Weapon swap speed buff needed! - those numbers tell why

[blueThunder24]

I'm not good at writing thus I will make only a brief introduction.

Weapon swapping speed is an old issue which becomes even more a hindrance when our dear DE releases more and more weapons which seem to be designed to work efficiently with a second supporting firearm. Namely Lenz and those new fancy sniper pistols as well as all other launchers and sniper rifles we are already familiar with.

I knew that those times are bad and they seemed inconsistent but as far as I know nobody knows exact numbers so an idea came to my mind to use some science in warframe, and here I will present my results.

A simple measurement made using stopwatch - manually so we have to take into account some scope of error but I think that the results should be reliable enough.
Almost all research have been done in Simulacrum using random weapons - I just drew some gun with quite sustained fire mode and while firing I was tapping weapon swap hotkey and measuring a time to the moment when a second weapon started to fire - most time I had to tap fire button again (during swaping) so next weapon would start firing automatically.

To not repeat "about" word note that all those numbers are approximate and averaged - and feel free to correct me if get different results.

1. No weapon swap speed mods installed.

Times seem to not be related to any particular firearm, thus:

• Swapping from primary to secondary takes 2.0 seconds
• Swapping from secondary to primary takes 1.6 seconds

It's interesting that drawing a supporting gun actually takes longer.

Now when it comes to melee, weapon type matters - but only when we're sheathing it to draw from the holster our secondary or primary gun - it doesn't matter what firearm type we have.
When we're unsheathing melee weapon an animation may be long but tapping melee attack key allow our frame to strike as soon as it starts grabbing the handle. It was too hard to measure it precisely but it seems to take about 0,5 seonds to be able to strike with melee after tapping swap weapon hotkey.

Now results for:

Sheathing: heavy blade, hammer, whip, machete and one-handed sword
takes 2.25 s

Sheathing: dual swords, gunblade, tonfas    
takes 1.8 s

Sheathing: blade-whip, nunchaku 
takes 1.65 s

Sheathing: fist weapon, single or dual daggers
takes 1.5 s

Sheathing: polearm, scythe, rapier, claws and sword with shield
takes 1.4 s

Sheathing: sparring weapon, glaive and nikana
takes 1.3 s

All of this takes longer than full charging the unmodded Lenz!

2. Results with weapon swap speed mods installed.

Here I found out that weapon swap speed has a cap, no matter what mod configuration I used I couldn't get less than about 0,8 seconds! Everyone who is using bow or other weapon with charging mechanics knows how long is 1 second and 0.8 s is still a lot! 

This cap can be reached by using both Speed Holster aura and exilus mod Streamlined Form or by using weapon specific mod from conclave or Conculyst whose give 200% holster rate. This way we gain 0.8-0.9 s on primary <=> secondary and most melees. Sheathing heavy weapons, one-handed swords and machetes takes 1.25 s then.

I didn't make more detailed research with mods - using a single mod just gives some values in between.

3. Inconsistencies.

Now the best thing!
While as shown above, swapping weapons takes a noticeable amount of time with or without mods, unless drawing a melee.

And here we have exceptions:

• Quick melee is instant.
• Our frame is able to shoot after throwing a spear after about or a bit less than 1 second, but we are able to shoot with our spear instantly after grabbing it.
• Weapon swap is instant after dropping energy cell.

Conclusions

Weapon swap times are too long, inconsistent and they discourage people from more varied and dynamic playstyle thus most people decide to stick to one of theirs firearms a whole or most part of a mission.
Using dedicated mods can shorten those times to OK values but they takes precious mod slots while the demand of additional slots still rises. Also doesn't help the fact that aura and exilus mods are not farmable and other ones drop from hard and rare enemies thus many players may still don't have them.

A solution would be to equalize and significantly decrease weapon swap times and remove all related mods from the game or make them reduce those times to 0 s instead.

Edited September 23, 2017 by blueThunder24

[Ragingwasabi]

ive been waiting for weapon swap time buffs for so long

[Koldraxon-732]

Perhaps making these item-swapping times at least half as long would probably suffice, or have a new Warframe who's passive is to have no swapping time or reload time at all (reloads are instant, weapon swapping is instant)?

[AgentSkye]

Also, for melee weapons, some holster options for the same weapon type are quicker than others. They should be normalized, since that's intended as a cosmetic option and non-standard holster positions must be purchased with platinum.

Also also, weapon swapping logic gets really dumb if you don't let the whole swap finish before doing some action. This can result in a lot of time wasted repeating the same actions over and over. For example, if you decide to switch from secondary to primary, and then do a quick melee after holstering your weapon but before you've finished drawing your primary, here's what happens (from memory):

1. Holster your secondary

2. Interrupt yourself to quick melee a Butcher (instant switch to melee)

3. Holster your melee weapon (not instant)

4. Draw your secondary weapon for no reason at all

5. Holster your secondary weapon

6. Draw your primary weapon

And every time you have to do something--anything--before you've completed step 6, you go back to step 4.

Or, if you're doing some quick melee strikes and decide you want to go full melee, you press the button while swinging, telling the game you want to stay in melee--but that's not what happens. No, your warframe has to do a lot of unnecessary weapon swapping even though it's already holding the freaking sword.

[Koldraxon-732]

18 minutes ago, AgentSkye said:

[Excerpt] No, your warframe has to do a lot of unnecessary weapon swapping even though it's already holding the freaking sword.

Sometimes it skips the weapon equipping animation and you don't notice until you try to shoot; this feature might've been intended and could've gotten lost somewhere.

As for the overdose of random weapon swapping, you could always blame it on Transference and your Warframe getting a headache over what you were trying to do, which could be further evidence for Warframes being self-aware, at least at a minimum (as seen in The Second Dream).

One could consider such a problem funny, though.

[Azamagon]

Just to add something to this:

Some old post of someone that did research in relation to Weapon Swapping speeds discovered something interesting; The Fire Rate (and thus Fire Rate mods) also play a role in weapon swapping speed. It's not highly noticeable within normal margins, but when you go to the extremes (like Twin Grakatas with lots of +Fire Rate, or something like an ordinary sniper with lots of -Fire Rate), the weaponswapping speed can be greatly affected.

My vote goes to making weapon swapping a normalized, near-instant speed (say, max 0,5 seconds), by (ab)using the "teleporty" animations that exist when you use the "don't show weapon when holstered"-options. And then remove all the bandaid mods that relate to weaponswapping (or revamp them into something entirely differently, like ... I dunno, ammoregen mods?).

Edited September 15, 2017 by Azamagon

[blueThunder24]

1 hour ago, Azamagon said:

The Fire Rate (and thus Fire Rate mods) also play a role in weapon swapping speed. It's not highly noticeable within normal margins, but when you go to the extremes (like Twin Grakatas with lots of +Fire Rate, or something like an ordinary sniper with lots of -Fire Rate), the weaponswapping speed can be greatly affected.

I quick check - I took Twin Vipers Wraith and modded it to 58 fire rate and get about 1.5 seconds for primary --> secondary swap speed. Either fire rate really inpacts holster rate or I'm bad at measuring - because another thing I noticed that my measurements, especially at this test, wasn't much repeatable - too noticeable deviation between min-max. 
We also have to take into acount lags during playing co-op which also will influence swap speed.

I also forgot to add that I was testing weapons stripped of all unrelated mods and was taking those with rather higher rate of fire.

 

I think that it could be same as it is now when drawing melee - let the animation remain long and fancy but let as interupt it to be able to shoot after max 0.5 s delay with any weapon.

[TaylorsContraction]

+1, it's been asked for ages. Instead we kept getting band-aid mods instead of actual faster swapping speed. When weapon swap speeds match our reload speeds, what's the point of even swapping Q__Q.

[enivanfamilia]

Easiest way for DE would be, to put melees into the weaponswap rotation 

Primary -> secondary -> melee -> primary...

I still wondering why two! weaponswap options are in the game... 

[Ice_Peck]

20 minutes ago, enivanfamilia said:

Easiest way for DE would be, to put melees into the weaponswap rotation 

Primary -> secondary -> melee -> primary...

I still wondering why two! weaponswap options are in the game... 

You have to hold the button to swap to your equipped melee. You knew this, I hope, right?

 

As an addendum, come to think of it, that actually causes a very short stutter for the swaps to occur. Game has to detect you're saying "switch to melee" instead of "switch to primary/secondary" because they're both tied to the same button. Game just running a check to see if you're doing one or the other.

 

Personally I'd suggest having Quick Melee automatically set it to our active weapon for us. There's absolutely no animation playing so our current gun just auto-holsters itself during quick melees while we have to sheath the blade and grab our guns again when we stop mashing our quick melee button. Seems counter intuitive.

Edited November 25, 2017 by ChillyBro

[(XBOX)Evilpricetag]

Mod's exist for this, and thus this shouldnt be buffed to the point the mod isnt helpful. you prefer NOT using a weapon swaping aura, then fine. deal with the time it takes

[traybong111]

18 minutes ago, (Xbox One)Evilpricetag said:

Mod's exist for this, and thus this shouldnt be buffed to the point the mod isnt helpful. you prefer NOT using a weapon swaping aura, then fine. deal with the time it takes

Yeah let me drop my Corrosive Projection for Speed Holster. 

It's like Warframe is the first shooting game these people have ever played and they haven't even played Warframe that much. 

  On 10/21/2016 at 3:30 PM, traybong111 said:

Even back in 2013 when we didn't have the speed and flow we have now, Warframe's weapon swap speed was considered pretty bad. Faster weapon swap speed has been asked pretty much since the inception of Warframe but DE has never once budged on it over 3 years. 

I don't understand why DE is so adamant on this either, faster weapon swap speed and melee holster would actually encourage players to utilize the various element combos. The slow, flow-breaking weapon swap and holster is probably one of the factors that contribute to players defaulting their weapons to corrosive 98% of the time other than armor scaling and the very clunky loadout UI that doesn't fit with the speedy drop-in drop-out nature of Warframe missions. 

I'm just starting to suspect that it's a "social experiment" to see if people will defend any stupid thing if the thing exists long enough e.g. Speed Holster. 

 

face 

desk

contact

repeat 

 

EDIT: Yes, I agree OP, weapon swapping in general should be faster and melee holster needs to be more fluid and under player control. I don't know, maybe it's an engine issue? I've noticed over the years that Warframe, despite having a pretty consistently good & stable graphics, has some trouble syncing up animations and gameplay mechanics & triggers, and I don't think it's ever floated to DE's radar despite a lot of different feedbacks that converge to this issue. 

Edited November 26, 2017 by traybong111

[enivanfamilia]

Am 25.11.2017 um 21:32 schrieb ChillyBro:

You have to hold the button to swap to your equipped melee. You knew this, I hope, right?

i never "HOLD" a key for switching to Melee. o.O Are we talking about the same game?

 

[(XBOX)CannyJack]

If you don't have Switch To Melee Weapon bound to a key, you have to press and hold the "switch weapon" key (or button, on consoles) for a moment to fully equip your melee weapon. If you just tap the button, you get a quick melee attack. 

On consoles, note, you don't have the option to do anything else -- you must hold the button to fully equip your melee weapon; otherwise you just switch between primary and secondary. PC has more control binding options.

Edited November 30, 2017 by (XB1)CannyJack

[Kletse]

On 26-11-2017 at 5:59 AM, (Xbox One)Evilpricetag said:

Mod's exist for this, and thus this shouldnt be buffed to the point the mod isnt helpful. you prefer NOT using a weapon swaping aura, then fine. deal with the time it takes

Those aren't helpfull at all because, like Traybong111 said, there will be no one that gives up the better auras.
If we'd have faster weapon swap speed and those mods you talk about, would make the switching instant, Then we can combine different elements on different weapons and have some better gear choosing options.

I'd think about using speed holster then, but i'd probably only think about it. At least it would be for the better.