1. ONLY 20k? That price tag makes a sniper xbow and steel bolts the single most expensive weapon in all of crpg. And with a performance that is at the very least debatable, the price tag is unquestionably high for what you get. You just compared a single weapon to your entire gear loadout, wherein the prices were similar, and you stated that you felt this was as it should be. LAWL, wow.
2. Best xbow+bolts = 20k. Best bow + arrows = 13k. That is not a minimal difference, as you said. With the other 7k, an xbowman could get a decent set of light/medium armor, which makes sense, since the nature of xbows nearly demands that an xbowman enter into melee far more often than archers.
3. Even if the xbow + steel bolts was the same price as the best bow + best arrows(13k), a pure melee would still have more gold to pay for his weapons/armor(+13k). I think this is not only acceptable, but far more balanced than what we currently have.
No, I only compared it to my gear loadout without horse.
I take my 20k courser you take your 20k crossbow and shoot it, you win. I just paid 1k for an item I couldn't use. Anyway, what I wanted to say is that you can easily maintain crossbow/bow+some light armor+some mediocre weapon. (Archery => you take 2 stacks of bodkins, since they hurt only half as much as bolts). IIRC you complained about ease of picking up some ranged, and well, that's the prize.
About effectiveness, you can argue, but I found no problem using a sniper crossbow on maps that offered good cover. If you are going for K:D that's probably the best weapon, since it's very hard to die when spending 90% of the time behind cover while picking off people. Effectiveness for team is harder to say, but you can take out horses and archers that melee can't deal with - and eh, when you headshot Phyrex in his black plate open up a beer and relax the rest of the round. When you are mostly shooting you don't need so good melee, it's either a cleanup job or you make a last stand against scattered and wounded survivors.
So ... if you want to be crossbowman primarily, you can have sniper crossbow+steel bolts + cheap backup weapon for when you are going to shoot mostly (good map, much cav, whatever) and according to my experience that works, and normal crossbow+bolts + semi decent melee gear when you probably aren't.
edit: But yeah, I agree about the throwing, but for me it's simply that throwing needs nerf. If we buff other ranged again to it's level, we are where we were before the patch.
