I agree with with the love studios, an old school trick like a blob shadow would go along way into giving the player a basic understand to where they were going to roughly land. It is not a gamebreaker with the current respawn system, but it would shave a few unnecessary deaths off of a player’s run through the game.
As far as the sword, I agree, leaving it in makes it confusing to the player. Maybe remove it from the player at the start of the game. That way it conveys to the player that they are going to have to make it through with the rolling/jumping options instead (until the grenade :) shows up). Plus, it buys you time to tweak the controls, and you may be able to add the sword back in later down the line. Kind of the classic show the player the cool thing they have, then take it away from them and make them earn it back through gameplay.