Why every shooter should have leaning

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Ugh now we're going after jumping? Look, I'll admit you don't need jumping to make a good FPS, but if it came down to jumping or leaning, it's jumping all the way. Leaning is a completely non-essential luxury. Jumping can be used to completely change the level design and gameplay of the whole shooter.

I still haven't seen anything yet that refutes that strafing does the job just fine.

I never said remove jumping. I said that I doubt anyone needs to jump when they're ADS so you can make the jump key (the spacebar) be the "switch" that makes A and D lean instead of strafe only when ADS so you don't need to move your fingers off A and D. Press spacebar while ADS to lean with A/D, release to strafe. It was only one such way of doing leaning that I came up with in about 2 minutes. Or use a side button on a gaming mouse to be the "switch". Or numerous other ways. The point is there's no reason why leaning should add 2 more buttons to the controls when it can just take 1 more button or even none. Leaning actually works best on a controller because you can use the left stick to lean making it super easy to allow for raising and lowering your head along with the standard left/right. I previously went through all the reasons why leaning and strafing allow for different things.

 

[maninahat]

I remember the days when most old school PC FPS games had leaning, even Crysis 1 had leaning.

Pah kids today, I remember System Shock and Thief, which had totally useless "lean forward" buttons.

I like being able to lean, but I find it pointless in console shooters. I've just got into Battlefield 1, and the way it works there is that you get a button prompt to pop out of cover (whether by leaning or by peaking over), but its very temperamental about what counts as cover. It's just one more thing for me to press by accident. (The game isn't that great at integrating tutorials, I played through all the story missions and a couple of hours of the multiplayer before I properly learnt the throw grenade button).

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

I like being able to lean, but I find it pointless in console shooters. I've just got into Battlefield 1, and the way it works there is that you get a button prompt to pop out of cover (whether by leaning or by peaking over), but its very temperamental about what counts as cover. It's just one more thing for me to press by accident.

I find Battlefield to be a rather bad shooter especially on consoles at least. BF4 has an aim-assist that is basically auto-aim making gunfights really poor. Then, its lean mechanic as you said is just as horrible. Any type of contextual controls are bad especially in a competitive environment where any instance of a game doing something you don't want can get you killed. BF's lean mechanic is horrible because it's contextual, only working when your face is against a wall.

Only headshots is super lame.

It makes skill win gunfights and makes camping basically useless, that's win-win.

It's lame, and it takes skill either way. I wonder if that means shotguns are pretty much useless. I love blasting people away with shotguns. MGS4 isn't that good a shooter. Even the perspective sucks for shooting. Really zoomed in when aiming, making it hard to see your sides, you're forced to move slowly while aiming and the camera shakes ridiculously during rapid fire.

Shotguns are actually the most satisfying in MGO2 than any other shooter IMO. It takes 2 to 3 hits to kill via a shotgun but landing a shot within the shotgun's effect range (like 15m) makes the enemy flinch or you can straight-up knock the enemy to the ground if you're really close (like 5m). You can't completely stun-lock an enemy with a shotgun as the timing is setup just right (with shotgun pumping the next round) to allow the other player a chance to land a headshot between shotgun blasts. Thus, you can't stand still and just fire into the other player or else you'll get killed so you have to keep on the move during your 2-3 shots to get the kill. My patented 3-shot flinch kill is the normal standing opening shot, then crouch on my 2nd shot to lower my head, then lean left or right on the 3rd shot to finish the kill moving my head left/right. Or if you're close enough for the knockdown, you just keeping moving basically right on top of the downed player to finish the kill with your 2nd shot. Using a shotgun in MGO2 requires having really great map knowledge along with knowing the shotgun's flinch range to the inch because if you engage in combat just outside of the flinch range, you're pretty much dead. Also, the shotgun is a great counter to the shield, shoot at the exposed legs to cause a flinch and they have almost no chance. Although, the shotgun in the game is the one thing that is actually the most unbalanced in almost a perfectly balanced game, not because headshots rule the game otherwise, but because there's a level 1 skill (using only 1 of your 4 skill slots) that basically allows your character to not flinch which does basically nullify the shotgun's effectiveness. Basically a level 1 skill takes out a level 3 skill. There's other times your character will flinch so the skill was put in for mainly that reason but it so happened to somewhat break weapon balance. If a team knows a player or two on the other team shotguns, then they can all equip that level 1 skill to basically nullify that player. I had 2 clans always run that skill when they were playing my clan because of me but they didn't realize I only shotgunned on certain map/mode combinations that I felt shotgunning was most effective. Anyway, a lot of MGO players are quite annoyed by the shotgun that they will disable the gun in rooms they create and I've also been top player numerous times against top clans running the shotgun to know it's a very effective gun if you know how to use it.