Archery gain on deed impossible?

[Cy]

Edit: I thought it's because the animals I kill are too weak but no. I lead 12 wild cows and horses on deed and shot them with a longbow from 20 tiles away with sleep bonus on. After 20 minutes or so, when I was down to 2 animals, I noticed I only got gain in Fighting. As a test I took remaining two animals out of deed and killed them there, one was shot while we were both outside, one when I was still on deed (the horse wasn't). In both cases I got around 0.15 gain in each, Archery and Long bow. Is there a known rule that prevents me from getting Archery and Long/Medium/Short bow skills from wild animals brought and killed on deed or is that a bug? Or is that a giant string of bad luck and if I killed few more the skill would raise on its own?

Wurm Unlimited v1.8.0.3

[Cy]

The problem with bodkin points is... they never existed in steel. At least there's no proof they did. All that was found was soft iron. And all above just confirms of what I said - good quality armour made people arrow-proof but it wasn't widely adopted (i.e. outside of king's army and even there, not always) because nobody could afford one. That's where the balance truly lies. Common people used common weapons that was effective to hunt and fight common treats, wasn't effective in rare situations when fighting against a specialized enemy - armor is that kind of specialization. Now think why this can't be done in Wurm? Everybody can make steel and plate after few weeks of playing, and they'll get decent strength in the meantime... All archers can do in few weeks is make one mediocre bow and maybe two quivers of arrows above practice target. That's what artificial balancing does to any simulation, including games. It breaks it. If you're a dev, just mimic life, it'll work way better. And if you don't know how life works on some aspects, read on it instead of inventing bad rules.

All above said. Thanks for your contributions. I know how to train better now. :)

[Xype]

Originally posted by Cy:

Yeah but it goes deeper. People bring tough animals to deed where they can safely shoot them with tons of blunt wood because they can't do what they should be able to, i.e. just shoot at the practice target until max skill. This is how you become an archery master in real life, you shoot at targets. The target doesn't have to be alive for you to learn something new. Now meelee folks found that unfair. No, it isn't. First of all there's no fighting skill gain and it's boring to train, also in practice, you'd need to make a new target every week or so and learn for months to be good (although just few days to kill a deer with one arrow). Second, they have armour. No arrow can shoot through good quality plate, will even have trouble with good quality chainmail. Bad quality, obviously, it can go through and a good quality plate in medieval times was as rare as a teenage virgin. On top of that it was priced around half a village per full set because iron was scarce and it took a lot of hard work to be a smith. All above I consider perfect balance. Meelee is what should be hard as ♥♥♥♥, blacksmiths and masons should be the richest people on land and knights should be freaking arrow-proof tanks financed by the king.

As a former competition archer I disagree. Targets get you the basics and fundamentals. Creatures are moving targets, you learn a lot of new skills related to archery when dealing with a live target. Trajectory adjustments, wind speed, angle of approach, and adaptive prediction when targeting. So live targets offer higher levels of skill a practice target never will.

[Brewdu]

I personally enjoy the skill limit on the practice target, but don't understand why people can't gain skill shooting atop a palisade wall to take down beasts outside the gates? (I'd even compromise on skill limiting that to 70~) if we need to prevent max skilling from safety. Even though that still doesnt agree with the logic of you can still gain skills in safety by having passive mobs beat on you all day and regen your health faster than they can dmg you.

[bob_2059]

Originally posted by Brew:

Don't link wiki articles,

But, apparently it's OK for you to do so.

after asking if someone even googles

I didn't. Show me where I did. Note that none of my previous posts in here have been edited.

and des Ursin's statement that the French knights of the first ranks at Agincourt, which included some of the most important (and thus best-equipped) nobles, remained comparatively unhurt by the English arrows.

I'm not disagreeing with that. What's cited in the references "comparatively unhurt" is a far cry from the claims made earlier in this thread of being "arrow proof." That's the problem with these claims of absolutes- even if one exception is found, then the initial claim is untrue. Which brings us to...

Originally posted by Cy:

The problem with bodkin points is... they never existed in steel.

The Royal Armouries in the UK kinda makes the same statement, however if you read on they only analyzed TWO bodkin heads.
That's like checking the gender of two dogs, finding them both to be male, then making the claim all dogs are male. You're dealing with a statistically insignificant sample set.
Steel broadheads from the same era have been found, so I'm gonna stick to my claim it's possible. The technology existed, just because the whole two bodkins that were analyzed were not steel is not proof that none were steel.

Originally posted by Brew:

Sure by the 1300-1400's knights weren't useful anymore, but are we talking about that time period, or the time in which wurm is currently in?

Wurm is kinda conflicting in terms of technologies. Occasionally you find one that doesn't belong with the rest, like a 17th century spyglass.
The easiest answer is that Wurm is a fantasy world, without a direct correlation to Earth.

[Brewdu]

don't link 1 wiki article as your source of proof and expect it be iron-clad, sorry bob I will be more clear in my statements in the future. (and your lack of proof) "just because the whole two bodkins that were analyzed were not steel is not proof that none were steel." as proof that it's possible, is as flimsy as wooden walls on a pvp server. Enjoy your day bob, wurm on, wurm on.

[Cy]

Oh my gaaahd stop arguing! :D But seriously, I like the subject, it's interesting to me what people know and think about medieval times and how sword fights or archery looked back then.

Originally posted by Xype:

As a former competition archer I disagree. Targets get you the basics and fundamentals. Creatures are moving targets, you learn a lot of new skills related to archery when dealing with a live target. Trajectory adjustments, wind speed, angle of approach, and adaptive prediction when targeting. So live targets offer higher levels of skill a practice target never will.

I understand why somebody may think that but, once again, I disagree. Wurm devs could have introduced different targets, e.g. a log on a rope (as it was used as a target a lot and I've seen photos of historical drawings that depict that), wind speed we already have, angle of approach is something you learn with setting your target at different distances and using different sizes of the target. What you learn by shooting animals is how they react after your first shot, whether you hit them or not, and how to track and be stealthy. Not much about shooting itself. IMO it's just the refreshing feeling many people get when switching from long hours of practice shooting to the real thing that makes you say that.

Originally posted by bob_2059:

[...] What's cited in the references "comparatively unhurt" is a far cry from the claims made earlier in this thread of being "arrow proof." [...]

I agree, how about we settle on "fairly arrow-proof"? What I mean was (AFAIK) arrows couldn't penetrate steel, whether used in plate or chainmail.

Originally posted by bob_2059:

[...]if you read on they only analyzed TWO bodkin heads.

I thought that was because they only found two? But it's probably due to my English, sorry. I don't understand, though. Why would they do that if there was more to analyze?

Originally posted by bob_2059:

[...] Steel broadheads from the same era have been found,

Are you sure of that? Google's silent. :( I found many discussions but nothing factual.
[edited]: My bad, I was looking for steel bodkins, sorry, yeah I agree it's possible because steel broadheads were in truth used. I don't find it probable though to be mass used because, man, steel was very very expensive. Imagine loosing that? It'd be like loosing a 100 € bill.

Originally posted by bob_2059:

[...] The easiest answer is that Wurm is a fantasy world, without a direct correlation to Earth.

That I also absolutely agree with... but even the fantasy worlds have rules and IMHO the closer these are to our historical truth the better the gameplay is balanced and as a result more playstyles possible. Next paraghraph is just what I know from experience is inaccurate in Wurm compared to real world. Feel free to try to convince me it's better that way but I simply will disagree.

I yet have to try how many arrows I need to kill a Wurmian but currently (not far above the practice target, around 45-50) I need 8 arrows to kill a cow. Which doesn't move. And has no armour but its own hide. In reality, arrows make deep piercing wounds. One successful shot to anything around the centre or a neck should be enough. Maybe two if I hit a shoulderblade or some other thic bone. I've mad (both bad and good) bows and arrows in my life as well as killed animals with them and saw many first timers to kill medium and big animals with makeshift bows and arrows they made.

Now the next 4 (most likely lenghy, sorry) paragraphs below will be another examples of why I think Wurm is meelee oriented and in reality that artificial balancing makes it very unbalanced, which at times gives less intresting experience than it could be, and how keeping it closer to real life and history we know (and can prove for the sake of less arguments) would IMHO make it much more fun. It's kinda bubbly thinking, though, so you might want to skip it if you don't have time (I know I would) but if you read it and disagree, I'd like to hear your thoughts.

If you know nothing about bowmaking or fletching but somebody tells you what to do it'll take about 10 work-hours to make 10 arrows and a considerably well functioning 30-40kg bow (assumming you have the wood provided) - learned from experience. I find it very very upside down in Wurm compared to e.g. blacksmithing where in medieval times it'd take 80+ work-hours of an experienced smith to make a single common sword and over 200 work-hours to make a bad plate (it'd usually take months for a sword and year+ for a plate because various stages were made in bulks to save resources while smelting but I've been told 80 and 200 hours per unit were values used to calculate how much a single smith could provide for an army in case of war - I don't have a source on that but googled something similar when I heard of it years back so I assume, unless new historical evidence were found, it's true). That's one.

Also it takes about 15 hours of (really painful three days, oh my back!) training to learn how to shoot consistently enough to kill something from 5-10 metres with one shot. Granted, you need next to no training to be able to pierce something to death with a sword but you need to learn much more to be able to acutally fight with it, e.g. how to parry or how to swing it without chopping your legs off. You need to learn way less to be a typical but decent instinctive archer (which in medieval times was typical). It's very very consistent art: look, shoot, repeat, at some point make sure most of the arrows went where you were looking. It's even more consistent when competitive (which they also had but it wasn't typical) because you anchor and take your time aiming. My point is, with bow you don't have high or low guards, you don't need to fake your shots and change direction mid-air, you don't deflect other arrows with your shield in the meantime, all you need to learn (when there's no horseback archery involved) is how to shoot at a target. Yet in Wurm you need to shoot animals because of people trying to "cheat" their way out of bad prevention mechanics of not being able to learn by shooting at targets. That's two.

I'm a very bad archer but it takes me 15 seconds to unload 5 arrows in real life, timed. That's 3 seconds per shot on avarage. It takes less than a second to swing or pierce with a sword, not timed. In Wurm it's 5+ seconds per shot with 70 effective archery without armour and it scales (I think it was 14 seconds when I started, i.e. before training and before the curve). And it takes a fixed amount of time to hit when fighting unarmed (3 seconds), with knives (3s), with short sword (3s), with long sword (4s), with staff (3s), with halbard (4s)... and can be further reduced by focusing that doesn't work with archery at all. That's three.

Finally, minimal distance for a bow... Really! Oh, just come on. Make it body control dependent instead. 20 - short, 23 - medium, 26 - long for example. And make them shoot at different rate, e.g. long 100% time, medium 90%, short 80%. It just seems to have way way more sense, no? Same should go for swords because why not? And on top of that why can't we move while shooting? With short and medium bow with at least 60% of the time we should be able to walk because it's just drawing an arrow. With a short bow even shooting from a moving horse, maybe? I can't say much about short or medium bows (not even what those are really) because I only made and shot long bows in my life but what I can say for sure is bows have no minimal range. That's four.

Before getting any angry comments from animal lovers let me explain I used to attend survival camps as a kid to avoid reformatory. Cruel or not, idk, but those animals were cooked and eaten same night and all the resources saved, including leather, fat, hoves, bones and sinew. Hopefully I'll never have to do that again but if zombie appocalypse ever comes, come on over, I've got the knowhow and need hands to work.

[Xype]

clearly a post by someone who has never had to lead a shot on a live target at varying ranges. Log on a rope don't be a joke, simple timing no better than a target with a bulls eye.

[Cy]

Originally posted by Xype:

clearly a post by someone who has never had to lead a shot on a live target at varying ranges. Log on a rope don't be a joke, simple timing no better than a target with a bulls eye.

Well, first of all, I unfortunately had to on multiple occasions, as stated before.

Second, I'm not saying this is a great way to learn how to estimate range and required angle of approach. I'm saying devs could have done a better job and that they gave much more attention to melee aspects of the game saying it's balancing. Real life people do numerous things with targets to learn the nuances. They could make it so that up to 40 you learn at stationary target, then up to 60 on a swinging one, then you need to learn from farther and farther distances for up to 70, then higher and higher height difference for up to 80, then by shooting live stock up to 90, finally only by shooting red mobs and players for up to 99. And that's only an example, you can give better if this one doesn't feel okay for you. Maybe we'll make a suggestion out of it and more players will end up enjoying it not discouraged by how nurfed archery currently is.