I play it as a fps. But what about luck and crit outside VATS? In VATS when your crit meter is full, you can force a crit. That is not possible outside VATS. So can weapons even crit when not using VATS etc?

Thanks
FF

In previous games, when you got a Crit outside of VATS, you got a notification of it. I have not seen such a notification when not using VATS, but the notification does pop when I use VATS. My assumption is therefore that there are no crits at all unless you manually trigger them with VATS.

I almost never use VATS, only thing I've noticed is that in 1st person where you land the hits seems to matter. Shoot them in the head they die "sooner" Legs they might trip and arms they could drop their weapon.

I don't think there are random crits, at least without some perk I don't have yet.

Why?

When I look at my combat stats, I see that "Sneak Attacks" and "Crits" both have the same value. i.e, the only crits I've gotten were because of sneak attacks.

yeah this is my thoughts aswell. If this is the case, it's a horrible game decision by Bethesda

Why?

I've received several critical hit pops ups outside of VATs, only noticed them today, so no idea if it's a bug. But they were there.