Archery Mechanics, as explained in 99

[ExodusIX]

Hi all,

I've been alerted to this shard by a friend who recently started playing. He told me about this suggestion form and I was impressed with the attention to accuracy. I thought I could help out. I have a bunch of materials I saved in an old folder from the era. I played from release (Sept 97) until Dec 31, 1999 (I quit UO as my new year's resolution for the year 2000)

I read through the archery mechanic thread on here and remembered that I had a text file from the era where a well known forum user on Greybeard's site posted the facts on archery. The text file is dated 6/19/1999. I don't remember who posted it, but I remember it was a well known user and many users had found it informative, myself included (or I wouldn't have saved it into this file for future reference). Here is the text:

"Many of you seem to be lost about the facts about archerys nature. This post is to inform any of you who don't know this. Ever since the archery patch in february of 1998 archery has ignored the opponent in the formula when damage is being determined.

This means armor, tactics, wrestling, reactivate armor, and any other possible damage reducer are not put into effect when the damage is calculated. Archerys range use to be 10, now it is 8. There is a 2 second delay before the oncoming weapon delay(so if a bow takes 5 seconds to shoot, you have to stand still for 2 seconds, then the 5 second delay starts)

Now keep in mind, The area of a charectors vision is 120 tiles. (From west to east vision is 10 tiles, from north to south its 12)So you get more than half the screen to shoot an opponent. Anatomy does increase archerys damage, and because of archery ignoring the opponents defenses, it does solid (same) damage. With 0 Anatomy, the first bow shot does 20(EVERYTIME)the second does 25(EVERYTIME)the third does 30(EVERYTIME) and this is repeated (ie the fourth shot will do 20, fifth shot will do 25, sixth shot 30.... it goes on like that) So an archer with 0 anatomy will be able to kill a person with 100 str in 5 shots.

The archery skill itself, like the other 3 weapon skills, determine the chance of hitting, and since the opponent dosent have a deciding factor in archery of course, its solid also (75 archery= 74.5 % chance of hit, the skill is always .5 less percantage wise so 100 on any skill means 99.5 %)Now some people might say then how come I miss so much if I have 100 archery? Well a really old patch in a vain effort to reduce the effectiveness of archery a few months after the archery patch that made archery supreme came out (those few months were the absolute golden age of archery february-april 98) made it so when you move while your archery delay is running it reduces the chance of hit by 50%.

Archers right now do try to run when confronted with a melee weapon because they cannot size up to one, so that is the reason the effectiveness is so poor. This is how archerys shoot timing is set up: ok after your two second delay you have your weapon delay, I already explained this. Think of it this way, in order to hit with a melee weapon, you have to be standing next to your target until the weapon delay is complete. A good example of this is a slow weapon like a halberd where you can understand the effects because of its sluggishness, every second you stand next to them is another second you charge up your weapon for the next hit, so lets say the halberds weapon delay is 15 seconds, you stand next to them for 2 seconds, they move, you stand next to them again for 5 seconds, they move, you come again for 8 seconds and finally hit them, this is because you have charged up for a total of 15 seconds if you count those numbers up. Now since archery is ranged, you can be running around all over the place and charge up!(anywhere as long as you are in 8 tile range of your target)

So if the weapon delay is 5 seconds, you run around for 5 seconds, then stand still for 2 seconds and then you shoot instantly after those two seconds, but this is where the penalty for doing that comes in. If you have been running for the complete five second you will get the complete penalty (50%) The less you run and stand still for the delay the more accurate you will be. So standing still, not moving an inch ever since you pulled out that bow will get you the 99.5% chance to hit. Now heres where the anatomy part comes in. Anatomy gives 25% more damage at 100 anatomy, an archer will hit their target for 25 the first time, 35 the second time, 45 the third. This will kill any player if three hits are accomplished.

Ok, so these are the complete facts about archery. For one to argue about archery vs other things like my other post about "the unstopable duo" you must know the facts, take them into consideration, then reply. (BTW no I did NOT copy this off any website, I wrote every word myself off of what I KNOW IS TRUE FOR A FACT from my own experiences and calculations)"


I hope this information is useful to your shard. I can confirm from my own memory that the typical archers would kill you in 5 hits no matter what armor you wore, and the damage sequence was exactly as predictable as this post states.

I'll be digging through my UO archives to see if I have anything else for you guys.

[ExodusIX]

And here's the follow up by the same guy:

"Let me further explain this...
I forgot ONE thing, this was ALL assuming the bow wielder had 100 TACTICS (tactics is a very very easy thing to get and just about everyone has 100, especialy if you use a bow because it involves so much fighting and time taking to raise it)With the supreme accuracy... once you reach 100 archery accuracy is useless. Think of it this way, why would you pay a penny more for a supreme accurate bow if it gives you 124 archery if you are already at 100 archery? Archery is the chance to hit, once it reaches 100 skill, you cannot get any more accurate. Dont ever buy or pay more if for a bow that has some sort of accuracy. Parrying (as EVERY other damage reducer) does not matter for archery, trust me on all I have just said.

If you dont believe me try this all yourself on abyss with a friend(make sure to include archery as a beggining skill in order to get 25 arrows so you wont have to spend alot of time going all the way somewhere to get arrows to try this on)Try it with 0 anatomy, try it with 100. You will see I'm right. As SMstar said


"I can confirm 1 thing, when I stand still on a boat next to shore, I hit more often, but the damage appear pretty random and about the same to when I run around shooting "
The damage APPEARS random, as I said, first shot does the base damage, second shot adds +5, third shot adds +10, then repeated.

One more thing to note you have to also understand the values of the health bar of uo because its not exactly balanced, once its below half the bar, the point to bar values are very unbalanced. (ie 10 hp isnt the same amount of mass taken on the bar when first lost as it is when you lose it when you have 25 hp left)
As I said if you move one bit when you pull out that bow, I MEAN A STEP it will greatly reduce your chance of hitting.

Hope this clears things up."

[archaicsubrosa77]

If your chance of hitting goes down half when you run then the supremely accurate would raise it above that I am guessing, if not why would anyone have need of supremely accurate melee weapons if skill didn't surpass one hundred unless it was to reach one hundred tactics having less then?

Until that is determined this guy probably knows food hastens skill gains too

The whole running and missing thing I think was because of the long awaited fix that made it so you could no longer out run arrow damage. There was a time where there was an increase in internet speed where some had it others did not. Usually if you stopped running to shoot the other guy would run back and get hit But because the game when created was created for slower speed connections it caused a lot of problems.

I am almost positive it took time to set a polished interface where the connection was more or less uniform for everyone. We shouldn't set technology back in trying to recreate the feel of fail modem speeds in order to relive the headaches of the transition in my opinion.

Weapon skills should work as how they were first intended not how they were gimped due to technological advancements.

I think the developers understood this and so when old tech programming became obsolete it was a lot easier to just create a whole other platform as there was so much to fix. So when UOR came out....unfortunately arrow speed was still set for T2A speeds, and they finally patched that up. It was a problem that had become more relevant at the end of T2A so it appears...which kind of points at the problem. If you read earlier archives Archery was a very formidable skill and wasn't all buggy.

Thats especially why I say the theme should change to "the second age how it should have been"
If you refine this period...they will come

As a post note...having your weapon timer in relation to a target doesn't make sense nor does the fact that if you are running around with bow in hand and decide to peg a mongbat for no good reason will make you have a hundred percent chance to miss because you were in motion the whole time with bow in hand

Hold on Mr.Mongbat let me draw my bow and please don't hit me while I am waiting for my counter to set, I don't want to miss my shot if you make me move...the only thing I have been able to hit and kill was small game because I had to remain hidden just to get a shot in, everything else had more hp . I have had three chickens nearly kill me already before realizing that the only time this skill was useful was one shot one kill standing still and other players you might as well forget it....please sir can you kindly not move for two seconds while I shoot So please Mr. Mongbat pretend you can't see me okay? I need the gold to try to pay the ransom on all the children who were kidnapped from Sosaria.

That post would have had Duke Jones's seal of approval I am sure. "I hunt small birds for feathers for arrows, fish all day, mine and lumberjack by double clicking everything and handcraft everything without macros. My keyboard still has bloodstains from my fingers to prove it. It makes sense that you have to take the time to aim the bow properly...and do you know how hard shooting from horseback in motion can be?"

[Kaivan]

While it's interesting to see a rather unique description of archery, almost everything said in this piece regarding how archery works is plain wrong. Many of the claims made in this piece reference archery mechanics from early 1998 and are completely at odds with what we know to be true about archery from the demo and other related information.

I won't try to address each individual claim made, because the entire set of claims is without evidence or support from known information.

[Loathed]

asside from that chance to hit is decreased if the victimi/target is wielding a weapon they are proficient with, i.e- wrestling, swords, etc... so a +20 wtfever would most likely help lots as most ppl running around have a weapon skill or another. Nice find though.