First things first
First off would like to start by saying I wanted to voice my opinion about this before it launched, however didn't find enough time to actually make a post, so here I am. I'm known in the PvP community for my swordplay, so I thought it'd be fitting that I voice my opinion/experiences with what the current update has offered. I also took my time to play for a bit this update to see how much sword has gotten affected; I tried it before I complained about it, and now I'm going to point out the flaws.
The first issue I'd like to address is the stun. A feature as we all know of slashing someone with a sword is that it would stun them for a certain amount of time - specifically it would stun them for 0.5 seconds (before this patch). Currently the sword stun only lasts 0.2 seconds, pretty much nonexistent in this current update. I would like to point out why this change was actually a bad change when Rare attempted to "balance" the sword.
Speaking in terms of when stun was 0.5 seconds
With the stun ability of the sword when you slashed someone, it would punish them for making a mistake in the game, whether it was a bad judgement call or simply bad movement. In sword duels, if you were to be stunned, it would punish you for your mistake to where the match is now in your opponent's favor. Now because of this, it made me a better swordsman, as well as others too. The stun allowed you to learn from your mistakes and either be more cautious with how you approach your opponent, or allow you to be more aggressive with your movement.
Now that it's not 0.5 seconds anymore and 0.2 seconds (again, basically nonexistent), you do not get punished as much for your mistakes, rather it feels more like a slap on the wrist for messing up, rather than having you die, which is how it should be. Even if you got caught in a stun, you could get out of it as well, and that comes from practicing your movement as well as situational game sense.
The stun was also the only thing keeping a sword fight vs a double gun fight fair. How you might ask? If I were to run sword, and my opponent were to run sniper and blunderbuss, my goal is to get close to them to try to get them in a stun lock, and therefore favor the fight on me. However, if they are running blunder, they could also one shot me if I am a close enough distance, and they could also knock me back. When you had someone locked down in a stun, it was a 50/50 on whether or not they could land their blunderbuss shot on you. How it is now (with the 0.2 second stun lock), you barely even get stunned, you can easily get out of a sword slash, and easily favor the fight onto yourself.
Speaking in terms of how stun is now (0.2 seconds)
The meta now is double gun, you will rarely see any of the good / competitive players running swords anymore. If you look at streamers as well, even a majority of them have switched to double gun since this patch. It's because they understand how terrible the decision was (no offense) to reduce the stun lock. Now this may just be a coincidence and you might say "but I like the stun how it is now!" but all I have to say to that is to look at the meta now. Sword used to be the most viable weapon choice, as it's one of the most versatile weapons and could be used in 1 vs 4 situations, even if you didn't use the lunge ability and only slashed (yes you can 1 v 4 galleons with slashing only, and good crews as well not just bot crews). You really need to rethink here Rare, I understand the process of trial and error, and I really hope that this is the case here, because you have made an error to where the majority of players who take this game competitively in any way have switched to double guns. I'm sure many have also experienced bad hit registration in the game, even with swords.
When the stun was 0.5 seconds, you were able to see whether or not your hit registered if the opponent got stunned or not. Now that the stun is basically nonexistent you don't even know whether your hit landed on them. Hit registration itself however is a whole other issue that I'd rather not talk about much in this post.
Stow/Unstow "exploit" (X cancel, Double X technique, animation cancelling, etc)
Before I go on, would like to define what a lock down is as we proceed to the rest of this post. A lock down is when you are able to constantly slash someone, without letting them escape (to a certain degree) here's a video example of me performing the lockdown on a streamer and good friend of mine named Sparbucks when we were doing sword duels:
Twitch
Recently there was a clip which I'm sure a lot of you have seen online about a certain player cheating in the Sea of Champions Arena tournament. This individual used the stow/unstow exploit, but used a macro to make his slashes even faster, abnormally fast. I believe because of this clip going around, it was brought to Rare's attention to "fix" this. To do so, they added another new animation / delay to the sword so that when you equip it, it makes the animation of you unsheathing your sword. Here is my take on this:
The Stow/Unstow technique was used to reset your slashes as well as use it as a "feint" mechanic. Rare unintentionally added another mechanic into the game, feinting, which was as you might know of as the "Stow/Unstow exploit." I understand that Rare likes to tend to casuals a lot, and loves to be Sea of Friends rather than Sea of Thieves with some of their PvE content updates, but taking away X cancelling technique has brought down the skill gap of sword users even more. It seems as if every update Rare tries to balance the combat, they end up adding more animations, more delays, and more bugs. For instance, currently there is an ADS bug where your gun will be scoped in even if you are not holding your ADS key. It goes the same with swords for blocking, where your sword will stay blocking even if you are not holding your block button down.
The Stow/Unstow technique was probably the only feature in this game that made the sword more fun to use. It allowed you to circle around your opponents if you had them in a lock down, and allowed you to be very versatile and agile when using the technique. I understand Rare removed it because they saw how a macro can be used to exploit the technique to inhumane speeds of slashing. However, there's your problem right there - macros.
The individual that was abusing this technique in the Sea of Champions tournament was using a macro in order to do so. You cannot achieve that speed of slashing without using a macro to cheat. Instead of creating a macro detection in the game, you add more delays and animations to an already clunky weapon in a clunky combat system. Minecraft servers are able to create multiple multiple autoclicker / macro detections. I know this because I played Minecraft for 6+ years and helped come up with the logic for a few of these macro checks. However, the very first couple of checks that would be implemented before any advance auto clicker detection methods would be a CPS checker (clicks per second checker) to see if you click inhumanely at speeds such as 30 CPS or more, and the second method would be a consistency check - checking how consistent you are with your clicks. If Minecraft servers can create detections for macros and auto clickers, I'm sure Rare can as well in Unreal Engine.
It's not like you're detecting for Aimbot/Triggerbot/Smooth Aimbot, where you need to account for the complexity of the water simulation in the game, or use advanced math such as Calculus to come up with the logic behind detecting things such as aimbot, or even account for their yaw/pitch - you are implementing a detection method for MACROS, which are always consistent no matter how much someone tries to randomize it. Macros repeat the same pattern over, hence why they can be detected.
You removed the Stow/Unstow technique by adding more animations, when really you could've added a macro detection instead, which would solve more than half of your problems when it comes to cheaters. It would wipe out anyone who uses the same type of macro the player in the Sea of Champions tournament used, it would detect half of the players who claim to be good with double gunning by banning their macro they have set up to double gun; it would solve more than half of the "exploits" people use within this game because they would be banned for cheating. Animation cancelling has been popular in so many games such as Overwatch, League of Legends, as well as others. A perfect example is the game "Mount & Blade: Warband" where animation cancelling was envied if you knew how to do it properly, and was used in official tournaments held by the game developers as well.
While it may seem like an exploit, it was a mechanic that allowed a player to utilize its advantages in order to improve their movement, their offense, and even their defense. You could feint your attacks, and you could even stop your second slash midway in order to reset back to your first slash. It introduced a new way to play the game and made using a cutlass more enjoyable. Now with this patch, the skill gap has been lowered even more and the only thing setting you apart from another sword user would be your movement, not your style of attacking or anything at all. I understand tending to casuals, but lowering the skill gap even more to where a brainless noob can kill someone who's more experienced is just absurd.
We love your game Rare, but sometimes with some of these combat changes you make, it gets harder to actually hop on this game and enjoy the PvP.
The sword was at its absolute best over a year and a half ago, when your slashes would slow you down, and when experienced players knew how to have full speed on the first slash as well, even if their last 2 slashes slowed them down. At this point in time the sword was balanced, as even if you missed a hit, your movement would be slowed. This, along with the Stow/Unstow animation made it a pretty balanced weapon. Any changes after that have been unnecessary and have made the sword more clunky, and less skill based.
I of course welcome all criticism and feedback and would love to have a civilized debate if anyone is against any of the points I've made. I can't really think of anything else at the moment, but if something comes to mind then I'll be sure to either edit this post or create a new reply with what comes to mind. Thank you for taking the time to read this (if you did) and I hope that we as a community can get a response on this.
EDIT:
An alternative to the Stow/Unstow animation cancelling, which can help decrease the "clunkiness" of the sword combat
Another reason that people had utilized the Stow/Unstow animation was because of how you had the ability to have instant movement after you cancelled the animation. Currently how the sword is, you have to do all 3 of your slashes in order to regain movement, and that too after a small cooldown. If you were to try and move again after your first/second slash (by moving, I specifically mean sprinting), you are unable to do so until the animation for your sword swing has completely ended, with another second wait in between (and time really matters here, an example of how much time matters is the 0.5 second stun reduced to 0.2 seconds, making it almost nonexistent. Every delay matters).
What I propose is to allow sword users to have instant movement after their first two swings, and the final 3rd slash could be a trade-off. The reason we used the Stow/Unstow animation cancelling was also because we did not want to knock our opponents back after our 3rd slash; we wanted to keep them locked in place so that we could continue our combos on them until they died, or countered us. Allowing us to have instant movement after the first 2 slashes would allow us to create distance, but also re-introduce the "feint" mechanic into the game, which was originally used via Stow/Unstow animation cancelling. Allowing sword users to have instant movement after the first 2 slashes eliminates the desire to even have the Stow/Unstow exploit within the game. I believe this, along with increasing the stun back to how it was before, would cause the influx of sword users who switched to double gun, switch back to sword again.
