Why is hard-swapping frowned upon?

[✪Asielra✪]

Noticed a few people being very vocal about how hard-swapping is a sweat-lord thingy that's somehow bad, wanna understand why they think so. I personally thought it's super cool when I learned it from some content creator on YT, being able to adapt to the situation and surprise your opponents and all...

For the sake of the argument let's define swapping to dual nagis with BHS as rage swapping (which is always hillarious), and discard it from the discourse.

[Koala 4peace]

Originally posted by csand:

I have no problem beating hardswappers. It's just pathetic is all

Coping by low skill hardswappers is 👌

Then you would not have an issue with it, as there is nothing wrong with it.

Don't worry, as i said, learn to punish the hardswap, and you'll beat them in no time.

[C1REX]

I would never expect people getting salty because somebody changed weapons. I can’t do it myself during serious fights. Good players wouldn’t let me.

[Señor Brown]

Well, you don't need as much equip load to hardswap weapons versus soft-swapping.

You can swap equipment to meet the attribute requirement for spells and other equipment that normally wouldn't be accessible through soft-swapping.

You can swap to equipment like feathered talismans or the Royal Remains set to greatly increase your defenses in a near-death state versus soft-swapping.

In this game, hardswapping a one-handed weapon allows you to switch to an identical weapon with a different skill without any animation performed by your character versus soft-swapping.

Similar to the above, you can swap and almost immediately cast a skill like a parry or the Stormhawk Axe's Thunderstorm versus soft-swapping.

There are some glitches and exploits, both past and current, that involve hard-swapping.

I'm sure there's more reasons that can be added, but one thing they all have in common is that hardswapping give you advantages versus soft-swapping. Some are greater than others, and some are more obvious than others. But, advantages for what? In a PvP scenario, it'll likely be perceived as advantages to win. In fact, what you perceive to be "rageswapping" is basically the same as "try-harding". It's not like a mad player will swap to an inferior setup, right?

EDIT: formatting

[DayLight1943]

question for all the players who think hardswapping while in combat is an exploit, or should be removed, or isnt something that is intended by fromsoftware -

if you are not supposed to hardswap while in combat, how would you do the rykard fight? or the yohrm fight in ds3? you have to enter the boss arena, initiate combat, pick up serpent hunter/storm ruler, and while you are in active combat, you need to hardswap to serpent hunter or storm ruler.

you literally have to hardswap to do those fights normally and progress the game.

if menuing was changed to disable hardswaps while in combat and stamina is being used, you couldnt swap to serpent hunter to do the rykard fight.

[psheue]

Just scrubs being scrubs.

[Koala 4peace]

Originally posted by DayLight1943:

if you are not supposed to hardswap while in combat, how would you do the rykard fight?

While the question is not directed at me, you die twice then remember that spear you get at the entrance. XD

[miep miep]

Hardswapping is fine. The complainers cant hardswap and therefore find it unfair.

[DayLight1943]

Originally posted by csand:

Originally posted by DayLight1943:

question for all the players who think hardswapping while in combat is an exploit, or should be removed, or isnt something that is intended by fromsoftware -

Nobody is saying that. Some like myself are just saying in PVP, it's sweatlord tier

many, many people say that - search "hardswap" here or ER reddit and you will get pages and pages of comments to that effect. maybe nobody who has posted yet in this thread thinks that, and i did not mean to imply that you are saying that, but there is a vocal minority of players who feel that way very strongly, and the fact that fromsoft has now created 2 boss fights where the player is intended to menu swap to the boss gimmick weapon is an interesting thing to bring up to those kinds of folks.

for me, swaps are about having fun - landing a quick and precise series of inputs feels rewarding. having a greater variety of potential attacks and movesets at my disposal is fun, and makes fights more interesting and enjoyable.

if i wanted to sweat id just play dual bhs pikes or passive lightroll mage and would never need to swap at all.

if all you are talking about is the level of sweat involved, there is a HUGE difference between people who swap for fun, variety and skill expression and have a build/playstyle centered around swapping vs a person who just swaps to dual bhs pikes because they are losing.

swapping to have a wider variety of moves at your disposal or to try and do surprise attacks is hardly ever optimal, and doesnt work that well vs good players for one BIG reason - all ashes of war are perfectly reactable whether you know what ash they have or not. the reason these kinds of surprise ash of war swaps dont work well in duels against good players is because all ashes of war are easily dodgeable on reaction. if you cant dodge a surprise stormhawk axe or giant hunt swap on reaction, its not because its some kind of sweaty, optimal thing to do, its because your reaction speed is poor.

[Señor Brown]

Originally posted by DayLight1943:

question for all the players who think hardswapping while in combat is an exploit, or should be removed, or isnt something that is intended by fromsoftware -

if you are not supposed to hardswap while in combat, how would you do the rykard fight? or the yohrm fight in ds3? you have to enter the boss arena, initiate combat, pick up serpent hunter/storm ruler, and while you are in active combat, you need to hardswap to serpent hunter or storm ruler.

you literally have to hardswap to do those fights normally and progress the game.

if menuing was changed to disable hardswaps while in combat and stamina is being used, you couldnt swap to serpent hunter to do the rykard fight.

Your crafting menu is available after you enter Rykard's fog gate, which means they aren't immediately in the combat state. It's only when the boss health bar appears that the crafting menu is blocked and the player has entered combat. So, in the case that hardswapping were disabled in combat, there's nothing stopping a player from equipping it before approaching.

[Norm Macdonald's Ghost]

Originally posted by ✪Asielra✪:

Why is hard-swapping frowned upon?

Because you shouldn't be swapping hards with strangers. You don't know where that hard has been.

[Koala 4peace]

Originally posted by csand:

What people on reddit say has no bearing here in this thread where literally nobody said anything to that effect.

Hardswap = admitting the L, no question in my mind

"El mundo no es como es, el mundo es como yo digo que es!"
"El mundo no es como es, el mundo es como yo digo que es!"
"A la mierda los que no son yo!"
"A la mierda los que no son yo!"
"A la mierda los que no son yo!"
"Enfermeraaaaa, me he vuelto a cagar encimaaaa!!!"

The "estribillo" from a song a classmate brought one day to music class...

[A Gamer Gaming]

Originally posted by csand:

Originally posted by Willow >w<:

Someone changing talismans or weapon mid fight doesn't matter that much. If your entire build is countered by that I think you just have a bad build.

The poster below mine put it better.

End of the the day, if I see a hardswap basically I take it as a concession by the other player cause they can't beat me. It's a W on the books regardless of the outcome at that point. If I still win the match then it's baggin time.

Delusional cope bigtime lmao. It's actually a complete L 'on the books' for you if you lose, doesn't matter what made up rules you come up with for your made up 'book' in your head.

[DickyDiscord]

To me it's a whatever thing. They obviously intended for players to hard swap given how they made options to make it easier in this game than their previous titles. That said, I feel like it's a mistake to be going into the menu mid-battles in PvP given how overpowered some of the builds are. Guessing this is more of an issue to cautious PvPers? Shock & Awe peeps aren't really going to give you that time to breath.

[𝑀𝓊𝑔𝑒𝓃]

salt

[Stratus]

Total nevermind. I dont do it myself, because I run themed builds, and if I lose, then I lose, but peeps need their wins badly, so they do it, no problem with that. it is a part of the game for ages now. Also, its only possible if you give them space, if you have an issue with hardswappers you are just backpedaling too much, get in there and smack them.