I wanna preface this by saying that I didn't read the whole thread to this point, as it's almost as long as archers have been thought of as a lesser priority by OSI. A lot of this was stemmed from a conversation with my brother last night.
Having been a GM archer for years, I totally understand every one of the complaints that every archer has. On the other hand, giving us everything we want would easily make archery an incredibly overpowered set of templates. Everyone would hate us then, not just OSI. We'd be the new tamers. : )
So balance, then. I've seen discussion about a quiver or being able to insure bolts/arrows. This, I'd be against. Archer ammo is considered a commodity, like regs or ingots, which aren't insurable. If we got insured arrows, mages would be crying for insured regs. It's not that different. It the usefulness of a quiver was something different, say reducing the weight or item count or arrows and bolts to a point, I feel that'd be a good balance.
Some kinda bonus for fletching, ala lumberjacking for swords. Not all combat skills get a bonus like that. Should archery, fencing, and macing? Sure. LJ and Swords, Eval and Magery, SS/Necro and karma, karma and chiv. So why not?
Variety arrows, fire, poison, exploding, barbed arrow tips, etc. Excellent idea. Poisoning is an underused skill as it is. Fire arrows would require higher archery skill to use and have less accuracy, and take an oil flask and a torch/lantern to create. Exploding arrows and barbed arrow tips could require moderate fletching and tinkering or just really high fletching to make. The balance would come from the added skills needed to make yourself or find someone who can.
One thing that should be a given though, as archery skill improves, so should the hit chance. Why as a GM Archer am I missing 90% of my shots? I'm not saying hit every single time, but a realistic amount. I know a lot of weapon combat skills have this problem too, so not just archery would benefit from it. Also, the whole fire and forget issue. I have to side with everyone who wants this. Is staring at my arrow/bolt as it hits my target really nessesary for it to hit the target?
Enhancement to the fletching skill. Lots of things that can be done with this. For starters, the number of weapons we have. Five right now, and up until February, we only had three (seven if you count juka and orcish bows). Even fencing, with only nine standerd weapon types, has more than us. So easily right there, more bow types to make (dart types, too, perhaps? A dart gun, or a blowgun). Colored wood (below) or ingot enhancing added in, and the aforementioned variety of arrow types, and there would be enough diversity to warrent a fletching only BOD system. Rewards could include runic fletching kits (like you didn't see that one coming from a hundred miles away), archery butte decorations, things like that. More wood types (more leather types were already introduced, and they were just rehued from the standard leather types, would that be so hard?) would also be a great idea. The balance there would be just like mining colored ores. Higher lumberjackng skill means better quality wood.
Just a few thoughts to think about (or dream about, as our case usually is). I'd be interested to discuss this issue further.
