WHO IS THIS BAD WITH A BOW AND ARROW ARENT THESE VIKINGS!?

[Sokar Ma'at-Ra]

bruh who the hell misses with a bow and arrow, WITH TRAINING, from 20 meters away OVER AND OVER again? The ♥♥♥♥ kind of RNG is this

[Shanz]

Everyone.

You're confusing "chance to hit in battle with people screaming, dying, running, locked together in combat, with several people trying to kill the archer" with "people standing completely still because it looks like that in a turn-based game".

Turn-based gaming never had this "problem" in the table-and-dice version, because talented game masters would describe the sequence of events -- happening virtually simultaneously over seconds on a battlefield -- leading up to "the hit".

Most turn-based CRPGs, on the other hand, simply show the PC or NPC standing motionless waiting for their "turn", and the "turn" itself being some sort of attack animation that either hits, or misses.

I also blame the LoTR movies, specifically Legolas-style "bow-fu" where using a ranged weapon in close combat is CGI-ed into something reasonable to attempt.

For this specific game, the thing the game explicitly encourages -- archers "staying back" while the axe/sword guys engage -- in real life would be a recipe for *repeatedly* killing your own dudes.

[Sokar Ma'at-Ra]

Bruh have you ever shot a bow and arrow? It ain't hard.

[Wyrmnax]

Originally posted by LilyManCannon:

Bruh have you ever shot a bow and arrow? It ain't hard.

Have you ever shot while moving, trying to keep your distance from someone charging at you with a sword while your best friend just got his skull cracked by a axe?

Different envronmnet completely.

[T. Nightingale]

As someone who has shot a bow and arrow in a mass battle situation and has fought in hand to hand sword combat at a world championship level, I can tell you shooting a bow is easier, but the ability to shoot a bow is never the problem, the problem is distance the arrow travels and the speed of it, vs how much an enemy needs to move for the arrow to be ineffective or miss.
Particularly if the target is in combat with an ally, you do not want to be shooting the part that is near the ally, you will angle or hedge your bets to hit a part of the target furthest away from your ally or just not shoot at all.
Most of the time misses come from prediction errors or the target being aware of the arrow coming. There is a distance of about 10 metres more where an arrow, fired from about 60# bow, has flown long enough that for someone watching the archer has enough time to react and bring up a shield.

Ideally, the target being in combat should make them easier to hit the more experience you have, the target being further away should make it easier to hit for the novice if they are trying to hide or aren't paying attention, but really hard to hit for the expert if the target is paying attention.

P.S: archers fired from behind friendly lines all the time. The difference is you usually shot diagonally and in sync with your allies moves. This takes experience.

[Duster71]

Longbows were serious weapons, and their power was immense. Arrows could penetrate chain mail with relative ease, and frequently did, making plate armor more and more necessary. ... While medieval crossbows were also very powerful range weapons, longbows were cheaper, easier to make, and faster to shoot. Quote taken from a historical topic on a blog.

[drusca]

Originally posted by 76561198090830264:

Bruh have you ever shot a bow and arrow? It ain't hard.

I am a huge fan of bows. and as a matter of fact it is quite easy to miss especially when there is someone angry running at you and screaming. and this also happens with a gun.
it has to do with how well you cope with stress.

nevertheless, this is a game. if there is a chance to miss, you can miss.
but...in this game you can raise your chance with skills and also you can influence the enemy's chance to hit, lowering it. and the archers DO have a skills to raise that chance.
just make the most of the game's tools and you will be fine.

[drusca]

Originally posted by drusca:

Originally posted by 76561198090830264:

Bruh have you ever shot a bow and arrow? It ain't hard.

I am a huge fan of bows. and as a matter of fact it is quite easy to miss especially when there is someone angry running at you and screaming. and this also happens with a gun.
it has to do with how well you cope with stress.

nevertheless, this is a game. if there is a chance to miss, you can miss.
but...in this game you can raise your chance with skills and also you can influence the enemy's chance to hit, lowering it. and the archers DO have a skill to raise that chance.
just make the most of the game's tools and you will be fine.

[CptVodka]

Originally posted by LilyManCannon:

Bruh have you ever shot a bow and arrow? It ain't hard.

It sure ain't hard. To hit a living, thinking, reacting target on the other hand.. Is.
While in real life, i only have stationary target practice, VR opened up some more.
In VR, i've successfully captured arrows with my hand. Hard, but possible. If i look in the direction of the shooter (i.e prepared), i often manage to dodge.

You could find things like these performed in real life on youtube. Lars Andersen is one name that comes to mind. He caught an arrow and shot it back.

However, it may be worth to mention that you can shoot a lot faster than games&movies often let on. It's hard to say exactly what kind of rate of fire you'd expect, depending on skill, draw weight, range etc.. but in a good case, i'd say two arrows per second is within reason.

To dodge two arrows per second coming at you, isn't like dodging the occasional one. For that, i'm afraid you'd need a shield.
From what i've understood, arrows weren't really a "kill weapon". They were a suppression weapon. Naturally, gaining control of the battlefield would give you a huge advantage.

[akluis]

As far as T Nightengale's answer. I view that with a bit of skepticism.

I'll also note, that if someone is standing still I NEVER miss trying to hit them with a foam sword. Heck, if someone is standing still, I NEVER miss poking them right in the nose if that's what I choose to do.

We all know that in any sort of 'live event' hitting your living moving target is entirely different. Yet for some reason we think hitting an inert target with an arrow somehow directly translates to real life effectiveness.

As far as for pretend battles with foam swords, sparring, even fairly realistic HEMA type combat with blunted weapons, where the humans are moving, it's still not 'real'. it's still a game and your brain knows it and acts according. Even an extremely important game - making a free-throw means your team wins the state championship and that can be a TON of pressure - your brain and body knows it's a game. That life is not at stake.

Attempting to shoot a deer with an arrow - you get a rush of blood, an adrenaline dump happens, your arms shake, your vision tunnels down. It's called "Buck Fever" and it affects firearms uses too. Generally, for hunters, after you manage to kill your first deer it's a lot less, but it's always present to some degree, and that's just you being a predator. I'm sure an actual battle where people are trying to kill you is the same but magnified 1000 fold.

Aside from your body behaving drastically different when it's flesh and blood, there's the aspect of flight time. Arrow doesn't reach a target instantly. If that target is a fighter in combat who isn't themselves standing still firing arrows, then they are likely moving - running away, running towards, blocking, parrying, stumbling on the wet grass, tripping over bodies. So your arrow leaves the string, but your target leans back because his opponent just slashed at his head. Now his body has moved from where it was before so even if your arrow lands exactly where you aimed it, the body you were intending to hit isn't there. Hence - a miss.

Above, I mentioned time between arrow leaving string and arriving. But in actuality the time is much longer, you also have to factor in human reaction speed. It's really from the time the human decides to do X(decides to release the string with the bow at exactly this spot to hit that exact spot), starts doing X (nerve impulse race from brain to fingers) and actually finishes doing x (fingers release string). You might even be seeing the target moving in a way that will result in a miss, but not processing it in time.

The game sets it up so at best you have a 95% chance. I figure this is a fair representation of what should have been a hit dead-to-rights but the target slipped in the mud and ended up dropping to one knee or some other factor threw off the shot.

Should that apply to melee combat as well? Yes, but being that you are closer there's still the brain and muscle reaction time but at least no flight time. And there's also the case that a target moving by it's very nature going to effect an arrow strike more than a weapon swing,