PLEASE: KEEP THIS BUMPED, OR REQUEST A STICKY POST.

If You seem to be doing 0 damage to enemies at long-rage, and wish to make Archery more "Oblivion-Like" please read.

Yesterday, I've been doing some research to figure out why Long-Range archery svcks. Apparently, Skyrim employs a very subtle "auto-aim" feature that for some reason, makes targets at the distance not register damage. (that's just my theory.)

Shown HERE:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxmNZDhQEnY


ARCHERY FIX:

Basically, go into your Skyrim game folder, Open Skyrim.ini in a text editor, and add these two lines in the [Combat] section:

f1PArrowTiltUpAngle=0.0
f3PArrowTiltUpAngle=0.0

NOTE: You will now have to compensate for arrow drop more realistically (Oblivion-style).

I tried this last night and it's like I was playing oblivion! I was sneaking and popping enemies near draw distance. I have NO IDEA why Bethesda tried fixing something that wasn't broken, such as archery. But I hope this helps everyone!

(I am not the originator of this fix. I just want to get the info out there to as many people as possible)
Please point others to this post if they are having the same trouble.

Happy hunting everyone, and please vote if this fix worked!

Someone explained this in the modding section, when using a bow the crosshair is fixed so that the arrow hits the target in corsshairs at a certain distance (~10 meters or ~30 feet). If you want to hit a target closer than that distance, you need to aim below him, if you want to hit enemy farther than that, you need aim over him. The above tweak makes the arrows fire where the crosshair points.

This is really just a case of poor documentation

I dont want to get into this argument again because plenty of other topics discuss this already at length.


PLEASE NOTE: This isnt about "missing the target" because of how thecrosshairs are adjusted.

There are plenty of online videos showing archers who are able to "hit" their targets from long-range, but the arrows are passing right through them, for some reason, and doing 0 damage.

Yeah that happened to me too, but that tweak does seem to fix that.

Slightly shocking hijack of someone elses .ini fiddling. Still, best get it out to a wider audience.

That's my goal. I'll point that out in my post.

Didn't work unfortunately. I still cannot comprehend how this was not dealt with before release.

If you've made those .ini changes correctly it definitely has an immediately noticeable effect. If you're not seeing anything, you may have edited the wrong .ini.

It doesn't completely fix the long range issue based on my experiences with it over the last couple of days though. What it does do, is disable the apparent assistance that Skyrim implements to your shooting. It seems like a form of 'auto-aim' assistance.

Much better with it off although your initial arrow velocity seems drastically reduced.

Well I tried it out last night and my effective range improved GREATLY. Things at a distance were actually taking damage when I shot them!

Thanks for posting this, I'll try it when I get home, hope it works like you claim ^_^

No problem.

And please vote if this fixes the problem! :thumbsup:

Please keep this bumped, guys.
Thanks.

Does this still mean you have to point the crosshairs directly at your target or is it actually like Oblivion where you actually had to adjust your aim higher for further targets? I'm not a fan of the auto aim, makes archery feel really weird from the cognitive dissonance of aiming for ballistic flight and then having your arrow arcing towards the target...

This fix has fixed archery for me

I mean, I could play it before, you just learn to play within the game's limitations right? But this fix has removed the apparent problems I had before, so it's good. I'm successfully hitting skeletons at about visual limit, and I cannot ask for more range than that

I'll try this fix in a bit, the fact that i can't play a sniper has almost ruined archery for me. I had the distance issue at the exact area of the game that video was taken, on the same enemy. If this fixes the problem i'll be forever greatful :celebration:

Didn't work for me.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v482/jasonsteele/Game%20Stuff/ScreenShot24-1.jpg

Not even a lick of damage as you can see he is not aggro. Before anyone says it, the angle looks like it could have been a miss, but from my view when shooting them they all passed through the center of their body!

After changing the .ini file, Archery went oblivion-style:

-Damage was being counted at long-range
-You now compensate for further targets by aiming sufficiently above them.

Huh, I just assumed that's how it was by default. No wonder I can't seem to hit the broad side of a barn with my bow. Didn't any of the testers play as an archer?

Yeah the default settings for Skyrim archery is... wierd.

It's like the system will always "attempt" to compensate for the flight path of the arrow according to your crosshairs regardless of distance (up to a certain point.)
-If an enemy is 10 feet away, putting your crosshairs over their torso will generally be a hit.
-If an enemy is 100 feet away, putting your crosshairs over their torso will generally be a hit.

Unfortunately. This system (for some unkown reason) tends to not apply damage if you shoot something a very long range.

It goes so much as to make your arrows pass right through the enemies, dealing 0 damage.

I don't see how this makes the enemies solid to arrows but I'll try it anyway.

Once again, another reason I wish I had bought this game for PC... hope auto-aim gets an on/off setting. Even on a console, I never use it!

This sort of bug is nothing new its just new to TES. In FO3 there was the exact same problem with sniper rifles and basicly if you had your view distance turned all the way up you could see enemys farther away than the gun could hit them. What it comes down to is MAJOR oversight on bethesda's programers part that they coded the game for the console, which has a much smaller view distance, then gave PC uses the option to up that view distance however they did not put the coding in to enable the weapons to hit those distant targets.

Nice! I'll try this when I get home. I really missed being able to snipe mobs in Skyrim since I did it so much in Oblivion.

That's funny I don't remember this being a problem in Oblivion/FO3/FNV. In fallout I would even change my ini to make NPCs visible FAR beyond what can normally be done and had no problem hitting them. Maybe it was a console local problem or I got a mod that fixed it?

I dont know what to say. I have no idea, either. But it worked for me.

The only thing I can guess is that the same system that was attempting to auto-aim for you was also associated with hit-detection of the enemy you were aiming at.

So when you tried to tried to shoot something at long range, your auto-aim was saying "Nah, he can't possibly be trying to hit THAT." and give up on hit detection.

In short, Skyrim had no faith in you.

Changing the .ini is setting the crosshairs to be a static value, essentially telling that auto-aim to take a hike.