Weapon switch override on attack(?)

Issue Type (Required):

Other

Issue Description (Required):

There seems to be some sort of bug where if you attack too quickly after switching weapon, it stops trying to switch weapon and just attempts to attack with the weapon already equipped. The input queing system has seemed sort of broken, or very latency-sensitive, to me for a long time. I can’t be sure as this is my speculation, but I suspect this might be related either to the fact that many of the things we do in game are actually performed serverside, or there is some sort of input latency or queing system that prevents a weapon switch if you press the attack button too quickly after having pressed to change weapon. Regardless of the exact mechanics of it, I wish for a weapon switch button press to out-prioritize any other button presss no matter how short the interval between them.

A poster in another thread collected some hard evidence of the phenomenon here:

As can be seen, he does in fact press to switch weapons, but the game ignores it for whatever reason.

I have a lot of videos of me seeming to illogically attack mindlessly into thin air (often times right before a burster explodes in my face, or a rager gets up close and starts swinging, or similarly critical situations). Just to pick one concrete example I caught on video recently, at 24:35 in this video:

Right after I come out of the elevator I switch to knife, see two enemies in front of me, and then press to switch to staff and do primary attacks, but in fact nothing happens other than me attacking twice into thin air with the knife. The buttonpress to switch to staff was ignored, I assume, because I pressed attack too quickly after. Don’t know if this is a bug or intended mechanic, but either way it’s the game behaving in a way I think is wrong and should be fixed. A button press to switch weapon should just override anything else that could potentially interfere with it, and the weapon switch should occur regardless of whatever else is pressed or how fast.

Steps to Reproduce (Required):

Edit: The behavior can’t be reproduced in the psykanium. It only happens in missions in my experience.

Since I don’t know exactly what is causing it I’m not sure, but I suspect it happens when attack is pressed too quickly after pressing a button bound to another weapon. That at least seems to be when it happens. I think it’s sensitive to latency, because on some missions it’s much worse than others, and it doesn’t happen in the psykanium.

It happens at least once, and often multiple times per mission. Usually in critical situations where quick weapon switching is all the more crucial.

[PC] Do You Use Mods? (Optional):

Yes, and I’ve tried disabling them

Reproduction Rate (Required):

Constant (100%)

Platform (Required):

PC - Steam

3 Likes

You have to let go off r-click in order to be able to swap from inferno now.

No, it did not used to be like this. Yes, it is extremely annoying, and will get you killed.

1 Like

True, that is however not specifically the behavior I’m talking about here. It can happen with any weapon equipped (even brainburst), and with a bit of latency, if you press a button to equip another weapon and attack too soon thereafter, it will not switch weapon and simply continue to attack. For example in the video above I have knife equipped and want to switch to purgatus staff to fire off a couple of primary attacks to stagger the enemies in frost of me, but the game ignores my weapon switch button presses and simply launches into knife primary attacks.

Another typical way it happens: Say I’ve been brainbursting and I want to switch to melee to push a poxburster away, I press the button to equip my melee weapon and then immediately press the push button, but what instead happens is the game starts charging up a brainburst. Some times I stand there and multiple times go through the button cycle to switch into push (as I see the switch doesn’t happen, I try again), simply to see my character start and stop charging up brainburst multiple times.

I strongly suspect this is because these player actions actually happen server side and the client is waiting for confirmation from the server, and for reasons entirely mysterious to me, pressing attack/block/2ndary attack after a weapon switch in quick succession is overriding the weapon switch. So something about how latency interacts with weapon switching and attacking is causing this behavior. And this has to be either a bug, or some unintended side-effect of how the game is coded that is in bad need of a change.

2 Likes

I knew I couldn’t have been alone in this. This might explain why I also have had random issues of my weapon not switching when I want it to.

It’s astonishing that Fatshark’s software engineers still have jobs when this is how badly their code works.

1 Like