I would like to propose two different possibilities.
First, make the lower tier bows near same damage with high-tier but with MUCH worse accuracy - basically the strings are not as strong and so the arrows don't fly as true. Long range shots would just be a waste of ammo usually unless shooting into a crowd. The reason why do it this way is that 1) varying the damage too much among the various bows creates a lot more possibilities for broken min-max builds and imbalances and 2) shoot speed has a lot of secondary side-effects that wreck the usability of bows or create unforeseen side-effects (decreased damage, massively increased drop in arrows so arc effects, lobbing over shield walls etc.) (also why when last time shoot speed was heavily nerfed it was reverted back rather quickly and many of the low -tier bows were actually given increased shoot speed later to actually make them viable).
The effect of this would be for low tier bows a lot of close to mid range shots using strong intuition of opponents' movements and a primary purpose of crowd control (shooting into massed up groups), whereas the higher tier bows would do slightly more damage, mostly due to higher powerdraw and serve their role as long range firing but with 2 slots being limited in either ammo or melee weapon, requiring a stronger focus on dedicated archer build. (Think of longbow as a strong wood and sinew weapon that shoots the arrows straighter and more true to aim). But the higher accuracy also comes with slower draw speed (and i would also consider changing weights of bows to make the biggest bows closer to flamberge weight further reducing kiting - you are serving as an accurate long-range high-damage weapon with limited mobility requiring stronger team support. Kiting by low tier bow users would also be significantly reduced because the low accuracy makes single unit targetting much harder making a single melee chaser have a much easier time dodging their arrows and therefore forcing melee combat. Mid-tier bows would possibly be a balance between the two but with enough lower accuracy compared to longbow, rus bow, bow (the 3 two slot bows) to not become the OP weapons of choice for archers, but rather a selective class weapon like for the few remaining ha who don't need quite as much accuracy but need the slightly higher damage.
The second possibility is this. Make lowest tier bows extremely heavy but also have the highest accuracy rankings (not as realistic as 1st possibility). They would be the go to item for high agility archers still with the highest accuracy with these bows providing a good use of wpf allowing the headshots needed for extra damage, but between the weight of ammo and the bow their hyper mobility will be significantly reduced. The high strength archers would still use the higher tier bows to make good use of their powerdraw (since would have wasted PD points with the lowest tier bows), but with the lower accuracy it would be more a high damage crowd damager as no amount of wpf would be able to counter the significantly reduced accuracy.
I prefer the 1st possibility. But whichever way you go you need to realize roles are very important especially when it comes to how they play out on strategus. Xbowers are the selective snipers. Archers need at least some part of their class serve their main purpose - crowd control. Can't emphasize this enough. Archers main purpose is crowd control in the end as massed shield walls and masssed charges they damage and kill and break up formations, forcing greater dispersal or else guaranteeing countless hits by massed archers. Secondary role is strong anti-ranged counter which is where having some bows with good accuracy kicks in. Playing on battle server is only about 1/3rd of the equation when trying to understand archery's role in game - archery is an incredibly weak class in general that gains (and should gain) most of its strength in coordinated group play, ala strategus and banner stacks.
I just wanted to say, thank you san for asking questions of the community and actually listening and giving well-thought out posts. Makes those of us in the community who still care about the game want to reply in kind. You are a good item balancer (I wish very much you were the head one).
Not a fan of the first idea as this would only result in the total death of agility archers.
Archers still want to hit their targets, and unless the accuracy was only decreased to something like the Horn Bow pre-patch
and no further, I really don't think this would work.
It would especially affect the few remaining horse archers who use the Nomad or Tatar bows specifically for their accuracy.
The second idea, though.
Yes. That's a brilliant plan, actually.
As high PD archers dedicate their stats to damage and only a few points can be placed in athletics, an agility archer is going to dedicate those extra points to athletics.
Why not increase the weight on all the bows to reflect nearly the same weight as the quivers?
Archers are going to use two quivers anyway, unless they're a bizarre 2h build.
Short, Nomad, and Tatar bows would go up to something like 10 weight and quivers drop to 3 or 3.5.
The rest could go up to something like 6-7.5 weight.
It wouldn't exactly make any sense from a realistic perspective, but I'm goddamn near confident that would
fix the problem.
Maybe the quivers could go up to 4-4.5 and reduce the "lightweight" bows to 8.5-9.
This might even give hybridization a better chance for the archers
insane enough who only carry one quiver and a one slot bow.
There would be less weight restricting them from being an effective 2h/polearm hybrid as well (due that one less quiver), and we might see those guys actually fight instead of dropping everything and running for the hills.
Couple all that with the current talk of adding 3-5 additional arrows and a minor damage increase.
Shit. That sounds like a decent plan to me.
I'd still suggest decreasing bow accuracy across the board, though.
