Does anybody prefer lock-on cover systems over passive cover systems in third person games?

[P. K. Qu'est Que Ce]

I hate it so much, so very very much. Like others here, I prefer it either to be a very good context sensitive thing, or best of all, a "Hold it down" system. For something as important as taking cover from death, I want total control. Better yet...

...Fuck cover! We have the tech to do better how. Lets fly around, get vertical, dodge in three dimensions! Lets have more fun, than just huddling behind virtual walls under fire from virtual gunfire. I'd rather fly around and cast spells, or shoot lightning bolts.

 

[JohnnyDelRay]

Different games require different types. If it's a 3rd person shooter like GoW, then hard lock, or hold down to cover is fine. Makes it less messy. However in stealth games, the soft-lock is better, less chance for arbitrary button presses or getting stuck when you don't want to (games like Last of Us, or Batman Arkham games).

I know this thread is about the top two which I feel both have their place, but my favorite? Lean modifier keys. When you are in a firefight, that's what you're supposed to be doing anyway isn't it? To reveal the least of your body to go in and out of cover? But maybe because I play shooters primarily with KB&M.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

I much much much MUCH prefer the "passive" cover

I don't know if it's my slow brain or clumsy fingers or what it is but when I have to press the button to get to cover and then press a button to get out of cover, it just kills the flow I had and generally gets me killed or discovered.

I can't count how many times this has happened to me in Assassins Creed...

Alright, I have that bad guy to stab in the face! Get behind the doorway and wait for him to turn around. He turned! Go Ezio!...Go Ezio!....God damn it, I pressed the button, Go! NO, I don't want you to switch cover, I want you to get out of cover. No! GOD DAMN IT Ezio!!! No, you vaulted the cover, what the fuck are you doing!?!? Get out of cover so I can walk and stab this guy in the face! Damn it! He turned around...

Now contrast that with my Last of Us experience...

Alright, I have that bad guy to stab in the face! Get behind the doorway and wait for him to turn around. He turned! Go Joel! Off the wall, face stab, now let's move on. Boy am I glad that the game doesn't force me to stick to stick on cover like I was a magnet!

Assassin's Creed II/Brotherhood/Revelations had cover mechanics? Wasn't Unity the first to have cover mechanics?

OT: Dammit this thread was meant for me, and now I'm stuck on the second page.

Anyway, yes, I much prefer an actual cover system. It makes the game feel more rhythmic to me. Like Splinter Cell Conviction, the cover system felt really smooth. In contrast, I was never ever able to do a proper over-the-chest-high-wall takedown in Ground Zeroes. I hate it when the game decides whether or not you are in cover.

But I understand people' frustrations with it, so I would like it better if a game both had a cover system and a movement system that is good enough to compensate for not using the cover system.

 

[MysticSlayer]

It's not a passive cover system in ME1, you have to push Shepard into cover. Shepard won't enter cover automatically as Lara does in the reboot Tomb Raiders.

Technically speaking, it isn't fully covered in either from the OP. However, if you had read what I said after the comment about the transition between Mass Effect games, you'd realize Mass Effect falls very comfortably inside what I hate with incredible passion.

For me it gave me manual control of taking cover without the system being bound to the same button as several other functions.

At least in Mass Effect 2 and 3, it would be very hard to actually cause any ambiguity on what the player wants. The fact is, it wasn't just mapping a bunch of actions to one button and then relying on some complicated, obscure game logic to figure things out from context (similar to what the first game had). Directional input, tap vs. hold, and number of taps all gave well-defined, easy-to-learn ways to control the context. If you have trouble getting Shepard to do what you want, then that is completely on you not giving the correct input.

In contrast, the first Mass Effect required the game to determine if you actually wanted to enter/leave cover or not. This could often lead to delays between hitting and entering cover, taking too long to leave cover, entering cover because Shepard happened to graze it on their way past, and/or entering spastic dancing for who knows what reason. All of these could easily lead to unfair deaths, poor "game feel" with regards to movement, and general annoyance. And the worst part is that there was very often little the player could do to avoid it.

Sure, you could probably argue that Mass Effect worked "most" of the time, but the amount of control players had in the latter games and the amount of correctly interpreted actions were significantly improved in Mass Effect 2 and 3 compared to the first.

 

[MysticSlayer]

Wasn't Unity the first to have cover mechanics?

I don't remember if AC2 had it, and I didn't play anything between AC2 and Black Flag. However, Black Flag did have a light cover system where Kenway would enter cover if he got close enough to a corner. Of course this led to situations where he'd enter cover when you really wanted to climb, because apparently running towards a building really meant (to the game) that you wanted to go into cover, not climb it.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

Wasn't Unity the first to have cover mechanics?

I don't remember if AC2 had it, and I didn't play anything between AC2 and Black Flag. However, Black Flag did have a light cover system where Kenway would enter cover if he got close enough to a corner. Of course this led to situations where he'd enter cover when you really wanted to climb, because apparently running towards a building really meant (to the game) that you wanted to go into cover, not climb it.

Sorry, I meant lock on cover systems. I was aware that Kenway could once in a blue moon press up against cover (usually a chimney) and perform cover takedowns.

On another tangent, I forgot to mention Arkham Knight. It's a mix of soft cover and hard cover: you press up against walls when you are near them which decreases the chance of an enemy seeing you, but at corners you have the ability to go into hard cover which places you into a fixed angle and lets you do really OP corner takedowns. For stealth games, this is he preferred cover system.

 

[StatusNil]

The best cover system I have used was in Splinter Cell Conviction. You use left trigger to stick to a wall.

Came here to just to say this, but I've been stealthily pre-empted. That is the Splinter Cell way.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

I don't want the character to press and crouch against everything I get close to. It's kind of clumsy in Metal Gear Solid V. It's gotten me killed in MGO. I don't want to crouch throughout combat like in Tomb Raider either.

I prefer having to go into cover manually, but ideally I want the borders of objects to be easily discernible and the bullets to hit what you see in the reticle, rather than the near object that you're hiding behind, so that I don't have to use the cover system. I want a good manual crouch system in combination with that.

yup this. I have a much higher recall of the passive system fucking me over than the sticky cover ever messing up on me.

I typically do fine with either, but in a hectic environment, passive usually messes me up more, especially if the cover is rounded and you're trying to move along the object.

Idk, I greatly prefer third person so these things have never really bothered me that much, so I could be the wrong person to ask this to.

 

[tippy2k2]

Alright, I have that bad guy to stab in the face! Get behind the doorway and wait for him to turn around. He turned! Go Ezio!...Go Ezio!....God damn it, I pressed the button, Go! NO, I don't want you to switch cover, I want you to get out of cover. No! GOD DAMN IT Ezio!!! No, you vaulted the cover, what the fuck are you doing!?!? Get out of cover so I can walk and stab this guy in the face! Damn it! He turned around...

Assassin's Creed II/Brotherhood/Revelations had cover mechanics? Wasn't Unity the first to have cover mechanics?

I'm not actually sure. My little scenario above was about the guy in Unity but I couldn't remember his name so I threw Ezio in there thinking that the cover mechanic was in all those games...

Whoops

 

[K12]

The important thing about cover systems is that you don't get "stuck" to cover. Passive systems can do this too especially if it's automatic so that snap into cover when you're trying to run past it or jump over it (if the game gives the extreme luxury of jump button of course). The absolute worst is having a lock-on cover system where the lock on button also does everything else.

I actually prefer having to press and hold to go into and stay in cover (like Deus Ex Human Revolution) and automatically detach from it when I let go of the button. This can sometimes be rubbish too if you need to be pressing several other buttons to crouch, aim and shoot at the same time.

 

[Aerosteam]

Whatever the first Mass Effect game had. Yeah. Not that.

 

[Sharia]

I simply don't like cover systems. The way in which I like to take cover (if I must) is to strafe quickly in and out of line-of-sight using whatever might be around.

 

[FalloutJack]

Jack prefers passive, thank you. I'll make my own tricky defense options. After all, every solid environmental object in the wasteland is bullet-proof, laser-proof, plasma-proof, melee-proof, and - in the case of the gamma gun - rad-proof. My only concern, as I stand behind this piece of wood and tin, is the possibility of explosives cropping up in battle, for obvious reasons.

 

[Zhukov]

...and sometimes getting sucked onto a wall without intending to go in to cover, so you would have to give walls and sticky objects a wide berth if you didn't want to automatically go into cover when you don't intend to.

... sticky cover is just nonsense.

... and absolutely infuriating whenever i got stuck to a cover i didn't plan to.

Okay, a lot of you are describing something different to what I mean by passive cover systems.

With the passive systems I'm thinking of, the player character never actually sticks to cover. That's kind of the point.

I was very deliberate with my examples of Tomb Raider 2013 and The Last of Us. To my knowledge they're the only games to have used what I'm talking about.

Whatever the first Mass Effect game had. Yeah. Not that.

ME1 had a lock-on cover system.

Although it was a little bit different to most in that the button to lock on was the move forward button (or controller thumbstick I presume) and to de-lock was move backward rather than having a separate cover button.

 

[IceForce]

The Tomb Raider reboot did this perfectly. You didn't have to be too precise with your movement. Lara would automatically move behind any cover she came near to, adjusting her positioning automatically so as to be out of enemy line of sight.
In fact, it wasn't just 'auto-cover', it was also 'auto-sneak' too. Lara would automatically enter 'sneak mode' whenever an enemy was near that hadn't been alerted yet. -- Yet another awesome feature that worked perfectly and was a massive improvement on a manual 'sneak mode' that a lot of other games do.

I really wish more games would follow Tomb Raider's lead with this type of thing.

I can't count the number of games (which have no cover-snapping system) where I've tried to position myself manually behind cover only to be spotted by an enemy because half of my big toe was poking out. Orrr in games that DO have a cover-snapping system, I end up snapping to the wrong cover, or the wrong side, or I try to move out of cover and accidentally stand bolt upright again (because sneak mode disengaged for whatever reason).
It's frustrating beyond belief how many games get this so so wrong. And I was really damn impressed at how fluid and natural feeling the Tomb Raider cover-based combat was.

 

[Snotnarok]

Hell, freaking no I don't like lock-on cover.

Playing Mass Effect 3 multiplayer and (take this how you will) because of stupid porting and console button limitations: RUN, USE, REVIVE, COVER, VAULT are all the same single button. So try to revive a friend? Cling to a wall, trying to run away? Cling to a wall, then another.

Maybe if it was another button it'd be better, but I rarely found myself using it anyway and just applied soft cover (just standing behind cover) 90% of the time.

 

[Bat Vader]

I prefer lock on. Passive cover just feel like it's taking control of my character away from me. Plus I've died too many times having to deal with passive cover systems.

 

[Zhukov]

If you were being shot at, would you constantly crouch low from cover to cover or would you stand up straight and run to cover as fast as you can?

I would crouch. In fact, I would crawl on my belly as low as I could possibly get.

Incidentally, that's what the military teaches. If under fire, you stay as low as you can. Even if you're behind cover since in the real world cover often isn't guaranteed to stop a bullet. The major exception is if you have to cross a large open space, in which case they teach you to alternate between sprinting and crawling. Sprint for about three seconds to cover maximum distance, then drop and crawl for about ten metres so when you pop up for your next sprint you won't be in the same place you dropped.

I don't think the game needs to be playing itself. I want to decide when to crouch and when to dash for safety.

Except she doesn't go any slower while crouched. There's no downside.

I've been wondering, does crouching actually muffle your footsteps any more than stepping lightly?

No. If anything you'll make more noise by crouch-walking. How much noise you make when walking depends on the time between your foot touching the ground and that foot taking your full weight. (Also what surface you're walking on of course, but that's another matter.) The longer the time, the less noise. Doing that is harder when crouched, if only because you won't be used to walking like that.

It's just a video game thing. Crouching tends to double as move slower (and thus quieter) and hide behind low objects.

 

[IceForce]

If you were being shot at, would you constantly crouch low from cover to cover or would you stand up straight and run to cover as fast as you can?

As Zhukov said above, at least in the case of Tomb Raider it makes no difference. Lara moves at the same speed in either case.
It's been a while since I played it, but if I'm remembering correctly there's a "scramble" ability that causes her to dash/lurch in a desired direction, and the speed of this maneuver is the same regardless of whether she's crouched or standing up (Which makes sense, otherwise the auto-crouch feature would hamper your ability to quickly move out of danger.)