Hello. I'm a fairly new player, having not participated in the beta. I played a little MO1 and my brother played a lot of it. We're both old UO fans and I personally have been playing hardcore MUDs for the past several years.
While dueling together in Haven all night last night I discovered how inefficient and time-consuming switching from one weapon to another is. It's maybe not as bad if you're switching after applying a bandage, or if your opponent is running away to heal, but if your opponent is pressing you - even if you create a bit of distance by jumping over some fence or building, switching weapons is far too slow to be tactically useful in the vast majority of situations and if you're using a shield, the problem is further exacerbated.
My solution is this - let a one-handed melee weapon be equipped at the same time as a bow. When the melee weapon is equipped, have the character model hold the bow in the left hand and be unable to use it until the melee weapon is sheathed. Make it so that if an opponent backs up 20 feet or so, a skilled archer can draw, fire a shot and return to his sword fairly quickly. You can even make this a new primary skill intended for foot-archers, because it will be a very powerful change in dynamic.
This will make people with skills in both archery and melee much more dangerous in a fight than a person with only melee or only archery, which is how it probably should be. As of right now, if you are in a frantic 1v1 against a melee opponent, even if you have fantastic archery skills, those archery skills very rarely come into play in a way that would significantly alter the course of the fight.
While dueling together in Haven all night last night I discovered how inefficient and time-consuming switching from one weapon to another is. It's maybe not as bad if you're switching after applying a bandage, or if your opponent is running away to heal, but if your opponent is pressing you - even if you create a bit of distance by jumping over some fence or building, switching weapons is far too slow to be tactically useful in the vast majority of situations and if you're using a shield, the problem is further exacerbated.
My solution is this - let a one-handed melee weapon be equipped at the same time as a bow. When the melee weapon is equipped, have the character model hold the bow in the left hand and be unable to use it until the melee weapon is sheathed. Make it so that if an opponent backs up 20 feet or so, a skilled archer can draw, fire a shot and return to his sword fairly quickly. You can even make this a new primary skill intended for foot-archers, because it will be a very powerful change in dynamic.
This will make people with skills in both archery and melee much more dangerous in a fight than a person with only melee or only archery, which is how it probably should be. As of right now, if you are in a frantic 1v1 against a melee opponent, even if you have fantastic archery skills, those archery skills very rarely come into play in a way that would significantly alter the course of the fight.
