The fake bow was added to give the murderer tools to deal with large clumps of people - get up close by acting innocent with the fake bow, then stab them all. It is an interesting gameplay fix to a very small problem. However, it’s since caused a much larger problem - innocents, especially newer players, will shoot other innocents much more frequently now. Bows can be held by the murderer, and arrows are far too small to see clearly sometimes, making it particularly hard to avoid getting shot by random players.
Additionally, the problem I mentioned earlier already has a solution - the imposter tomb. This item lets you change your skin to that of an innocent, tricking other players into thinking you’re safe. Simply let them see you hold your sword in your main skin, then duck behind somewhere and switch to a different skin. While similarly confusing to new players, it’s much more intuitive to new players to keep the bow as a “good guy-only” item and allow for changing skins instead.
Removing the fake bow as an item murderers can get would reduce new player confusion and drastically reduce the frequency of overzealous innocents shooting other innocents. As there is very little upside, and quite a bit of downside, to keeping the fake bow, please remove it.
When the update came out and I saw that they added a fake bow, I was actually really surprised because I genuinely never thought Hive would add that. Both the bow and the imposter tome (as you said) seemed like they would just confuse players with less experience. I remember seeing a suggestion for adding a fake bow, and a lot of people were saying they agreed with the suggestion because the game is already tilted in favor of the innocents. That is pretty much true, but a fake bow is a bad solution. I would love for the bow to be removed
This makes a lot of sense to remove. For example, I was once playing with my friend (without knowing about the fake bow yet). Someone with a pig skin killed me so I spectated them. Then I saw they had a bow and I was like “wth???” So I explained this to my friend after that game and he told me “oh yeah thats part of deadly dealings”. But it STILL trips me up now even like oml.
I think that this would be better because there would have to be something to replace the bow. Most innocents use bow to clear people and not really armor and people don’t get armor in general as often so I could see this working much better. I also wouldn’t mind having a totally different item that isn’t fake anything but I get why this would make sense.
Once again as one said already you can just pull the bow back. And the fact that there is actually some detective work is really good I think because even if somebody has a bow you still arent sure…
Just wanting to clarify a few things to all those who seem confused:
This post isn’t saying experienced players aren’t able to clear innocents. This post is saying new players aren’t able to clear innocents, and are shooting so many more innocent experienced players despite them holding bows and arrows. Newer players won’t necessarily know you can’t get an arrow or draw the bow as murderer - they’ll just know they got stabbed by someone holding a bow once, and thus think anyone holding a bow might be the murderer and they should shoot them just in case.
The arrow is too small to see for most players, especially ones using a mobile device or console on a small screen - especially from far away. Don’t say “offhand an arrow”, I and many of my friends have been shot while doing that by confused innocents.
The fake bow isn’t important to the murderer’s strategy on castle town for all the reasons I listed in the initial post, I for the life of me have no idea why people keep mentioning that map. As a murderer on ct ur main goal is to get good snipes with the throwable while taking minimal risks, and if people push u then u stab them - not run up to people with the fake bow and try to be friends. I can name a few other maps though, since that seems to be a trend - remnants and eso hotel are also very difficult murderer maps for similar reasons to ct - very loopable, very open, very easy to camp, and the main counterplay is throwables on their pathing. Again, these maps have nothing to do with the fake bow being removed - that’s a different issue.
Even if your main goal is to confuse innocents as murderer, there is another way without the issues listed in the initial post - the imposter tomb is both better and more intuitive to new players, while serving the same function. You may say “but you’re supposed to combine them for best effect” to which I’d say “imposter is more than enough”. What’s more, if that’s not enough for you, currently you can do /hat mid-game as murderer which in the case of some hats completely changes how you look (box, shark, etc). Combined with the imposter tomb, this can trick people much more effectively than the fake bow.
If you don’t want the alternative I proposed, fake armor, there are many more ideas which could be their own posts - I’ll list a few here:
An alarm clock that plays a kill sound after 15 seconds when placed.
a button that teleports ALL players to their initial spawn spot on the map
a placeable fake coin/bux
(please note this is not an endorsement of these ideas, just me showing that there are other, less problematic options.)
All in all, the fake bow solves no problems, presents no good gameplay patterns, and creates a large issue for murder mystery players. Innocents, particularly newer innocents, get very trigger-happy where they wouldn’t have before. The fake bow can be replaced with interesting items that wouldn’t lead to the problem listed. Removing the fake bow would go a long way towards repairing that damage and would undoubtably make the game a better place.
I think the fake bow has more pros than cons, so it should stay. The only reason I’m picking up from this post is that you get killed more often, which can be avoided(sometimes).
The pros of having a fake bow:
Less repetitive gameplay. With the fake bow, you gotta pay closer attention to everyone with a bow still instead of knowing instantly that they’re cleared. (Huge reason)
Only having the imposter tomb doesn’t do anything if everyone is holding a bow, unless they change it to give a fake bow too. (Could work, but would make gameplay a bit more repetitive again)
Less murderers leaving at the start of the game, because it’s easier for them to win now. Of course some will still leave due to them being scared of it, but that’ll never be resolved.
A better win rate for less skilled murders which definitely needed a buff since it was very low. (so basically the treasurewars into bedwars changes, but for mm. More noob friendly)
Cons of the fake bow mentioned:
Innocents killing innocents more often. (Can be avoided more often by: drawing bows back (custom bows will need changed), or by staying away from all players)
Newer players not understanding the murderer can have a bow as well. (A solution is having a message in chat that says the murderer can have a bow)
I’ll try to continuously update this lists for people who don’t want to read all the replies. Right now it’s biased, since it’s only my opinion, but I will even it out with your guys’ responses.
I personnally disagree with removing the fake bow.
Like many people said, it adds a layer to the game, you dont really know if the guy is clear or not. Before, if there was like 5 people left and they all had a bow, it would be the end for a 6th person entering the room without a bow.
Moreover, I had one of my best The Hive memories ever, where I tricked one of the last innocent to protect me against the other innocent, showing him that I had a bow, and it was hilarious.
And of course new players are gonna get confused at first, maybe 1st game you’re like “what how !”, then 2nd game you’re like “nah bro i’m missing something”, and by the 5th game you understood that everyone with a bow cannot be trusted. For me that’s part of the fun.
