The Elder Scrolls XIV: Good? Bad? I'm the one with the Thu'um!

[veti]

If you want to break it down into materials, sure. Realistically there are only 7 different kinds of melee weapon: 1 and 2 handed versions of swords, axes, and hammers, plus daggers, with bows and crossbows for a total of 9.

Point of order: there is a significant difference between fast and slow bows, with the former having much greater drop over mid to longer range. So there's two types of bow.

[halfeye]

Point of order: there is a significant difference between fast and slow bows, with the former having much greater drop over mid to longer range. So there's two types of bow.

I thought that was a statement about what's in Skyrim, not the real world?

In the real world, there are short bows (used by native americans, and everybody else before the middle ages), and long bows (in europe from the middle ages onward), then variants on the longbow. In Skyrim they are all shortbows that behave more or less like longbows.

[Resileaf]

I thought that was a statement about what's in Skyrim, not the real world?

In the real world, there are short bows (used by native americans, and everybody else before the middle ages), and long bows (in europe from the middle ages onward), then variants on the longbow. In Skyrim they are all shortbows that behave more or less like longbows.

Relatedly, would be nice to have a sniper-longbow build in Skyrim, wielding a 6-feet tall monster of a bow shooting spears or something.

[Triaxx]

As always because it's Bethesda, there's a mod for that. Several actually. The one that caught my eye was Longbows which added bows that did more damage, but had a much longer draw. SkyRe added them as part of it's package and they were AMAZING. Unfortunately, I've abandoned SkyRe for Ordinator and Ordinator's archery is... awful.

[The_Jackal]

Relatedly, would be nice to have a sniper-longbow build in Skyrim, wielding a 6-feet tall monster of a bow shooting spears or something.

Well, you could argue that all of the Skyrim bows must be short bows, since they're all capable of being fully drawn sideways. This isn't possible with a longbow, by a human, anyway.

[veti]

I thought that was a statement about what's in Skyrim, not the real world?

In the real world, there are short bows (used by native americans, and everybody else before the middle ages), and long bows (in europe from the middle ages onward), then variants on the longbow. In Skyrim they are all shortbows that behave more or less like longbows.

Not so, Skyrim has two very clearly different types of bow. The early game, weak bows have a significant drop in the arrow's flight. Later bows, like glass, ebony or nordic, don't. (Though dragonbone may be an exception.)

It's not a continuum. Every bow is defined as either fast or slow, and all bows of the same type apply an identical trajectory and range to their arrows. (Yes, I've actually spent time testing this.)

[The_Jackal]

Not so, Skyrim has two very clearly different types of bow. The early game, weak bows have a significant drop in the arrow's flight. Later bows, like glass, ebony or nordic, don't. (Though dragonbone may be an exception.)

It's not a continuum. Every bow is defined as either fast or slow, and all bows of the same type apply an identical trajectory and range to their arrows. (Yes, I've actually spent time testing this.)

I don't think so. The parabolic trajectory of the bow is a function of the bow's draw speed, and draw speed varies along a spectrum. Here is a detailed breakdown of every bow in the game, including an explanation of the bow trajectory system:

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Arch...Bow_Comparison

The thing that makes the bows behave weirdly is that unlike many archery games, the arrows from Skyrim start on an upward trajectory, and for faster bows, this means they'll climb further before they begin to fall, where slower bows will begin to fall almost immediately. I'm not sure whether this is because arrows are subject to regular game physics, or whether they've got a bow trajectory parabola computed into their game mechanics, and merely alter the trajectory based on the bow's draw speed (before perks like Quick Shot, or effects like the Zephyr unique enchantment). But the really important difference is how the draw speed increases the flight speed of the arrow. A Daedric Bow shoots a much faster arrow than a Hunting Bow.

There is an easy test you can do to validate my description of bow mechanics in Skyrim. Go to the archery range, the one in Solitude will suit fine. Stand on the fountain, make not of the exact spot. Take the following bows with you to test:

1) Daedric Bow
2) Ebony Bow
3) Glass Bow
4) Elven Bow
5) Dwarven Bow
6) Orcish Bow
7) Forsworn Bow
8) Hunting Bow
9) Long Bow

Aim the Daedric bow first, and keep shooting until you hit an arrow at the very top of the archery butt. Make a note of the point at which you aim. Go back to the butt, and pick up all the arrows. Now fire each bow, in descending order of draw time. You'll see each shot will land slightly below the last.

[halfeye]

I don't think so. The parabolic trajectory of the bow is a function of the bow's draw speed, and draw speed varies along a spectrum. Here is a detailed breakdown of every bow in the game, including an explanation of the bow trajectory system:

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Arch...Bow_Comparison

The thing that makes the bows behave weirdly is that unlike many archery games, the arrows from Skyrim start on an upward trajectory, and for faster bows, this means they'll climb further before they begin to fall, where slower bows will begin to fall almost immediately. I'm not sure whether this is because arrows are subject to regular game physics, or whether they've got a bow trajectory parabola computed into their game mechanics, and merely alter the trajectory based on the bow's draw speed (before perks like Quick Shot, or effects like the Zephyr unique enchantment). But the really important difference is how the draw speed increases the flight speed of the arrow. A Daedric Bow shoots a much faster arrow than a Hunting Bow.

There is an easy test you can do to validate my description of bow mechanics in Skyrim. Go to the archery range, the one in Solitude will suit fine. Stand on the fountain, make not of the exact spot. Take the following bows with you to test:

1) Daedric Bow
2) Ebony Bow
3) Glass Bow
4) Elven Bow
5) Dwarven Bow
6) Orcish Bow
7) Forsworn Bow
8) Hunting Bow
9) Long Bow

Aim the Daedric bow first, and keep shooting until you hit an arrow at the very top of the archery butt. Make a note of the point at which you aim. Go back to the butt, and pick up all the arrows. Now fire each bow, in descending order of draw time. You'll see each shot will land slightly below the last.

I've not done that test, but I notice that the bows which do the most damage aren't the fastest (supposing you are correct), for me the forsworn bow is statted as doing more damage than the orcish, dwarven and elven bows (I think, it's been a week, and my memory is terrible).

[Keltest]

I've not done that test, but I notice that the bows which do the most damage aren't the fastest (supposing you are correct), for me the forsworn bow is statted as doing more damage than the orcish, dwarven and elven bows (I think, it's been a week, and my memory is terrible).

My understanding is that bows get slower draw speed and more damage as you go up in quality. So once you hit a high enough level in archery, its actually better to switch back to a regular longbow because it fires faster and you tend to overkill on a lot of targets.

[Celestia]

Draw speed is based on weight. The heavier the bow, the slower the draw.

[Spore]

I've not done that test, but I notice that the bows which do the most damage aren't the fastest (supposing you are correct), for me the forsworn bow is statted as doing more damage than the orcish, dwarven and elven bows (I think, it's been a week, and my memory is terrible).

I have a special place in my heart for ANY of the Forsworn gear. But I assume their gear is a bit different with the unique stuff that happens to and with them.

My understanding is that bows get slower draw speed and more damage as you go up in quality. So once you hit a high enough level in archery, its actually better to switch back to a regular longbow because it fires faster and you tend to overkill on a lot of targets.

If that is true, that would be so awesome. I mean, consider it for a minute. You have modern archers that are so good with composite bows (the easy to pull things that look like an engineer wanted to build a bow) but when you have a certain amount of draw strength, all that doodad does is distract you from the target.

Granted, Olympian archers still use those recurve bows (I think that is what they are called) despite their good arm musculature. But it's in the fantasy (where you swing a warhammer all day everyday and don't sleep unless you need a small XP boost. Not even after a cross country fast travel).

[Triaxx]

That's a compound bow. Composite bows have been around for centuries. Compound bows have the advantage of all the leverage of a conventional bow, but past a certain point, the energy is stored in the cams on the limbs, and it can be held for a tiny fraction of the effort.

[veti]

There is an easy test you can do to validate my description of bow mechanics in Skyrim. Go to the archery range, the one in Solitude will suit fine. Stand on the fountain, make not of the exact spot. Take the following bows with you to test:

1) Daedric Bow
2) Ebony Bow
3) Glass Bow
4) Elven Bow
5) Dwarven Bow
6) Orcish Bow
7) Forsworn Bow
8) Hunting Bow
9) Long Bow

Aim the Daedric bow first, and keep shooting until you hit an arrow at the very top of the archery butt. Make a note of the point at which you aim. Go back to the butt, and pick up all the arrows. Now fire each bow, in descending order of draw time. You'll see each shot will land slightly below the last.

I was all set to reply impatiently that I'd already done a test very like that, but in justice I thought I should repeat the experiment with more controlled conditions. (Because last time, what I was actually testing was the effect of tweaking variables in the construction kit. And as any good scientist knows, results obtained from an experiment designed to test one thing, do not necessarily mean what you think they mean about something else.)

And you're right. I stood on a spot outside Falkreath, and fired eight iron arrows from different bows at a spot on a tree in the middle distance. I know all the shots were aimed identically, because I didn't move either the mouse or my own feet throughout the experiment.

Result: a vertical line of 7 arrows evenly spaced up the tree. One of them turned out, when removed, to be double, so two of the bows I was testing must have been identical, but only two.

[The_Jackal]

I've not done that test, but I notice that the bows which do the most damage aren't the fastest (supposing you are correct), for me the forsworn bow is statted as doing more damage than the orcish, dwarven and elven bows (I think, it's been a week, and my memory is terrible).

Yes, but draw speed is not strictly correlated to damage. The highest base damage bow in the game is the Dragonbone bow, which has a 0.75 draw speed, smack in the middle of the range, and the second-highest is the Daedric Bow, which has the slowest draw speed (and therefore the fastest arrow and most extreme height gain, so you need to aim low up close). But the most important thing to bear in mind is that as the game progresses, the base damage of the bow matters less an less, as quality improvements from smithing dwarf the base damage of the bows themselves. That's why, when you've stacked the maximum possible buffs to your smithing, the highest DPS bow, far and away, isn't the Dragonbone Bow, or the Daedric Bow, it's Auriel's Bow, with the runner up being Zephyr. But if you're playing a Stealth Sniper style character, DPS isn't as important, and you want a strong bow that shoots faster arrow which hit harder, so a Stalhrim Bow fully upgraded and enchanted with Frost and Chaos enchantments will likely suit that style better.

And yes, the Forsworn Bow is a great bow to get and use early, especially when you've only got 1 perk point to sink into Smithing, because it gets the perk bonus for Steel Smithing.

I was all set to reply impatiently that I'd already done a test very like that, but in justice I thought I should repeat the experiment with more controlled conditions. (Because last time, what I was actually testing was the effect of tweaking variables in the construction kit. And as any good scientist knows, results obtained from an experiment designed to test one thing, do not necessarily mean what you think they mean about something else.)

And you're right. I stood on a spot outside Falkreath, and fired eight iron arrows from different bows at a spot on a tree in the middle distance. I know all the shots were aimed identically, because I didn't move either the mouse or my own feet throughout the experiment.

Result: a vertical line of 7 arrows evenly spaced up the tree. One of them turned out, when removed, to be double, so two of the bows I was testing must have been identical, but only two.

Yeah, I also spent a bunch of time testing various bows, in Solitude like I suggested, mainly because I knew I liked the heavier bows, because landing long-distance snipes was a lot easier with them, but the tendency for the arrows to fly upward made landing headshots inconsistent, so I was playing with different bows, and different aiming strategies at different distances. I came to the conclusion that I wanted an indoor bow for just spamming into enemies who were going to get into my face (Zephyr), and a sniping bow for heavier work. One thing I haven't tested yet, and would like to, is to see whether Auriel has a similar drop-off to the Longbow (same speed) or the Elven Bow (supposedly the bow it's based on). If you've got those handy, and wouldn't mind sharing your results, it would be very edifying.

[veti]

One thing I haven't tested yet, and would like to, is to see whether Auriel has a similar drop-off to the Longbow (same speed) or the Elven Bow (supposedly the bow it's based on). If you've got those handy, and wouldn't mind sharing your results, it would be very edifying.

It's the same as the longbow. And Zephyr. Which suggests it's related directly to draw speed, and nothing to do with damage.

[The_Jackal]

Yeah, that kinda sucks. I'll be sticking with slow bows.

[halfeye]

I'm still saying that the longbow should be a style of bow that can be applied to all of the other types of bow to give increased range and damage.

[veti]

I'm still saying that the longbow should be a style of bow that can be applied to all of the other types of bow to give increased range and damage.

Sure, that would be nice. Though not a modification to an existing bow, it would need to be made as a different weapon from the forge. Also you should be unable to maintain stealth while using it, and it should have a slower draw than the shorter version...

But... given the incredible range and lethality of all bows in vanilla, I'd say they're clearly long bows already (albeit with the handling characteristics of short bows), so what's missing is the shorter version.

That's quite a mod, I wonder if it's doable.

[halfeye]

Sure, that would be nice. Though not a modification to an existing bow, it would need to be made as a different weapon from the forge.

Yeah, that's more or less what I'm thinking.

Also you should be unable to maintain stealth while using it,

Eh? at long range surprise arrows should be more surprising, not less (less likely to hit, probably, but out of the blue, surprising, if you weren't looking).

and it should have a slower draw than the shorter version...

I dunno why. It was a harder draw for sure, I think the bows from the Mary Rose were tested at 85 lb, but I understand it to have been a case of draw and loose in one swift movement, not drawing and holding, and not drawing slowly at all.

But... given the incredible range and lethality of all bows in vanilla, I'd say they're clearly long bows already (albeit with the handling characteristics of short bows), so what's missing is the shorter version.

That's quite a mod, I wonder if it's doable.

I agree that the current bows behave like long bows, they're just graphically wrong for it (the long bow was 6ft, not 4ft), it would be nice to see realistic bows in another game.

[DemonicAngel]

Eh? at long range surprise arrows should be more surprising, not less (less likely to hit, probably, but out of the blue, surprising, if you weren't looking).

Yeah, it would, except i don't think anybody would draw a longbow sideways like you do in stealth. you kinda need your full ranger of upper body motion to draw one of those

[The Jack]

RE weapon skills.

Morrowind had too many weapon skills. I really liked that there was a lot of weapons, but the skill system wasn't good for the game.

Oblivion did nicely in streamlining, though I don't think blade/blunt was a good devision. (Short blade/long blade was still a thing, right?)

For skyrim.
I liked the two handed/one handed divide. It gave you more variety.
But I think perks ruined it, and I think potions/enchantments being overly specific about what kind of weapon damage they improved.
Also, really didn't like all the swords looking like paddles.

One thing I really liked about morrowind, was that when people made the weapons, they thought about properties; Not every material was used for every weapon; People didn't make many glass blunt weapons because glass was light and shock absorbent. In Oblivion/skyrim those glass weapons will be super heavy because weapon materials are tiers and each is better and more heavy than the last...

I think, Were I strangely left to made decisions.

-There'd be no armour skills. All that can be handled with attributes.

Weapon skills are:
Hand to hand (includes daggers and saps)
One handed
Two handed
Polearms
Throwing
Bows
Crossbows
Shield

But your weapon skill doesn't do much for damage, your strength does. Your weapon skill increases speed/reduces fatigue/decreases the chance of a defense/ reduces chance of bad thing. Your attributes should be the biggest multiplier to damage, so if you pick up a mace and are no good with it, but you're super strong, you'll still wreck people. That way, you don't have to worry about weapon choice, if you've put it all into strength you can just pick what's most fun, but you can worry about weapon choice if you want to be super optimized. Everyone wins.

IE: Rip off mount and blade.
I'd probably also increase the scope of regular weapons and armour, and have exotic materials be modifiers.

Perks would be nice for very specific weapon boosts.

I think a rubber band would do well. If you were a polearm master, but a novice with one handed weapons, you should increase one handed weapons faster. Some level of Transferable skills.

[Aeson]

(Short blade/long blade was still a thing, right?)

Depends on what you mean by it being a thing. All sword- and dagger-type weapons were governed by the same skill - Blade - but there were essentially four categories of sword- and dagger-type weapons, with larger weapons generally having higher base damage, longer reach, and greater durability but lower attack speed and higher weight than smaller weapons of the same material/tier/grade.

But your weapon skill doesn't do much for damage, your strength does. Your weapon skill increases speed/reduces fatigue/decreases the chance of a defense/ reduces chance of bad thing. Your attributes should be the biggest multiplier to damage, so if you pick up a mace and are no good with it, but you're super strong, you'll still wreck people. That way, you don't have to worry about weapon choice, if you've put it all into strength you can just pick what's most fun, but you can worry about weapon choice if you want to be super optimized. Everyone wins.

If you make the skills more or less irrelevant to effectiveness with a particular style of weapon, then you may as well remove the skills from the game. There is no point to having character skills in the game if they don't do anything useful, and if the effective benefit to weapon damage is marginal enough to be ignored except for "super optimiz[ation]" then your skills aren't doing anything useful.

Also, realistically speaking (not that it matters much to most video games), skill can and usually will trump brute strength, and the type of weapon, where it hits, what it hits, and how it hits are probably at least as if not more important to "damage" as the strength put into the blow.

[Keltest]

Depends on what you mean by it being a thing. All sword- and dagger-type weapons were governed by the same skill - Blade - but there were essentially four categories of sword- and dagger-type weapons, with larger weapons generally having higher base damage, longer reach, and greater durability but lower attack speed and higher weight than smaller weapons of the same material/tier/grade.


If you make the skills more or less irrelevant to effectiveness with a particular style of weapon, then you may as well remove the skills from the game. There is no point to having character skills in the game if they don't do anything useful, and if the effective benefit to weapon damage is marginal enough to be ignored except for "super optimiz[ation]" then your skills aren't doing anything useful.

Also, realistically speaking (not that it matters much to most video games), skill can and usually will trump brute strength, and the type of weapon, where it hits, what it hits, and how it hits are probably at least as if not more important to "damage" as the strength put into the blow.

In an Oblivion style combat system where taking swings spent fatigue, which reduced your damage, having a lower fatigue cost with higher skill is a very valuable thing. It means you can do higher damage attacks for longer before you need to back off. Yeah, a strongman can pick up a longsword and swing it, but unless he's trained in it he's going to tire himself out and do a lot less damage with it very quickly.

[Celestia]

Requiring fatigue to attack was a terrible thing and ensured that I never played a melee character in my several dozen playthroughs of Oblivion. Morrowind had it too, if I remember, but that was compensated by everything sucking in that game. A weapon that took fatigue to swing looked pretty good against a spell you only had a 12% chance of casting with no magicka regeneration. Plus, it was embarrassingly easy to create an enchanted item of fatigue regeneration and make the entire mechanic obsolete.

----

Changing topics, one thing that really irritates me about these games is the fact that different materials serve as strict upgrades. A glass sword is just objectively better than a dwarven sword. That bothers me. What I would prefer is that different materials had different effects with each one not necessarily being better. Like, maybe the glass weapons could swing faster but have lower power, while the ebony weapons were the opposite. Maybe dwarven weapons could ignore magical defenses or something. I don't know, just make them all roughly balanced and then add the scaling system by having different weapon qualities, so you could find crappy elven weapons and well-made elven weapons and amazing elven weapons, so you still have a reason to look for treasure. And then the materials would be independent of all that and add a new dimension to the choices. Same thing for the armor.

Mostly, I want this for aesthetic reasons, so a I can choose more thematically appropriate gear for my characters without having to sacrifice effectiveness. Like, when I play an orc, I want to be able to use orcish equipment without having mediocre armor and terrible weapons.

And I think they should also go back more to the Morrowind method of equipment placement by having some things exist independent of level. Like, dwarven equipment will, naturally, always be the highest quality (or maybe in the top two/three qualities), but you should still be finding dwarven equipment when you go into dwarven ruins at low levels. Of course, I think they should also stop with the enemy leveling, so if you try going into a dwarven ruin at low levels, you're probably going to die.

[Aeson]

In an Oblivion style combat system where taking swings spent fatigue, which reduced your damage, having a lower fatigue cost with higher skill is a very valuable thing. It means you can do higher damage attacks for longer before you need to back off. Yeah, a strongman can pick up a longsword and swing it, but unless he's trained in it he's going to tire himself out and do a lot less damage with it very quickly.

I specifically included effective for a reason. If a skilled swordsman can make significantly more attacks than an unskilled swordsman of similar strength, then that is a significant impact on effective weapon damage - or more accurately damage output - and the skill might then be useful. However, The Jack said that weapon skill should only matter if you want to be "super optimized," which suggests that whether weapon skill directly affected weapon damage or had the more indirect impact of increased time-average damage output by allowing a character to strike hard for a longer period of time, the effect would be at best marginal. If the effect is marginal, the skill is essentially pointless and you may as well not have it in the game.

Also, as far as I know, weapon skill had no impact on attack fatigue cost in Oblivion; it was a straight buff to weapon damage. Since maximum Fatigue scaled with Endurance, Strength, Agility, and Willpower and since you were almost certainly increasing a skill governed by one or more of these attributes when playing a melee character, your maximum Fatigue tended to increase alongside your chosen combat skills and thus attacks might appear to cost less fatigue as you developed your skills, but it's only in a relative sense and had no direction relation to your character's skills.

[Divayth Fyr]

Morrowind had too many weapon skills. I really liked that there was a lot of weapons, but the skill system wasn't good for the game.

(...)
Weapon skills are:
Hand to hand (includes daggers and saps)
One handed
Two handed
Polearms
Throwing
Bows
Crossbows
Shield

So, MW had too many weapon skills (hand to hand, long blade, short blade, axe, marksman, spear, blunt, block (if you want to count shields in the category)), but you're suggesting the very same amount, just with reshuffling from more meele skills to more ranged ones?

[Triaxx]

This is the Longbow mod I used: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/29950/

Honestly I missed the stamina cost for attacking in Skyrim. It's something that should have been in from the start because it reduces the utterly hated 'flail at the enemy' combat everyone hates. It requires you attack and then back up a bit so you can continue to fight effectively.

[Celestia]

This is the Longbow mod I used: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/29950/

Honestly I missed the stamina cost for attacking in Skyrim. It's something that should have been in from the start because it reduces the utterly hated 'flail at the enemy' combat everyone hates. It requires you attack and then back up a bit so you can continue to fight effectively.

Ah, yes. Replace "run up and flail" with "run up and flail until you can't then run away like a coward while your stamina bar slowly, agonizingly refills so that you can continue flailing."

Much improve. Such better.

[mythmonster2]

Yeah, my combat style in Oblivion and Morrowind is no different than Skyrim. Walking up to the enemy and left clicking until they're dead is how melee in Elder Scroll's always worked. At the very least, due to Skyrim adding bigger animations for power attacks and the like, you can dodge out of the way of those attacks.

[Rynjin]

Ah, yes. Replace "run up and flail" with "run up and flail until you can't then run away like a coward while your stamina bar slowly, agonizingly refills so that you can continue flailing."

Much improve. Such better.

Wildcat's implementation hits a good middle ground. Attacks take stamina, but you CAN keep attacking out of stamina; they're just a bit slower and do less damage. It then also encourages you to use stamina pretty fast since Power Attacks are seriously buffed.