As someone who does archery in real life, I have to say that this is [censored] (I couldn't think of a more politically correct term, you'll have to excuse me). I have a love-hate relationship with archery in TES games, but one thing that is true is that a person could indeed withstand being shot with several arrows before dying. Now what I am talking about is not long term, if you pierce a man with an arrow (as in all the way through) he most likely will not die instantly, I'm not saying that an arrow in the gut would still allow him to live to an old age of 100 (not that it would effect much if modern medical applications were to apply to it), but even with your throat slit (an extreme) you can still keep on fighting for quite a while. Back in the day when bows were an "effective military tactic", their primary role was not to kill the enemy, but wound him so that either it will weaken one side greatly or other men have to drag him off the field. If you were to shoot somebody with a bow, I have almost no doubt that they will become quite enraged and charge at you with intent of aggressive retaliation. Even quite severe wounds are survivable if not only for a matter of minutes, which is all one needs to do harm to his attacker. To put into perspective about how strong the human body is, there was report of one police officer who was shot through his eye at close range, the bullet entered his brain and hot gunpowder burned his other eye rendering it useless. The blind officer fell to the ground, drew his weapon and fired his entire magazine into the attacker (which died) and lived to tell the tale. Now, you might be saying "But you said the body was tough, how come the attacker died?" to which my response is "the question was why does it take several arrows in a game to kill a person instead of just one, and in this example the officer was shot once and didn't die, the attacker was shot 6-10 times depending on the gun, if anything the video game results are quite on par with reality".
tl;dr: people don't just die instantly from getting shot by one arrow, the game presents results close to reality.
Only problem is the gameplay aspect of it. There are several things in games that are quite unrealistic, but it's added because it makes game sense - i.e. it's exciting play and keeps the adrenaline going. Killing a target fast enough is also a factor of combat flow and how you want the player to, sort of, get that guy out of the way, go to next target etc etc. Bows also need to be comparable to the melee, so that it feels balanced and that one weapon won't make another weapon redundant. Even as a fan of archery myself, if the bows deal 1 damage and the sword deals 500, then I'm not gonna use a bow (blatant exaggeration ofc, but it gets the point across).
I would agree if they could implement features like what you're talking about, the wounding and haltering of enemies and then finishing them off with the blade. Then the damage wouldn't matter as much, because the bow would have a different role alltogether. But that wouldn't sit well with players who prefer to use bows exclusively, or with the fact that real people detect eachother much sooner and at greater distances than AI mobs. Real people also use half a brain, AI mobs are complete idiots in most games.
Besides, with realism into the game you could pretty much 1-hit kill every enemy with a hammer to the head. Imagine a stealthed rogue with a hammer, killing of someone and then nobody reacts because you're in stealth mode.
» Wed May 18, 2011 10:41 pm 
! Ranged shouldn't be used in close combat like Legolas uses it, but just shoot an arrow or two before you pull out your sword. 
