[2023] Rare has nothing against quickswap

And this is quite obvious from the fix that was implemented in Season 10.

To understand why this is the case, we must first familiarize ourselves with a core mechanic of the game, namely sprint-ADS or "quick draw".

In SoT you are able to ADS (aim down sights) while sprinting, which let's you pull out your gun and go straight into scope/aiming.

This works with every gun in the game and works exactly the same whether you have one or two guns equipped.

This mechanic makes the game feel smooth, as you can sprint away from skeletons and enemies and simply turn around and quickly aim at them to shoot instead of stopping completely, taking out your gun and then aiming. You can try this in game right now, just hold out a gun, sprint and start aiming while sprinting and you will notice the quick draw.

Alright, now that we know how "quick draw"/sprint-ADS works, we can move on to quickswap.

Quickswap is a technique built on this mechanic, where you sprint after switching your weapon in order to pull it quickly after switching.

This technique works identically whether you have sword+gun or two guns and many people do it without realizing it as it comes quite naturally during combat when you are sprinting around.

What the community discovered was that when sprinting for a very short time after switching in order to quickly draw your secondary weapon you could fire even faster than if you were to stand still and swap weapons.

As players got more experienced particularily with double gunning, Rare clearly deemed that this difference in speed between shots (approximately 1 second between shots when quickswapping compared to around 1.5 seconds between shots when standing still and swapping) was too strong and that doublegunning needed a nerf.

There is nothing inherently wrong with this, as re-balancing is quite common in games with PvP.

Their mistake in how to approach nerfing doublegunning was trying to single out quickswapping as the culprit that needed fixing as opposed to exploring alternatives revolving around a hard-cooldown between two shots coming from the same player which could be any number of seconds that Rare deems appropiate.

Instead, quickswap is left untouched and works entirely as it has worked in Season 9 as long as you have sword in one of your weapon slots and a myriad of weird behaviour happens when you try to do it with two guns equipped.

The latter is the weapon clunkiness that many people have been describing, with bugs such as not being able to pull out any weapons while a weird sound plays, not being able to aim after taking out a weapon, weapons "snapping back" as if the server was desyncing etc.

As a result of this fix, quickswap also works completely the same way as it has worked with two guns as long as extra steps are performed, such as whipping out a bucket like a clown, sprinting many times or just waiting until half the reload animation has played and then executing the technique the same way you always have (this is why many veteran players are using sword in one of their weapon slots right now, because they can quickswap freely with it).

Hell, you can even quickswap between two guns exactly the same as you could in Season 9 as long as you don't fire a shot.

This is because "quickswap" is merely a combination of existing mechanics and generally the way all actions in SoT interact with sprinting and properly removing it would cause the game to feel extremely different and considerably less smooth.

Their communication and approach to this topic has also unfortunately caused a lot of confusion within the community, as there are many players that think that quickswapping and doublegunning are the same thing or that quickswapping was some sort of near cheating exploit that has now been removed, when in fact it works exactly the same as it has worked in Season 9 as long as you have sword equipped or wait 0.4 seconds after shooting without sprinting if you don't have sword equipped (once again, this is because of how the "quick draw"/sprint-ADS mechanic works in this game).

In essence, the combat fix implemented in Season 10 should be seen and communicated as a balance change, not a mechanic change (because it clearly isn't based on what was patched and how quickswap exists just like it used to for sword+gun setups).

I think the majority of doublegunners would not complain about a hard-coded timer between shots the same way that I think the majority of sword enjoyers wouldn't complain if Rare decided one slash should deal 20 damage instead of 25, as this is a balance change in order to reduce the power of a certain loadout/setup.

I really want to stress that Rare is more than entitled to make balance changes as they see fit, however they should be cautious about how to archive the results they are after as we can see that doing these bizarre fixes just adds a ton of bugs and inconsistencies between mechanics across weapon loadouts such as in this instance, where "quickswap is gone" but it actually works exactly the same as long as you don't doublegun and it even works when doublegunning as long as you take some extra weird steps.

It really seems like it would have been simpler to leave the mechanics untouched and instead just add a hard-coded cooldown between two shots from the same pirate. Who cares how fast someone swaps weapons as long as they can't fire them faster than X seconds? (X here being however many seconds between shots Rare deems appropiate for balance reasons).

Alternatively they could've just forced sword in the first weapon slot, if two guns are too problematic to the point that they would rather try implementing weird fixes to core game mechanics in order to reduce their power.

As a final sidenote I really recommend that you sprint quickly before aiming, regardless of your loadout, as it usually helps you to aim quickly and smoothly. It makes a huge difference when slashing someone a couple of times and then quickly swapping into sniper or pistol and can help one-blunders be considerably more consistent. Try it out next time you're on the seas!

TLDR: Quickswap is just based on how different actions interact with sprinting in SoT and as such its still in the game. Nerfing doublegun with a hard-coded timer between shots from the same pirate makes way more sense than whatever they did in S10 patch which messed up guns hella hard. Try sprinting before aiming for better results with any firearm and any loadout!

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