May be it was not reallistic, but i loved the archery system in desperado. I got lot s fun trying to kill fast rabbit, even using the slow motion capacity, witch is fair if the character is a skilled archer. I guess for a good one, the sense of time is getting slower during aiming process.
Barre indicators are welcome, because this is the only feedback we have, at least untill some crasy devs or hardware manufacturers will come out with a pain emulator device.
Perhaps the developers will be interested to look at these materials (church frescoes) on bows and quivers 14-15th on the territory of Eastern Europe.
Можливо розробникам буде цікаво подивитися на ці матеріали (у більшій частині церковні фрески) по лукам та сагайдакам 14-15 ст. на территорії Східної Европи.
https://picasaweb.google.com/113650598740985256040/BowKolchanChilindrMin?authkey=Gv1sRgCMup04KWpojIvAE
http://www.kitabhona.org.ua/forums/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=810
If your back quiver fits it is very easy to pull your arrows quickly. I can do 7 aimed in 30 seconds or 8 if I don`t care where they hit. The really fast guys can do 9 or 10.
Ok, but I bet you that i can do almost the same with 32" long arrows and heavy poundage bow with quiver at my side. And I bet you, i can put more arrows to my belt quiver in 10 seconds than you 
Second reason why to use belt quiver is that, in this time they often wore arrows with arrowheads upside, so they can choose arrowhead type.
And few nice images
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Nice archery animation with follow through of release hand after release … well done. I like back quivers, so no complaints from me. They need to fix the arrow not being in the quiver though. The draw could also be a bit slower. I guess all the animations I saw in the video could be a bit slower.
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Archery in this game can ,borrow’’ some ideas from War Of Roses game especially the realistic moment when hand begins to shake after couple of seconds,when arrow is not released and the pressure of the bow is big. Reloading and shooting must’nt be boring linear action of reloading, every time the same movement…like changing magazine on your rifle in BF3game,always the same movement of your hand you know what i mean… There can be couple of 3-4 animations with some variety bethween them to look smooth and natural to release arrow in 3-4 diferent ways.
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That is one of the objectives in archery, is to do it the same every time, it is the art of repetition 
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crossbow superiority is very debatable.
a crossbow is more powerful yes, but, takes longer to reload, and is inaccurate at long distances.
a longbow is less powerful, but takes less time to reload, and retains it’s accuracy at a longer range.
training is of course, required, more so for a longbow then a crossbow.
that’s why, in England at a time, people were ordered by law to practice archery on saturday/sunday.
that way, they had a huge pool of semi-skilled archers to draft for war.
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give me a longbow or horse bow rather then a crossbow any day of the week.
a crossbow can be very accurate in trained hands, but since medieval armies adopted the crossbow especially because it required less training to use, i doubt they would get the same kind of accuracy.
the main positive points to use a crossbow were:
- cheaper to train large units of crossbowmen then longbowmen
- the ability to pierce plate armor
http://www.militaryfactory.com/smallarms/medieval-crossbow.asp
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On short ranges the crossbow has negligible projectile drop off and fires very much like a modern day rifle would. Excellent in siege situations or field battles with war wagons where the enemy get close but can’t attack you. To achieve the same kind of accuracy with bows takes notable longer.
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You can take a oerson and make him able to use a crossbow with some effectiveness in a day or two. (at most)
And the same can be said about early firearms.
It takes many years to get a person to be able to draw and hit anyhting with a full powered longbow… that is why is lost to the “gun” in the long run.
A battalion of longbow men at Waterloo would have shot the old guard to pieces at 200m in a minute or two… but when it effectively takes 15+years to train a longbowman. (when rained from childhood) it is not that great a plan.
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You can also get a pretty accurate replica of a composite bow from Grozer - here is a quote from the site (extra III)
Extra III. (composite or horn bow) finish: This is the kind that is the exact copy of the original, made with the same method as a thousand years ago, and consists of only natural components. The core of the bow is joined together of assorted kinds of wood. The inside (that is on the archer’s side) is made of horn plating. The outside is made of tendon strings and fishbladder-glue, layered and shrunk onto the bow. These layers are sensitive to moisture, so it is covered with birch-bark or thin leather, which we decorate with original painted motives, on demand. The handle and tips are stiffened with horn or bone, and strengthened at the joinings with tying. The horn plating is made of the horn of Hungarian grey steer, water buffalo, ibex, wild sheep horn, and it’s an expensive material, because there’s not too much of it left. The fishbladder-glue can only be cooked from the airbladder of the sturgeon, a living fossil, that is also scarce these days. Actually, it isn’t cooked, but we extract the glue from it with a “cold” process, soaking it in different kinds of materials. This way the quantity of the glue is small, but for that the quality is excellent. There is several reasons for using sturgeonbladder-glue for bowmaking for example: 1/ very strong gluing capability 2/ it won’t get brittle or lose it’s elasticity even after decades 3/ it is easy to work with. Obviously applying the tendon layer has got its own tricks. Before sinew must be soaked in various materials, impregnated, then only after this apply to the bow. This is why it is so unbreakable and resistant on the outer side of the bow. Besides, wood and horn must be treated, otherwise it would break easily in the bow. The horn-bow, the great invention of the Scythians, as well as the saddle, and later the Avar’s stirrups. The rest of the eastern cultures took the knowledge of bowmaking from the nomads.
The making of a bow this way can take up to 10-12 months, drying of the wood not included.
An average composite bow has got the draw weight of 65 lbs, but we have orders on 45 lbs and 90 lbs bows either.
100# not so hard to draw? If you´re not used to it I think it´s pretty hard.
Strongest bow I shot was a 80# longbow and I´ve also tried to draw a 100# yew longbow but couldn´t fully draw it.
But for every day shooting I prefer lower poundages - I´m shooting a 56# english longbow and a 54# hungarian bow - love them both 
Dear Warhorse,
on my wish list is to see realistic archery effects, with a sliding scale of difficulty.
Say on a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is hardcore mode and 1 is easy left click pointing cross hairs over the target. I have seen so many factors wanted on this thread and would love to see them as part of KCD, whilst a clumsy player like myself could go through the game as an archer. Regards.
Here’s another challenge to the realism of the plot. A son of a blacksmith, who was trained to be an archer for years? Or maybe a son of a blacksmith, who’s also blacksmith, but practicing archery in his spare time, so he’s able to hit a rabbit in the end of the Act III? My best wishes to the Warhorse writers, no sarcasm, no trolling.
I think you’re referring to a ‘Compound’ bow. Yes modern day compounds are made of composite materials… however when referencing a ‘Composite’ bow, it’s simply referring to a bow that is made using a variety of different materials (commonly for the time period; horn, wood and sinew) rather than a single piece of wood.
Todays Compounds are designed so that if the initial draw weight is set up to be say 50-60 pounds, as the string is pulled back, the cams (pulleys) rotate to a particular ‘let-off’ point, where the holding poundage essentially drops back to around 20-25 pounds. This allows the archer to hold the bow at full draw for much longer than if they were pulling an equally pounded Recurve or Long bow.
Hopefully that clarifies… 
As long as you’re doing the right thing that is…
Otherwise you end up just repeating your mistakes 
So what you real archers think about alpha archery?
As long as I am only a knight here so I don´t have played the Alpha by myself, but I have seen some youtube videos about the Alpha. The archery ingame looks really great, I am an archer by myself and this seems to be pretty realistic.
Well i would love to see some real archery tech as there have been ideas that back in the days (unless it was in a army formation) archers could fire many arrows very fast if the target was not to far away (making it harder to aim).
So for example the ability to hold 3-4 arrows and using them faster maybe draining more stamina and giving a accuracy penalty.
Other then that i dont have much to say about the archery combat. It have a few annoying things but it could be possible that its annoying due to the character lacking skill in archery.
The only issue i have with archery is how much the bow sways at full draw. The devs had said that is because the bow you are using is hard to pull back but i have experience with archery and when i attempt to bull bows back that i can barley handle i don’t sway all over the place my arm just trembles a little. But at least the sway will go down when you get your archery skill and strength up.