No, they are products of math, and science, which luck is not.

Think about it though... One can rate a person's aspect or aptitude on a scale from 1 - 10. There's Nixon, and there's Clinton [no politics inferred].
There is Dave Chapelle and Carl Weathers; there is Stephen Hawking and Steven Seagal. Attributes differ, and Fallout ranked them in the abstract.
10 was human maximum, 1 was human minimum.

They are using someone else's weapons.

Oooookay, then. No wonder you have issues with games applying randomness to things, given that apparently life is 100% measurable and controllable.

Fair enough.

I don't think one way of thinking about criticals is particularly superior to the other though. I'd rather direct the damage than have no choice and let dice decide.

The entire development of Fallout with 3 going forward is slowly splitting control between things the player can easily decide for and control himself and leaving the rest to classic RPG mechanics. It looks like with Fallout 4 they split some more things off.

I have, its still an unrealistic abstraction of how those things ACTUALLY work, but that's fine, because its a game and conceits in realism are made for the sake of fun.

Just like luck doing what it does now.

For sake of plausible mechanics; and Luck filling a death-O-meter is not plausible.

Do you mean that the player should have absolute control over where the bullet goes? That wind, and unexpected events never affect the shot? (That the bullet aimed for the heart ~not hit something in the target's pocket? (ignore it, and make the perfect impact anyway?)

That's what the dice are for; they dictate circumstances beyond player control.

I need to stop posting at 2 AM in the morning because I'm not sure whether this actually makes any sense or I'm just not thinking straight from sleep deprivation. So first of all what are you bringing up realism? And didn't you just complain about a lack of realism in something that is unrealistic itself is honestly kind of silly.

Its honestly rather stupid and unrealistic.

I should probably go to sleep now, I'm not even sure if I'm making sense right now.

Luck is not plausible in and of itself.

Yes, and then I mentioned a game that didn't have such problems, aka Borderlands, and said I wished Fallout had gone that route.

Luck is not understood; but it's plausible.

*But Luck based guarantees are not plausible.

About as plausible as an invisible, intangible, horse being in my room.

With those qualities, what difference would it make? (And you cannot empirically prove that it isn't.)

What's your take on Quantum theory?

** It would be better IMO, if the crit-O-meter were affected by the target's choice of action, and position in the game world, as well as aspects of the PC's actions, position, and overall health and awareness.

For instance, giving advantage if the land is on an incline, and the PC is above the target. Or having a bonus to critical hit during Vats if the target is currently reloading. Far better than topping off an MK/KI style special move meter.

Better still if the thing didn't even appear to the player, and the game engine just handled the statistics and applied them dynamically.

Sounds like a fun mechanic. I like it.

That its something for another forums.

Basically what you described is how hit chance works right now, at that point, why bother having a separate crit system at all when it operates on the same factors? Also, how does the enemy reloading increase your chance of getting a critical? things like terrain advance, line of sightm etc. etc., those are all actual factors that determine if your shot actually hits him dead in the skull like you wanted, but him reloading or not has no effect on that.

Also, not showing the player the math behind the game is bad, there is a reason most good old RPGs would dice the dice roll calculations used to determine if you hit or missed.

0/10 unrealistic luck, where the [censored] are my leprechauns

I don't like the charged critical either. They may as well change the name to "Can of Whoopass".

Hey, there's a mod idea - change the label to Limit Break.

edit: ooh, and I could name my first character Tifa, and the dude Cloud.

Right, that's what it reminded me of. I expect the related animation to have nuclear explosions that https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=LG5hr18qUVg#t=769

Everyone knows that the numbers drawn for the lottery are completely controllable and predictable - that's why everyone who buys a ticket wins the jackpot.

If you knew the precise location of the balls in the machine, and how the machine shuffles the balls around, one could, with some accuracy, guess the numbers that would be chosen.

Unless its a hand drawn lottery, and not one of those air tube ones.

Except she's essentially correct. Everything, except things on a quantum level (which I don't think is truly random either) stems from *something*. Things don't just magically happen, there are events leading up to it that make those events possible.

Reminded me of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_game

Because, the PC is concentrating on shooting the target, and can see that the target is not concentrating on shooting them back.

Which changes nothing.

Him reloading or not doesn't change how much his skull is able to resist from a high caliber round being shoved at high speed into his skull.

Are you serious?

Yes, because what you describe has nothing to do with critical hits, it does however factor into how accurate you can hit in general.

But general hit chance is another thing entirely.

Todd has never said nor has it been shown that it is 100% change to succeed. All that was said or shown was that you choose to attempt a critical and, if you succeed, it takes place wherever you chose rather than having it randomly chosen.

@Gizmo:

It is not more silliness at all and you can pound your head against the wall all you want (please do if that's your attitude). It is precisely the same as having a random chance every shot, after all. This way, you get to strategically choose when to use it and where it is targeted rather than having it randomly happen at a random body location. It's more tactical so better combat. VATS in FO3 has TONS of disadvantages which is obvious to anyone who ever died while using VATS or shortly after coming out of it. Also, Fallout was NEVER a venerable RPG by any means. It was a niche market game with little business success until Bethesda acquired it and relaunched it. Your claim that it is core mechanic and that players must use it or lose it just ludicrous. That's like claiming that VATS was a FO3 core mechanic even though many people play it without ever using VATS. You just want everyone to be forced to use your concept. Therefore, feel free to make your own game and compete with BGS, okay?

People also need to remember that successfully landing a shot while sneaking was 100% critical in FO3 and FONV. There was NO OTHER WAY to get 100% critical in either game. The best chance to hit that you got was 95% in VATS and that wound up missing more than 95% of the time in my experience, but even if you hit it was not an automatic critical.

The new system is far better from what we know right now.

Edit (OT):

@AwesomePossum:

You cannot predict what is drawn in a lottery with 100% accuracy no matter what regardless of whatever math you want to use. In fact, chaos theory specifically shows that math of any kind is only useful for prediction in a very limited manner for any chaotic system because there are simply too many variables and randomness to account for. This is also how evolution occurs, of course, via random slight mutations of various kinds.