Welcome to Archery Popshots, a series in which I, as a real archer, critique archery in video
games.
For lovers of gruesome medieval combat who aren’t watching this video in 2012, you’re
probably already on the battlefields of Mordhau. A spiritual successor and a much improved
upgrade to the acclaimed Chivalry: Medieval Warfare, Mordhau brings the player into the
dirty, up close and personal combat. Featuring numerous armour sets, dozens of deadly weapons,
and a simple yet well-executed combat system. Swing, parry, thrust, riposte, kick, chamber,
morph, accelerate, drag and taunt your way through the battlefield. Blade on blade combat
has never been so much fun.
And then you have bows.
Whether you’re a Chivalry veteran or a new Mordhau fan, you probably gave a collective
sigh as you felt yet another annoying prick in your side. You’re enjoying the most intense
duel, and some cowardly scum has to pick a bow and shoot you in the back. Screw archers.
Unfortunately, as I am an archer, I had to put aside my love of melee and role play as
one such annoying archer scumbag. And I actually had quite a bit of fun, even if it came at
the expense of others.
So, let’s take a look at the bows and archery in Mordhau, how it works in the game, and
throw a bit of historical commentary for flavour.
Mordhau differs from many class-based games in that…it doesn’t have classes. While
there are some default archetype characters to start off with, the heart of the game is
in creating your own custom mercenaries with in-game gold, earned from fighting in battles.
With a limited pool of mercenary points, players have to balance out their weapon loadout,
armour and perks, such that a single build can’t have everything.
For those looking at playing as an archer – and yes, there are people who do that
– the default Huntsman class is the starting point. After gaining some gold, you can purchase
the bows for your own builds, of which there are three.
The longbow is the most versatile – the general purpose bow, as you will. Somewhat
slow, but dealing high damage, excellent for long-distance shots. The recurve bow is a
smaller, lighter, faster and weaker option, with less sway and more suited for closer
distance harassment. The crossbow is as strong as the longbow and can be held indefinitely
without shaking, though it must be manually loaded between shots, leaving the user momentarily
vulnerable. The crossbow’s ease of use makes it effective at picking off targets of opportunity
and excellent for counter-archer combat.
Because the bows take up a significant number of points, it is unlikely that a character
build will incorporate much else. Typically, an archer build will have light or medium
armour along with a sidearm, such as an arming sword of warhammer for personal defence. And
in this regard, a competent player can hold their own with carefully timed parries and
counters to defeat more heavily armed opponents. This is important, as being hit while holding
the bow knocks it out of your hands, forcing you to switch weapons and fight in melee.
Even without the duress, an archer may choose to rush into the fray to help allies deal
with enemies instead of hanging back to take potshots.
While being struck by arrows is annoying and distracting, archers are seldom a threatening
presence, since it takes many arrows to bring down armoured opponents. Thus, hitting a random
enemy may simply tickle them, and they’ll recover by the time they reach the front line.
This isn’t useless, however, as picking bloodied targets may result in opportunistic
kills, or weaken enemies to be finished off by your teammates.
Archers can also bring down mounted combatants with well-timed shots, who would otherwise
run rampant around the map and pick off individual players at whim.
Archers – especially using the longbow and crossbow – are ideally suited to engage
other archers. The Huntsman perk gives bonus damage against other archers, with a single
torso hit enough for a kill. Things brings up some very fun counter-sniping sprees and
archer duels separate from the battle raging in the middle.
The battlefields of Mordhau don’t really showcase archers in their historical roles
as massed ranged units, as you only really have a handful of archers on a team. However,
a small group of archers fighting together can actually be quite effective, as they can
bring down a single enemy with rapid hits, compared to the slow and vulnerable solo engagement
when fighting alone.
Finally, bows have a unique purpose in the Horde mode, with the standard strategy being
to load up on ranged weapons and climb ladders to deal with the hordes below. Though recent
patches have nerfed this strategy in that the AI fighters throw area damage turds – yes,
you heard that right – this still remains the safest way to complete the mode.
As an archer, you have to deal with multiple challenges if you are aiming to contribute
to your team. The first is surviving. It’s very tempting to get close to the front lines
to get easier shots, but if you choose to do so, you must not become tunnel-visioned,
as the rapid flow of battle will mean that enemies will spawn and flank you, easily killing
you on sight. Even when perched on advantageous positions, you will be rushed by a lone player
who can easily dispatch you as you slowly load your next shot. Your presence is also
going to be obvious to eagle-eyed enemy archers, who will counter-snipe you as you stand outlined
in predictable places.
Staying alive also means constantly maintaining situational awareness, scanning your surroundings
between shots and relocating frequently to avoid counter-sniping. It’s scary how often
you will see someone of the opposing colour running at you when you turn around. Listen
to your instincts – if you feel like someone is coming up to you right about now, you’re
probably right.
Next is making your shots count. Unfortunately, there’s no easy way of doing this – and
that’s probably a good thing. Your arrows move slower than you may initially think,
especially if you’re used to faster first-person shooters, and when you start, you will always
feel like you’re a split second too slow and the arrow whooshes behind your target.
Even when you get used to the arrow speed, the erratic movements of human players all
but makes it impossible to get a bead on your target, with shots going off the mark and
often hitting your teammates.
My advice here is to avoid the rote action of nocking and shooting into the crowd or
trying to twitch-play with a bow on a close opponent. Instead, analyse each situation
and recognise patterns in player actions. It’s easier to hit a player moving in one
direction at a constant speed than someone dancing around in melee. If you are shooting
at someone who is fighting an ally, you’ll recognise their duelling habits from a distance,
such as when they move forward or backpedal. Position your crosshair to where you’ll
think they will be and let them walk into the shot.
In my opinion, the crossbow is the easiest to use for this purpose, as it can be held
indefinitely, while the recurve and longbow will begin to shake when held too long. Experienced
players will often snap-shoot with these bows, letting go as soon as they get to full draw
or even slightly before.
You’re also better off going for light armoured targets, as the damage reduction from medium
and heavy armour largely negates the effect of ranged damage. Hitting a heavy-armour melee
fighter once or twice probably won’t give your team any advantage, and it’s an inefficient
use of your ammunition. If you’re going to be archer scum and annoy the enemy team,
at least help out your team by picking the right positions to cover the moving front
line rather than cherry-pick the easy distant shots.
We’re going to briefly go through the historical accuracy of the archery in Mordhau. Obviously,
the game isn’t meant to be historically accurate, so we’re not going to roast the
game over things like damage and balance. This is more to prompt some questions and
curiosity, and maybe learn something new.
Firstly, do bows handle the way you see them in the game? The archery kind of feels slow,
both in shooting speed and arrow speed. For the longbow, this is roughly about right,
given that the game leans towards faster loading speed to keep you in the action. While a lighter,
modern bow can be drawn and aimed much more quickly, a medieval war bow might be in excess
of 80 pounds of draw, and the English longbows were over 100 pounds. Drawing these bows required
careful technique and physical exertion, so the sluggish pace of drawing and aiming the
longbow is a relatively decent reflection.
The recurve bow is meant to represent the recurved horse bows used in this time, more
commonly in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Typically, these are meant to be shot
with a thumb draw from the other side of the bow, but the game models the same technique
as the longbow, I’m assuming for the sake of simplicity. While the recurve bow is a
little faster, I would actually expect a real life archer to shoot these even faster. I
also feel that the power of the bow is a little undervalued, as the arrows drop quite soon,
making long-range shooting difficult.
The crossbow handles a bit too quickly compared to real life. Light crossbows could be loaded
by hand, but heavier crossbows would have required additional tools, such as a belt
hook, or devices such as the goat’s foot. The game’s rate of fire makes it comparable
to the other bows, and I think the crossbow could be slowed down a bit between shots,
and perhaps balanced by giving it more damage.
Regarding the visual depiction of these bows, the crossbow looks like a typical medieval
crossbow, so that gets a pass. It’s worth noting that the stirrup at the end of the
crossbow is meant to have your foot placed into it when loading the bow so that you could
pull the string up, which the animation doesn’t show.
The default longbow skin looks more or less similar to an English longbow in size and
shape. The alternate skin resembles a Holmegaard or flatbow. The “divided” skin, with the
limbs bolted onto the handle, is definitely a fantasy design. Medieval bows were not manufactured
this way, and this is an allusion to a modern bow design. The bolts may actually weaken
the bow, causing the wood to split from stress.
The recurve bow’s divided skin is similar. However, the default skins seem to be an all-wood
design. Historically, these bows were commonly made of composite materials, namely wood,
horn and sinew. This is because these materials, combining tension and compression strength,
allowed for stronger bows to be made in a more compact size, especially without the
wide availability of appropriate woods for longer bows.
On a side-note, Mordhau gives all archers a belt quiver, which is historically accurate,
avoiding the popular game trope of back quivers, which were seldom represented in historical
sources and is largely a modern invention.
Finally, while the game obviously measures damage appropriately, the heavy plate armour
would have been highly effective at deflecting the arrows used, making armoured fighters
arrow-proof in real life. This lopsided performance would eventually lead to the historical shift
from bows to firearms.
As interesting as this may all be, I wouldn’t be surprised if you haven’t changed your
mind about archery in Mordhau. To be perfectly honest, Mordhau isn’t the kind of game that
embellishes or rewards archery. It is, at its core, a melee combat game, and the game’s
mechanics all revolve around the intensity of hand-to-hand fighting.
This isn’t to say that archery has no role. While fairly superficial, games like Mordhau
include ranged weapons to introduce another element to the battlefield, forcing players
not to be too comfortable with running headlong into the melee. Effective archers can help
control the battle with area denial, pushing back overconfident players and just generally
causing frustration.
The main thing to consider is whether you’re missing out on the game by playing as an archer
character. The rest of the game has so much depth to it, compared to the point and click
of archery. It’s hard to justify your place in the team as an archer when you could be
another spear or sword on the front line to fight at objectives and bring down numerous
enemies.
Overall, archery is what you would expect in a fast-paced action game like Mordhau.
It’s there, but it’s clearly not the focus and is overshadowed by other weaponry. If
you’re looking at this medieval combat game for the archery, this isn’t that kind of
game. But if, like most people, you’re drawn in by the intense combat, Mordhau is an excellent
time sink and a satisfying experience if you invest the time to learn the mechanics.
Thank you for watching this episode of Archery Popshots. This is NUSensei, and as usual,
shoot straight and aim for your best.