If archery is goign to change then it needs to be a mechanical change and not just stat changes. Stat changes alone will never alter how archery is used and this is the actual problem rather than them being generally over or under powered.
Here's one way that I think the mechanics could be changed to make things better.
- Holding the left mouse button readys your bow/arrow in a comfortable position (half drawn) and lets you aim for as long as you want.
- Releasing the left mouse button pulls the bow back that final amount and then releases the arrow which means there is a delay before you fire. Not sure on the exact delay yet but somewhere around a second i'd guess.
- The delay should be proportional to the amount of PD you have over your bows difficulty level. 0 extra PD = 100% delay, 1 extra PD = 75% delay, 2 extra PD = 50% delay, 3 extra PD = 25% delay, 4 extra PD = no delay at all. This makes sense as your strength determines how far you can pull a bow string back so that you can comfortably hold it. If you have enough Strength on a light enough bow then you can pull it all the way back and hold it.
- An archer would be able to cancel their shot by right clicking if they are quick enough and have enough wpf. Like melee feinting. Obviously this would not be possible with zero delay, but then the archer wouldn't need it as they will just stop aiming.
- The above changes would mean that PD no longer effects damage. Effectively the dificulty of a bow would be the poundage of that bow. A 150lb bow is a 150lb bow no matter who is using it. Having more strength than you need doesn't make it do more damage it just makes it easier to use. As a result bow damages would need rebalancing to cater for this and I would also duplicate the bows at different difficulties so that people have plenty of choice.
- See below for a table of suggested bows and their stats
Difficulty Bow Damage Missile Speed Speed Rating
1 20lb Short Bow 30 36 75
2 40lb Bow 35 38 72
40lb Nomad Bow 35 38 72
3 60lb Bow 40 40 69
60lb Nomad Bow 45 40 69
4 80lb Bow 50 42 66
80lb Tatar Bow 50 42 66
80lb Yumi 50 42 66
5 100lb Tatar Bow 55 44 63
100lb Yumi 55 44 63
100lb Horn Bow 55 44 63
100lb Long Bow 55 44 63
100lb Rus Bow 55 44 63
6 120lb Horn Bow 60 46 60
120lb Rus Bow 60 46 60
120lb Long Bow 60 46 60
7 140lb Rus Bow 65 48 57
140lb Long Bow 65 48 57
8 160lb Long Bow 70 50 54
You can use words like heavy and light if people don't like the poundages. Looming gives +1, +1, +2 to damage and missile speed. These figues are based on those of the crossbows with the difficulty 8 Longbow being similar to the Heavy Crossbow in terms of damage and missile speed. They should however still be balanced against each other since the Heavy Crossbow is slower but only requires 12 strength to use instead of the 24 strength that the 8 difficulty long bow will need (36 strength if you want to use it without the firing delay). I expect 160lb Long Bows will prove to be very rare but they should be there for those people who are good enough to handle them with the delay (they won't be able to run very fast though
)
The above changes would result in a much greater risk of team hitting when firing into a melee as the delay would mean you have a much lower chance of hitting someone that is moving erratically whilst fighting. However, a person closing in on an archer wouldn't have any extra advantage as if the animation is done right it should be very hard to see exactly when an archer is going to fire when you are charging them head on. It would limit shot-gunning at the last second though as the archer would have to time it better or use a lighter bow.As for archers hitting longer range targets that aren't aware of the archer, all it would do is increase the lead you need on them. Good archers will adapt very quickly to this. Crap archers will choose lower difficulty bows so that they can play without the delay, but as a result they will do far less damage.
