I know that people who see TF2 in a particularly competitive light hate the idea that some aspect of the outcome is being determined by factors that aren't controlled by the players—but in fact, crits
are controlled by the players. They only happen when someone is shooting, and they happen more often when people engage in probability-raising behaviors. It's true that you can't count on them from one encounter to the next, but considering the number of attacks that occur over the lifespan of a single TF2 match, they exert
a predictable influence. It is possible to mitigate their influence on your game: don't rush up on a guy who just killed three people. Don't necessarily go toe-to-toe with a guy just because the math is in your favor. Always strive to put yourself in a situation where the other guy's gun isn't pointed at you. This is not some mysterious force arbitrarily raising up some players and casting down others—this is a
game mechanic that you can
account for, and the fact that it makes certain kinds of shootouts far more unpredictable than others is a big reason why the game is so fun.
Warning: 8 new replies while you were typing lolI was going to make the comparison to Magic but nobody had mentioned it yet. Since Makaris did, then: in Magic, your deck order is random. There are cards that let you influence that order, but you can't guarantee you'll get those cards, either. The reason Magic succeeds competitively is that, because you're playing more than one game in a match and more than one match in a tournament, the effects of randomization are averaged out. Crits in TF2 are less random than even that, though, because they never prevent you from being able to play; attacks will randomly do
more damage, but they'll never randomly do no damage whatsoever.