A massive archer overhaul which will result in 8 different types of archer archetypes being playable. To get this done, this will happen: A patch with which cut bows will have crazy random soak values, so every hit is like a dice roll (but lower average damage), and pierce will be lower, non-dice roll consistent damage.
Arrows won't determine damage, only bow assigning of damage type. [ like old time]
Archery accuracy will go up, to increase player skill, but body shots will go down in damage by over half. Encouraging skilled archers to headshot. And, making them possible to do reliably if skilled.
With a huge revamp of the bows -- Enabling 4 main archetypes of archers, with two distinct variants of each. Each bow having a different Damage type and speed classification.
-Bow and Short bow will have fire rate doubled form current. Short bow will be pierce -- same damage of current. Bow will be like Short bow, but Double damage and cut [fast, low damage -- now possible!]
-tartar bow and nomad will be next tier up -- Keeping current fire speed. tartar will be pierce, same damage of current, Nomad will be cut -- double base damage
-Horn bow and yumi are next tier up. Horn bow being current pierce damage, and slower than current fire rate. Yumi being cut version with double damage.
-Rus bow and Long bow are top tier, with considerably slower fire rate. Same base pierce damage for rus bow, and double damage but cut for longbow.
keep in mind improved accuracy, and since pierce (of the same damage from now) with lower, consistent soak values of negation from armor. Double damage cut, but with twice the armor negation there is now, and with a huge dice roll. This averages out to the same damage as the consistent pierce. Except a guy in heavy armor might get hit by that longbow and only take 1/10th damage twice from a dice roll and kill the archer one time, and get 75% gone in one shot another, rarer time.
This allows 8 archetypes of archers, of 4 speeds with a choice of damage type. With the same, current balance of archers (you keep the movement speed nerf, identical average DPS to archers currently) . Greatly diversifying to the types of archers within the game. Along with that, a bonus for skill and a nerf to the bad, random shot archers.
With such an archery overhaul, all archer looms will be turned back into loompoints to be re-assigned. This means all bows, and arrows.
Sorry, I'm trolling. But it is a better idea than our current system, and I made it up as I posted.
Put me on balance team, make this game more lively. Reintroduce boulder on a stick, bring back cross dressing, buff items that really suck instead of nerfing the popular ones, etc.
