From my experiences in the Beta, and in the Live client, I have noted, when giving advice to low level players, I often say:
"Just wait til weapon swap opens up at level 15, you will love it!"
To which, they respond with a variant of: "What?!? ... Why do I have to wait until level 15 to use a ranged AND a melee weapon??"
I try to explain to them how the system works. I tell them that they can still use the "other" weapon type, but that they need to pick which weapon type they want to start out with.
Unfortunately, that doesn't "cut the mustard", so to speak, for most of them.
Possible solution:
Make Weapon Swapping available at level 1, with Full tutorial support.
The tutorial could trigger when a character first picks up a new weapon type.
Here's the main reason why I think changes need to be made:
Every Old-school, Pen and Paper, Tabletop roleplayer knows that you always have
Both a ranged, and a melee weapon.
Most of the folks that I have spoken to regarding this issue fall into this category ... and so do I.
Edit: I would like to retract my request to change Weapon Swapping.
My reason (also found in the thread):
I think in part it's mechanic based too.
At the start your character has no skill points (obviously), so basically having one choice of weapon to improve/work-on/skill-up means your character becomes less of a 'jack-of-all-trades'. There are so many options to place skill points, even in this situation, so I think a little help from the mechanics to help new players limit these choices is helpful.
Skill-point use is probably the most important right at the beginning of the game; spread them out too much and your character can really suffer in combat. Maybe not for experienced players of MMOs or the like that know what they're doing, but for players that are new to the genre/style. And we have to think of all styles of play. Such new players could really dig themselves into a hole if they spread out their points/experience too thinly. I think limiting weapon swap, helps mitigate this problem, if but a little.
@Rev Rielle
Impressive.
I had not considered this angle.
Yours is an Excellent, well reasoned response, and I fully agree with you.
I will retract the Feature Request and update the original post to reflect this, and your reasoning.
Thank you, and Well done Sir or Madam, whichever the case may be.
(+1 "Insightful" to your post)