A note about the future

[Kong Ming]

Thanks for all your hard work on this mod.  I'm always curious to see what the next patch holds.  As a devoted archer, I'd like to make one observation.  I love that crossbowman will be a legitimate class, and I can't wait to see how they fit in.  I caution slightly, however, the desire to separate the two classes by creating a disparity in accuracy.  "Accuracy" is a troublesome concept in video games.  In theory, accuracy should be almost entirely dependent on the skill of the shooter.  In real life, expert archers, snipers, riflemen, etc. are more accurate because of their skill with the weapon, with minor uncontrollable elements (wind for example) being minimized at the top levels of ability.  In most video games however (including M&B), it ends up being an abstract concept, introducing a total randomness to a player's shot, regardless of the skill of the player.  I find this idea frustrating in general.  It's not dissimilar to glancing blows for melee players.  Instances in the game where the player did what was correct, but a random factor intervened and they failed anyway.  Some games address this by adding "gun wobble" and recoil.  Obviously there is nothing like this in M&B, and instead we have the somewhat over-simplified "accuracy".

I played a great deal of cRPG in the early days, and they also tried a similar idea between archers and crossbowmen.  In my personal opinion, it made archery a lot less fun.  For this reason, I would just like to mention that flight speed is another stat that is often over-looked as a balancing element, but one that I feel is much better for the task.  Slower flight speed has no effect on accuracy per se, but it can make landing a shot accurately much more difficult.  It is a way of making the task harder for the shooter without randomly punishing them for no reason with "inaccuracy".  Making crossbows a slower but more powerful weapon, with a significantly faster flight speed, and allowing bows to be less damaging and higher rate of fire, but slower flight speed, would still create the effect of making the crossbow easier to snipe with, without making the bow a frustratingly random weapon (sorry that was a LOT of commas).  Just food for thought. I'm sure I'll be excited to see your work, whatever your decision on this issue.  Thanks again!