Whats up with swapping time?

Hi, I just wanted to say that I am very skeptical towards the introduction of the cast time to swap decks.

First of all I do not know if it is bugged, sometimes when I have different decks there's no casttime, but when I make an exact duplicate, there's max cast-time.

Secondly, there already was a cost and effect (focus/lost cards), this added cast-time makes the feature almost unusable in combat and the experimenting with different skills, and hence the game, much less interesting.

 

As per the instructions that everyone should have read:

Deck Swapping: Amount of focus lost and time to switch depends purely on the number of items that are different between the two builds.

• 0 items = 1 second swap, no focus loss.
• 1 item = 2 second swap, 10% focus loss.
• 2 items = 4 second swap, 30% focus loss.
• 3+ items = 8 second swap, 50% focus loss.

 

My apologies, I should have been more clear. I have read them, and meant "what is up" as in "what is the thinking behind this change".

 

As jiirc mentioned: The length of the switch is based on how many armor pieces are different between the two decks.

It is means of simulating the effort involved in changing your outfit in the middle of combat, to adjust your benefits, something a lot of us thought was pretty silly.


Personally, I find the process a little annoying when out of combat, but perhaps that can be corrected for in the future.

 

Well I think the idea behind the change was to make it so people did not abuse it. As in pvp finding out you ar fighting a firemage and so you go into your icemage tree or some other tree to quickly win the fight, well perhaps I am not saying it the best since I don't and haven't done much pvp so far. I also really have not played around with switching my deck since so far I have just stayed with one deck. Also Etel welcome to Shrouds and feel free to friend majoria in the game if you need help and also whisper me anytime with questions or to chat and say hello.

 

The rationale: a number of people complained that you shouldn't be able to immediately swap decks if you were changing armor. So they introduced the armor penalty as a time penalty. They were just responding to the demands of the public.

 

It's a step in the right direction. If you want to experiment with different skills, change decks before the battle or suffer the time penalty.

 

I haven't played much pvp yet, my use for the deck swapping was so I could quickly jump on my coconuts and put some town clothes on - this doesn't work now.

 

Aye. That is what I use the deck swapping for as well.

Nuisance having to wait so long to switch into my cosmetic outfit.

 

Possibly just stopping people doing it in combat would of been a considerable option *wink*

 

Yea, this, plus I think they wanted to experiment with other types of penalties to see if they could reduce the focus penalty (it was 50%) to deck swaps -- which is an issue I brought up in R18 -- plus introducing time to swap armor I guess was a solution that sounded realistic.

Personally, I don't mind some time penalty to swap, but I think the way it's currently implemented feels a bit clunky. My views:

- I think it would be ideal if you were able to do the swap while moving; if there needs to be a way for the player to interrupt, it could be something like him pressing X (or the swap button) again. Lets say I'm an archer and I run out of arrows, so I want to switch to a dagger; this is something I'd suppose I'd be able to do, because I'd guess you could do it in real life.

- I think the only way its going to feel smooth is if there's an actual animation between swaps, for instance -- first, an animation of the avatar putting away his first set of equipment, and, then, an animation of him taking out his second set of equipment. Obviously, it has to be interruptable only before the second animation starts, otherwise the sequence would feel broken, but the game could keep the cooldown for use of skills until the second animation completes.

- In order to have a timer that lasts longer than those two animations, you'd have to put a pause between them, I suppose. But it shouldn't be much longer, if at all longer, than it takes for the two animations to complete. I also don't really like the 2 sec extra penalty for an offhand weapon or shield; only because it doesn't fit the rest of the game -- for instance, when you draw a sword and shield by pressing Z, the animation shows you drawing them out both at once, the same amount of time it takes to draw a single weapon. And really, if you're drawing, for instance, two daggers from your belt, it shouldn't necessarily take more time than drawing one dagger -- because its just as easy to do.

- I still see other problems with being able to swap armor during combat. Lets say you accidentally linked one deck to a different set of armor, when its supposed to be the same set. You swap to your second deck during combat, and it forces you to swap your armor, and either you waste 8 seconds or you cancel the swap. Why? Yes, it is the player's fault this is happening, but it still doesn't make sense to swap armor in the middle of combat.

 

I used it primarily to change out of my Armor and onto my Coconut horse. While I can still get onto old Coconuts, I can only get off manually due to the "tried to use Swap Deck, but failed: Mounted." issue.
This peaves me alot more than a delay in cast time.

 

Since the timer has been introduced, I ended up using the deck menu to swap decks instantly. This new timer is too much IMHO since you already have a timer to go out of combat to swap decks