It's not a mechanic it's just an additional trait of a weapon. Doom has it in the guass cannon, it has massive kickback to yourself when you shoot it so speedrunners play the entire game walking backwards shooting the gun Edit: to answer your question, it's different because it's not annoying
I'll tell you what man, cooldowns are one of those things that people outside of the hardcore forum crowd absolutely think games need, and it's really hard to argue on that subject. Same thing with hitscan weapons, tall maps, and melee lunge/auto aim. I've talked a lot about these things with my brother in law who is generally good at games and very sharp, but all of these shitty developer precedents are just burned into his brain.
To play devil's advocate, I think you could say almost every weapon in Halo is on a cooldown because the time between shots must be greater than 0 seconds (except semi-automatics, which have an indirect cooldown in the form of the time it takes the player to pull the trigger twice). But I can see your point.
Firing cadence is separate from a cooldown. That's like saying the spacing between notes in a musical phrase is the same as a rest between phrases.
I don't know anything about music so your analogy is lost on me. But I can imagine a little spell icon, like in Diablo or something, with one of those greyed clock face things doing a full rotation in between each shot. Technically, I don't see the difference. https://i.gyazo.com/e7b8cabc1a156b529fcd5d45eee3a3c8.gif
Possibly the worst argument I've ever heard. If I need a clock on my screen to tell me why nothing happens when I press a button, it's a cooldown. You don't need a timer to tell you when to pull the trigger again on a sniper.
I don't like ability cooldowns Firing your first bullet and waiting .5 seconds to fire the second bullet is not an ability cooldown. If you want to play devil's advocate, you could argue that reloading is a cooldown, but we have separate words for a reason.
Yeah I think I would almost definitely consider reloading a form of cooldown. It's a little different because you're not reloading after every shot (in most cases), but I think in concept it works pretty much the same. Also, what is an ability, really? I understand the visual and theatric distinctions between firing a gun and using some other kind of ability; but mechanically, I think firing a gun is the same as using an ability. What about casting a fireball spell in a different game? I realize I might be being overly technical here, but that's kind of what I was going for.
And it's likely a different reason than what you're implying here. Usually when we rely only on "figuring things out", we're just making **** up and fooling ourselves. Sprankles is actually making sense, guys. There are examples in this game of what he's saying, notably in vehicles. Although generally cooldowns are long enough to differentiate them from quicker mechanisms to the point we have to mentally handle them differently, usually needing an indicator that lets us know when they're ready. Focusing on the annoyance factor, weapon cadence can be long enough to blur the lines between them and cooldowns. I agree that cooldowns are annoying, but I think that makes them a good mechanism that can provide a good and varied experience when done the right way to balance and enhance play. Still annoying to the point where I tend to choose weapons and abilities that don't have cooldowns, so I'm with ya in preference for sure.