From a melee perspective, I think the main thing people dislike with ranged is that the counters are all purely defensive counters, and even then they are weak from a gameplay perspective. Conversely when ranged is in melee range there's a sense of them having their cake and eating it too. The tables don't turn and suddenly the ranged can only do some weak defensive counters. The ranged player can negate 100% of your damage, just like you can theirs, and in the case of crossbowmen they are virtually 100% as effective as a pure melee player while in melee range (depending on the crossbow, 2 slot xbows are a bit different). This is if you manage to force a melee fight. If not the bowman can just kite forever. This is not fun gameplay for the sort of people who want to play a medieval combat style game
The defensive counters to ranged either involve holding a shield up, physically avoiding the entire class or trusting the ranged player to miss his shots, which puts the emphasis on the enemy's aim rather than your own skill. Don't talk about dodging when you move so slow, its still about how good the player is with aiming and judging the enemy player's movements. At his point it is not player vs player. The counters to ranged are more ranged or to play in a fashion that is not fun to play. It promotes boring stalemates or simply avoiding an entire class.
Then we have ranged while on a horse. Thats just beyond a joke to me. I can't even imagine the psychology involved with people who play ranged on cav, its like shooting fish in a barrel, or its about stroking ones ego. Especially towards the end of the round when one team has no cav or ranged whiled the other has some ranged cav. Put any idiot in that ranged cav position and he will do as well as any other. At this point again its not about player skill, but people having put their cards on the table, and it plays out in a predictable fashion. This is not fun and dynamic gameplay like with melee vs melee combat. It stale and boring, and not player vs player.
Then on top of this we can analyse the actual skill involved in a ranged shot. In the case of crossbows with high WPF or looms, its literally point and click. For bows its a bit different but they can shoot over and over (and thus fail over and over) and the one time they hit they can kill or do decent damage. The ranged combat mechanics are just so far behind the melee in terms of depth and negative consequences for making mistakes, it adds that extra bit of dislike for players.
Tackling this isn't easy though..people will always want to play ranged whether its nerfed to the ground or not, just because there will always be a sense of being able to be detached from the action while still feeling involved in some way. That to me is one of the key things that draws people to ranged. You can do literally F-all while still feeling like you aren't just standing around doing nothing. To other player's perspective you are involved in combat and doing something, there is no requirement for you to be actually doing something useful. Its hard to determine just how much of an influence a player has on a team while playing ranged, and you can do that with minimal effort. Just move a bit out of spawn and pewpew. This is a mentality that is appealing to players that just want to grind out generations, and to not feel like they are doing nothing while getting xp. So it doesn't matter how much you nerf them to some extent it terms of damage. That isn't the issue imo. They are not OP in terms of damage, they are just not fun to counter and promote boring gameplay that doesn't really reward player skill like it could.
If I were to balance them I would try to combat that passive gameplay so many ranged players go for. Make them squishy as hell and easy for cav to counter, get rid of crutch mechanics like knockdown on tiny hammers. Make them have to consider their positioning more, to take a more active role in the team at all times. Make them slower so they can't kite so easily, make the actual shots have to be carefully considered more from an ammo perspective, as well as making the shot hard to make from a player skill perspective. Of and create more counters to ranged cav or make it simply harder to play.
I don't want to belittle ranged players though. I have fault with the game rather than players..people will always only play the game as its designed, and that involves taking the line of least resistance, what they find fun (regardless of balance) and play to win the rounds through whatever means necessary
