In my opinion this is a little rediculous and on the grounds of realism, I see none what so ever other than the fact that "in real medieval battle, archers would just run, while infantry broke through their ranks and engaged their persuers". With regards to cRPG, there are no said "line battles" so this wouldn't happen, everyone is pretty much a skirmisher in their own way and that's how things have always worked, 1 men armies running around hacking and slashing, say what you will about teamwork but when it comes down to it, you've got your best interests at heart and you play how you want to, i'm 100% sure that at some point you've been running with a couple of teammates on the server and they've got into a sticky situation and you've thought "screw this, i'm running" and done so! ^^
Back on track though, it's not realistic, now, i'm pretty sure if someone gave me a bow and a quiver full of arrows, I could jump and take an arrow out of said quiver on my back, knocking it, sure that would be a bit of a problem, but I wouldn't have my arms pinned to my side and if I already had the string pulled back, I wouldn't suddenly drop the arrow and be unable to do anything with it. This comes from someone who wouldn't be able to actually draw the bow due to injuries to his left shoulder and leg but would still have the required movement and co-ordination to pull an arrow from a quiver while moving in a verticle motion!
Next we have the falling, not sure what it is like now but last night when it was originally introduced around about 00:00 GMT +1 if you walked down an incline or fell off something, the same thing would happen, the G-Forces were too great for puny archers (or xbowmen to come to that) to lift their arms or they lose all hand-eye co-ordination. This is a little silly because I found multiple times that I would be running, (I had remapped my jump button away from space so I didn't have the risk of trying to jump to somewhere while drawing an arrow) and I would go down a slight dip in the floor and he would drop the arrow and start the animation again, it seems a little extreme to me! :S
I played like this for three hours, had a bit of a laugh with VRN/SeaRaiders/Templars on teamspeak where we (archers and xbowmen) ran at the enemy jumping like penguins but it was enough to test it against footmen. Against cavalry, with the new changes they're getting as a result of this silly change that will
not have any effect on me running away from melee, turning and shooting, it just means that I will have to run a little further before I turn and shoot, think about it, i'm still faster than you, I can still knock an arrow while i'm running and I can still turn and shoot, you're still going to get the same arrows flung into your body and 9 times out of 10 I never jumped anyway, so it doesn't stop that!
The only other problem I can forsee with this is that cavalry will be able to pick on archers a lit harder than they used to. They'll be able to deftly bump the archers while they can't fight back because the slightest contact will stop you from reloading, melee isn't good for more archers so that's a problem there. I've already found with the one or two cav that were playing at half 2 this morning that even with 7 athletics, I wasn't quite quick enough to move myself out of the way of cav without jumping when they come charging at me, to actually have some form of defence against them and have a chance to shoot down their horse/the rider.
On a side note, Bunny hopping isn't a good term for this since it's not a series of quick sharp jumps, it's 1 jump.
I'm not sure what the full capabilities of WSE are but if possible I think it should still be applicable for archers to draw an arrow, not necessarily knock it nor draw the bow back while jumping and falling and if they already have the bow fully drawn back, they should be able to release the arrow because. So basically an interim point where the animation stops that it will go no further, the point where the archer has the arrow out, and the bow and arrow are down, I might post a screenshot later on.
TL;DR:
Archers and Crossbowmen jump like Penguins, had fun with that one just for the stupidity of it.
I have enough hand eye co-ordination to draw an arrow from a quiver at the very least, maybe not knock it, in real life despite injuries to my left arm and leg.
Archers will still outrun fat infantry, they will still draw arrows, they will still turn on the spot and they will still shoot you as accurately as before and you will still whine that we are kiting you, you just can't use "jump spin shoot" as the reason behind "why that archer was faster than me"
Cavalry will be a massive pain in the arse for archers since they won't be able to fight back.
Walking down a steep hill or even a few flights of stairs, you won't be able to knock an arrow. (Even walking across a field sometimes causes this because you're falling :S)
Comprimise between realism/whine with an animation stop after the archer has drawn the arrow and before the knock it to the bow and allow a fully drawn back bow to fire while in midair.
At the very least remove this from falling (I know this is possible from what was being said last night) because I would like to walk down a slightly bumpy road without tripping!
