Was doing some character planning and noticed that mr sandman and ninja perks specify "sneak attacks". So i'm thinking the better criticals perk won't increase damage on sneak attacks anymore. What do you guys think?

Sneak attacks could still be said to produce criticals, so surely a criticals perk covers it.

There's the cheat criticals (a sure thing, entirely manufactured), and sneak attack criticals (the real criticals we all know and love). Both are criticals.

If anything, the cheat crits should be the ones that aren't actually criticals. They're basically just power attacks.

I too got the sense that sneak attacks and criticals have been separated this time around. Now that criticals are something you select instead of occurring by random chance, I suppose it makes more sense to separate them from the sneak attacks. Though it does raise the question of what happens if you use a crit in VATS while an enemy is unaware of you. Do all of the sneak and critical perk effects apply?

yes... however you would need the critical banker perk.. otherwise criticals go away when combat ends and therefore you would never be able to initiate a sneak crit (without critical banker that lets you store crits for later)

I think the crit meter only goes up in combat but does not decrease until you use it.

Incorrect.. there is an entire perk related to saving criticals for later which would be useless if the bar stayed full.

from everything ive seen the crit bar resets when the encounter ends unless you have critical banker perk then you can save the critical out of combat.

I'm pretty sure I saw footage of the main character with a full crit bar outside of combat. The crit banker perk allows you to store a full bar for later use in VATS, enabling you to start filling a new bar. I guess we will need to wait and see.

also sneak is now a perk no longer a skill so you assassin type's need to put a lot in agility and perception to get sneak perk on your builds

I think you can still sneak...The perk allows for better sneaking.