Pyro Paul said:
I wish people would stop bringing this 'Realism' thing into this argument... the 2 weapon set up has absolutely nothing to do with realism and everything to do with game fluidity. Simply said, if you give the player more then 2 guns at any given time you're making the game a lot more difficult.
But almost every PC FPS game on PC for the last 10 years has had a "select previous weapon" function key. Normally bound to Q.
This means if you select the shotgun from inventory, then select the sniper rifle, press Q and you switch back to shotgun, press Q again and back to sniper.
Shotgun
Q
Sniper
Q
Shotgun
This functions just the same as "Tap Y to change weapon" in combat, the difference is you keep a hold of all your guns in your inventory. So if some big mecha appears out of no where you can still pull a grenade launcher from your inventory rather than go on ANOTHER BLOODY FETCH QUEST looking for one.
And this applies perfectly for console:
Hold Y = bring up analogue wheel for weapon select
Tap Y = alternate between last 2 weapons selected
This is not unprecedented after the likes of CoD use every other face button with varying functions depending on tapping or holding-down
X: tap=reload, hold=interact
B: tap=crouch, hold=prone
A: tap=jump, hold=Mantle
Ultimately we NEED to break out of this hegemony of keeping our inventory management dumbed down to a single button tap. Gamers and developers are caught in a trap neither one wanting to make a move and risk a $10'000'000 project or for the player a $60 investment. Everyone is playing it safe and copying everyone else.
CoD herself is
trying to break this principal with many "gun like" weapons accessible from the D-pad such as missile launchers and flame-throwers. But can't quite bring themselves to do more than that.
I see the value of having a single button to quickly switch between 2 weapons, but that is no reason to limit your whole inventory to only 2 guns!
While we are at it, CoD needs far more options on the quick-grenade bumpers, why do they have to be fixed grenades? Why even grenades, the idea seem to be a small weapon you pull out with one hand and use. Couldn't that equally apply for a small pistol? So if surprised mid -reload, you snatch RB to pull out a pistol for at least a fighting chance.
So the Bumpers are for quickly deploying small-items like:
-grenades (from fragmentation to smoke variety)
-molotov cocktail
-knife (this is the proper place for 1 hit kill melee weapon)
-Compact Pistol
-torch
-bludgeon
And most of all, give us the option to change this IN GAME, don't saddle me with pre-set grenades throughout an entire level. If I've been hulking useless smoke-grenades and find a box of flashbangs, I should be able to pick them up without discarding anything.