I’d agree whole-heartedly, but he had no need to get offended/angry and bitter over it.
That wasn’t me. I agree. Let’s get back on topic…
YES! A thousand times! When I fired my first arrow ingame, this was my very first thought. I really hope devs will see this…
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Yeah, the way to aim the bow in this game throws me off so much because it’s so offset. I’ve been target shooting and bow hunting since I was a kid. I’ve always aimed my recurves and longbows by looking down the arrow. Compound bow I have an actual sight dot on, but that isn’t relevant to this game.
When I started playing the game, I was excited to mess around with the bows, but after trying them, I just feel like they are barely even useable. Aiming them is so counterintuitive with the offset that it feels like a struggle to hit a target just 10 feet away, because I’m constantly having to correct myself away from aiming how I’ve been aiming for 30 years.
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I’ve been thinking this since the bow training at the start of the game. Henry should be looking down the arrow with the upper limb near vertical. I also agree the bow should be held low until notch then raised on the draw to eye level.
It’d certainly help with the bow issues AND make the game more realistic.
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+1 to all the above.
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Excellent post, I really like this idea.
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I completely agree with this. Right now the peculiarity and abstraction of the game creates a sort of…different difficulty. I ended up mastering it eventually, but it was more like a bizarre puzzle than real archery. Again the lining of offset and out of place arrow is a strange choice. I shot only modern bows, but the way I taught fits OP’s description.
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This gives you such a satisfying sense of accomplishment when you are able to start nailing your targets from horseback. Keeping your horse up to speed with a herd of deer and picking them off one by one or running circles around a bandit camp raining arrows into them. Such great, much death.
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My two cents on how to improve the archery experience.
Add a feather hanging from the top knock. This indicates wind direction and indicates how you need to over-shoot. Faster draw-speed, faster stamina loss when fully drawn. Addition of placement of quivers (not intended for realism per se), position on the back allows for more and longer arrows, placement on the hip allows for quicker “reload” but generally weaker arrows. Add status effects to archery, like shooting a foot or a leg reduces the enemy speed for a short time, or better yet reduces their aggressiveness because they are afraid to let down their shield-guard. Or something.
Naturally, the wind-indicator would be best implemented within a 3rd person camera. Yes, I will always mention this untill warhorse reenables the console command.
I see why people look sceptical of the focus of speed in archery, especially after the controversy like what lars andersen did. Here’s what i think of speed archery and how it might be useful.
Lots of horseback archery technique teach the use of speed archery against unarmored opponent, for example mamluk archery treatise suggest ‘shower technique’ like this guy demonstrate to form arrow barrage to designated killzone area (just like modern rocket artillerry) against mongolian horse archer which often unarmored.
Now lots of horses in this game were unarmored, maybe a little better with the knight horse which often have blanket cloth but i doubt that suffice to stop arrow from decent draw weight bow. More better if you use poisoned arrow to compensate the reduced power (which actually was practised by african archer such as nubian and malian archers; and slavic archer as well which is mentioned in strategikon of maurice for the way to combat light cavalry using missile).
The core of speed archery is ussually speed nocking than short draw length, so i dissappointed someone like lars didnt use proper draw length and more hurt is that his bow is might not higher than 45lb. He is talented but what he wanted to replicate is not the right like what historical cataphract horse archer did (mamelukes, byzantine, sasasnid, etc).
The second way is to add holding multiple arrow in your palm like that guy did above, or hungarian style like lajos kassai did which places arrows on the bow grip instead. Lots of different technique, but the core principle is basically to aid archer to speed shooting without sacreficing power as possible.
One last thing, i really like if the more higher perks allow you to slow mo when you aim. To compensate the lower power of speed shooting lots of horseback archer would shoot with such accuracy like they were capable of splitting thei arrow to a knife target from 10 feet on galloping horseback.
Edit: There is also that you cant shoot rightside on horseback, yeah i know its difficult especially if you never train using bow using right grip left draw. But historical horse archer did it just perfectly so maybe if we are that high enough in archery and horsemanship there should be a perk that allow henry to shoot any direction from horseback.
AFAIK there is no wind effect. But they already have body part specific wound effects, such as slowing an enemy by shooting their leg.
Yes! Marvelous idea! I ended up turning the fire cursor on as I just can not seem to tell where I’m shooting. I learned to fire a bow many decades ago and haven’t done it much since. I knew there was something ‘wrong’ with the way the bow was implemented but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
Thanks for stating the problem so eloquently.
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Great post hope they implement it soon!
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This is a horrible idea.
You are maybe an archer - and I have done archery myself as well including bow hunting - but this is a game, and gamedesign mechanics given the limit of keyboard/mouse and a 2d screen means that the interface style has to be implemented well so that the control of the character is fluid, unobtrusive, and responsive. There cant be too much on the screen getting in the way. Having to pull the arrow up to your cheek and aiming down the shaft would cover half the screen. Also you might not be familiar with combat archers of the medieval era who DID NOT knock arrow to cheek. They shot rapidly more from the shoulders and chest, aiming by the point tip of the arrow.
So actually the way it is now is MORE realistic for combat archery of the era - than your archery-range competition archery that you are talking about.
Also - 100% Realism destroys the game. Too much realism, and its not a game anymore nor is it enjoyable. The balance of that is crucial.
Agreed, all this anchor point rule is in fact a modern invention especially in olympic culture. Historical archer dont know all those sort of thing and shoot as please they want as long its work and not dangerous.
You haven’t understood my suggestion correctly. The amount of screen being covered would only be increased by about 1-2%. The hand and bow already cover the screen, my suggestion is to raise them. Your response details further misunderstanding, the knock point is irrelevant to my suggestion, which is in fact a better balance between gameplay and realism than what we currently have, which is neither realistic nor intuitive.
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OK, if I didnt understand your suggestion correctly, then I still think changes to the way archery is implemented are a waste of time. The archery system as it is - is great. I thought you were suggesting “more realism plox!” type changes - which would make the archery system WORSE, not better.
I think there are important, critical issues (and bugs ofc) that need the focus and not this kind of nit-picking “i like red with a brown trim instead of blue” kind of suggestions (which nobody is going to agree on because its your flavour - and not improvement over the game mechanics).
So i think this thread and suggestion is just a waste of time - youre creating an argument to which everyone is going to have a different opinion - and there is no actual improvement that can come out of that.
Hopefully the devs just skim through this and forget about it.
I guess, better solution just to make a second moment to show a crosshair(And then it disappears) , when you’re drawing a bow to remember where’s the center of the screen and that’s all. This’s the easiest way. Many people just can’t understand where’s the center of the screen to aim with.
P.S Something like that. You don’t have crosshair, when you’re wearing a bow, but when you’re starting to draw it appears for a second. It’s not like final idea, but a good one.
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This is an excellent thread and well worth the Devs considering Callaghan’s well thought out suggestions obviously founded in his real world experience. Thank you for posting.
Without wishing to hijack this excellent thread in any way and posted only as a humorous comment; my own two-penn’orth of noobie archery gripe is that quite often, when I have unloaded say half a dozen expensive piercing arrows into a fairly tough assailant, the b***er goes down on one knee to beg for his life, I then follow up with a coup de grace of one final arrow, and the cheating sob gets up and runs off like a hare taking 16 Groschen or so of my arrows with him. This can be quite an expensive undertaking with say three of them pulling the same trick in a bandit camp. I have even tried running after the vanquished for an extended period of time but after a while the NPC just disappears, of course taking my expensive arrows with him. Grrr
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