Damage 2.5 draft " which (among other things) puts more emphasis on resistance distribution, so weapons get more character when using them against different factions. This might offset the "loss" of the sentiment "to crit or not to crit?" by immediately making a weapon perform visibly different in terms of damage when it comes to different factions.

If you remove crits, you don't need to compensate by increasing base damage too much, at least not on certain weapons. Soma, for example, could just have a really high weakspot-multiplier as compensation. Snipers and Bows could also have quite high multipliers.

 

If Status-effects grants minicrits (as I said in my first post here), some of the old critweapons (like Grakata) can then be based on Status effects instead... which it already does :D

 

The day critical hit chances are removed + critical hit damage are turned into weakspot damage would be a great day for Warframe. Less reliance on RNG, more reliable and skillbased fighting and also more variety in modding. Yes please :)

[notionphil]

I'd say keep them in the game simply as a balance factor.

 

Take away the Soma's crit aspects and it becomes a terrible weapon. If you buffed its damage back up to make up for the loss you'd just have a simple high damage rifle, barely different from the others out there.

 

The point is less about crit lore, and more about differentiating between weapons and giving you more options. 

 

Agreed that options/differentiation should be the goal, but crit does not provide options.

 

Weapons over a certain crit%  threshold gain DPS by being crit built, and lose it otherwise. Re-imagining crit damage as a weakspot multiplier would give us an actual option.

 

Do I want to deal more damage on regular shots (+dam/ele mods)

 

or

 

deal less overall damage, and rely on my skills to deal extreme damage (+weakspot damage mods)

Edited March 21, 2014 by notionphil

[Khunvyel]

Yes, I was thinking along the same lines. Not just straight ramp up the damage for each weapon to reimburse for the lost crit.

Some would get their base damage, some would gain more weakspot bonus than actual base damage, some would gain more status chance than anything else. Those weapons would be selected among their characteristics and feel, depending what would be most fitting for them. This is also going to be required in order to rank them properly in tiers.

 

Part of my upcoming Damage 2.5 draft would also include an "efficiency modifier" for status procs. So not just a chance any more but also affecting it. Length / severity of the proc. But this is also the reason why it is still a draft, and only some of it being fleshed out and posted. For one, this helps me getting the thing across bit by bit, and the others are simply too uncertain to use. Perhaps a status "intensity" modifier is too much, even though it would go along the lines of the old "crit chance / crit damage".