Ever use a shotgun or sniper rifle in an fps? Its the rpg/medieval equivalent of that nut busting awesomeness. That being said meh Id rather be able to go into first person as a werewolf.

You are assuming that the reason so many things were removed from prior games is because the team did not have time to implement them all given the time and budget constraints of the game. That may or may not be true. Another possible explanation is that Bethesda purposefully removed all this stuff because they wanted their game to be simpler to appeal to a broader audience. Based on all the interviews with Todd Howard I have heard, it sounded to me like it was more the latter than the former, and I think that is what has everyone's panties in a bunch.

You got anything you can cite to to support your argument that removal of so many features from prior games was more about lack of resources than a purposeful decision?

Hehe. Reminds me of "Betrayal at Krondor", an old crpg. It only had swords..

Uh. Well, in real life, they're a bit harder to operate.

I guess it's something about it being a new addition and another ranged weapon in the game.

The more weapons the better, that explains the excitement about crossbows.
I've extensively shot crossbows and bows in real life and must say I like the crossbow better -its more accurate, even when you're a good shot with the bow; it has at least 1.5 times the effective range of a normal bow and aiming with the bolt tip works reeeally well..
The downside is its slow and difficult to reload, the more powerful crossbows that could penetrate nights armor even needed a drawing winch. (Your not gonna draw a 700 lbs crossbow with arms only)

I say a crossbow would work very well in Skyrim, more powerful and better accuracy but very slow to reload, you'd need good strategies to use it in combat.

thats called a pike

lances are used for cavalry

effectively the same thing, except a lance is usually more robust than a pike since it has to take the momentum of rider and horse to the tip without breaking

pikes are to stop that from happening, but since theyre designed to basically impale the horse or rider theyre usually longer and more slender than a lance


cool enough but how would you replace the bolts with both hands occupied?

practical issues aside, it wouldnt hurt to have it

First, that guy with the long bow is about as slow as you can be. A skilled Long Bow shooter can have 3 arrows in the sky at the same time, obviously at a distant target. This guy could have never achieved that. Even then, the crossbow was half as slow as the long bow.

The only person who should use a crossbow is someone who can't use a regular bow.

Which was most people.
In England and Wales you started learning to use a longbow as a child.
Such was its effectiveness that both Scotland and France tried to adopt it for their own use but training men to use it took too long and neither country ever fielded effective longbowmen of their own

Crossbows weren't cheap though and in the Hundred Years War the crossbowmen who fought for the French were mostly professional Italian mercenaries

I am a firearm enthusiast but I have done quite some research into crossbows. And despite what the majority of people think, that is they think that a crossbow is always more powerful than a standard bow. Its actually the other way around. A compound bow has the ability to have much more drawback than a crossbow, a compound bow also has the ability to reach a much higher velocity than a crossbow.

Here in Canada there is a very small crossbow hunting season for the fact that everyone thinks that crossbows have a huge advantage over other bows. But if they looked at the facts they would see that bow users have a advantage over crossbow users.

The one big advantage about a crossbow is they are simple to use. You take your bolt, place it, draw back and then you are ready to release it whenever you are ready.

A bow on the other hand may be faster firing but requries you to draw back with quite some strength if you want to do any damage. It takes much physical strength to make multiple powerful drawbacks in quick succsession.

Would I like to see crossbows in skyrim? YES.

Do I care that they are not in skyrim? NO

? I just watched this video, how fast should he be? Not everything is bullet-time perfection. He has to knock, full draw, and fire, he did those professionally every time. The (fast load) crossbow the other was using, is simple to charge because he can just use his foot, and there is no nock so he just sets in the bolt.
In other words- I don't think you realize that the bow man here was not "going super slow", unless all english archers of times past were super-rambo-elites. 10 arrows in less than a minute is not- as slow as you can be.

Note: From our own experiences at faire, we know that 10 aimed shots per minute at a man-sized target at half that range is quite a feat!
source: http://www.archers.org/default.asp?section=History&page=longbow

it all comes down to skill in the end

they resorted to crossbows since it takes years to be a skilled archer

whereas you can just give a peasant a crossbow and theres your missile troops

slow drawing bows? im good...especially if its painfully slow to fire like master spells

I already have a powerful bow so a crossbow will do nothing for me except be decoration for my wall or a gift for my wife

We talking modern compound bow? as in pulley system?

Um, crossbows are painfully... fast to fire.. slow to reload. Think about it.

The same can be said for crossbows. Just because its simple to use, doesnt mean that it doesnt take any skill to use it. If a person trains themself with a crossbow there is no doubt that they would be able to make as challenging shots as a bowmen would. That being said the bow does have the advantage of being able to arch. A feature the crossbow is unable to accomplish.

Ordinary people don't shoot like Legolas. The guy in the video was a little slow, but he was still pulling off about one shot every five seconds. The best that most people with training can expect is about one shot every three seconds. That is the fastest speed anyone in my college archery class could muster with any degree of accuracy. Now consider that the longbow in the video was a 110 pound draw (although it didn't look like it, that is what the crossbowman said) and most practice bows are going to be about half of that or less, and I think the old guy with the longbow was doing pretty good, assuming his shots were accurate.

But yeah, figure a very strong and talented longboman might increase the fire rate from 10 arrows per minute to about 15 arrows per minute and if you have a heavier draw crossbow that uses a winch draw, the rate of fire is going to go down from 6 per minute to maybe three per minute and you have a big diffference in fire rate.

Where I see a crossbow coming in handy in TES is for sneak shots against armored enemies or for melee opponents to get off one quick and powerful shot as they close the distance.

Compound bows (with pulleys and such) are a modern invention like firearms. They had no compound bows in fantasy settings. Composite bows are another matter, those are more like the plywood designs of modern recurve bows.

Hunting game may not be a good comparison for the advantages and disadvantages of crossbows vs longbows because game does not wear armor and the main advantage I have always heard about crossbows is that the heavier bolts were more capable of piercing heavy armor than longbows.

... THIS!

The compound bow was officially made in 1966..... but thats not to say that a pulley system was never used in bows before that time. There are reports that were issued in the 100 years war that stated that mercenaries from foreign lands carried bows that were strange looking and had wheels on them... Kinda sounds like a compound bow dont you think? And that was in the timeframe of 1337 - 1453

indeed

source please, don't buy it.
In literature of the early 20th century, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composite_bow have been incorrectly described as "compound", although these two are completely different.

primative firearms started popping up in the mid 1100's..... I wouldnt exactly call that modern....

I don't miss crossbows in the game.
Niamh is an archer and that's all cool, BUT - I reckon she would be more than happy to cross-skill for some close-in high damage goodness.

I think a crossbow benefits a stealth character very well because it removes some of the element of chance that a bow has, but still requires careful planning because range is less and rate of fire is lower. I think it would be a really interesting proposition and we are both quite excited about the possibility of them being in the world.

Huh? Every projectile from bows to guns to cannons to basketballs to ICBM's arch as gravity pulls it toward the gravitational center of the earth (assuming that the law of gravity works the same on Mundus). How much of an arch you see depends on the velocity of the projectile. Since gravity applies at a constant rate, slower moving projectiles arch less than faster moving projectiles, but they all arch.

He means for long range volley (area) shooting. Crossbows cannot do that very effectively, longbows can.

The thing is the volley shooting was not "man" accurate, and was accomplished by mass firings, it would not be effective on an individual basis. But he is right that crossbows cannot compete in a volley shot.

Lets not forget the 100m rule