From a dedicated xbowman stand point, i believe that xbow and archery is pretty balanced out. Though xbows do more damage, bows out shoot an xbowman any day. Xbows only have 1 shot before they have to spend like 10 seconds to reload their arbalest, while it takes an archer like 5 seconds to shoot their arrow. Archery and xbow is balanced, even though you can't melee in archery, you can always outrun someone with an xbow. Also archers can shoot farther away than xbows. To me the reason there is xbow is to take out people who wear heavy armor.