Not sure why thumb draw would mean less accurate method, in fact thumb draw would result more cleaner release and slightly improvement in accuracy and power not the other way around. I would make thumb draw to be more difficult however, because right placement of arrow often require manual spine correction by torque hand twisting your bow (also called ‘khatra’ technique in mamluk archery ). I agree that thumb draw with right placement is more faster and allows to over draw your bow past head.
A person could speed draw high draw weight like yew longbow if his muscle acceleration is strong enough, Agility focused bow is basically low draw weight bow so i think classification based on draw weight is much better instead.
Judging how the most common tactic againts archer is to run as fast and zigzag to archer aiming at you i think ‘lars’ style of archery would be useful…although someone would do it with much powerful bow.
arrow fired from 35 lb bow aimed at eyeball is still deadly no matter how strong that guy you were aiming at.
Nah, Lars’ style is only good against targets that he has set up specifically to demonstrate his skills, after hours of practice and attempts at getting it right. On the battlefield, you don’t get to choreograph your shots for days in advance.
I agree with you, It would be nice (and probably not to hard) to make it so that we could use the shaft and perhaps the tip of the arrow to aim at our targets. I see it as an improvement to implement realism and not something that would change the mechanics of archery ingame.
After wasting tons of arrows by taking shots at all kind of things I am getting better at aiming while compensating for the fact that i need to kind of follow the arrow in a diagonal trajectory rather than a straight one but i reckon it would feel more natural the way you suggest.
But there are a couple of other things that i would like to suggest. I am no archer but I have fired a few shots in my youth and the thing that i find most annoying is the way that the bow moves while aiming as if i was drunk, i have got used to it, to some extent, and i tend to wait until the swaying moves over the target and then release the shot, however it does not feel natural at all to me.
I think the bow should be a lot more stable than it is to the point where it does not sway at all for a short time after drawing, with the exception say if the archer was shooting with a bow he doesn’t yet have the strength for and perhaps if he is extremely low rank.
when he has reached a high enough skill level swaying should not be an issue anymore, then he could focus on things like aiming quickly while taking the target distance into consideration to adjust the parabola of the shot.
The other thing, particularly as there are no perks for archery, I would suggest that one of the things that could improve with rank is the draw speed and dare i say the time that it takes to ready the next arrow.
I have gotten my archery skill up to 4 and already the sway is a ton less. I think they have what you want kind of implemented. The thing we have to keep in mind is that Henry has never held a bow in his life. It even says that he can’t hold it correctly until level 5 in the game. Also, the bows in the game are likely nothing at all like modern bows that we could expect seeing at the average archery range. The bows in the game/at that time in history were designed for killing first and probably accuracy second. Is anybody past level 5 in archery yet? Maybe the bow straightens out at that point and the shaft and tip can be used to aim? Is there that big of a change when Henry can actually hold the bow correctly as the game says?
My bow skill is at 7 or 8 and it still sways too much in my opinion. It is not a game breaker for me, I just think that when Henry has done enough shooting and reached a high enough level he should not have any difficulties at keeping the bow still, at least while his stamina is good. As I mentioned I also believe it would be right for his draw, reload and generally ready his weapon to become more efficient but, as you said, this mechanics may already be in place.
At the same I do like that lack of the aim cursor and maybe the damage that the bow inflicts should be so that it does not become to powerful, maybe with the exception of particularly well aimed shots, like the ones in the head.
I do agree with the OP “Callaghan” that the position of the arrow shaft could be changed so that it could be used more as it would be with real life shooting.
You answered my question. The arrow shaft position doesn’t change to what Callaghan suggests after reaching level 5. What level is your strength? Maybe that’s why you are still swaying a lot. I have spent a lot of time grinding with Cpt Bernard training combat and strength.
I think my strength is 15 or over, over 13 for sure, i too enjoy sparring with Bernard. To be honest I will have to pay closer attention to the amount of swaying that I have at my current level.
As far as I know there are ways to reduce it or even stop it, check the nexus, but I have not felt the need to resort to use them, at least not yet. Mine was a suggestion to (in my opinion) improve archery in the game not to make it easier but more realistic and skill based, just like Callaghan idea for aiming.
… and yes the arrow position is still the same as it was the first time Henry picked a bow.
Maybe there is a sway difference between M/K and controller controls. I am on PS4 Pro so maybe the sensitivity is set differently. What is your mouse sensitivity at? Is there an in-game option for it or does it just use Windows settings. Also, check your DPI settings on your mouse. Could that be contributing to the sway? There are a lot of little things with mice that controller users just don’t have to/get to worry about.
Mouse sensitivity, DPI, smoothing or similar settings - be it in game or via other control panels - do not come into play here. Meaning they affect mouse movement, that is you need to move the mouse and such settings will make a difference, in this case the swaying takes place independently of mouse movement.
I’ll post a video trying to show what I mean, here I do not move the mouse at all from start to finish. I start with no weapon in hand to show where the cursor is, then I equip the bow and hold the Left Mouse button to take the shot. All the swaying that you see is nothing to do with me, for the sake of this video I do not try to compensate for it. When I deselect the bow you see the cursor return, by itself, to the original position.
I´m in no way an archery expert, but have made shots with a wooden longbow and taught by an “expert” how to hold and aim, and will agree… Makes no sense to have the arrow that far to the side. Hopefully this will be seen and archery will be more enjoyable
First of all, if you archers are engaged in a melee, you’ve done something wrong.
Secondly, if your archers are in the process of getting engaged in melee and they’re still insisting on using their bows, they’re doing something wrong.
The most common situation of the use of archery in this game could be considered using archery in melee engangement like you said. One of the popular tactic for bypassing Runt boss fight is to quick shoot at him with bow and arrow and aim to the head. I dont see why this is like something that is wrong, Speed archery technique would work very well in this kind of situation. Not to mention that the whole thing about horseback archery, launching arrow as accurate and many as you could in the duration of the gallop are valid strategy i could think off. Currently henry draw and nocking are slow, perhaps he could learn a trick or two from cumans how to do speed archery technique of nomad origin.
You’re not going to shoot as fast with a bow capable of doing any real damage to someone wearing gambeson. And I’m not even going to go into mail or plate.
What are helmets, or shields.
Also good luck hitting someone in the eye, while they’re sprinting at you with the intent to kill you. Lars Anderson’s technique might be viable if he were fighting in a battle full of naked people, but even in places like Sub Saharan Africa, where they would wear no armor, they would often poison their bows.
Arches quite commonly would engage in melee, or even somtimes shoot from near point blank range. Just look at agincourt.
the “lightly armored, and armed” archer who has to run away from a melee is not accurate.
Agincourt is an excellent example of a battle where one side was almost exclusively archers, were heavily outnumbered and were facing down a charging heavy calvary, and completely dominated the field from every range, short, long and mid range.
Of course, part of Henry V’s plan was to throw chivalry out the window and ignore the commonly accepted rules of war by the French and English. Knights were often of noble birth and were expected to be taken for ransom rather than killed. Henry V had his archers, when the knights were down take daggers and dirks and stab them in weak points in the armor, from the armpit, the neck, between the joints. Chainmail is excellent for stopping slashing strikes but is useless agasint stabbing from a dagger or dirk, which is what the platemail protected them from.
It also didn’t help the French that it rained and the field was muddy so the heavy calvary was nowhere near as effective and when their horses were injured or killed and the knights thrown, the mud didn’t help them get up again, especially in a rain of arrows and some men going from fallen knight to fallen knight and stabbing them in the vulnerable spots.
To be honest, i think he made the right call. The prisoners French prisoners actually outnumbered the English army, and had he not ordered many of them to be executed, it could have resulted in his stunning victory turning into a horrific defeat.
Why not? Iam sure someone strong enough to pull warbow like 120lb could draw fast with enough practise. If not then faster nocking technique, which known as shower shooting, i had discussed it above. Lajos kassai and mihai cozmei have good example how it works.
Not gonna argue with plate, but how much Draw weight you need to penetrate mail with 12 layer gambeson anyway? As i said in above this technique were developed to fight light armored opponent such as nomadic horse archer, camp follower during raid scenario basically something that you wanted to cause damage as possible during skirmish engangement. And…if your aim true enough, why not the gap between armored soldier?
Not if i shoot from horseback and aiming at those clueless bandit that i encircling with my horse, like a hunting prey lol
Also thanks for mentioning the use of posioned arrow, but sadly the archer who practise this kind of technique rarely use that (mameluk archers) and i wanted to explain the context of speed archery historically accurate as possible. Perhaps during the scythian era or parthian empire, but as we see in carrhae they prefer using steady arrow rain over faster shooting in short succession. In game context, i actually often do that (bane poison laced arrow is sweet) just its a shame that henry could not pull his bow faster despite his strength stat increasing throughout the game.
Of course when eccountering knight or heavy armored soldier, you switch for heavier bow and armor piercing arrow. This is what mongol did, often they would even dismounted while using heavier bow (which look like the most commonly marketed as mongol bow now, while their shorter bow looks closer to modern reproduced turkish bow). Again i am sure many player would use archery more againts unarmored bandit then switch to melee to deal with armored one.
battle of dorylaeum is good example despite light arrow cant penetrate the crusader armor, they eventually succumb to the wound caused by some arrow among all those pin pencussioned armor, to make it way to the weak gap.
I agree. He did make the right call. I was simply stating that there was more to his victory than the skill of his archers, which were obviously very good.
