Hello.

I tried searching the forum, and while there are a couple of threads on the marksman skill, none seem to be about this question - which is how the marksman skill should affect ACCURACY. (As opposed to damage, perks, armor penetration etc)

This suggestion primarily covers how the marksman skill affects accuracy. Other issues, such as damage/armor penetration, are (as of now) not covered. The same goes for skill perks.

The intent is to come up with a suggestion that will make the marksman skill more realistic and rewarding wrt accuracy.
In Oblivion, even novice marksmen are able to hit targets pretty reliably, as the dispersion from the aiming point is negligble (by dispersion I mean archer-induced dispersion, not gravity-induced drop) Improving your marksman skill does not dramatically improve your accuracy, as it would in real life. Instead, the RL players(as opposed to the character) ability to judge superelevation is the key factor to hitting targets.

This suggestion involves creating a default dispersion whenever using ranged weapons, and allowing the marksman skill to modify this dispersion. The skill will do this in two ways. More on this later.

Default dispersion.

By "dispersion", I mean the random pattern arrows will make because of (small or big) errors on the archers part. This could be shaking hands, unproper string release, etc. This dispersion will be modeled by drawing an invisible circle around the aiming point. When you release the string, the arrow will hit a random point within the "dispersion circle". (The randomness might sound funny, but this is generally how accuracy works. There is ALWAYS dispersion, the key is to make it as little as possible) Better bows might have smaller dispersion circles, but for now we'll assume the only influencing factor is the characters marksman skill.

In order to make speed a factor, we'll use two dispersion circles. One "snap shot" circle, and one "aimed" circle. The first one is the largest, and is applied when the bow is simply drawn and immideately released. The aimed circle is smaller (ie, more accurate) and is used when the character takes some time to aim after the bow is fully drawn.

How the skill will affect it

The marksman skill will affect these circles in 2 ways; accuracy and speed.

1) Accuracy. Since the arrow will strike completely randomly within the dispersion circle, obviously having a smaller circle is good. The most important part of the new skill will be to reduce the size of the dispersion circle as the skill increases. As a novice, the circle will be very large, meaning you will have a very hard time hitting a target at all until you get some more practice. As you approach master level, the aimed dispersion circle will be no bigger than the circle in the cursor as we know it from Oblivion, making for very accurate shots.

2) Speed. Your skill level will affect how long it will take for your "snap shot"-circle to reduce itself to the "aimed"-circle. This is obviously a continuing reduction, but where a novice might take up to 3 second for the snap shot circle to reduce itself down to the aimed circle, the master marksman might only need 0,5 seconds to achieve "aimed" circle.

In this way, a skilled marksman will be considerably more accurate than a novice one, and will require considerably less aiming time to achieve maximum accuracy.

To illustrate, I've added two pictures. The "snap shot" circle is marked in red, while the "aimed" circle is marked with blue. (Obviously, these will be invisible in-game, and are marked for illustration purposes only)

http://img255.imageshack.us/i/marksmannovice.jpg/

Uploaded with http://imageshack.us
Novice marksman, note the large blue circle - all aimed shots will hit at completely random locations within this circle

http://img63.imageshack.us/i/marksmanexpert.jpg/

Uploaded with http://imageshack.us

Expert marksman. Much more accurate aimed shots, as the smaller blue circle illustrates. Also, not shown, the time required to go from "red" to "blue" circle will be much shorter than the novice marksman. Thus, the expert marksman is able to take faster, more accurate shots than the novice. (It will get smaller still as the player advances to master)

In the pictures, I haven't changed the sizes of the red circles. I'm not sure if there is a need for this - the expert marksman will reduce the red circle quite fast, so the dispersion is only as big as the red circle suggests for a quarter of a second anyway. The novice marksman may need a full second before the red circle even begin to reduce. So while the pictures may give the impression that both archers are equally accurate when it comes to snap shots, the reality will be quite different.

What do you think?

I like this idea a lot actually

This is very interesting.

I could see the circles actually being in game kind of like the stealth eye.

This is a very simple approach. Would it also affect the drop of the arrow?

The problem with this is that no one will want to play as a Marksman anymore, it would be far too tedious at the beginning of the game as you spend an age trying to hit anything and level up your skills.

Another possibility is a moving cursor that would mean you have to time your shot as well. If anyone liked that idea, I don't know if it should be on top of or instead of the dispersion.

Obviously not directly - the drop itself is gravity-induced and cannot be changed directly. However, faster arrows will mean reduced flight-time, which mean that the arrow has less time to drop en-route to the target. Improved marksman skill MIGHT improve the speed of the arrows somewhat, reducing the need for superelevation...but this will require finding a new superelevation aiming point as you level up...might not be practical. I think the best idea might be to just stick with the superelevation as it is of now. It requires some player skill in addition to character skill, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Or actually, how about one of those meters that go up and down at the bottom of the screen where you have to release when it reaches a specific point and the closer you get to the middle, the more accurate your shot will be?

Atually having the part of actually hitting the target being the challange you can have arrow doing real damage instead of taking 10 arrows to kill a target, it might take 5. This way it would be worthwhile to be marksman because each succesful hit means so much more.

The idea is that if you pick marksman as a major skill, you will be able to reliably hit target at medium ranges at level 1. If you pick it as a minor skill, you will still be able to hit targets at shorter ranges. If you don't pick the skill at all - obviously the bow will be a useless weapon. That is the general idea behind character generation - this will make the marksman skill a VERY useful skill. If you change your mind later and want to use the bow, you'll have to practice - as you would have had to in real life. No soldier in his right mind will pick up a type of weapon he has never used before and head into combat without any type of training.

Not a bad idea, but it sounds like it would depend more on player skill, and less on character skill.

I find the "dispersion circle"-idea to be more realistic. Actually, this is how I was tought how to use the pistol. The instructors idea was that every gunner had his own "dispersion circle", and the object was to make the dispersion circle as small as possible through training. During practical shooting, you would only aim as hard as required to make the dispersion circle smaller than the target - closer/bigger target means less time for aiming. That's where I get the idea about blue/red circles from.

That's not what the thread starter wrote.



Additionally the post goes on to say

Therefore anyone starting the game out as an archer will be heavily penalised compared to someone who is going for melee, as you'd have a hard time hitting a barn.

I like the dispersion circles idea, but I think that the snap circle should get smaller with skill as well such that there is still a noticeable difference between snap shot accuracy and aimed accuracy, but the difference shrinks with skill. It doesn't make sense that a novice can snap off a shot as skilfully as a master.

Otherwise I like it!

Edit: CommanderZx2, I think you're getting way too hung up on the specifics at this point. Focus on the basic principle for now and worry about the parameters later.

The first post doesn't COVER changes in damage. It doesn't say that changes in damage are prohibited. I would welcome a significant increase in damage from marksman-weapons, at the expense of accuracy.

Wrt starting out: The idea is that players that picks marksman as a major skill will benefit from it, while players who abandons the skill completely will not be able to use the bow before they have had some training. The dispersion circles will always be smaller than most barns they may have in Skyrim, but the dispersion circles available to characters with skill level 15 or above should be small enough to ensure a decent hit rate. (nowhere near 100%, tho. Marksmanship is a SKILL that takes practice and experience. You cannot simply pick up a bow and reliably hit match boxes at 100 metres - that is plain silly)

I thought about that, and it might be a good idea to reduce the size of the red circle as well. My idea was that a "novice" circle would stay red for a full second before beginning reduction, while a journeymans(or apprentice, haven't gotten into specifics yet) would begin reducing immediately - thus giving the skilled users increasingly accurate snap shots because of the time factor. But I agree, it might be a good idea to reduce the red circle alltogether.

Oh yes I understand that, but I would see a reduction in the snap circle as well. There should still be incentive for master marksmen to pick their shots and the difference between snap and aimed should always be significant, but still it doesn't make much sense for everyone in the universe to be able to snap shot equally.

I like the disperssion circle idea and do agree marksmanship has room for improvement. I would also like to see more variations of arrow/bolt physics based on the different type of arrows/bolts.

All right, I think I agree. Both the red and blue circles should progressively be reduced as skill increases!

I Agree, beeing an Archer IRL, you have many factors.

But again, when you pull and realease you should be holding your breath. So waiting too much you wil start to shake and circle should grow.

So the ideal would be, pull and the circle get decreasing till say 5 to 8 seconds after that it start increasing again.

And let do this in the follwing way, skill affect how big the starting circle and minimum circle decrease, and how fast the snap shot (least accurate) stabilize rejoin to the aimed (best acuracy you can achive) circle. And how much you can stay put under stamina loss.
Problem is:
Enemy Distance in TES is too short. 30m(+ - 90 feets) is not much. Accuracy really become challenging at 50m (150feets) to hit a static person.

I agree to this sistem IF there s an drastical increase in damage is incorporated, because as it stand in RPG Missile has always been overweak. If there s no increse in lethality then there s no need to bother complicating missile users.

Could devise the following system:
Skill decrease circles and increase "stable shot" time (time you can stay with full acurracy while pulling string) and diminish stamina use while in full pull. If you stay with a missile in close combat ennemy will strike your weapon trying to damage it (if it does it does great damage), and classical damage decrease with worst item condition.

to compensate this increase in dificulty we got an massive increase in damage,

Done properly this would recreate what happened, few deadly arrows, then clash. If you miss you better draw a weapon fast.

Great input, succellus!

I agree, the resulting "penalty" in accuracy should be balanced out with a significant increase in damage - making bows more lethal weapons once you're able to reliably score hits. Obviously, this would apply to enemies as well.

Yes I was going to mention that circles should grow again after a while aiming (like in Thief games :wub:) but I... forgot.

I like this topic very much! Some very good ideas here and if marksmen damage was increased I think this could be a great improvement to the game. I also this that the size of the dispersion circle should vary on a number of things besides just your marksmen skill, like the type of bow and arrows your using and the condition of the bow. Also if your running/jumping/walking/moving in any other way there should be whole new much bigger dispersion circles as any sort of movement while shooting will throw off you accuracy much more than just standing still and these circles should also shrink as your skill improves, but never reach the size of the standing still circles. What I mean is there are different circles for walking than for jumping than for standing still, and some such as sneaking at a walk will have a circle that is just barely increased from standing wheres as running or falling will have a huge circle at first making it almost impossible for a novice to hit a target like that, which I think is pretty realistic. If Bethesda puts these dispersion circles in (as they should) I think there will also have to be places where you can shoot at practice targets to gain marksman exp. (not nearly as much as if you hit a monster but some) this is so characters who didn't choose marksman as a major skill but still want to use a bow can without being only to take (and most likely miss) 1 or 2 shots at an enemy before having to switch weapons or use magic inorder to survive.

Edit: There would have to be a way to make sure people dont abuse the targets by standing right next to them and pressing shoot as many times as possible without fear as missing, as this would not help you get any bettter. This could be accomplished by having an npc monitering the range and to get in you have to talk to him and he says you can't shoot within 30 yards (or more) of the targets and if you try a message could just pop up stopping you from doing it.

Also it seems like you should get more exp. for succesfully landing longer shots than for shorter shots as the farther away you are the more effect the dispersion circles have and the more impressive landing a shot is.

lanray, I definitely agree with your points. There are a multitude of factors that should affect the circles, and they should be implemented - movement and fatigue being among the bigger ones. I also agree that target practice outside the fighters guild should count somewhat towards skill increase.

I'd prefer a simpler approach - aiming wobble with a 'breathe-holding' perk at apprentice level. This perk would increase in effectiveness until at master level there would be no wobble whilst holding your breathe. Those who don't specialise in marksman would find it impossible to use a bow at anything other than short range.

Good idea except that variation in the arrows flight isn't only do to your ability to hold your breath. There are a multitude of other factors such as your grip on the bow, how you release the arrow, any wind in the area, and even if you don't pull the string back to the same place everytime it makes it significantly harder to aim accuratly. I may have misinterpreted your post the way I read it breath holding cancels out all variation in flight at a master level, you may have mearly ment it decreases wobble due to breath holding as so decreasing the size of dispersion circles but they're still there, if this is the case I apolagize and please correct me.

I like it, since it's almost the same as my suggestion.



Also, that's pretty much how Mount&Blade does it.