Hypothetical "tacticool" game innovations

[Pulp Hero]

The "tacticool" realistic shooter genre is stale. Everyone runs around with modded weapons and costumes and acts like retards.

So list some innovations you think would actually change the genre, rather than just add a new weapon type.

My idea is the "Buddy-Team": In a standard team-deathmatch style game, players are randomly paired up with someone else on their team. Instead of getting points for kills, players get points for their buddy's lifespan. And to encourage people to fight rather than just hide, players only get points if their team wins by getting the overall highest kill-count. Players can drag wounded buddies and heal them (ala 'Army of Two' 'L4D' and others). You would get the standard amount of retards and TKers, but you could only rank up, not down- so being stuck with a dumbass won't hurt your rank.

[Stark]

That gametype would be a minor mod for Gears2 if it was on PC yet. Cool idea, similar to a few UT2k4 mods I played back in the day.

I'd like to see player- and attack-interruptible animations. If I'm reloading and a guy comes round the corner, I want to hit pistol, drop my rifle, draw my sidearm and fire, then have to pick up the rifle once the dust settles (and perhaps the magazine). If you get shot or fall down or something while reloading, the magazine should be dropped and the weapon unloaded. I'd like to see 'per-pocket' inventory where you outfit your guys not using giant 'gun' slots but by mounting it on your guy and where you put it affects the animation required to interact with it which would make things like pistols and nades easy to work with but things stashed at the bottom of a backpack more difficult, allowing a bit of 'impractical under fire' to show through. This leads directly into destroyable equipment; my absurd FCS and HUD and super-jump boots or whatever can be damaged or destroyed. Obviously not a huge factor depending on the player damage model, but I'm tired of games with giant antennae or full-face masks that only break WHEN YOU'RE DRAMATICALLY DEAD OH NO. Being forced to ditch broken equipment and replace it in the field would make the game less about hitpoints and more about equipment and the capability it provides.

And I don't think the 'tactical' genre is stale; it's almost nonexistent. Most games simply use the cachet of 'omg real gun namezzz' and 'w00t acog = +50 accuracy' to be tacticool. It's a STYLE of shooter these days, not a design philosophy, and it sucks shit.

[MKSheppard]

I'd like to see player- and attack-interruptible animations. If I'm reloading and a guy comes round the corner, I want to hit pistol, drop my rifle, draw my sidearm and fire, then have to pick up the rifle once the dust settles (and perhaps the magazine).

I'd implement it like this (if it was CoD4)

Number Key 1: Regular Switch of Primary/Secondary Weapon; you stow it in your holster, or sling it around your back.
Number Key 2: Rapid Switch of Primary/Secondary Weapon; you drop the weapon you're holding on the ground so that you can rapidly pull out your pistol or SPAS-12.

[Stark]

It isn't even that hard; just use the press/hold duality console games have used for more than a decade.

[MKSheppard]

It isn't even that hard; just use the press/hold duality console games have used for more than a decade.

Fuck consoles. We have a 101-key keyboard, let's use it.

[Stark]

Why? Let's all go play Falcon 4? No. Simple interface = better. Saying 'lol is console must be bad' is fucking retarded.

[MKSheppard]

Simple interface = better.

Except with a 101 key keyboard, you don't have to do retarded "double mappings" that you have to do in consoles in order to fit all the commands needed into six buttons.

And I like how you strawman "I want to take advantage of more keys on a PC keyboad" into "LOL, I WANT FALCON 4"

Saying 'lol is console must be bad' is fucking retarded.

Except they're responsible for the recent downgrading of games' scope and scale in order to fit them on consoles. Even the cheapest fartknocker computer sold the last couple of years has 1 GB of RAM, while the XBrick 360 is permanently limited to 512 MB of memory.

This forces a lot of compromises; like much smaller maps, etc.

[Stark]

Irrelevant. Go away; using 80 buttons when you could do it with 5 isn't 'innovation', it's 'lazy controls' or 'bad design'. Using less buttons is BETTER unless doing so makes things HARDER. Your childish bias against consoles is amusing, but a complete red herring. This thread is about 'innovation' not 'use heaps of buttons to no benefit' or 'I hate consoles'.

[MKSheppard]

Irrelevant. Go away; using 80 buttons when you could do it with 5 isn't 'innovation', it's 'lazy controls' or 'bad design'.

Again with the "Shep wants more granularity in his game controls, so OF COURSE HE WANTS FALCON 4 COMPLEXITY LOLOLOL" strawman.

Using less buttons is BETTER unless doing so makes things HARDER.

Not when they have the possibility of causing fuckups, like your example of "press/hold" duality.

Keeping the Fast/Slow weapon swap on separate keys minimizes screwups, while mapping both actions to the same button increases screwups.

Your childish bias against consoles is amusing, but a complete red herring.

Way to ignore the key point I raised, like consoles being horribly crippled when it comes to memory; 2 GB beats 512MB any day of the month.

[Ryan Thunder]

1. Debilitating injuries rather than hitpoints. Sort of like Stark's idea with equipment damage.

2. Bleedout timers. Every injury starts a bleedout timer. When the timer runs out, you die.

So if I get shot in the leg, I immediately fall down "prone." I can still attack, but I can only move very slowly (if at all!), until the bleedout timer runs out and I die. Shooting me again in another location will shorten the timer (so, shooting me in the foot again won't do much, but shooting my chest or arms will speed my demise.)

3. Magazines that don't fill themselves for you. So, say I have a magazine with four rounds left, and two full magazines of 7.62mm or whatever; if I reload my gun, I have a full mag in my gun, another full mag and a mag with 4 shots left in it. Picking up a mag with 6 rounds left means I have a full mag, a mag with four shots, and a mag with 6 shots left, rather than a full mag and a 10-shot mag.

[weemadando]

In relation to the weapon switching thing - SWAT 3 had a good reloading mechanic along these lines. If you emptied a mag, you'd simply drop it straight out and slap a new one in. If you were doing a reload of a partially expended mag, then you would swap it for one in a pouch - taking a bit longer to do it. Some mods added stuff like mag-clips so you could quickly swap mags once and then had to go to the next one in a pouch.

Army of 2, for all the shittiness that it contained did have some good ideas - the "physical contact" set-ups were good (two guys one riot shield) and the terribly done "back to back" pieces. I'd like to see a system where a team working properly (ie covering multiple sectors, moving cohesively) got some form of advantage in game to represent this. In some games it's a natural advantage to work this way (OFP, ARMA, SWAT), but for the most part it doesn't... I don't know how to fix it, but it'd be nice.

Damage instead of hitpoints would be awesome. Have a guy with injured legs? Be ready to carry him everywhere. Injured arms? He might be able to use his weapon, he might not, but he's still a member of your team that you can't leave behind.

In fact, that would be my big thing - REWARD UNIT COHESION AND ACTUAL TEAMWORK. Make workign as a team essential, not just nice.

[weemadando]

It isn't even that hard; just use the press/hold duality console games have used for more than a decade.

Remember Army of 2, when we were busy fist-bumping each other to death instead of meleeing the enemy right next to us? Sometimes controls need slightly more definition.

In this case though a simple "press to drop and grab side arm" and "press and hold to sling and draw sidearm" would probably work. But it would never make it past focus testing because people are used to "press and hold" being a drop weapon mechanic, despite the fact that in this case time is of the essence.

[Stark]

Again with the "Shep wants more granularity in his game controls, so OF COURSE HE WANTS FALCON 4 COMPLEXITY LOLOLOL" strawman.

Is this how you prove using more keys is better, when the downsides are obvious (increased complexity, limited keys in reach, depreciated features etc)?

Not when they have the possibility of causing fuckups, like your example of "press/hold" duality.

That would be the whole 'unless it reduces usability' aspect. Do try to read; my point is that needlessly using more keys is not good design and combining common functions is good - I'd argue that with reloading being forced to hold the button down for a large fraction of a second actually ADDS to the game, because it limits your ability to circlestrafe/jump/aim carefully/whatever while doing so. How does it hurt?

Keeping the Fast/Slow weapon swap on separate keys minimizes screwups, while mapping both actions to the same button increases screwups.

Prove it. It's not my fault you play fuck all games and then pontificate on what does/doesn't work based on complete ignorance.

Way to ignore the key point I raised, like consoles being horribly crippled when it comes to memory; 2 GB beats 512MB any day of the month.

You do know what a 'red herring' is right? PROTIP - pc vs console is a red herring because it's totally irrelevant to this thread. Get off your soapbox and fuck off.

Ando, R6 way back in the 90s had 'magazine awareness'. It was too hard for compulsive reloaders, so it's faded away.

[Stark]

Remember Army of 2, when we were busy fist-bumping each other to death instead of meleeing the enemy right next to us? Sometimes controls need slightly more definition.

Wrong. Combining DIFFERENT functions is stupid (like 'power off' and 'reset' on a console, like PS2) but combining SIMILAR functions on one button is less objectionable (ie, 'draw slowly' 'draw quickly' is the same action and the absolute worst that can happen is that you end up with the gun in your hand like you wanted).

In this case though a simple "press to drop and grab side arm" and "press and hold to sling and draw sidearm" would probably work. But it would never make it past focus testing because people are used to "press and hold" being a drop weapon mechanic, despite the fact that in this case time is of the essence.

That's why it's 'innovation', because it'll never appear in a retail game.

[weemadando]

Mag awareness in R6 never bothered me because I rarely used a full mag during the course of a mission (unless I was using an MP5 to breach a door) because there wasn't goddamn clown-car terrorism and spawning enemies back then. I knew roughly how many people I was up against and knew that if I did a Mozambique drill on them with my MP5 that they would goddamn well drop.

Sadly, that kind of thing has disappeared, and now what happens is that you go in, there's X^3 enemies there (where X is the amount that you were told would be there or could realistically be expected to be there even if the goddamn Russkies were going Red Dawn on the place) and shooting an enemy twice in the body and once in the head , rather than being a fairly terminal experience for them instead seems to be liberating, pulling them out of a shitty AI idle routine, and make them begin toshout and me and then duck into cover and begin a long firefight that wastes a lot of ammo on both sides.

[Havok]

It isn't even that hard; just use the press/hold duality console games have used for more than a decade.

Fuck consoles. We have a 101-key keyboard, let's use it.

Uh no. Having 101 key controls, or even half that, doesn't make a game more innovative. It just makes the controls for a game more complicated.

[Vendetta]

Except with a 101 key keyboard, you don't have to do retarded "double mappings" that you have to do in consoles in order to fit all the commands needed into six buttons.

Except people want everything on six buttons anyway because it means less hand movement, and faster response if you need to suddenly change plan and do something else.

[Laughing Mechanicus]

Judging by some of the suggestions in this thread I think some people are confusing "think of innovative ways to improve tactical games" with "shoehorn poorly thought out 'realism' features into the game".

1. Debilitating injuries rather than hitpoints. Sort of like Stark's idea with equipment damage.

2. Bleedout timers. Every injury starts a bleedout timer. When the timer runs out, you die.

So if I get shot in the leg, I immediately fall down "prone." I can still attack, but I can only move very slowly (if at all!), until the bleedout timer runs out and I die. Shooting me again in another location will shorten the timer (so, shooting me in the foot again won't do much, but shooting my chest or arms will speed my demise.)

Debilitating injuries have been in a few games before. Operation Flashpoint specifically did the "leg injury = forced prone" thing and all it accomplished was being bloody annoying. Is it fun to be forced to crawl around prone? no - then what does it teach the player? nothing; they already know not to get shot because they die and need to try again. Under this system a debilitated player will just load a saved game/commit suicide anyway - you've basically just made the process of "dying" from certain injuries more annoying and time wasting for no good reason. The "ActionQuake/Half-Life" series of mods had a much less severe injury system: a leg injury reduced player speed and caused them to leave a blood trail, players still just commitied suicide to respawn when injured.

"Bleedout timers" have also been done in many games, although always with the ability to "bandage" the bleed to stop it; without that ability it is just a pointless death timer which will just lead to more players suiciding/reloading/being annoyed. Considering bleeding/bandaging was one of the much touted features of FarCry2 and has been in plenty of other games/mods it doesn't really count as "innovative".

3. Magazines that don't fill themselves for you. So, say I have a magazine with four rounds left, and two full magazines of 7.62mm or whatever; if I reload my gun, I have a full mag in my gun, another full mag and a mag with 4 shots left in it. Picking up a mag with 6 rounds left means I have a full mag, a mag with four shots, and a mag with 6 shots left, rather than a full mag and a 10-shot mag.

Managing your magazines during battle is something that has been tried, but the implementation was pretty much always rubbish and made people hate the feature. Most often it was done "silently" with no GUI element to warn the player - so the first time they realise it was happening is when they slap a (previously used) new magazine into their weapon at a critical moment only to discover it only has 2 rounds in it (and they just reloaded from a mag that had 6!). Now in reality our jack-booted Rainbow 6 stormtrooper would pull the mag out of his webbing, feel the weight of it, decide it's probably nearly empty and pick another one. Without some method for the player to make a determination like that then all this system does is make the game still stupid and unrealistic, but in a new and novel way!

Stark is definitely on the right track with the idea of giving more functional "depth" to certain actions - you could apply that to this "magazine management" feature easily; a single press of the reload key would cause the player character to automatically grab the fullest magazine they have and load it, but if the player holds down the reload key for a short time then it would bring up a basic quick select menu which shows you all the magazines you are carrying for that weapon plus how full they are - you then choose one to load specifically (if you want, you could just be checking your ammo). You could extend this further by allowing the player to use this menu to discard certain magazines - for examples if you have 3 magazines which only have 1-2 rounds in each, you would probably rather discard them so that once your other magazines are empty you will automatically switch to a backup weapon rather than reloading again only to find yourself with a near useless number of rounds.

Anyway thats all very detailed and probably adds way to much complexity for most tactical shooters, but the beauty of a system like that is the depth is tailored to how much people care - if they want to they can completely ignore it and just hit the reload key to get a new magazine.

Army of 2, for all the shittiness that it contained did have some good ideas - the "physical contact" set-ups were good (two guys one riot shield) and the terribly done "back to back" pieces. I'd like to see a system where a team working properly (ie covering multiple sectors, moving cohesively) got some form of advantage in game to represent this. In some games it's a natural advantage to work this way (OFP, ARMA, SWAT), but for the most part it doesn't... I don't know how to fix it, but it'd be nice.

Damage instead of hitpoints would be awesome. Have a guy with injured legs? Be ready to carry him everywhere. Injured arms? He might be able to use his weapon, he might not, but he's still a member of your team that you can't leave behind.

In fact, that would be my big thing - REWARD UNIT COHESION AND ACTUAL TEAMWORK. Make workign as a team essential, not just nice.

The thing is, most games already reward unit cohesion (i.e. sticking together, sticking to assigned roles) and teamwork - in an online game an organised team will always totally demolish a disorganised team, even a handful of players working together in a larger game can often have a hugely out of proportion effect on the games result (ref: World in Conflict).

The problem, however, is that the vast majority of this kind of game (in multiplayer anyway) is played on public servers with a bunch of random morons. There's not really a feature that can fix that. The closest thing I can think of would be tying the players success or failure - which must be made meaningful in the long term with something like a global experience/unlocks system - entirely to the success or failure of their team, so if your team wins you advance but if it loses you get nothing. This might encourage teamplay, but it will also have ugly side effects as long term players of the game will almost certainly harass new and inexperienced players in an attempt to make them leave their team, because their presence would increase the "risk" of the team losing.

It's a really tough problem to solve, it's probably the core challenge in designing a team-based multiplayer game.

Personally I think Stark's idea of allowing the player to customise the arrangement of carried kit is a good one; players already enjoy messing about with avatars and their appearance (usually out of the game) allowing them to tweak something like this where there is A) a tangible but limited in-game effect and B) no "right" combination would be quite satisfying. Not to mention you could sell different styles of webbing as DLC... so Ubisoft should love it.

I have some ideas of my own on this - I'll post those later.

[CaptHawkeye]

I'm not sure where the notion that "sim/tactical shotzz must be 80 buttons" anyway. I can't help but think it's just a nostalgic holdover from the days of "Pre-Consoles" when systems had some 3 buttons or so with no pressure/time sensing. Thus games of any real depth simply had to be on the PC for lack of competitive hardware on consoles. This encouraged precisely zero-innovative thought into control design though. Since it's way easier for a developer to just map every function to one key after another than critically analyze or adapt to his different resources.

It's been years since HMS Dreadstation though, and we've come to obtain controllers with waaaaay more functionality. Modern controllers are limited in quantity to a keyboard but frankly, they've got things keyboards have fuck all clue about. (Which would be the aforementioned pressure/time sensitive buttons for one. Other things like sliding triggers, ergonomic design, etc.)

Ash, it amuses me to watch people just add features for the sake of adding features. I love Flashpoint but I actually use it as an example of how *not* to do damage modeling. I mean, Flashpoint's vehicles used silly health bars too.

As for tac-innovations. I'd argue that you don't really need to be innovate, since a lot of established tactical shooters have good ideas. They just need to combine all of those good ideas in some meaningful fashion. I'm partial to AA's suppression and fire support system, which successfully places emphasis on avoiding fire in the first place. Battlefield isn't tactical, but the concept of a "spawn on squad leader" or other forward spawn system gives the game way better pacing. Gears has some seriously good character controls which allow for tight co-ordination yet still avoid wildly uncharacteristic run n gun Counter Strike isms. Like I said before though, if you're going to have these things you've got to make sure that...

A. They make sense in the context of the game.

B. They aren't complex to a point of counter-productivity.

C. They weren't broken in the first fucking place.

[Laughing Mechanicus]

Here's an idea I have toyed with for tacticool games before:

It is basically a way have an "RPG" style advancement system that fits the military theme slightly more elegantly than a standard "pen-and-paper" stats based approach.

The basic idea is that a players characters abilities are based on the skills he has learned in-game, as with normal "levelling" systems, except the difference is that these skills take the form of specific new gameplay features instead of simple gradual stats improvements.

The easiest example of how this would work would be with weapons. There would be a variety of "qualifications" available for weapons and each of these would change how the player uses weapons in the game. The most basic type would be a qualification to use a specific type of weapon, for example an "assault rifle qualification". When a player learns this qualification it would allow him to equip himself with assault rifle type weapons (at the ubiquitous mission loadout screen) and grant them the ability to use the very basic functions of weapons of that type (reloading, using the iron sights etc...).

The reason getting weapon qualifications would be important is that if the player attempts to use a weapon they are not qualified for then they will really suck at it. Let's say you pick up a light machine gun during a mission before you are qualified with them; the players character will act like a person who has never used an LMG before - for example reloading it might take a long time and force the players camera to closely examine the weapon while doing it (along the lines of the "first aid" animations from FarCry2) perhaps even requiring some input from the player requiring them to press several buttons to get it reloaded. This is a punishment to discourage the player from venturing outside his "skill set" but still allows some use of all of weapons for emergencies.

Now, once you have the qualification for a certain type of weapon it would open up further functions you can unlock for them in a skill-tree. The most basic might be a set of weapon specific qualifications, for example an "M-16 proficiency". When a player learns this qualification it will unlock more "features" for M-16 type weapons - perhaps allowing them to look down the iron sights while moving, or allowing them to reload it while on the move. There could also be more generic types of ability the player could take, like "Bayonet Training" which would apply to a whole weapon type.

From here you can imagine the ways this system could be extended into other aspects of the gameplay. For example the player could take "Urban Training" which allows them to perform new actions like shooting around corners. You could possibly even have an entire "cover system" which the player can unlock through training by gradually adding various skills their roster like leaning, blind firing, quick cover switching etc... If we are talking about a story driven singleplayer game then you could have some skills that only a certain character can teach you - so if you save your teams sniper's ass in a mission then maybe afterwards he will teach you how to steady your aim with controlled breathing or how to estimate the range to targets.

Hopefully that explanation is clear, but to put it briefly the basic idea is to show the player characters skills progressing from those of a raw recruit to a highly experienced soldier who knows all the "tricks". I didn't say much about how you would earn the experience to unlock these qualifications and that's because it wouldn't matter especially.

Ash, it amuses me to watch people just add features for the sake of adding features. I love Flashpoint but I actually use it as an example of how *not* to do damage modeling. I mean, Flashpoint's vehicles used silly health bars too.

Actually Flashpoint did use the same "hitpoints" style health system for infantry too - they just hid the health bar for infantry and added the additional location specific injury effects.

[Stark]

Insane perk trees are just another way to massively unbalance the game. That sort of thing is fine in SP, but in MP is just a disaster. In general I think some ideas are more 'naturally' successful than others, and requiring characters to go through a series of hoops to acquire abilities just means in an hour after launch there'll be a FAQ on gameFAQs about the best-path through the hoops and it becomes irrelevant.

[Laughing Mechanicus]

Well I have to admit that thinking all that up I was thinking of a singleplayer game along the lines of the older Rainbow 6 games. To do a system like that in MP I would say you would need to do something like Planetside, where each perk is relatively quick to unlock but the player is allowed a limited number of them - so they have to mix and match what they want.

[Stark]

It'd be great in an SP game (especially a team-based or team-management game like Silent Storm or UFO) but even in a long enough SP game you'd need to have some limit on the number of qualifications/maximum total familiarity/a degrade rate or people will eventually just 'max out' all the useful bits. Either rationing the available choices for qualifications (ie, not giving enough 'training' to take everything) or putting in degradation or overhead (ie King Sniper loses 20% of all skill points to maintain his aptitude) would mitigate this.

This sort of thing in multi is really interesting (because people do have styles and expressing that is good) but balancing it in some contexts (like an RTS) is difficult. I think you're right in your suggestion; the CoD4 system where you 'earn' perks and can only 'use' a selection at a time is fine in principle, however poorly-thought out that selection is.

[Mr Bean]

You can get around that problem in MP Stark by going semi-class based. Your MP classes could be say "Rifleman" as a generalist class which could use the most number of weapons, "Assault" which would have total knowledge of AR's, SMG's and knowledge of useful utlility items like door-breaching explosives and an automatic feedback.

Let me expand on this, *Edit, damn submit instead of preview, stand by while I edit this in.

There are in tactical shooters(Assuming modern day) a large amount of equipment and weapons which can be used to base your skills around. To much in fact, best to concentrated on say six different assault rifles(Ak-74M for the Russians, Type 95 for the Chinese, G-36 for the Germans, SA-80's for the Brits, M16A2 for the American's and AK-47's for everyone else), add in a few light machine guns for the various nations(RPK, MG-3, M249 ect) plus the standard side-arms of everyone. Now add in the various special forces SMG's, the pistols and your good to go for weapons(Minus shot-guns).


Now your class based system will be your "class" will be a three parter through quick select. First nationality, second Branch(Armor, Airforce, Infantry) if it's infantry only then it's limited to infantry.

Once you picked your nation(Automatic qual and default kit), your branch/your specialty

A German, Infantryman could pick from say,Assault(CQB-Door breaching charges use, flashbangs) Scout(Less Ammo plus bionics, better camouflage and prehaps training in setting bobytraps), Grenadier Medic(Obvious, standard loadout) Riflemen(Sniper eh) Special Forces(Explosives, silenced weaponry or Veteran(Basic familiarity with everyone's guns, basic familial with nearly all devices)

Say each gun counts as a "weapon skill" Certain weapons are harder or easier to learn. Instead of SP slowly building up familiarization with each gun, instead you start as either "Expert" "Certified" "Novice" or "Untrained" Call the ranks whatever you like. Point is you only start out as Certified(The base state) with your main weapon, your side-arm plus whatever one or two skills you got from your class. Scouts and Snipers are free to ditch their rifles and run into battle with a fallen soldiers LMG but not wearing the harness needed for ammo they only have the one belt/box loaded with an extra's going into Stark's idea of gear based. So your sniper is running forward with his one loaded belt or box or drum of ammo and the rest slung over his shoulder. Diving will lose all that extra ammo and he's got no place to hold more than a few grenades of various kinds.

In single player you'd be choosing your load out(Guile Suit, Standard BDU w/without harness, or support harness). In MP your loadout is chosen for you, your free to pick up that fallen soldier's g-36 but being say a Chineese soldier you might have issues reloading it or be less accurate since the sights are not set for you and your combat harness can't hold the ammo, it's not designed for those kind of clips so the extra's go into belt pouches which you likely already have grenades in.


Lots of stuff you could do with that.

[Singular Intellect]

One thing that pisses me off is what Stark brought up, which is redundant control setups and practically useless key functions. I'm all for numerous key binding possibilities, but would really appreciate it if companies did so intelligently.

A couple of bad examples would be Grand Theft Auto 4; it has seperate key binding options for changing weapons while on foot and in a vehicle. Why not just key bindings for changing weapons, regardless of player position or what they are operating?

If I see the control setup giving me the option to bind a key to entering a vehicle and a key for exiting a vehicle, I get annoyed. You only need one for fuck's sake.

Another example is Far Cry 2; it employes a toggle key for the crouch position. Which is great...if they had made that feature itself a toggle.

Battlefield 2 did a good thing by introducing (for me anyhow) the feature of pressing your forward key for walking, and a double tap and press puts you into run mode.

A good example for input controls would be Crysis; with a single key, you have a 'interact' system. I can enter and leave vehicles, pick up ammunition, pick up and throw any object, grab and throw enemy units, activate computer consoles, open/close doors and maybe one or two other options I missed. All with one key, and all it took was an intelligent targetting reticle.