For the love of all that is fun, make weapon swapping faster already

[ShiraHagane]

It's honestly ridiculous how slow weapon swapping is, and how nothing has been done about it for the years we've been complaining about it.

And please, don't tell me to just put the mods on, there are enough mandatory mods like serration, split chamber, Crit mods, and elementals, you shouldn't have to use up 3 mod slots across all your weapons to have a USABLE weapon swap rate.

[CrazyCatLad]

tHer3 iS @n auRA 4 dat!!!!

 

All seriousness...I agree.

[Ardhanarishvara]

Just put the mods on. Some people have less issue with holstering than you do and so ignore it. It's clearly necessary to your enjoyment of gameplay however. Slapping Streamlined Form in the Exilus slot is probably the least costly way to go about it.

[DrBorris]

1 hour ago, Ardhanarishvara said:

Just put the mods on. Some people have less issue with holstering than you do and so ignore it. It's clearly necessary to your enjoyment of gameplay however. Slapping Streamlined Form in the Exilus slot is probably the least costly way to go about it.

Obviously it is not "necessary", but would the game be better for it if we could swap weapons quickly? I would go out and say it would be an improvement to combat as it would make weapon swapping a viable option to reloading your weapon in the thick of action. Something as simple as that should not be bound to modding, sure it could be further improved with modding for those who want to put more of a focus on weapon swap, but just because there is an option to make something better it does not mean the base stat is justified.

 

"Fine" is never good enough, the pursuit of perfection is the only way to get better. So... do you think Warframe be a better or worse game if swap speeds were faster?

[Ardhanarishvara]

4 minutes ago, DrBorris said:

"Fine" is never good enough, the pursuit of perfection is the only way to get better. So... do you think Warframe be a better or worse game if swap speeds were faster?

Neither, as weapon swapping is of little consequence to me except in the instance of spearguns, in which case I mod for it.

The game is designed so that if you want to play a certain way, you have to sacrifice something else. That's just how it is. Your line of reasoning is the sort of thing that would turn the game into a musou-tier god-fantasy. Just how far is far enough for you? The search for perfection is fundamentally flawed because it ignores how much deeper and more satisfying the world is with problems to overcome.

Now, I do think that maybe holster mods could be a little bit more potent though.

[DrBorris]

1 minute ago, Ardhanarishvara said:

Neither, as weapon swapping is of little consequence to me except in the instance of spearguns, in which case I mod for it.

The game is designed so that if you want to play a certain way, you have to sacrifice something else. That's just how it is. Your line of reasoning is the sort of thing that would turn the game into a musou-tier god-fantasy. Just how far is far enough for you? The search for perfection is fundamentally flawed because it ignores how much deeper and more satisfying the world is with problems to overcome.

Now, I do think that maybe holster mods could be a little bit more potent though.

Of course weapon switching is of little consequence right now, it is so slow that it is only really viable to do outside of combat. That, for a game as fast paced as Warframe, seems absurd to me. 

The game is designed that I'd you want to gain an advantage you need to sacrifice, but that does not mean the base - line needs to necessitate mods to make the mechanic worthwhile. You don't need mobility mods to make running/bullet jumping viable. You don't need mods to make reloading every weapon comfortable, these systems are designed to be usable at their base but able to be enhanced with mods. 

I never said Warframe would be perfect, all I said is that you should pursue perfection. That way you are always moving forward. Sure you will never reach your goal, but if you just stay complacent then, well, you are just being complacent. Warframe has not thrived on the status quo, it has thrived on evolution and moving forward. 

[ShiraHagane]

8 minutes ago, Ardhanarishvara said:

weapon swapping is of little consequence to me 

Then why are you arguing against it if it doesn't matter to you

[Cicasajt]

the weapon holster speed started to bother me recently too. i thought about using [speed holster]. might do that. i wish there was like a "quick secondary" thing like the quick melee

Edited November 29, 2017 by Cicasajt

[tnccs215]

1 hour ago, Ardhanarishvara said:

Just put the mods on. Some people have less issue with holstering than you do and so ignore it. It's clearly necessary to your enjoyment of gameplay however. Slapping Streamlined Form in the Exilus slot is probably the least costly way to go about it.

Alternatively, one can easily argue that Warframe's nature of an extremely fast paced game with a necessity of highly responsive input cannot in any way accept such cumbersome and pointless things like slow as hell weapon swapping. 

When reloading weapons is faster than swapping, you are essentially pressed into not changing weapons and sticking to what you have, resulting in a lost of dynamism and depth that could make the game more fun for everyone. 

[tnccs215]

On 29/11/2017 at 6:56 PM, ShiraHagane said:

Then why are you arguing against it if it doesn't matter to you

Because a good fraction of the  human population has both a terrible affinity for the status quo and for seeing themselves as the center of the world. Therefore any change that doesn't come to address something they see as negative is seen as a bad change and therefore worth fighting against - even if it's a purely positive change with no negative side effects. 

Edited December 5, 2017 by tnccs215

[(XBOX)weedyodaa]

You can always try your best to dodge incoming fire.

[tnccs215]

6 minutes ago, (Xbox One)Mythical Warden said:

You can always try your best to dodge incoming fire.

Yeah - but since weapons don't swap during actions such as rolling, we might also very well just stick to one weapon, and therefore prove why the fact the weapon swapping speed being so slow indirectly - but actively - prevents players from enjoying the full extent of their arsenal. 

Why not remove the two guns systems, now that we are at it?

Edited November 29, 2017 by tnccs215

[Ardhanarishvara]

13 minutes ago, tnccs215 said:

Alternatively, one can easily argue that Warframe's nature of an extremely fast paced game with a necessity of highly responsive input cannot in any way accept such cumbersome and pointless things like slow as hell weapon swapping. 

When reloading weapons is faster than swapping, you are essentially pressed into not changing weapons and sticking to what you have, resulting in a lost of dynamism and depth that could make the game more fun for everyone. 

There's a reason why weapons are called "primaries" and "secondaries". The secondary is meant to be a back-up except in only a handful of instances, and in either case you have access to limited melee potential at any time. Secondaries are, by-and-large, simply less potent than primaries, with far less staying potential. The idea of increasing the base holster rate in any way increasing "dynamism" is fundamentally flawed for that reason alone since people by-and-large either focus on primary or on melee to the exclusion of all else. The "added fun" would be extremely minimal except for a relative minority of players that find it difficult to cope with because they can't adjust to the intended pace for the game's systems, for whom the devs are suddenly catering to and in doing so making their game a little simpler and less complex.

As for the idea that Warframe is an extremely fast-paced game, Frost, Nova, Gara, Limbo, and several others would like to have a chat with you. The game is as fast as you make it. The game is what you make of it. You are arguing for a change that would benefit almost nobody except for a small circle in a small bubble who share similar views and mistake their problems for everyone's problems.

19 minutes ago, ShiraHagane said:

Then why are you arguing against it if it doesn't matter to you

Every idea needs a devil's advocate. Leaving ideas uncontested only creates an echochamber that leads people to lose sight of the bigger picture. Example: Universal Vacuum.

I would have fewer problems if weapon holstering speed was increased, sure. But having fewer problems in a medium of entertainment that is about solving problems is kind of, well, a problem in itself to me. I like complexity in my games. Having to go "am I willing to sacrifice more ability potency or mobility for more holster speed" is an interesting question for me to ask myself.

Also ultimately I like to at least try to convince others of my beliefs.

Edited November 29, 2017 by Ardhanarishvara

[(XBOX)weedyodaa]

Just now, tnccs215 said:

Yeah - but since weapons don't swap during actions such as rolling, we might also very well just stick to one weapon, and therefore prove why the fact the weapon swapping speed being so slow indirectly - but actively - prevents players from enjoying the full extent of their arsenal. 

Why not remove the two guns systems, now that we are at it?

Or jump, bullet jump, dash.. 

[tnccs215]

4 hours ago, (Xbox One)Mythical Warden said:

Or jump, bullet jump, dash.. 

Which also cover reloads, which are usually faster than swapping weapons.

4 hours ago, Ardhanarishvara said:

There's a reason why weapons are called "primaries" and "secondaries". The secondary is meant to be a back-up except in only a handful of instances, and in either case you have access to limited melee potential at any time. Secondaries are, by-and-large, simply less potent than primaries, with far less staying potential. The idea of increasing the base holster rate in any way increasing "dynamism" is fundamentally flawed for that reason alone since people by-and-large either focus on primary or on melee to the exclusion of all else. The "added fun" would be extremely minimal except for a relative minority of players that find it difficult to cope with because they can't adjust to the intended pace for the game's systems, for whom the devs are suddenly catering to and in doing so making their game a little simpler and less complex.

As for the idea that Warframe is an extremely fast-paced game, Frost, Nova, Gara, Limbo, and several others would like to have a chat with you. The game is as fast as you make it. The game is what you make of it. You are arguing for a change that would benefit almost nobody except for a small circle in a small bubble who share similar views and mistake their problems for everyone's problems.

Except not. 

Secondaries are not less powerful than primaries - but I agree that is irrelevant, since we do both agree that they are meant to be used as back up. 

Where we disagree, is whether that role is fulfilled in a satisfying way. Since many if not most reloads are shorter than swapping times, and since ammo economy is only a problem for a handful of weapons (and the fact there are much more convenient ways to address that issue over swapping weapons), I conclude that no, it is not. 

Of course, you answer that with a git-gud mentality, shaming the complainers for an hipothetical lack of skill that, for the most part, is very much undeserved (sorry for the lack of modesty, but I'm very much not a bad player), and completely dismiss the fact that just because someone is capable to handle something that does not mean that handling is enjoyable - which is actually the whole point. I and many people do not feel rewarded when managing to swap weapons, we feel pointlessly encumbered and slightly frustrated. And that is not fun - something that, at the end of the day, is the whole point of a game. 

Such encumberance could feel rewarding on another game, yes - but on Warframe, where every movement is tuned to the max, it feels disjointed and out of place.

I do like to ask for a bit of congruence in the game.

I want to note that, again, you did not give one single reason why it would actually affect the game negatively - the closest thing to that was an elitist misrepresentation dismissing the enjoyment of an allegedly small group that is allegedly playing the game worse than you, with a repetition that that change would affect the game to the allegedly bigger and allegedly more-legitimate-to-be-pandered-to audience - without actually expressing why that effect would be negative.

 

Edited November 30, 2017 by tnccs215

[(XBOX)weedyodaa]

1 minute ago, tnccs215 said:

Which also cover reloads, which are usually faster than swapping weapons

The reload issue is different for all weapons but not as big of an issue.

[ShiraHagane]

Another thing I wanna add, when it's faster to reload your 200 round lmg (that can oneshot anything short of sortie 3 bombards) than it is to pull out your pistol, something is wrong

Edited November 29, 2017 by ShiraHagane

[tnccs215]

15 minutes ago, (Xbox One)Mythical Warden said:

The reload issue is different for all weapons but not as big of an issue.

It is an issue innately intertwined with this. 

The idea of secondary (not alternative) weapons was introduced in games exactly to introduce another layer of skill to shooters. Changing to your pistol is faster than reloading is a phrase present on almost all games featuring this mechanic. The players that could learn how to swap weapons are rewarded with an effective reduction of their downtime. 

When you make weapon swapping slower and more cumbersome, you effectively loose the point of even having secondary weapons in the first place. 

To defend that additional swapping time actually adds another layer of skill learning is incredibly paradoxical. 

At best, one could argue that secondary weapons in Warframe are not meant to do what I described, but yes to cover other functionalities the primary doesn't. But not only the somewhat equal level of power between primaries and secondaries seems more incidental due to mods than actually actively planned, it still doesn't address even slightly the fact such a long swap time is schizophrenic in a game where the devs have added commulative changes in order to make player control be as fast and fluid as possible. It indeed only feeds it. 

Edited November 29, 2017 by tnccs215

[Ardhanarishvara]

14 minutes ago, tnccs215 said:

Of course, you answer that with a git-gud mentality, shaming the complainers for an hipothetical lack of skill that, for the most part, is very much undeserved (sorry for the lack of modesty, but I'm very much not a bad player), and completely dismiss the fact that just because someone is capable to handle something that does not mean that handling is enjoyable - which is actually the whole point.

...

I want to note that, again, you did not give one single reason why it would actually affect the game negatively - the closest thing to that was an elitist misrepresentation dismissing the enjoyment of an allegedly small group that is allegedly playing the game worse than you, with a repetition that that change would affect the game to the allegedly bigger and allegedly more-legitimate-to-be-pandered-to audience - without actually expressing why that effect would be negative.

I did no such thing and do not appreciate you having put words in my mouth in such a manner. Making note of a lack of ability in one regard is not tantamount to deriding that lack of ability, no matter how commonly the two are paired. Personally I believe in something as simple as incompatibility - not all people are made equally. Some simply have more difficulty adjusting to certain things. I don't use this as an insult, ever. It is simply the way of life as I see it.

However, the world is built around dismissing minority issues. The world could not function if it ground to a halt every time five people out of a million had an issue with something.

My argument essentially boils down to - if the majority of people don't have enough of an issue with it to make a big stink of it, and some might even take enjoyment from that problem existing, then taking away something that adds enjoyment and complexity to the game for the sake of a small handful of individuals is not fair to the rest of the population, and only creates a new problem in its place. There is a certain equilibrium to some people enjoying or at least seeing value in something, some people not, and the majority not caring.

Some weapons have extremely long reload speeds, to the point that in some instances it is legitimately better to switch to another weapon. Given that weapon-switching can be made faster by non-weapon-specific modding (unlike reload speeds), in some cases it is better than simply reloading. I might bring up the possibility that, at least from my perspective, there are those who tend not to use the extremely long reload speed weapons and thus may have lost that perspective.

[(XBOX)weedyodaa]

It could be intertwined, yes, but it shares its own factors through the fact of different mod for both primary and secondary weapons to be able to reload faster. All I'm trying to say is that you could dodge incoming damage from enemies by jumping around. True, rolling will cause to stop a weapon from swapping, but jumping won't. Neither will doing a bullet jump. Both of which are viable options to use as a way to avoid taking damage. As for reloading, you can use different mods to increase the amount of time you speed up a reload. If not, same thing, just try dodging. So while you're stating good, constructive arguments, I'm talking about a different situation; avoiding enemy fire while swapping/reloading weapons.

[tnccs215]

3 hours ago, Ardhanarishvara said:

I did no such thing and do not appreciate you having put words in my mouth in such a manner. Making note of a lack of ability in one regard is not tantamount to deriding that lack of ability, no matter how commonly the two are paired. Personally I believe in something as simple as incompatibility - not all people are made equally. Some simply have more difficulty adjusting to certain things. I don't use this as an insult, ever. It is simply the way of life as I see it.

But you kinda did. You connected their supposed lack of skill to their discomfort, and used that to deligitimize the position you are opposing. I do not exclude the possibility that I misread you, but frankly, it seemed the only possible interpretation. 

If it betters the situation, we leave my accusations to your consciousness: if it's warranted, than its on you to change that attitude. If it's not, then no point worrying, specially because I'm not interested in accusing you of that again. 

3 hours ago, Ardhanarishvara said:

However, the world is built around dismissing minority issues. The world could not function if it ground to a halt every time five people out of a million had an issue with something. 

We both know that's incredibly erroneous (rather, the world works by imposing the will of a powerful minority), but we also know thats not your point, so I'll answer accordingly. 

With that in mind, I have to correct you: the world should work by dismissing minority issues when those create issues to a majority, if they are issues. To confound desires, needs and opinions as if they were on leveled ground (and as if all could be classified as issues, rather than misguided tantrums or oppositions born out of false consciousness) is too reductionist to how the world works. To do otherwise would be to deny potential happiness to a group of people, however how small, simply because a majority is being narrow minded at best, and doesn't actively want it at worst. You are a smart person, you know that.

Just as you know that as far as society goes, it's made by people, and even if you cannot tap into the most basic infrastructures that coordinate the vast majority of what we call the human world, you can at the very least nag developers of a game on a forum to at least try and do things right. Worse than conforming to a bad condition, is to expand it as if it was law, after all. 

Enough café philosophy though. My point is: for you to be right - that is, for faster swapping speed to be a negative change - two conditions must be fulfilled:

1)the people who don't want the change must indeed be a majority

2)the change must actually negatively impact the game for those people. 

And the truth is that, you have no proof whatsoever that the people who don't want the change are indeed a majority. 

You simply don't. There is no data whatsoever (at least, that I'm aware of) that points towards that assertion. Yes, we could attempt to draw a conclusion from comment analysis on topics like this, but whatever the conclusion might be chances are it will be heavily shewed at best, for starts because we cannot admit the people that actively engage in the community are a fair representation of the vast majority that doesn't (the simple fact they do engage imply at least a degree of difference). Sure, we could also introduce the change, analyze the feedback, and proceed to either roll back the change or keep it accordingly. However, since DE seems to have a particular distaste for roll backs, I think we can agree that option is off the table. 

Of course, this is a double edged sword for my position. The truth is, just as you are unable to prove the people who don't want faster swapping speed is a majority, neither can I disprove it - or prove the opposite. 

And this invariably means that, at least with the data we have, any argument based on "people (don't) want X" is inherently too weak to be considered valid. So neither you nor I can argue with that.

Which leads us into having to modify the point of contention from "what do the most people think it's good or bad". And if player affinity cannot provide, as stipulated above, an answer for the here and now, than what's left is the much murkier subject that is the essence of the game itself. That is, the question becomes solely "is this a good or bad change for the game?" 

Which leads me into addressing the rest of your arguments:

4 hours ago, Ardhanarishvara said:

I would have fewer problems if weapon holstering speed was increased, sure. But having fewer problems in a medium of entertainment that is about solving problems is kind of, well, a problem in itself to me. I like complexity in my games. Having to go "am I willing to sacrifice more ability potency or mobility for more holster speed" is an interesting question for me to ask myself.

Now, contrary to what I might have transpired here, I actually do get you.  If you check my historial here on the forums, barring the unproductive sarcasm, my most active contributions were 

1)Reworking Equinox (irrelevant for the case) 

2)Combating the ever present increase of absence of challenge and unbalance of the game

Which might look somewhat paradoxical with my position taken in here. I get that. But there is one thing we must remember when talking about game design: a game's challenge is limited by its defining borders. 

What I mean to say is that a game's core gameplay both defines and limits what you can introduce (or, in this case, keep).  One shouldn't try to introduce (or conserve) challenging mechanics simply because they exist on another challenging game, when the nature, the essence of the game, the reason we play one when we are in the mood for a kind of gameplay in liew of another, is fundamentally different. There are mechanics that work, and others that do not.

Not all games are Dark Souls.

By all means, the nature of a game can perfectly change over time - Warframe itself is a great example of that, becoming faster and much more of a power trip as the years passed - but it has a nature nonetheless. 

And what essentially defines that nature? Well, the developers vision, of course (limited by player demand, for all the good and bad that brings), a vision that we can infer from the changes that they introduce as the vision and themselves mature. And judging from exactly that, from every ability that influences exclusively enemies becoming recastable (such as Chaos), with Parkour 2.0 (which, despite removing speed, introduced unprecedented amounts of agility), with the fact they made Warframe-operator transition as fast and seamless as possible with no negative "punishments" such as power deactivation despite there being precedence for that (coff coff Equinox), hell with their scheduled removal of the almost unnoticeable delay between pressing shift and starting to run, it becomes undeniable that the devs aim to make every frame more and more fluid to use, diminishing any form of struggle between the player and the avatar. 

The truth is that, some challenges prevent the existence of others. When you task the player with struggling with their character limitations, you remove the possibility of introducing more environmental ones. And that is perfectly fine - but it is simply, clearly not the direction Warframe is meant to be going to, where the player has full and total control over the Warframe, with barely any punishments and limitations - so that they can focus, fully and completely, on annihilating enemies, and surviving them.

That is why I have insisted, time and time again on this thread, not that weapon's high swapping time is inherently bad (it isn't), or even that it is unmanageable (it clearly is),  but that it is contradictory to the ultimate point of the game itself. It is a relic from when the game was slower, when walking was actually the usual movement speed, and when the enemies didn't storm you by the millions. 

In the end, it stops players from accessing all their roster, in a way that is paradoxical to everything else - and the ultimate result is akin (if on a much smaller magnitude) to Equinox's: when you encumber a player action in a way that the behavior of the threats directed to them gives no room for, they ultimately stop engaging on that action. In Equinox, that transpires in people sticking to one Form. On weapons, it transpires on them ignoring the other. 

There is no issue in Warframe having a challenge. But this is not the type of challenge that makes sense in Warframe.

Edited November 30, 2017 by tnccs215

[(XBOX)YoungGunn82]

7 hours ago, ShiraHagane said:

It's honestly ridiculous how slow weapon swapping is, and how nothing has been done about it for the years we've been complaining about it.

And please, don't tell me to just put the mods on, there are enough mandatory mods like serration, split chamber, Crit mods, and elementals, you shouldn't have to use up 3 mod slots across all your weapons to have a USABLE weapon swap rate.

I agree, weapon swapping is clumsy and slow, and even if you were to use mods to speed it up its still looks clunky and glitchy. It needs to be more fluid, we are elite "WARFRAMES" for Christ sake. 

(And no it's not my internet speed)

Edited November 30, 2017 by (XB1)RDeschain82

[(XBOX)YoungGunn82]

5 hours ago, ShiraHagane said:

Another thing I wanna add, when it's faster to reload your 200 round lmg (that can oneshot anything short of sortie 3 bombards) than it is to pull out your pistol, something is wrong

Exactly correct. I have 13 year olds that can swap weapons faster during 3 gun, than it takes Fictitious Warframes Space ninjas to swap weapons. Its actually laughable. 

[Twellve]

In my opinion, swapping weapons shouldn't be that fast. Imagine if we can swap weapons just like in Counter Strike or any other streamline FPS, we'll be looking like a magician! (poof! here goes my semi-auto pistol! then poof! here goes my very very big sword! and poof again! say hello to my little friend! paw paw paw... reload, jumping2, switch! knifing2 )

That would look bad I say.

Why not add a weapon switching feature that adds to the combat? Like, we can chain from quick melee, to equip melee weapon. So that when we chain it like so, a better animation plays, and it also has a damaging area to the enemy.

[Ventura_Highway]

On 11/29/2017 at 1:15 PM, Ardhanarishvara said:

Secondaries are, by-and-large, simply less potent than primaries, with far less staying potential.

Please show me what led you to this conclusion.