Prone/crouch
Postures that lower the character's profile and movement speed in exchange for reduced visibility, improved weapon stability, or access to low crawlspaces. ARMA 3's full stance system (standing, crouching, prone, each with sub-adjustable body lean) and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare's crouch/prone toggle both use posture as a tradeoff between mobility and stealth or accuracy. Designers use prone/crouch mechanics to add a positioning and risk layer to combat (a prone sniper is harder to spot but slower to reposition), to enable traversal through low gaps that standing height blocks, and to differentiate tactical, slower-paced shooters from run-and-gun ones through how much posture actually matters. Key decisions: how significantly each stance affects visibility, accuracy, and speed (subtle differences feel decorative; meaningful ones make posture a real tactical choice), transition time between stances, whether stance state is visible to other players (some games disguise a crouching player's silhouette, others don't), and interaction with cover systems. Pitfall: posture systems with negligible mechanical difference between stances (crouching barely changes visibility or accuracy) make the feature feel like animation flavor rather than a real tactical tool — the tradeoffs need teeth to justify the extra input complexity.
- Dev effort: Small
- Timing: Real-time
- Common in: shooter, milsim