Contextual Button Imputs

[Tayh]

Call-out to Mass Effect 3 for making take cover/revive teammate/use objective all use the same button.
Multiplayer matches have been lost because of this.

I'm in the camp that'd prefer having individual buttons for individual actions. Or at least the option to remap the keys so.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Ground Zeroes' cover system is actually VERY well done. If you walk up to something and collide with it, Snake automatically slides into cover. A very simple pose transition instead of some over-acted 'enter cover' animation. Moving away from cover smoothly detaches him from it. No 'enter/exit' cover buttons needed. If you move left/right respective the wall from your view, he'll track along it to stay in cover(but again, you're never locked to it and can break away at any time). If you're at the edge of a wall or a low cover, you can easily just hold aim and he'll pop around the corner so you can shoot.

Very clean, very intuitive. It doesn't really change any of the functionality of your buttons(aim still aims, move still moves) but it adjusts them to the fact that you're behind cover.

If context actions are implemented WELL, no one complains. There's nothing wrong with contextual actions as a concept, only if they're poorly implemented.

Ground Zeroes has a good contextual cover system but it's still not better than having a cover button. The problem with cover systems a lot of the time is it takes too long to release from cover whereas MGS4 and Ground Zeroes does that wonderfully, press away from cover and you're off of it immediately and very few games actually do that. The contextual cover system works great vs AI enemies. But in an online environment, it will get you killed. I hope they change up the controls for MGS5 because I think they are/were taking input from MGO players. There's a lot of things MGS4 allowed you to do that's not in Ground Zeroes like leaning. Back to cover; shooting from in cover exposes more of your body than shooting behind cover. I want to be able to stand behind a wall with my character touching the wall but not in cover; you'll notice this is what all the top players do in cover shooters because it's disadvantageous to be in the cover system vs just having you character up against a piece of cover. Plus, when you shoot from cover, your body is more exposed AND your character pops out and shoots exactly the same every time so lining up headshots against someone using cover is extremely easy.

 

[Areloch]

Ground Zeroes' cover system is actually VERY well done. If you walk up to something and collide with it, Snake automatically slides into cover. A very simple pose transition instead of some over-acted 'enter cover' animation. Moving away from cover smoothly detaches him from it. No 'enter/exit' cover buttons needed. If you move left/right respective the wall from your view, he'll track along it to stay in cover(but again, you're never locked to it and can break away at any time). If you're at the edge of a wall or a low cover, you can easily just hold aim and he'll pop around the corner so you can shoot.

Very clean, very intuitive. It doesn't really change any of the functionality of your buttons(aim still aims, move still moves) but it adjusts them to the fact that you're behind cover.

If context actions are implemented WELL, no one complains. There's nothing wrong with contextual actions as a concept, only if they're poorly implemented.

Ground Zeroes has a good contextual cover system but it's still not better than having a cover button. The problem with cover systems a lot of the time is it takes too long to release from cover whereas MGS4 and Ground Zeroes does that wonderfully, press away from cover and you're off of it immediately and very few games actually do that. The contextual cover system works great vs AI enemies. But in an online environment, it will get you killed. I hope they change up the controls for MGS5 because I think they are/were taking input from MGO players. There's a lot of things MGS4 allowed you to do that's not in Ground Zeroes like leaning. Back to cover; shooting from in cover exposes more of your body than shooting behind cover. I want to be able to stand behind a wall with my character touching the wall but not in cover; you'll notice this is what all the top players do in cover shooters because it's disadvantageous to be in the cover system vs just having you character up against a piece of cover. Plus, when you shoot from cover, your body is more exposed AND your character pops out and shoots exactly the same every time so lining up headshots against someone using cover is extremely easy.

Hm, a fair point. I hadn't considered the multiplayer angle.
However, given how easy it is to break from cover if you feel it is required, I don't think it'd inhibit anything. If you're concerned popping out from cover exposes too much, you can step back from cover and strafe into position as needed.

Thinking on it further, it would be nice to have the 'fluid stance' type of thing for that situation. If you're aiming with your right stick/mouse from cover, having the left/wasd to fluidly adjust how far you stick out would potentially be a nice addition to it. Have it only work when you're actually aiming while in cover so it doesn't affect movement otherwise.

 

[Gray-Philosophy]

It can be done right, and entirely wrong. I don't mind it in the slightest if done right.

Like others have mentioned regarding cover systems, having one button for ducking behind cover as well as leaping over cover is just silly, that's one button with two completely conflicting actions. I would find it much more logical to have two different buttons for that, perhaps something like a Crouch and a Jump button that also function like an Enter cover and Leap over cover button.

In many games that I play there's usually some manner of semi-universal use/interact button that can pick stuff up, pull levers, talk to people and whatnot, depending on what you look at. Something like that seems perfectly reasonable to me.