Soltis

I'm sick of watching our big, heroic, strong, etc., etc., Dovakiin draw his bow like he's some girlscout who's still unsure which direction the sharp end is supposed to point. Someone needs to watch this video and create some animations and such which reflect what an archer who actually knows what they're doing would look like:

My character has a seemingly-permanent "temp" stat penalty -- getavinfo shows the base perception is 7 with a temp penalty of 4; I have no idea what could be causing such a penalty, as no effects listed in the EFF screen, nor any equipment, has any stat penalties at all. It may be some script which is misbehaving -- I'd like to know how I can remove any effects which might be causing this, since it's really putting a crimp in my lock-picking at the moment.

I did some deeper research, and a fire rate of 20 shots per minute was fairly typical with longbows; this gels well with my own experiences in archery . . . which is why the character fumbling around like he's not sure where the pointy bit goes is just painful to watch.

Look, discussing realism in a game which permits magic casting, fire shouting, dragons, and giant walking cats from "Elsewhere" is kinda, well, utterly missing the point. The point is that navigating the menus in Skyrim every three seconds to change between sword and spells is a pain, and anything which makes combat more natural and flexible than the clumsy train-wreck we have now is a gigantic blessing. Hell, I'd personally take Morrowind's combat over Oblivion's (and Oblivion's over Skyrim's) -- but that's just because it's fun to cast "levitate" on a foe, lead them 2,000 feet high, and then dispel the effect. I'm only hanging around the modding forums now hoping someone can salvage this mess, but I really don't have much hope until the injector crowd gets their claws into the game's innards.

This makes absolutely no sense.

If it were only the heavier bows which were so affected, I might be able to see your point - and if it were only a couple seconds, I could also see your point -- but it's not. A bow can take a lot of time to draw when one isn't used to it, but within reason, a practised archer can draw a bow extraordinarily fast. Frankly, a much less idiotic archery system would revert to arrows having weight (like Morrowind) and make the bow animation modeled on someone who actually knew which end of a bow was which. The idea of carrying 1,000+ arrows around without penalty is just . . . why do we have limited ammo at all if it's going to be that dumbed down?

Every PC attack animation in the game is painfully slow. Painfully, god-awful, annoyingly slow. Having swung swords, shot bows, and handled axes and large hammers, I can tell you -- this is just flat-out retarded; you know, the kind which means "slowed" or "impaired": it's like the character is moving under a sea of transparent molasses. So I'd like a mod which roughly doubles the animation speeds for attacks. Jesus, it doesn't take three days to raise a sword overhead! A bow doesn't take six(?) seconds to draw! I'd be even happier if this could be linked to the skill level (so maybe a level 5 archer really WOULD take several seconds to draw properly, but a level 40 would actually know what he's doing), but that's probably impossible or tedious or both. So simply having faster animations would be nice. Especially for bound weapons, which are weightless -- why does the bound battle axe move like the character is on ether? Anyway, you get the point. More snappy, less crappy. Thanks.

There needs to be a "Search & Destroy" AI package where they know *something* is wrong and are looking for the shooter, but they don't automagically detect you. That would make stealth MUCH more fun, since you could remain hidden and continue getting your critical headshots, but you'd have to be creative in avoiding enemies who are actively looking for you.

This would be a very good mod. Make a form of "closed helmets" and remove a bunch of gender checks or dialog options if you're wearing one... For the Enclave stuff, it should definitely only work if you're wearing both Enclave helmet AND armor, possibly of the same type -- people are gonna notice if you're wearing the armor, but not the helmet, for example, and possibly even if you're wearing Hellfire armor but a Tesla helmet.

These are two changes I've considered making eventually; I'm pretty busy with moving/work/other mods, but this is something I'd like to see done myself.