Right now we have keys for "prone" "crouch" and "stand".
I feel that the "stand" key is unnecessary. Here is how a lot of games, including ArmA3, do it.
keyPRONE = prone
keyCROUCH = crouch
keyJUMP = jump/vault/activate
stance "prone" - press "keyPRONE" - character stands up
stance "prone" - press "keyCROUCH" - character goes crouched
stance "prone" - press "keyJUMP" - character stands up
stance "crouch" - press "keyPRONE" - character goes prone
stance "crouch" - press "keyCROUCH" - character stands up
stance "crouch" - press "keyJUMP" - character stands up
stance "stand" - press "keyPRONE" - character goes prone
stance "stand" - press "keyCROUCH" - character goes crouched
stance "stand" - press "keyJUMP" - character jumps
When the "keyJUMP" also works to activate contextual menus (open doors, pick stuff up, etc.) the game should assume that the player wants to use it for that when an action is available.
Player crouched in front of a door with the open door icon showing, the door should open and the player shouldn't stand up.
I can see a problem in a scenario where a player is crawling through a sea of items and wants to use the "keyJUMP" to stand up and not pick stuff up. In that scenario the player should use the "keyPRONE" to stand up.
DayZ has the "sit" stance. Getting out of the sit stance with other stance keys:
sit - "keySIT" - stand
sit - "keyPRONE" - prone
sit - "keyCROUCH" - crouch
sit - "keyJUMP" - stand (while accommodating contextual menu actions)
You can leave a dedicated "stand" key in the game for the players that wish to use it.
This is how its been done in most FPS games and people expect it (at least I do).
You free up 1 key around the WASD keys which is significant. Between ingame voip, TS push to talk, steam overlay etc. there aren't that many keys left. I know my control layout would get improved by this.
I do not see how this would conflict with the current DayZ control scheme or why it was done like this in the first place.
Only thing I can think of is that because of the desync and clunkyness DayZ is sometimes very unresponsive and someone wanting to go prone might be inclined to mash the "keyPRONE". If those actions are queued up an undesired result might happen.
To avoid this there should be some logic to how player inputs are handled. You should be able to mash the "keyPRONE" to go prone. It should only start working as a stand up key when it is pressed when the player is already prone and not just queue them up (I've seen very few games do this).
Its more intuitive this way. TBH ATM I can't even think of a game with a dedicated "stand" key.