I believe you will be able to fletch your own arrows, as I'm sure players will be able to forge their own weapons and armor. This can balance itself out if the only way materials can be obtained either by the player or NPCs would be from gathering jobs like mining and woodcutting. Also, Ebony (IIRC was mined in Morrowind) would be semi-rare and thus rare to find in most loot as compared to iron which would be extremely common in comparison. This would work for fletching as well, as you could create some pretty damaging iron-tipped arrows in large quantities, but you would really need to search for the more powerful silver simply because of it's rarity. I for one hope ideas like the one Miltiades came up with find their way in-game, so it can give my assassin a reason to take time before contracts to stock up on our new powerful ammunition for our bows.

Also, because I'm sure these will be brought up, Glass was also minable in Morrowind IIRC giving it a rarity on par with Ebony. Also, on Daedric items, IIRC Daedric items were created by "tempering a Daedra's soul" or "binding a Daedra's soul to the item", giving it near unfarmable status, making it very rare, and making the Daedric items become more valuable and more powerful than they were in Oblivion. Yep, alooot of recalling in this post, sorry. Corrections are welcome! >.>

The imperial city is like the united states and Skyrim is like africa. Different culture evolve differently, even though time has pass. It doesn't mean the technology will spread all over the world and make everything all technical.

Hope this explains, A LOT.

ROFL

Something that just occurred to me. A dragon shout that teleports you forward a few yards is confirmed, correct? Depending on how often you can use Dragon Shouts, it seems that one like that would add an extra layer of strategy to an archer character. As long as you can't keep spamming it to get out of melee range constantly and you're forced to use it intelligently anyway.

i would love crossbows but in no way should they be better than long / short bows.

No you are wrong, the dragon shout pushes enemy away in front of you.

People who want crossbows in Skyrim have never used a real crossbow before.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HagCuGXJgUs

I advise anyone who doubts the ability of a bow or an archer to read a little about the English longbow. But in short an old English longbow had a draw weight of about 160 - 185 lbs it could pierce and kill a man wearing chain armor with a single arrow, the massive power of the bow had the drawback of a slow fire rate, even the strongest archer could not get of more than 10 shots a minute and at that rate he would be fatigued verry quickly.

@Luke Skyrimmer: great video!

I don't like what OP says. I think it is a great way of making archery more combat friendly, I can already imagine those awesome OHKO stealth kills, not needing to see the damn enemies turn around and come after me without any visible damage and dying a hundred arrows later..

And I mean no to cross bows at the same time, as they won't be needed.

i don't think they've confirmed or denied crossbows yet, so hopefully they make a return.
i feel like they would be a good compliment to the way bows work now. bows take longer to shoot and do more damage, and crossbows would be the quicker, less damage counterpart

second that one

A British longbow, 13th century, draws between 80 and 120 pounds. And that is ~not~ a compound bow. There was a reason why it took 10 - 15 years to make an archer. Indeed, if realism is to be an issue, (it rarely is in games with magic and dragons. :wink_smile: ) a bow with the power to kill a man at long distance would require the archer to stand stilll, or with eastern recurved bows, you could be on horseback.

I rarely see any unarmored bandits either, in fact they're my biggest supplier of the really heavy stuff. In real life you would need a lot more than 20 arrows against plated armor. Some penetrate, but not enough to do any serious damage, and most that penetrate won't even make it through the cloth inner lining/padding. So yeah, I think you'd need plenty of armor to create enough scratches on your plated foe. Or... Apply poison.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3997HZuWjk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-Xp56uVyxs

As frustrating it sometimes was having to spend multiple arrows on a foe, at least that explains better why I'm still living after a "bow fight". The better way to approach it, rather than make it over powered, would be armor penetration values. Minimum penetration with same material as your target, increases if you "out material" your target. One thing though. Although poisons are great for actually killing a target (via drain), we shouldn't be able to use poisons when hunting for food, as it will create "spoiled xxx meat" with lots of negative impact. We *can*, but food will get spoiled.

quicker at shooting perhaps...but far from faster rate of fire, even a light crossbow is quite a thing to reload. So if anything crossbows should be a even more slower but powerful then bows.

Although we don't know yet. I really believe we will be able to make arrows.
They said there is alot gone into crafts this time.
If we can make swords,surely making arrows will be possible.
Another thing i would like to add ( again we'll have to wait and see ), but in the concept art,it showed an bandit with a flame arrow,and we can also burn oil.
Maybe that would suggest we can dip or pour oil on arrows a set them alight,i really hope we can do both

No, you are wrong. There is more than one dragonshout. :facepalm:

Allellluja they are finally doing it. Seeing your opponent fighting and kicking while being more crowded than a porcupine is pathetic.
If they do it like annouced they ll do a great step forward.
Loading is the slowest part pulling is the fastest and aiming and realeasing is always in between.

@Succellus - You might want to redo your signature. That's a very fractured and poorly written metaphor that doesn't really hold together and there's a few grammatical errors.

You can easely walk with a knocked arrow and a partially draw bow, not in the firing position thought, its ankward. And Aiming and shooting should be aless than 4 second if long range 2 to 3 seconds if medium range and less to one second if close, this if the victim isn t moving toward you as a sitting duck or isn t stationary, then its always 1 to 2 seconds.
shoting target moving (not toward you is a PITA) Ballistic, heading and wind correction slow you down.
Usually victims in CRPG are less than 30 meters which is medium range (10 to 50). PB is up to a dozen meters and long range is above 50.
so the longuest part is taking thearrow out of the quiver and knocking it it ain t an simple manoeuver than can be done fast without a hell of practice.

i hate the idea of guns in this game... one it the nearly crosses the line from rpg to third person shooter

i like using the bow it is more realistic if you have a higher marksmen skill in oblivion you do more damage. aim for the head for max damage it does near to nothing when you shoot in a no critical area of the body, if your detected that is point being in the Elder Scrolls guns wouldn't really fit all that much...

ya there easier but what fun is a game if its to easy? personally its incredibly boring if the enemy dies to fast. to some people its not true but to real gamers they like a challenge one shot kill is not a challenge its a walk in the park... if you don't like the bow for its damage then don't be a marksman. its better for a marksman to have more sneak that way you do more damage and are not detectable your more of a sniper with a bow and the point of a sniper is not being detected or your good as dead...

to sum it up guns would make the game a bit to easy for some people. as an example fallout was a good game with guns because of the kind of location and time period its in it makes more sense.


Elder scrolls how ever guns wouldn't fit all that much the environment more set for before guns were even invented...

Fallout was based in reality with places that were based in the real world.

Elder Scrolls is a fantasy world with a medieval like setting so guns would make no sense.... Cross bows would make more sense because they have been around almost as long as bows. they would do the same amount of damage depending on your level in marksmen with the difference of your range... cross bows would most likely have a lower range due to the fact you cant pull the string as far back and control it easily.

yeah, i cant wait to try out the new system. but i see your point. crossbows are sweet.

obviously you dont play as an archer very often. the ability to take someone out with as few shots as fast as u can is very important. It would be unfair to make bows even weaker then last time around because they were too weak then. A bow should only take a few shots if it even takes more then 1. I dont feel like having to shoot someoen 10 times like your suggesting thats so unrealistic. matter of fact it should be the other way around where swords take more hits to kill. even tho i still think a sword fight should be 5 moves at the most. but of course your character should have the edge of having more health just so u dont die eveyr 5 seconds. i think morrowind had it right. almost at least. when u got strong enough u kill with 1 or 2 shots or 1 or 1-4 slashes o a weapon. but no way im going to want to have to shoot a guy 10 times to take em down.

The change in bows' power is a gameplay adjustment, not a technological advancement in lore.

I lobbied for something along the lines of what Bethesda appears to have done with Archery in Skyrim, for the Adventurers mod for Oblivion. It was incorporated into that mod, and all bows were changed in feel from sissy short bows to large and powerful war bows. The reception to this change was mixed however. It had a curious way of making people that liked playing Archers already suddenly hate archery, whereas people that normally went with melee fighters or wizards gained a sudden interest in archery. In short, many people felt that Archery got a harder time to stand on its own as a combat skill, becoming instead a support skill, supplemental to melee capabilities. Using archery as your sole combat skill became damned near impossible when you couldn't back-pedal and shoot your way through a dungeon. Archery was instead used as a devastating weakening shot on approaching enemies before the archer switched to melee weapons.

That situation lead me to believe that the best way of setting up archery is to offer the player of a variety of shorter and longer bows, with varying speeds, ranges and damage, so that people that enjoy a fast but weak harassing weapon, can use that, and those that enjoy slow and powerful sniping weapon, can use that. Dedicated archers can then pick the right tool for the job, using a smaller bow within dungeons and interiors, while using the larger bows in the wilds to reach greater distances.

There's still the uncertainty of the rareness of arrows. Rare compared to Oblivion is leaving a dungeon with less than 100 looted arrows. Maybe they'll give them weight so you won't want to carry more than 20 at a time (although you could if you wanted to sacrifice a bunch of other things). I really hope that you can craft your own (like ammo in NV but more). I really hope that they include limb damage too - if I hit your arm I expect you to at least drop what you're carrying. Maybe in TES6 we'll be able to pin a character to the wall with arrows. Then my assassin will truly live...