That's a game designer's job, to find fun ways to put features together. One use is to ratchet up tension and then release it. Instead of the player feeling surprised and cheated 1 in 10 times, if you telegraph the feature properly then 9 in 10 times they might instead feel excited/relieved that the crit didn't get them. Using other tricks you can make the sense of impending doom seem greater than it really is, so the player is disproportionately relieved.

If you give them the tools to mitigate critical hits, then there's the satisfaction of having planned for an event and weathered the storm. A bad round for the opponent might force you into plan B. If you have a plan B and it brings you back from the precipice to victory, that's satisfying. With predictable combat rounds, you might not have needed a plan B.

Overcoming impossible odds is fun. Crits can create situations where you shouldn't win but do anyways. If that was the only way to win it feels cheap, but if a player made obvious mistakes and then won despite them, that's its own flavor of fun. It relieves situations where winning is impossible but the game isn't over yet (and vice versa).

Variety is fun. Crits in a wargame let you know somewhere along your front the opponent will have an upper hand and somewhere you'll be hard pressed, but not know where until a particular playthrough.

My point is that "good game has feature X" or "bad game has feature X" or "feature X didn't work in this game" is much more a question of how the pieces fit together then a statement that your game must/can't have feature X. As a game designer I think you have to figure out what the impact of a feature is, how it interacts with other ones, and then put it into play if you have a particular role a feature fills.

This seems a quote from 20 years ago, games evolved, players evolved most of all. Crits are plain, bad, there is no surprise only frustration, sure overcoming odds is fun, but crits are not odd, good developers present odds in form of many enemies, stronger enemies, powerfull abilities, not extreme RNG, thats very bad designing.

Also associating variety to crits make me laugh, to have variaties create many races, many abilities, a strong AI that use every trick, not just an autoattacking AI that sometimes make so powerful crits the player either dies or is just forced to play run etc.

Sure its a cheap way, in fact crits always existed and only nowadays they are slowly disappearing cause smart developers understood how bad and frustrating and unrewarding they are and found better ways to reward players without punishing for too bad RNG.

Although Polama made a lot of good points, I tend to agree with dworm on this one. All the things that crits achieve can be done in a much better way that will be more fun, more rewarding and cause less frustration. Most rpgs have crits simply because they didn't want to waste resources on designing a better feature serving the same general purpose. Crits have been in games forever, more often because of tradition or lazy game design than any good reason.

Crits are solely associated with luck in the player's mind, and although good luck can be fun sometimes, it's still not rewarding. When you luck your way out of a bad/impossible situation, it feels good, but it doesn't feel rewarding, you feel like you just cheated the game somehow, you feel like you don't really deserve the win. The same way you feel when using an exploit to win. Sure, you "outsmarted" the game, you won, but you also cheated in a way, and you know it, and it lessens the fun and satisfaction of winning.

When you experience the other end of it, the bad luck, it's even worse, you feel like the game cheated you. It's extremely frustrating and terrible design in my opinion. I don't think anyone enjoys that feeling, so why have it in your game ? You can mitigate that feeling if you implement it smartly, but why go through that trouble to end up with a feature that is still frustrating even if it's just a little bit ? Why not put your time and effort into designing a feature that will achieve the same thing without causing the frustration of bad luck ?

In rpgs, and I think especially in strategy rpgs, rng is a bad thing, it feels out of place, it's breaking immersion, it's causing frustration, it lessens the satisfaction of winning, of overcoming bad odds, of growing with your character. We are talking about critical hits, but it's the same thing regarding rng based loots, if I open a chest and the content is completely determined by rng, it feels wrong. It doesn't feel like I just killed a powerful demon to finally gain access to that chest and its rare loot, it feels like playing the slot machine. I will feel like shit if I don't get the good loot and if I do I will feel like I didn't earn it even though I just killed that powerful demon. If rng decides, then there is no reason behind it, no narrative, no work from the designer. Crits are the same, extremely gamey, they are not immersive at all, not anymore at least, and rpgs are all about immersion.

There is no self improvement with rng, you can't get better at having luck and so you don't strive for it. It really goes against everything that makes rpgs what they are. If you end up in a bad situation because of rng, there is nothing you could have done better, nothing you can improve, nothing you can learn, and it feels horrible, it takes control away from the player. It makes the consequences independent from the decisions the player makes and that means that those decisions are not important, that they don't matter. Rng just doesn't work with RPGs, not if it's perceivable by the player. You should only use rng in a way that is invisible to the player.

And crits just have too much of a baggage, no matter what you do, you won't be able to change the player's perception that they are the incarnation of luck in games. That is why you should find a better way to add uncertainty to your battlefield. One that people won't perceive as "only luck", one that they can learn about and get better at.

Wow alot of emotions regarding crits:). You really think games suffer so greatly from it? (most game has similar elements). My take is that randomization of damage shouldnt be to extreme, but like many other systems in games, if they are completely static/predictable that is also not good. (very few examples, like chess, work with no randomization at all)

Random elements (including randomized loot) ARE important in roguelikes, especially since the worlds are procedurally generated. Have you played ANY roguelike without randomization? And development resources/time IS ALWAYS limited so its easy to just write "make everything great in your game". But at the cost of what other gameplay elements?

If crits are so terrible and better gameplay elements (to achieve surprise/risk etc) are so easy to implement instead, what are those? Plz give concrete examples.

You can and should have randomization in your game, especially if it's a roguelike, but it shouldn't look like it's random. It shouldn't feel like rolling the dice, that is the main point here I think. That is why crits are bad, because they look and feel like rolling the dice 100%.

Most of what I said was regarding rpgs in general, and personally that is why I don't think roguelikes make good rpgs, because they need randomization and it doesn't sit well with the core concepts of rpgs. They can be great games, just not great rpgs.

Of course it's up to you to judge what is most important for your game and prioritize things to make the best use of the limited resources you have, we are just having a theoretical discussion here, not factoring more practical stuff. But design is often not what takes the most resources and/or time, and yet it's arguably the most important part so putting some extra effort into it is worth it in my opinion. It can even save you resources down the line. A better system is not necessarily a more resource hungry one, it could be easier and faster to implement a better system than critical hits.

If you want concrete examples, we need to know more about your game, the features and the lore. The main weakness of roguelikes, in my opinion, is that although they don't make good rpgs, they still are rpgs, and people are expecting from them a rpg experience to some degree. They want/expect things that are not really possible to do in randomized/generated worlds, things like narrative driven design. The best thing you can do is focus on hiding the rng in your roguelike : try to make everything that needs to be random for gameplay reasons not seem random. It's certainly not an easy task, but it's what will separate a good roguelike from a bad one. If you use random loots, find a way to make it seem like they are not random, like there is a very good and logical reason behind it. That will do wonders to make your procedurally generated levels feel coherent and unique and non repetitive.

A very simple example of something that can replace crits from enemies is a special ability. A stronger attack that is basically like a crit, but isn't one, it's just a different, more powerful attack and no luck is involved there (from the player's perspective), the gobelin just chose to use this one sometimes (randomly, but it doesn't feel like rolling the dice, it feels like a smarter AI) instead of his regular attack. Effectively it's the exact same mechanic, it's just presented in a way that makes it feel completely different. In darkest dungeon you can see the perfect example of that : the monsters often have a stronger ability they use randomly, and they can crit, and while it's essentially the exact same thing, it feels totally different to die from a special attack and to die from a crit. I got frustrated every time a crit ruined my plans, but didn't feel the same way at all when it happened because of a special attack.

If you can make such a huge difference in perception just by changing the presentation of your mechanic, imagine what you can do actually changing the mechanic itself.

Wow alot of emotions regarding crits:). You really think games suffer so greatly from it? (most game has similar elements). My take is that randomization of damage shouldnt be to extreme, but like many other systems in games, if they are completely static/predictable that is also not good. (very few examples, like chess, work with no randomization at all)

Random elements (including randomized loot) ARE important in roguelikes, especially since the worlds are procedurally generated. Have you played ANY roguelike without randomization? And development resources/time IS ALWAYS limited so its easy to just write "make everything great in your game". But at the cost of what other gameplay elements?

If crits are so terrible and better gameplay elements (to achieve surprise/risk etc) are so easy to implement instead, what are those? Plz give concrete examples.

Often in rogueliikes randome elements are just those who piss the player off.

If you want an example provide a concrete problem, and lets see if there is a possible solution. You cant just ask for a generic example since crits arent necessarly needed per se.

I don't see much difference between excessive variance with a unimodal distribution and a multimodal one, nor plausible cases in which a multimodal distribution might be "better". Critical hits that merely deal more damage are a gratuitous complication.

On the other hand, the goblin example in the OP doesn't necessarily represent a randomness problem. If the goblin can kill the character with one hit, it simply means the character is low on hit points and it's time to retreat: it can become an annoyance only if the player doesn't realize there is a risk. For example, the game is unfair if critical hits are rare enough to ignore them as a nonexistent mechanic, to forget them since the last occurrence, or to lack knowledge about how hard a goblin can hit.

I don't see much difference between excessive variance with a unimodal distribution and a multimodal one, nor plausible cases in which a multimodal distribution might be "better". Critical hits that merely deal more damage are a gratuitous complication.

Gets back to using numeric ranges.

Assuming we're talking about combat animations, I can completely understand how damage does a range.

While visually I am attempting to hack and slash with my greatsword, I understand that some hits will be harder or lighter than others. That's believable, and doesn't look like stupidly-random values.

I can also understand how -- in combination with proper animation -- a critical fail could be animated as my greatsword banging up against their shield and doing zero damage or near-zero damage. While the numbers-heavy people might figure out the percentages and risks of that happening, in the game I see the highly skilled opponent blocked with their shield or maybe sidestepped so it doesn't feel like stupidly-random values.

I can understand multiple nodes, high damage and low damage, on particular weapons. Maybe a spiked mace will sometimes do damage with the blunt mace part, and sometimes does extra damage if a spike happens to do extra damage. Or perhaps a bladed spear with attacks for the stab, slash, and swing will each do different damage because they are each different attacks; I'm not sure if you consider that multiple nodes or separate attacks. Still can involve some random numbers, but it doesn't feel wrongly-random: hitting someone with the blunt part of a spear is quite different from stabbing with the pointy part.

But the critical hit. The one that suddenly does 3x or 5x or 10x damage for no apparent reason. That one always troubled me.

What does it mean?

I can imagine a critical hit where the creature you are attacking is visibly critically hit, perhaps you chopped off its head. That isn't +340 points damage, that is +death. Yes it is critical, but critical for different reasons.

Does it mean I chopped through a major artery in their arm or leg? If so, I would expect animations to show spraying blood continuously, I would expect damage over time from the gushing wound, and I would expect a death clock as the character bleeds out. (Recalls the Monty Python dark knight: "You've got no arms left!", "Oh, it's just a flesh wound.")

Does it mean injured body parts? Without additional design, a high-damage attack doesn't really mean that, either. It just means something did more damage for no reason other than a random number said so.

I particularly enjoy how several games have shifted to injuries on body parts. An injured foot causes different animations when you attack and block, reduces your attack and damage, decreases travel speed and may cause the character to limp. An injured arm means you take extra damage when blocking with the shield, or if you have a two handed weapon you deal less damage and are less effective at blocking blows with the blade. An injured head means worse response time and higher likelihood of various bad effects. None of those are "critical" on their own, either when injury is on the player or on their opponent.

Those injuries are still random numbers, but they feel far more believable as part of the story world. I can understand how a lucky swing that chops off an Ogre's head results in its instant death. I can understand how a lucky swing that chops off the player's head also kills them instantly. I can understand something chopping off an arm or a leg, or rendering the arm or leg useless.

A critical strike that animation says is critical for a reason I can understand, that can work. But a critical strike that for no discernible reason does triple damage? Bad design, no cookie.

,,80-120''

imho thats okay, but dont put too much randomness, the battle itself should be calculable.

Its a simplistic tactical game/RPG, also there is NO animations:) Im doing everything myself.

A crit typically represents a good hit, meaning hitting between armour plates, hitting a vital part of the body etc (it comes from pen and paper RPGs from before body parts were tracked individually)

The idea of crits is to give dangerous spikes that is harder to predict (with very little cost in development). The alternative seems to be to give opponents another skill that deals extra damage, has a cooldown and has some % to being "picked" by the ai. It will be the same thing mechanically but maybe is explained better in the gameworld by somehow conveying the information in some way :

attack: deals 3 hp

attack: deals 4 hp

brutal strike: deals 8 hp

instead of:

attack: deals 3 hp

attack: deals 4 hp

attack: deals 8 hp (crit)

If crits were hand-down horrible game design philosophy then you certainly wouldn't see top game developers employing them. But just take a look at World of Warcraft. The fire mage is an rng-crit machine!! Their entire gameplay is built around getting crits, and it's highly fun to many people. Getting two crits in a row allows for a powerful, instant cast, free pyroblast (pumped-up fireball).

Saying that crits are not fun is like saying gambling is not fun. You can make it fun or you can make it unfun. It all depends on how you program in the odds and the rewards for such odds.