For the uninitiated, crouch jumping is a mechanic where you can increase the height of ledges you are able to jump on by holding crouch after jumping, like a simulation of pulling your legs up in real life.
I never really thought much about it growing up, some games had it, some didn't, but it always felt natural/intuitive, and today I feel like it is a way to increase the ceiling of player movement by a simple combination of two existing movements.
However I've heard that some people dislike it, and some actively hate it. Some of the arguments I've heard is that if a player needs to be able to get somewhere, then ledges should be lower and not gated, and that the whole mechanic is useless and just introduces an extra button press for no reason.
I can see the merit in some points, and others I feel like are nitpicky, but I'm interested in broadly knowing how Lemmy feels about it.
Like all game mechanics, it can be implemented in a clumsy way, or as part of a rewarding movement system.
I think that skeuomorphism in games is a decent accessibility feature for people just getting into games, but also video games have been a cultural staple for decades, so it's not really that necessary that games mimic real movement anymore.
I don't have a good crouch-jump example, but games like Quake have taken jump movement tech to a crazy level, originally intended or not.
https://redirect.invidious.io/watch?v=XhzK5fL1mj0
Quake movement raises the ceiling for sure, I saw a graph once showing the optimal angles for bunnyhopping and it seems crazy precise.
Accessibility is always a concern, which is why I'm glad Black Mesa introduced an auto-crouchjump option for those that want or need it, but generally I think it is a good thing when the range of things a player can do is expanded.