that's not luck, it's called adapting to how the other team tries to counter your mids. If your team continue to wins mids by playing passive, you should probably expect the other team to start collapsing on you and if you don't then it's your fault and you can't chalk it up to luck. There is literally not a single sport or competitive game where luck can be removed.

yeah but there are times when adaptation is countered by unpredictable plays. of course it's not 100% luck, and of course luck can never be 100% removed, but it's still a diceroll that will more often than not win a team the round.
whatever though, it could be worse.

To use an analogy, rock-paper-scissors is better than a coin flip, because you can fake-out the opponent, and know that most people pick rock and stuff, but it's still not ideal. I think that's what people complain about regarding mid-fights.

yeah but being unpredictable is a key part of the game, i dont understand what you are advocating for. each team chooses a strategy, and one of the strategies beats the other, this is a core tenet of literally every competitive game and sport that exists

I agree that if you removed rng from the smg and pistol, you would have to decrease the damage it does at least at longer distances. 2-3 damage per tick at long range vs the current 8. Otherwise a perfectly accurate pistol at long range for 8 damage a tick would be dumb. I'm all for making the game more aim based and less random based (the very reason bullet spread, random spread and random crits are off in comp), but you can't just turn rng off without balancing the damage fall-off.

I always thought of mids as rock paper scissors. One mid beats two, two beats three, three beats one, etc. Most teams use the same mids and the only random factor I can think of is singular player plays (which usually get punished). This doesn't feel random, just that you decided to pick scissors versus a rock. I don't see that being random, unless we have different definitions of random?

There's a pretty big difference between uncontrollable randomness (bullet spread for example) that this thread is aimed at, and controllable unpredictability like midfight strats that a team can get better at and deal better against through skill which competitive play is based around. Stuff like midfights being unpredictable because a team might try a different strat isn't a bad thing, it's pretty necessary to be a competitive game.

rng is not people choosing to go left or right on a mid, rng is the game deciding if its going to fuck you or not

Midfights only have rng elements if you decide your mid strat by rolling a dice

If you decide your mid strat by rolling a dice, rng is the least of your issues in this game

i think that's more of a stat than rng

the random spread default in the game varies between weapons

for example the sg (scoped t rifle) has a longer effective range than the ak, the a1s has a longer range than a4, which has a longer range than ak to balance it against the ak's 1taps

i think scout and awp don't suffer from this, and deag has ridiculously good first shot acc that's better than ct rifles

still fucking stupid rng shouldn't be a stat

a thought on something that's random still, but in a far more controllable way: instead of spread, the pistol has a random pushback that moves the cursor [x] degrees in a random direction with each shot (w/ the amount getting slightly larger the longer you fire). the pistol will always shoot at the center of the cursor, but now the skill is in making sure you can consistently control it

this could severely fuck up how people have learned tracking over the years though, so idk

I don't know about that completely, I've seen some SC2 matches with maps that have 4 spawning locations and it has had an effect:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Da66ACO5MyI
If it were fixed spawns, MC would've known where to 4gate with no problems. That was in 2013 though, but the latest was in 2015 at Blizzcon where they played Iron Fortress LE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9T_tVQdMoA
Which is apparently a a 4 spawn position map so idk. But don't the players themselves choose the maps from the ladder rotation? I definitely agree though that most of the maps played at the competitive level are 2 spawn position maps though.

Just make it like LG where after a certain distance it does 0

4 spawn maps exist but they usually force cross positions. The rule of thumb is that the map must be symmetrical no matter what spawns occur. An interesting map is called Korhal Floating Island, where the map would always be symmetrical but depending on which set of spawns occur, it could play totally differently. This randomness never puts a player at an advantage or disadvantage though, because the map is always symmetrical.

The map you showed didn't force cross positions, which isn't always a problem except that the map was rotationally symmetrical, which isn't an okay combination. This doesn't happen anymore.

Maps are picked from the ladder pool, yes. Those maps aren't allowed in the ladder anymore though.

Fall damage thing should be fixed

Pistol RNG can't actually be fixed without changing it into a dramatically different weapon than it currently is, even though it really is a problem. I'd prefer to see a low-RNG unlock for now instead of changing the weapon itself.

> the range on the demo pipes is actually very slightly random by ~5% because tf2 actually models the drag physics and shit

They made direct nade damage bypass that system a few months ago IIRC

> Just make it like LG where after a certain distance it does 0

Pistol is currently 100% accurate on the first shot and it's useful for taking out sentries, pls don't do this

Oh my god I remember Korhal Floating Island rofl. Thanks for the explanation!

Pistol has random spray? Tell that to quad...

Thats already the case when you are close to mid range as it is really accurate at that range

minigun

this is exactly what i was thinking a few months ago but this video resolved my questions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9ZI9kMsvRQ . In the long run, rng elements don't affect the game very much (excluding random crits lol) , the better team still wins and the worse team still loses.

Did you actually even watch the video you linked or nah?

yeah it basically says in the long run the better team still wins and the worse team still loses so it doesn't matter

even random crits realistically won't make the better team lose but it doesn't fucking matter, random elements like that just destroy the competitiveness of the game

pistol and smg barely have spread, if you are perfectly tracking a player at mid or close range with either weapon your going to hit like 90% of your clip.

have you ever heard of the proto pistol?

Ok but what about stairs and the idiot effect they have on explosive damage?
I know smart mapmakers are avoiding them, but on older maps that shit's fucked up. I wish stairs were fixed on badlands last for example, but oh well

i was talking about https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACfafLuLmy8

iirc its why some pipes will go about a foot or two further ingame sometimes

stop fucking downvoting me im right u fucking nerds

having spread on a weapon isn't necessarily bad if you're shooting a shit-tonne of bullets. minigun spread isn't bad because you can expect a certain dps at a certain range on a certain target. smg/pistol are similar but less consistent

Spread is just the most efficient and simplest way to make some weapons have weapon inefficiency based on range. Falloff is also a way of doing this but isn't enough on its own. Spread sucks cause it has RNG in it and can be kinda gay. The minigun is also RNG but its RNG is less severe so it sucks less

An engine nerd (wareya) might wanna confirm the validity of this but: tf2 rounds damage down if it is a decimal, meaning <1 damage per shot will deal 0. If you wanted to remove RNG without touching close range damage and keeping long range shittiness, turn the pistol into a "shotgun" a la the shortstop. Give it a tight spread, even tighter than the current one. Making each pellet fire for ~1.5 damage would make it do the same DPShot (15) as it does now at medium and close range if every pellet hits, while making it so once you get to around the point where minimum falloff is, only one or two pellets will hit meaning it'll do 1 rounding down damage. At best, you might be able to maintain damage at spire-to-choke ranges if you can get perfect tracking for >1 pellet and guarantee a strong 2 damage per second maybe. You could make it cosmetically the same as the current pistol even, just give it one visible tracer or w/e. Seems like it'd remove a lot of the gay from pistol RNG without adding more gay of long range single taps. I don't think people complain about shotgun spam outside of DM servers.

Wari: give it the reflex chaingun thing where it'll hit each spot in the spread once before resetting

yes do this so you can practically revive nospread and make scout cheating great again

CS:GO has a recoil and not a spray pattern.

yes bring pRCS to tf2 we need some innovation

but ya the whole point o fmaking spread random and server side was to stop the retard nospread pootis in pubs