Crispy™ What are your thoughts on cover in cRPGs?

[rusty_shackleford]

I noticed a lot of newer cRPGs have been adding cover mechanics(probably due to popularization of the mechanic by the new XCOM games?) and it ends up creating some strange environmental design where there happens to be a bunch of random items cluttered throughout levels to hide behind.

Good? Bad? Something else?

 

[Butter]

If you're going all out with JA2 style tactics, cover is obviously an essential component, but then so are destructible environments. Knights of the Chalice shows that you don't need a cover system if your other systems are developed thoroughly, and it's more engaging than nu-Shadowrun or Vigilantes or Wasteland 2.

 

[Ghulgothas]

The Silent Storm Series set a strong example that too few games these days are wise enough to take from.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

The Silent Storm Series set a strong example that too few games these days are wise enough to take from.

Worth playing?

 

[VGMG]

If it ends up creating what you just described, which most often than not does, I would say it's bad.
Don't believe I've played a game that does it extremely well yet, but it doesn't sound like it's outside the realm of possibility to have cover mechanics without sacrificing the look of an organic environment.
As with most cases the extra investment probably just doesn't feel justified, as I believe most consumers won't even notice or consciously appreciate it.

 

[Shaki]

Cover system makes sense, and is pretty much necessary if the game is focused on guns or other long range low-fantasy options. In games with magic, it depends on the specifics of the game, might be well implemented and justified with lore, or might end up in a situation where theoretically every mage has an equivalent of the uber rocket launcher available to use whenever he wishes, but somehow you can just hide behind a wooden chair and suddenly that explosion of magic energy that was breaking stone walls in a cutscene 10 minutes ago, now has 80% chance to just completely ignore you. Games based on guns usually balance unavoidable AOE by simply making tools like rockets/granades very limited, but in a fantasy it's much harder, so a lot of RPGs just choose the lazy way of making AOE spells subject to hitchance, and end up breaking immersion and looking absolutely retarded.

 

[Dodo1610]

Worth playing?

You won't like it since it's made by the same guy who made the Pathfinder games and had female wehrmacht soldiers 15 years before BF5

 

[J1M]

Cover seems fine for XCOM. I would prefer if it acted as a damage reduction instead of an accuracy reduction. When the math of being in cover is too beneficial, it infests the level design to a point where so much cover is placed that all of the maps feel the same.

For fantasy games it comes across as weird because there are usually already a lot of detrimental rules for archery, like characters being able to travel as far on foot in one turn as the max distance that someone can shoot from, attacks of opportunity, magic armor, etc.

Something that hasn't been explored much is more realistic room and hallway dimensions combined with area of control abilities like grappling and opportunity attacks. Maybe tactical combat isn't fun unless cave tunnels and dungeons have 10 foot wide doors and every room is the size of a hotel lobby?

 

[Pocgels]

Not real big on knights in plate mail having to army crawl from behind a broken-down wagon to a random boulder so they get close enough to throw an incendiary flask into a repeater crossbow nest.

Line of sight and blocked shots are usually enough for fantasy. If there's projectiles that couldn't be blocked by a shield involved, then it's a different story.

 

[mondblut]

Virgin ironmans need to use cover, chad savescummers do without it just fine

 

[gurugeorge]

There seem to be two sides to the cover issue.

The XCOM aspect is more board-gamey, where they rough out a level in plain blocks, getting the distances between the blocks, chokepoints, etc., right for good gameplay first, and then dressing it up in some sort of quasi-realistic setting. In that case, the gameplay layout comes first, and sometimes the blocks of cover can indeed look weird, gratuitous, etc., from a realistic point of view, because they're reaching to find a realistic. cohesive "paint-job" for the placing of the blocks. Plus in strict XCOM board-gameyness, it's all squares, and in real life everything isn't set out rectilinearly, so that can look weird too.

Then on the other extreme, you have more of a simulation, where you have a realistic setting, and the gameplay has to fit willy-nilly into the realistic setting using more realistic rules and gameplay - in that case, cover when it exists doesn't look out of place, and can be at all sorts of realistic angles.

I must admit, once you've played a game with a cover mechanic for a while, not having a cover mechanic seems weird if there's stuff lying around that could potentially give cover/half-cover from a realistic point of view.

As with many things, Troubleshooter has a nice way of doing it: cover can be at diagonals, while having the grid be a grid and the cover marker marking full or half cover over the grid, not the object.

 

[OSK]

Like Shaki said, I think it's a must for any RPG that primarily focuses on firearms. Playing ATOM RPG made me miss Wasteland 2's combat. Not that Wasteland 2's combat is great, but in ATOM RPG the combat just felt stale and dated.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Line of sight good, cover as stat buff bad.

 

[Denim Destroyer]

Tactical mechanics such as bullet penetration and stances should be a staple in any RPG with firearms but sadly has been relegated to strategy games and milsims. Imagine playing ATOM and having bullet actually penetrate through thin surfaces! Would be the best thing ever but sadly not enough people care for these things.

 

[Peachcurl]

I absolutely hate the wall-magnet type of cover systems. But if cover just means you can change your exposed profile and there's decent collision checks for projectiles... that's actually great.

 

[Norfleet]

People don't stay still when they see a grenade or rocket coming their way, they duck or run. Sometimes someone even jumps into a grenade, or kicks it.

Grenades are actually very poor at actually killing enemies, unlike depicted in most such tacticool games. Probably a fair modelling of a grenade in such a tacticool game would be that grenades explode at the end of the enemy's turn. Of course, you would then notice that very few people actually get killed by grenades...which is actually realistic, since the main purpose of throwing a grenade is to flush enemies out from where you threw it. People seem to expect grenades to work like they do on the televitz: Big fireball, bodlies flung through the air...that's not really how it is. Grenades kinda emit a small bang, with no real fire to speak of, and then sharp things too small to easily see go flying through the air, and hit people. This means that a real grenade can actually be contained by a guy jumping on the grenade...and he will likely live if he remembers to also throw his helmet over the grenade as he does so, to contain the fragments.

 

[Arryosha]

Does JA have a decent cover system? I never played it because in the demo I remember having trouble with the cover system--getting shot when it seemed like I should have been in cover. But maybe I was missing something or that experience isn't representative of the full game.

 

[Grunker]

I dislike cover, but I think games such as Dungeon of Naheulbeuk and Troubleshooter at least uses it in a somewhat interesting way, where cover is more of an option or a luxury that something that completely defines movement.

 

[Gregz]

Sticky cover mechanics (Mass Effect 2) are so infuriating that I uninstall whenever I see them.

Strategic cover in isometric cRPGs is usually OK, as long as the cover elements blend well visually with the map.

Games with cover systems that work well, and look right:

• Jagged Alliance 2
• Shadowrun: Dragonfall
• OpenXcom

Games with cover systems that work well, but look 'staged':

• The Dungeon of Naheulbeuk
• Troubleshooter
• XCOM: Enemy Unknown

 

[ERYFKRAD]

The Silent Storm Series set a strong example that too few games these days are wise enough to take from.

Worth playing?

Absolutely.