Seen a couple of posts here and there about the bow and not being able to snipe from afar, at least not like in Oblivion.

I experienced this too and figured the bow just got nerfed. But fear not my friends! Just get the zoom perk!

Makes a world of difference. I sniped a moving target from a really long distance, felt damn good to one shot him too.

been sniping long distance's with the bow with out the perk.....

Good to know, my character in Oblivion was epic at sneak - one hit kill with a bow.. is the zoom system or higher level archery combat better, the same? as my current character is a basic heavy armored warrior

Yep, bows are pretty epic. There's a perk that will slow time while you're zooming with the bow too!

I'm willing to bet you didn't snipe at the distance I'm talking about. It would be 100% impossible. You can't do extreme long range without this perk. I've tried, trust me =)

Bows can be tremendously powerful when you choose the right perks.

In Sneak you can get 3x damage perk.
In archery 5 x20% damage etc.
Zoom perk and then a slow down time 2x25% =50% slowdown.

Sneaking around with these perks I'd imagine you're a one hit kill machine.

Also, the part where you won't find a lot of arrows that Bethesda said, LOL.

I have over 100 iron arrows and 30 Ancient nord and 30 Steel arrows and I am level 4 I think.

It takes alot of luck, or bad luck, to hit a target at very great range but its not impossible without perks.

I accidently shot too high when I was aiming at a deer and my arrow went on the other side of a slope where a Thalmor patrol happened to wander by.... I saw the deer shrugging happily eating grass and yet i got the "Sneak attack x2.0!" message. I barely had the time to frown before the lightning bolts started flying.

Dunno about that I shot an archer from one side of a cavern to the other, she was standing on a bridge with no idea I was about to shoot her in through the back of her neck, 1 in a million shot, she fell over the rope and down into the water below

Lol above me
I have 358 iron arrows....

The only problem with the bow i have had is the arc of the arrows
From the bowmans viewpoint it look like it is going right at the target
However there is an extreme drop at the end
So u might very well be "seeing" ur arrow hit tye target but in actuality it is dropping right infront
And its annoying because its so much harder to realine for the second shot
Its kinda like" bfbc2 to bf3" syndrome sniping is just so much different now because they changed the bullet drop....

I have missed several elk during hunting expeditions because of this...
Long distance shooting is a steep learning curve now
Esecially for leading targets

bow + sneak = 1 shot kills

Bows are stupidly powerful when you invest perks in Archery. In particular, Power Shot is just ridiculous. Once you get that, you have no use for melee weapons ever again.