Critical hits and short-term variance

One of the things that poker and Team Fortress 2 have in common are that encounters are often decided by short-term variance while the game goes to whoever is better on average. In poker you're trying to merge your own range as well as playing against your opponents range and you'll run into the top of your opponents range every once in a while. In TF2 critical hits (especially crockets) will decide the outcome of a fight, even if it's not as extreme as in poker.

I've noticed that as I've become better, I like natural criticals (as opposed to kritzkrieg etc.) less and less. The reason for this is the same reason why criticals are also a good idea: it allows a worse player to beat a better player through randomness. As I wrote in my post on transparency, this is one of the things that make it harder to improve but also keep players in the game. So if new players want criticals and better players don't, you need to implement a system that reduces variance as skill level increases. Something like the resilience stat in World of Warcraft.

There has been a lot of talk about resilience gear in WoW and while I haven't been an active PvPer I think it's a great way to reduce variance to acceptable levels. Playing 3vs3 in arena when you could get killed instantly by two damage dealers on the other team wouldn't be much of a skill-based PvP system. Instead as you move up in the ladder and gain gear you will have a larger health pool as well as resilience to reduce critical hits, letting you live long enough for skill to be a bigger factor.

The only issue is that it becomes really hard for new players to get into the PvP game from PvE since you start with no resilience. This has been fixed with later patches as you can now get PvP gear from badges awarded by killing bosses. It is a MMO after all and Blizzard wants you to keep paying.

If poker players had the opportunity to reduce variance I think they'd like to, losing actual money and not just in-game points can wrench your heart out. In the end, the random factor is also what lets new people into the game. Instead of reducing short-term variance, poker players live on playing more hands and not looking at their account balance too often.

When designing games, considering if and how the game will change between low- and high-level play should be considered, whether it be critical hits, damage spread, spawn locations or some other random factor. What you decide on is not as important as making sure you make informed decisions.