New archery system in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

[DipenJI]

I just get my 40% more archery damage, zoom and freeze time perk, but still I cannot hit a deer over, maybe, let’s say, 80 meters/240 feet away. Last night, I successfully hunted several dear within 50 meters, so I tried to shoot 2 Deers all perpendicular aligned to me, on almost flat grassland which has a little slop upwards. 1 hour past, thousands of different arrows been shot at different angles, aiming down or high up, still, those happy critters were neither hurt or disturbed, just ignoring my aggression at all. Although I can see arrows hit the ground in front of them or flying over their shoulders, I don't see any arrow hit the target, no matter whether I am standing or sneaking.

[Irene-I]

I too have issues with aiming. When I'm not standing too far away (perhaps a normal size dungeon room) from a target and place my cross hair and the enemies head, the arrow always without doubt flies over the enemies head. So, when I reload, I am lower in an attempt to not over shoot. However, the arrow simply smacks into their gut. I am going for headshots and I'm finding them very hard to come by. Am I missing something (besides the target).

[DougWison]

If so, are you using the left mouse button to draw the bowstring to its max extension? The reason I'm asking is because when the game installed itself on my computer, it screwed up the default settings, and assigned the letter R to fire arrows. This negated the increased damage you get from drawing the bowstring to its max position, and also limited the distance the arrow flew to a very short range. It wasn't till Tuesday till I got that fixed and now long-range headshots are a thrill. Have not seen the arrow trajectory at a point to where the arrow actually dips down.

[Ashley Parker]

Arrows seem to have perfectly flat trajectory and maximum range to prevent those really long accurate shots. I would like to see someone make a mod that fixes both of these issues. Otherwise bows and archery are very, very well made. I do some traditional archery in RL, and I have never such realistic (fantasy) bow looks, sounds etc in any other game.

[Shae]

I have not had any issues with arrows missing their marks; I actually got off a really sweet shot a couple days ago while going to kill some bandits. I was creeping up on the tower in case there were any patrols, when I saw two bandits walking back and forth along a bridge high over a river. I was well over 240 feet away because they were very small targets, so I proceeded to pull out my bow and draw the string all the way back. When I let that first arrow fly and saw the bandit tumble over the back of the bridge and fall to his death in the river I was to say the least very stunned. It was one of the best things I have seen in a game for a long time. I actually had to use two arrows on the second because I miss-judged the first shot but I got her with the second one and she also tumbled to her death off the backside of the bridge.

[Wyl]

It's a bizarre step backwards for Bethesda, but they no longer let you shoot more than about 100 feet in front of you. Apparently, they forgot how to handle physics, and arrows fly straight, and just disintegrate beyond medium range, making the long-bomb sniping I used to love impossible. I have no idea why they couldn't just copy-paste arrow physics from the last game, this is far worse.

[Bubboy]

It does reflect reality. Arrows have a limited range, MUCH shorter than guns. An arrow is a very large, high-drag projectile which slows down quickly in the air. Arrows quickly lose accuracy and penetration over range. I'm sure somebody will say "but English longbows!": those were used in an indirect fire role against formations. Sure, if you shot into the sky at a 30 degree angle the arrow would eventually land on that block of 500 guys out at a couple hundred meters, but that's basically using a stupidly powerful bow as field artillery and not what we have in the game which is precision marksmanship. And 80 meters is a pretty fair distance for a simple bow shooting a chunky armor-piercing arrow without any sights.

[drspiffness]

Add these lines to your skyrim.ini file. Don't add [Actor] if it already exists in the file.

[Actor]
fVisibleNavmeshMoveDist=12288.*0000

This completely fixes the arrow and spellcast range issues.

The most realistic way of handling this is not letting the arrow pass harmlessly through your target.