I don't know, there are too many trolls that spoil the fun, lots of grinding, pay-to win, no respawn, and I really don't dig the current pandemic storyline.

You are not wrong here and crouching is indeed can't be more stealthy than walking usually, a slight lean down might do the trick but not a complete crouch when you practically kissing your knees. Some games do it properly, they add a "sneak" function, or walk/move slower, and even change the animation for silent crouch movement into something believable when a player model stand up a little from crouching position and actually *creep* (move quietly).
Stealth mechanics almost always are broken.
What I personally can't stand is when in first person perspective you *hide* behind a perfectly smooth piece of wall or block (everything is 100% rectangular), the game switches into third person perspective and you can see that your player model head sticks out and enemies don't care to notice it. This breaks any remaining bits of immersion, and most of the time enemies are also utterly blind and extremely slow to react, yet they are super quick to forget and forgive any dead teammates, and highest difficulty don't change anything but your health damage.

It's not much different from the big winding movements in depicted in combat. It's a easier to spot visual for the audience and sometimes looks more dramatic than real-life actions.

Yes. This bugs me too. Moving silently while crouching is harder than while simply moving carefully. It's a really stupid trope.

And here I thought this was a thread about dissecting haiku's and such...

No, I agree, but it's a known cheap and easy mechanism for the most part to make you more involved into what's happening in games that aren't mainly about sneaking or stealthing, usually in action non-rpg games. Because, you know, it's cool to be the silent ninja or James Bond preparing for a sneak attack, while crouching. Easy combo as been said earlier, easier like that when the distinction is clearly noticeable between normal height and crouching, visually, without making it too complicated in an action game.

In reality you would most likely just bow down a little and spread out the legs to provide some stability, though then again, games aren't about realism...

But the that's not the worst offender here; the fact that some action games can't properly implement a silent mode when it's supposed to work in the game, and then makes all kinds of thunderous noise (yes, I'm talking about the annoying dumpsters in CP2077), and still NPC's are completely oblivious to what's happened... that and killing vs not doesn't matter at all.

It's a stealth mechanic that has been copy-pasted since times immemorial. Crouch-walking makes little sense in general, I agree with you. Crouching to hide behind an obstacle or to aim, sure - but in terms of actually walking while keeping a low profile you'd have better luck with walking on all fours or crawling.

There are games that don't fall into this mindless reuse and recycle trap, where "stealth mode" just cuts your movement speed and potentially auto-ducks you when it makes sense (when you are hiding behind a box, for example) - you are walking, but carefully measuring your steps.

In games where stealth is not the main thing, I guess crouch walking is tolerable - but in a game that's all about stealth? Ugh...

In Death to Spies, it actually does. If someone sees you crouching, crawling or generally just acting weird while you're in disguise, they'll know something's up.

It's why I'd prefer more stealth games take the, "Act like you belong approach" instead of the "death machine 4000 sentry" approach.

Nobody is going to question the guy wearing a high vis vest, clipboard/tablet & toolkit.

It's a little known secret that you can get virtually anywhere if you carry a ladder and wear a high vis vest - that's why they don't add them in games! :P

Medieval dungeon guard: "Halt! Who goes there?"
Player: "I'm just a lowly maintenance chap here to replace a burned out light bulb."
Medieval dungeon guard: *Visible 12th century confusion* "Oh, carries thou a ladder? On you go then."

Oh, very well. It isn't entirely universal. That was more based on a DEFCON video I saw about elevator hacking.

OP has a point. If you crouch, you risk letting out a big and noisy fart.

Not only can you be heard, but also smelled.

Imagine a game where you hear dogs that start barking in the distance (downwind) whenever you crouch.

And you can't even save your game. No autosaves or checkpoints either. Combined with a permadeath feature. Really bad game design.

I am actually not quite sure if their is such a thing as crouch walk for stealth only excpet maybe in games that are shooters, crysis for example where you even show your knee's when crouch stealthing

most rpg's be it third or first have perfectly worked out sneak stuff