Following concerns voiced by its player base, Bungie has recently confirmed plans to mitigate the weapon swap delay in Destiny 2. The delay, which was originally introduced as a broader solution to an exploit issue, will be reduced to about one second shortly after the launch of Season 21, according to the game’s developers.
Here are the exact details from the tweets from Bungie:
We would like to give some extra context on the weapon swap delay change. The shotgun exploit wasn’t the only issue we were seeing and to safely fix the underlying problem we needed to introduce a global firing delay when swapping weapons via the inventory screen.
Due to the networking differences across players and environments, we couldn’t guarantee the shortest possible delay would address the exploit.
After closely observing the current behavior in the live game, we have enough information to dial this in more precisely, and plan to reduce the weapon swap delay to about one second shortly after Season 21’s launch later this month.
Bungie had initially addressed a glitch involving the swapping of a Slug Shotgun to another Shotgun, which had allowed for massive damage output. To fix this, a two-second delay was introduced where a weapon could not be fired after swapping to it from the inventory screen, as stated in the recently released Destiny 2 Hotfix 7.0.5.3.
Although two seconds may not sound like a significant delay, its impact has been felt during gameplay, particularly amongst the higher echelon of players. Speedrunners and seasoned Guardians adept at rapid weapon swapping expressed concerns that this delay could cost them precious time and DPS. This change affects all weapon swaps, not just Slug Shotguns, applying to Loadouts swaps, and even Hunter’s Solar Golden Gun, a Super ability that technically counts as a gun.
The two-second delay is less likely to impact the majority of Destiny 2 players. For many Guardians, weapon switching mid-activity is not a common practice, particularly in stressful combat situations. The delay is primarily a concern for those players who frequently swap weapons and have honed the skill to the point where a two-second timer could detrimentally affect their gameplay.
The decision to introduce a global firing delay when swapping weapons via the inventory screen was motivated by the need to rectify an underlying problem beyond the shotgun exploit. Bungie’s team emphasized the challenge of ensuring the shortest possible delay to address the exploit, given the varying network conditions across different players and environments.
Despite the controversy, some players acknowledged that the fix, although unorthodox, might be a practical solution to a more complex problem. An overhaul of the Slug Shotguns to prevent the glitch could have resulted in a more cost-intensive fix. Moreover, this issue affects only a fraction of the game’s player base and should not interfere with the players’ abilities to complete activities, Triumphs, and other in-game objectives.
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