It wasn't meant to increase the time of swapping, it should be just a "replace". More or less a "nice thing to have" instead of a "must have".
Edit: Oh of course there should be a toggle on/off option for the "animations" as well.

But you're right, adding some 2h's or something similiar would add to that uniqueness aspect. I'd love more "class" quests or missions with a few cutscenes involved here and there. Even adding some sort of AF would be awesome. It was always a thing which you could work on. Stopping @50 to collect all those AF's was always a nice change. And getting that last piece and having FULL AF made me happy :P Even some of the AF Armors sucked like hell. But it was more for the looks anyways

At the moment we're just tossing out some ideas and SE is just looking for minor adjustments they can make in the next updates. They really have a big chunk to fix and "bigger" implementations we suggest are just being made once they have a game at a nice ground.

I'm still waiting for a new letter or some patch notes though. It's about time since they announced the 2 weeks rythm. The update on 3rd March was actually the one in the end of february. So it's about time