Archery is way too effective in this game. To the point that its unrealistic. And at the same time, its not realistic enough. Arrows to the HEAD, eyes and neck should be a one shot kill if it doesn't hit a helmet. But anywhere else, the damage should be way less. Especially if you are wearing heavy armour or if you are A FREAKING DRAGON!

Dragon armour is supposed to be the second best after daedric. So why is it that DRAGONS can be bested by puny little iron and steel arrows in just a few hits? These arrows shouldn't be punching through. The dragon's scales should be deflected this stuff without him even feeling it. The only time 'weak' arrows should hurt a dragon is if you get him in the mouth while he shouts or in the eye or something. His underbelly or neck.

It makes no sense to me that I can be taking steel swords to the arms and get hurt alot less than some bandit chiefs /silver-hand/forsworn arrow. I take two or three arrows and I'm dead.

Archery was terrible in Oblivion. To the point where it was useless. Now its far too powerful.

I would like localized damage as well. But honestly if I was shot in the gut with a bow i'd probably play dead until the guy who shot me left.

Archery terrible in Oblivion? Since you could move a lot faster with an arrow nocked than you can in Skyrim, you could just backpedal and kill a lot of enemies as they ran towards you.

Yeah, I can one and two shot a lot of enemies with a bow, unless they have a ton of HP/armor.

Soldier of Fortune, which came out a good 12 or so years ago, had amazing hit detection and reactions. Shoot somebody in the hand, they drop their gun. Shoot them in the foot, they limp. Head and throat shots were instant kills, with the exception of guys with rocket launchers and the final boss, they had armor that rivaled a tank.

No one is making you use archery so you have no right to say arrows need to be nerfed Anything can kill a dragon a daedric sword that does 500 damage just use the certian shout on them. spells that do the exact same thing as arrows and just the eyes head and neck? Called the heart and vital organs and tendons if you hit one of those they would go down easy and if they are not dead they will be soon from lack of blood. really when you can shoot a guy in the back of the head and he just says I guess it was the wind is the only thing I find wrong with archery.

You want an insta kill for a headshot? Fine, do me a favor an think about something for a sec. Think about the Archery perk that slows down time ( can't remember the name ) coupled with insta kill headshots. Now have something that godly and tell me if you think that would be more realistic than it currently is. If you add a head hitbox that equals an instant kill, that perk has to go.

/Edit

Now an insta kill headshot without using the perk is perfectly viable and actually sounds fun.

no nerfing anything, if your bow does too much damage, then use a hunting bow and iron arrows and dont buy any of the sneeking perks, that should lower the damage, and try a harder diffculty.

lol unrealistically overpowered. Seriously? Have you ever hunted with a bow in real life?

Bow + steel arrow = gaping wound with blood pouring out everywhere = death within a minute.

Bows are tremendously underpowered in Skyrim when compared to real life. If you weren't wearing thick armor, 1 arrow would be almost guaranteed death from blood loss. It wouldn't even have to be a serious part to be punctured with the arrow, a thigh shot would be more than lethal.

*sigh....

Reality: The study of terminal balistics and the physiological effects of projectiles striking the body or limbs is by no means an exact science, and despite what the movies or tv shows lead us to think, effects vary incident to incident. But several rules of thumb do apply:

Unless it's a central nervous system strike, what counts is blood loss, and to a variable extent shock...but shock alone is a dangerous thing to stake your life on.

Even the best hit you can get with a projectile in relation to blood loss is the severing of one or more of the major veins and arteries, or a heart strike, but this still leaves a minimum of 15 to 20 seconds before loss of blood causes the brain to black out....and that 15 to 20 seconds can see an awful lot happen.

What counts in blood loss is the size of the hole, and what it's in: diameter and depth, and what it goes through.

That said, having a metre long (approximate) arrow sticking out of you will both hurt and make it difficult to do whatever you were doing.

Skyrim:

It's a game. It's not a combat sim.

Do I find some incoming arrows damaging? Yes, which is why I do my best to avoid them...if I can't, then I do my best to protect myself against them while I either try to avoid them, or I take out the archer....which is why as a fighter I chose to take the appropriate shield perk, and I wear heavy armour.

Then don't change your bow. Stick with the hunting bow. Don't put any perks into it.
Quit crying about it

Wth? One-handed is far better imo.

I think it's fine the way it is.

Also, dragons have an armor rating of 0. That means they are not armored at all, according to the game, whether it looks like it or not.

That said, localized damage would be cool, but not needed. Archery is fine as it is.

No localized damage please. This isn't CoD.

Nerf this, nerf that,is this the Gears 3 message board?
You think archery is too powerful? Use a long bow and falmer arrows...problem solved.

i find archery fine but i generally use low teir weapons and armour,
varity is what id change so there might be some point to carrying different arrows other colour coordinating, like whos gunna use falmer forswarn arrows are worst than iron, they need some edge to keep thing pointful and viable, i like the adea that some arrows are better ArmourPenertrators and work like mace perk, some have higher base power against unarmored foes, others could buff poision or enchanting, the best arrows doing several thing but, being rare exspensive and added modifier more break on contact so you wont find may on corpses.
i hate the horridly obvious incremental arms chart in tes. it would be nice if they did stiff other that just one after another besting each other. So for instance:
iron arrows- basic arrow, little Ap
steel arrow- Gp arrow high durability
falmer/forswarn arrows- weak but increased poision effect.
elven arrows- Gp arrow high velosity
dwemer arrows- high Ap low overall strength
orc arrows- high pow low Ap
Glass- Holds charge better, break easy.
Ebony- Holds charge better, higher pow, break very easy.
deadric- Holds charge better, higher Ap, break very easy.
somthing like this would be better, same with armour and weapons, if they still had durability ratings it would seem alot more balenced as high tier gear should degrade quick to still make low grades worth useing.

I'm not just talking about me using archery. I'm also talking about the damage I take from arrows. And the damage that dragons take from arrows. If dragon scales are so strong how come steel arrows can punch through?

This . The different ammos from Fallout come to mind .

Agreed that bows are underpowered in comparison to RL. I have seen the damage a real 50 to 80 pound bow can do and its not pretty. Where in Skyrim I have to pump 3 or 4 arrows into a bear or sabre to put it down.

It would be fantastic to be playing a game where you have to use actual strategy to survive, so lets say an enemy in full steel plate armor comes to attack you. You can't break through that armor with your weapons, so you have to play carefully, waiting for the moment to cause damage to the weak points, maybe if you are hit in different areas your body responds differently. I can't see this happening anytime soon, but localised damage could have easily been implemented.

Also the fact you swing weapons the same speed in full heavy armor than if you're naked is ridiculous, you can also make heavy armor weigh less than clothing, have the same movement speed and stamina usage!? The weightless perks are to overpowered, if you wear heavy armor you should never be able to move as fast than if you're naked.

Try taking an arrow in the heart, in the liver, or have an arrow sever an artory. Those are all definitive kill shots. You will die very quickly, almost instantly. There are many more one shot kill areas on a body then just the head and neck.
In any other vital organ or in your intestines it will usually take a bot longer for you to die.


The arrow heads in TES are obviously armor penetrating arrow heads.
At any rate, in real life you need a shield and sloped armor plate surfaces to negate armor piercing heads. I'd imagine this to be the same in TES. And very few armors in TES have sloped surfaces.


I do agree that dragons go down way to easily. In-game they don't even have an armor rating.

But you don't know whether armor scales and skin get tempered before they're used on dragon scale armor. Leather and hide obviously get tempered as well.


Archery is overpowered in this game. I agree. But it does affect me as a player in the same way. There are bow-wielding enemies that can one shot me as the player as well. That to me does add some extra difficulty, it does make an engagement where archers are involved much more challenging. Where you'd usually ignore archers and deal with more impressive melee enemies first, now you have to fight your way through melee to reach the archers first because otherwise you're dead, quickly.

when the next DLC will come out i want to use a gun, like M4A1 and a .44 Magnum with and RPG-7 for backup!!

I'm not a historian or expert on weapons, but wasn't part of the point of a bow & arrow (and later the crossbow) is it's ability to punch thru armor? All that force focused on the sharp point of the arrow tip?

By your reasoning if I have dragon armor then I should also be immune to arrows unless I'm shot in the head?

Damage Treshold should be introduced to TES.
For those unfamiliar with Fallout, DT means if your armor has higher DT than the attacker's damage output, he deals no damage (or the damage is minimal) no matter what kind of an elephant gun is in question. You couldn't just penetrate Power Armor with a 10mm pistol.

It's still supossed to be an RPG and no [Censored] FPS... so please no localized damage detection!

This, the FNV system worked very well IMO.