Will these new bows use magicka? Because that's the only way they'll be effective.

Crossbow having shorter length and doing mediocre damage don't make any sense. It must do lethal damage and travel longer distance.

With that said, I don't know if I want Crossbow in this game because I don't want any weapon basic attacks do lethal damage. I like long bow/short bow thingy you suggested, but since there is no swing speed difference between sword/axe/mace and dagger as well I don't think it will happen.

FYI the best bow mechanics I've seen in my life was early DAoC's one. It felt really like bow-sniper... I miss it.

Make the rest of the physical weapons work as good as bow.

Well, archery is one of my hobbies, so here goes...

Longbows have a longer pull, require more strength, arrows travel the slowest but have more energy behind them, and are the least accurate.

Short-bows have a shorter pull, require less strength, arrows travel faster but have less energy behind them, and are more accurate than a longbow.

Crossbows have a shorter pull but constant due to mechanics, arrows travel the fastest but have the least amount of energy behind them, have great accuracy, and require the least amount of strength to use.

Take it for what it's worth as part of the discussion.

GrimGryphon wrote: »

Well, archery is one of my hobbies, so here goes...

Longbows have a longer pull, require more strength, arrows travel the slowest but have more energy behind them, and are the least accurate.

Short-bows have a shorter pull, require less strength, arrows travel faster but have less energy behind them, and are more accurate than a longbow.

Crossbows have a shorter pull but constant due to mechanics, arrows travel the fastest but have the least amount of energy behind them, have great accuracy, and require the least amount of strength to use.

Take it for what it's worth as part of the discussion.

So would it be accurate then to rework the ranges I put up in reference to accuracy?

Thralgaf wrote: »

UrQuan wrote: »

rekina wrote: »

Crossbow having shorter length and doing mediocre damage don't make any sense. It must do lethal damage and travel longer distance.

Ah, I see you've bought into the crossbow myth.

The fact is that crossbows never had longer effective ranges than longbows. The reason for this is that, unlike a regular bow, you can't fire a crossbow on an optimal parabola for achieving the greatest range. Or at least, you can't do it without the crossbow bolt tumbling and becoming ineffective. You need a longer arrow with better fletching to fly true over such a distance and arc.

Additionally, only the heaviest of crossbows had more penetrating power than a longbow. These are the crossbows you see with elaborate winches and other mechanisms for cocking them, and they were typically used primarily for sieges, where you could hide behind a wall or mantlet during the long reloading time. Crossbows used by armies in the field tended to be either cocked by hand (in which case they had less penetrating power than a bow), or by a stirrup and a hook on the belt (in which case they had similar penetrating power to a bow, and somewhat less than a longbow).

The only real advantage that crossbows had over bows is that a bow requires a great deal of training to be used effectively (the best longbowmen trained from when they were children). A crossbow requires virtually no training to be used effectively.

Actually, the arbalest had a longer range than the longbow. It just wasn't cost effective.

No, it actually didn't. An arbalest had an effective range of about 300m, while an English longbow had an effective range of about 315m (at least that's the longest range we know for sure they practiced hitting a target at - supposedly it could fire significantly further than that, but it's doubtful it would have been effective). I once wrote a paper on the evolution of bows when I was in university.

id rather see a separate archery class added.

don't really like how they lumped together NB and archer, despite the whole stealth thing works well with it, eventhough NB was never a stealth class...more like a mage with a sword.

anyway...

id rather them flesh out the current melee system before they started making range weapons even more popular.

The large cranked crossbows can penetrate armor at a longer range than a longbow. That translates into more "damage" and range in a videogame. It also translates into longer loading times, but the difference is in videogames the training and expense of longbowmen are often not accounted for, at least in MMOs (games like RTS sometimes account for it) so a longbow has no disadvantages when in reality it had enough disadvantages to be eventually replaced by crossbows.

Mind you I'm talking about the large cranked crossbows like arbalests, not the smaller ones that were loaded by pulling up while stepping in a stirrup although they were also lethal. Some of the smaller crossbows still had a greater effective range than most bows but their largest advantage was the training necessary to use them, or should I say lack of training compared to longbows.

Holycannoli wrote: »

The longbow didn't have a longer range than the arbalest,

So 315m is not greater than 300m? That's odd... Especially since I was using the conservative estimate for the effective range for an English longbow. Some sources say that the professional longbowmen during the late 100 years war had an effective range of as much as 350m. I've never seen any source that gives an arbalest more than about 300m of effective range, but if you've got a source I'd love to see it.

I don't care about the short bow, but a crossbow sounds awesome

UrQuan wrote: »

Holycannoli wrote: »

The longbow didn't have a longer range than the arbalest,

So 315m is not greater than 300m? That's odd... Especially since I was using the conservative estimate for the effective range for an English longbow. Some sources say that the professional longbowmen during the late 100 years war had an effective range of as much as 350m. I've never seen any source that gives an arbalest more than about 300m of effective range, but if you've got a source I'd love to see it.

There's a few sources, and if need be I can dig through my medieval warfare textbooks but not right now.

http://www.lordsandladies.org/crossbow.htm

That link is sketchy in spots, like saying the crossbow was supplanted by the longbow. It's actually the opposite.

http://fads.blogspot.com/2008/07/long-bow-vs-crossbow.html

http://web.mit.edu/21h.416/www/militarytechnology/crossbow.html

These are the most important exerpts from that link:

- Range: By the 15th century, with a steel crossbow, the range was about 380 yards, sometimes up to 500(2). Earlier crossbows were thought to have a point blank range of 70 yards but were more often angled up 45 degrees to give them a range of 350 yards. Highest effective was 150 yards, but still able to kill at 300(5).

- By 15th century most were made of steel so crossbows could have a better range than a longbow, as well as require less training to use(2).

- The most powerful were Genoese crossbows (this and their training may have accounted for their being the major mercenary crossbowmen hired in the Hundred Years War by France). This bow was 38 inches wide, 18 lbs, with a pull of 1,200 lbs and a range of 450 yards. It would shoot a bolt of 14 inches and 1/4 lbs but had to use a windlass and was very slow and heavy(5).

Italy was known for it's crossbowmen at the time, as the swiss were known for their pikemen. Turns out combining the two made an extremely effective fighting force in high demand.

The next source is not about not medieval crossbows and longbows but modern flight bows. It's interesting even if it doesn't add much to the discussion of medieval bows so I'll link it:

http://www.second-opinions.co.uk/flight.html

Distances shot

The furthest distance shot with any bow is 2,047 yards (1,871.84m) . This was shot by the late Harry Drake in 1988 using a crossbow. The furthest with a hand-held — and pulled — bow is 1,336 yds 1' 3" (1,222.01m) , shot by Don Brown with an unlimited conventional Flight bow in 1987. My 40kg Compound World Record of 1,162 yards was made shooting a 30 kg bow — I can't pull 40 kg!

Distances achieved in Britain include:

Conventional Flight Bow (unlimited): Alan Webster — 916 yards
Compound Flight Bow (60 lbs): Barry Groves - 914 yards. That distance has since been beaten

There was a mod for Skyrim that offered this. So long bows did a lot of damage based on the distance, while short bows were almost melee combat and did less per shot.

Personally I don't mind this, they could also add poison arrows, flame ... The question however is, how urgent is it and how many would really use it?

just give bows a decent range, sticks shoot just as far, even my thrown daggers go pretty much same range as normal shots, it just feels like were all running around with 30lb bows not longbows. snipe is ok, but even that feels short.


ps: if they do add anything to bows, please dont break bows again while doing it.

Audigy wrote: »

There was a mod for Skyrim that offered this. So long bows did a lot of damage based on the distance, while short bows were almost melee combat and did less per shot.

Personally I don't mind this, they could also add poison arrows, flame ... The question however is, how urgent is it and how many would really use it?

It's urgent in the sense that weapons and stamina skills need an overhaul. And I would use it because my preferred weapon is the bow, even though I respecced out of one hand + shield to train destruction staff "to keep up with the Joneses."

The problem is it's nearly impossible to model the real life pros and cons of the various bows in a MMORPG. I briefly mentioned some of those pros and cons last night.

One idea I wouldn't mind seeing is that longbows would require a lot of skill points to use effectively, and you gain the advantage of a fast reload speed, which would make it a fantastic weapon vs unarmored or lightly armored opponents. Crossbows would require very little skill points, but you'd reload much slower (at least half as fast as a longbow). You'd also have a better effective range than longbows vs armored targets if you are using a later era heavy crossbow.

What would be the point in spending so many skill points in longbow then you ask? Exactly. That's realistic. You can accurately fire at least twice as many arrows, at shorter max range. Vs lightly armored opponents it's devastating, and how many people wear light armor in this game? Answer: almost everyone.

Unfortunately this sort of thing works much better in a game like Mount & Blade. MMORPGs are too simple and cannot model cost effectiveness, training requirements, effectiveness in large-scale battles where rains of arrows are modeled etc. When I asked above what the point in spending skill points in longbow would be, in a game like Mount & Blade an army supported by well-trained longbowmen can mow down lightly armored opponents at a much faster rate than an equal number of crossbowmen. Again though, doesn't translate that well in a MMORPG.