Love the game, best game I've ever played, excellent storyline, etc. etc. I'm lvl 26, semi annoyed with stealth atm. It's great when you're in a cave and have something to hide behind but one of my quests sent me to a fort to assassinate someone inside. This fort was surrounded by bandits on the battlements. I hid in the outlining rocky terrain outside trying to lob arrows in. It felt like I was playing angry birds on insane mode. I'm not really [censored] with the bow, I've hit things pretty far away but the dynamics of that bow are so realistic that I need some type of wind factor measurer or something.

I'll aim it center of mass and it'll hit too low, I'll move it slightly higher and it'll go 1 cm over their heads. I'll end up sitting there lobbing 20-30 arrows maybe killing 1-2 because I want to be stealthy and not get in there. I kill 2 and enter the fort where I find 3 more. I decide to archer snipe them but there is dike all to hide behind. I say screw it and just pull out my nightengale blade and chillrend and slash them to pieces, they weren't very hard enemies but when I was done I didn't feel very stealthy. Are there just situations where you inevitably are going to have to come out of hiding and 1 v 1 your opponents? I really don't like the fact it makes you feel like a rogue warrior in those situations more than a sneaky archer or sneaky cloak and dagger assassin etc.

I really dislike the bow. I tend to aim a little higher, due to playing games like Battlefield. I really don't understand the bow at all. It seems like I'm supposed to aim lower. Also, my arrows tend to curve a lot to the side.

So your problems are with archery and not with stealth?
I agree though, archery in this game can feel very unrealistic at times, and during others it feels like a simulator.
For instance, I was aiming right at the chest and the arrows were landing right below the dude's feet.

I have the slo-mo perk and i just use that when bandits are in a room together and i need to assassinate them all quickly.

The arrow goes in a curve. It's pretty realistic. You have to judge the range and angle of your bow...

Arrows travel in an arch, which means that at short range they end up slightly higher than you aim, and over long range they gradually lose height and end lower. On the point of stealth, forts are indeed difficult to enter in a stealthy way. What I usually do is just rush the fort and kill everything with regular swords, then pick up the sneaking when I'm inside the fort. It's not as sneaky, but as close as you're gonna get.

yes, the arrow goes in a curve but you must aim where you want to shoot at any distance. The ballistic of the arrow is only cosmetic.
The bow is good in the game but one needs to be used to the aiming system to be efficient. It is not very intuitive as we tend to aim above the target at long distance and it doesn't work that way in game. Tje arrow always goes to the center. And sometimes misses for some unknown reason or does no damage at all. Weird.

From what I understand, within a certain range the arrow will fly in an arc to your cross-hair (if you aim and shoot at something 30ft away, the arrow will always hit where your cross-hair is pointed). Beyond a certain range, however, it will only adjust the arc to a certain amount (if you aim and shoot at something 200ft away, the arrow will be on your cross-hair 50ft from the target (if the max range was 150ft) and then continue to drop for the remaining 50ft).

There are also long-range issues where, from my understanding, the arrow will 'despawn' in mid-air. In this manner, it will despawn, fly through the bad guy, and then respawn when it hits the ground behind him/her, doing no damage of course.

I've enjoyed some rather epic fails in the archery department. It takes practice. I recommend buying a few dozen cheap arrows and hunting wildlife. Learn the arc and ranges.

I don't know what your sneaking skill is, but considering your weapons you probably have boots with a helpful enchant on them. You should be able to sneak pretty close to guards and take them out without being discovered.

I like to sneak in close and pickpocket bad guys before I gut them. But that's just personal taste.

I have found that the eagle eye perk helps with this, it is great to be able to zoom in and get a close visual on your target. I find the hardest to deal with from a archery perspective is roaming guards on the battlement of forts, unless I can get it so the shot is in a straight line I always miss them. Sometimes though they will stop and look at the arrow I shot at them then I can get a solid shot on them.
I agree though that it isn't really stealth that is making this difficult but you use of archery. I think that stealth can become overpowered particularly with some of the perks. There is something wrong when a bandit chief is literally pushing me around while I am stealthed muttering about having heard something.

Well in this kind of case I used to sneak somewhere at the fort or near to it and shoot arrow from shadows to rock or something which has some distance to me. They can easily see or hear the arrow and they probably go near where it landed or just start to move around trying to find you (which pointless if you have good hiding place) when they are seeking you you can easily find people far enough from each other to sneak behind them and kill them instantly and silently with dagger.

I love Archery in Skyrim and I'm the worst Bow person in the history of Oblivion. I believe it will just take more practice and making sure that you only shoot and aim when they are 100% still. I find that hitting a moving target is a waste of time unless you absolutely need to do it.

eh, the archery's pretty easy once you get used to it. Have you been using archery since the start of your character? Anyway your gripe is with archery, not stealth, right?
although one thing that really gets me annoyed is that if you're hiding behind a wall for example, and you aim at the air close to the wall, your arrow would hit an invisible barrier

I am trying to get used to this old fashioned way of bows again. I have to say I wasn't a fan of Oblivion. But they had great bow action that was more realistic. I had to arc the bows at a good angle to get a long distance shot on a target. Now in Skyrim they went backwards an I have to shoot dead on to hit the target....LAME!!! This was the reason I never used bows in Morrowind, they didn't feel natural. One other thing I have recently noticed is like some arrows will kill a target and then bounce off them, so I just run over and pick them back up after the fight.......

That bothers me too, when it's clearly a straight shot and your just a couple of inches away from the object, you still hit a barrier.

Not for me.

Short distance: Aim a bit low.

Medium distance: Pretty much center the piece of [censored].

Long range: High aim.

RARELY does the arrow actually hit the crosshair for me. So it seems very realistic.

I don't like how you have to aim low regardless of distance, it makes no sense. Why can't shooting NPCs be like the targets at Angi's camp: Low for close range, on the crosshairs for medium, and high for distant targets. Do NPCs have some sort of stupid auto-correct thing or what?

Plus, I have an issue where all nearby enemies go into full alert mode as soon as I release an arrow. While the arrow is still mid-flight (having just cleared the bow) all enemies will be charging my position. When the arrow hits (if they haven't moved out of the way during their charge) it does regular damage because I've been detected instantly.

Stealth is ridiculous. You can be in plain sight wearing heavy armor and not be seen.

Love using the bow. With the 3x damage with the surprise hit just about everything except bosses is a one hit kill. I don't understand your problem with aiming; just point at the target and let fly, unless they're moving fast I never miss.

I too have a character who is an assassin with high stealth. I have not had a problem. In fact, my character seems to be able to disappear on people right in plain sight especially in the shadows. I can even sneak up on a giant and kill them with an assassin's dagger to the back...I can pretty much sneak up on anyone...I am just about to take the last perk in sneak as a matter of fact.

I always sneak and use a bow. I'm horrible with melee weapons and even use my bow in close range combat (silly, I know). I always aim the dot (the middle of the eye- either sneaking or not) for the enemy's collarbone/lower neck. This will always shoot them in the head (at least for me it does). I also always do attacks at night, so it's harder to see me (wait until around 8pm or later and then go from there). This is all basically personal preference, but it's how I manage to kill everything with a bow, 3x sneak attack and basically never come in melee combat with anybody.

The bow mechanics might be kind of wonky, but man does it feel good when you snipe a moving target at a long distance with a headshot. And to see them sent flying.

I'm a bit disappointed with stealth myself, but not for the reason you might think. Where I feel stealth fails is in how easy it is to not be detected, even when one of the victim's associates is practically standing on your head. Naturally I ruthlessly abuse this, since my stealth characters tend to be squishy and I play Dead-is-Dead, but it would be nice if, upon my putting an arrow in some guy's/gal's neck, his/her friends actually came looking for me while I backed away rather than giving up after a few seconds.

I have occasionally been pursued, at least to an extent, but it's usually been essentially by accident; when it's happened it's been because I was in a small room with no practical escape route, and in such cases they were going to eventually find me anyway unless I managed to pick them off first, which isn't always doable. It probably doesn't help that the Shadow Warrior perk is insanely broken if you know how to use it, as it keeps 'resetting' the AI unless they're at point-blank range and can see you anyway, but even before you get it it's way too easy to dupe the AI by breaking LOS since the player is the only one who ever uses Detect Life.

I'm currently playing a Archer/dual dagger character on console. Bows for me have been pretty easy to use, just a slight arc at mid range and the drop for long range. Hardest part is accounting for movement over long range and making sure you have fully drawn before releasing. Forts by design are meant to be a challenge for stealth, well lit and lack of cover. You have to use the angles to your advantage. Enchanting Muffle can help you hit and run (literally) so as to avoid detection. Shooting arrows at walls to distract enemies and make them move is a useful trick in forts, allowing you to get enemies to move where you want them.

All in all, Stealth is well made. It can be OP once you get high up in skill but its not unexpected, its a hit or miss skill. The bow too seems to be hit or miss for players, some have no trouble others seem to have some issues that stem from the game mechanics acting strange.