first off, in native crossbows don't do 98 damage a pop.
Secondly, Crossbows were not nerfed at all, and they are in fact more accurate than bows. I should know, I have an archer and a hybrid crossbower. The crossbow-woman is more accurate than the bow, despite the fact she has 30 less wpf in xbows than my archer has in bows.
but also, in native people don't wear Black Armour or have 10 ironflesh, some people wearing normal chain-mail are still standing after 3 normal xbow shots with steel bolts, thats over 150 perice dmg, how the fuck are they still standing.
Those 3 shots take 20 seconds from reload to closed crosshair Native siege xbow reloads in less then 2 secs, and hits for 60 pierce 62 if you count steel bolts.
the shot speed of a native xbow makes Crpg xbow bolts seem like volleyballs.
i often have to aim in-front of people as if they are horses in native (normal xbow) that's how credulous the shot speed has gotten, the bolt falls short at an astonishing rate, ,making long range shots, a volley, buy the time they reach their target they do shit all damage.
my point is, native had balanced the weapons against each other for over 4 months of beta testing and 1 year of release fixes
the xbow and all other weapons where balanced against each other.
Crpg has seen some rather massive nerfs to xbow coming from native, why is this?
this is because of people bitching.
Instead of re-balancing an already balanced weapon, chadz should have simply made pole-arms 3-slots, think about it pole arms are huge in size, much larger then xbows.
Xbows should be rolled back to their native values, and mabye keep the arbalast for the really heavy duty but slow reloading role.
one last thing, wtf is up with 12 bolts????, bolts are half the size of arrows, densest it makes sense that you can carry twice as much? the quiver is tiny it can fit on both sides of your hips, how can you give it the same slot as a Longsword?
I'll close with this, instead of changing a basic original weapon from native to suit the new Armour and equipment of crpg, instead do it the other way round, keep the base weapons as they are, and change the new ones.