A Response to Lars Andersen: a New Level of Archery
A mobillity demo of a guy wearing full plate
It’s the balance question, rather than the realism question.
I could agree that certain weapons should penetrate certain armors as much as they do now (although it’d then make certain weapons useless later in game), but when facing enemies such as Orcs – even the young ones – I find their ability to deal a massive amount of damage to both armor and health to be accurate. Furthermore, if chainmail armor could protect you easily for most of the game, then there wouldn’t be a reason to wear plate armor, which increases the amount of protection by large, but at cost of fatigue (which is done for balance reasons).
I won’t say some balancing shouldn’t happen, but that’s different from re-doing the whole system, like you propose to do.