Well, reguardless of bow balance: Which I fully agree with you is currently in such a shit state it looks like Somalia, new players are going to gravitate towards archery because it is an easy class to play.
Please don't be butthurt "Profesional Archers", I have done 16 gens as archer, untill they set up slot system and the softcap on levels, archery was my favorite thing, since I could carry a decent weapon and fight while using a bow that doesn't look retarded: Cannot stand ppl who use horsebows (If it has a leather sheath for the bow, its DESIGNED INGAME to be used on a horse, the quiver SHOULD be on the horse's saddle, but the engine doesn't allow that, the bows SHOULD be unusable on foot, to stop the HORRIBLE look of them) as their primary bow while on foot make me sick.
That said: archery is not highskill, difficult, cool, anything of that nature. My primary enjoyment in it is shooting horses from across the map, its fun to predict their position and launch arrows high into the air and see the horse fall. But even that, shooting at fast moving targets across the entire map, is not difficult.
So new players, and plain bad players, will gravitate naturally towards archery in this game, because unlike real life, it does not require any amount of skill beyond not making a stupid build. Even unloomed (I currently dont use a loomed bow on my archer alt) archery is good, despite what many ppl claim. So, a nice cap would be, imho:
Dont allow new players to use any ranged. Once they have, lets say, 8 generations, allow them throwing, at 12 allow them crossbows, at 16 allow them archers. Simple.
Archers have nothing to do with Bows! LOL!
If you change the order of the words and completely restructure the sentence, you can arrive at a different meaning. Yes. Well done. That's how women argue BTW, you might wanna review that information, and grow a pair: argue based on what the person you disagree with ACTUALLY WROTE OR SAID, not on what other interpretations you can make for the words once you change the meaning of the sentence.
EDIT:
You throw rocks?
I wrote, this THREAD isn't about bows, its about NUMBER OF RANGED PLAYERS, not bow balance. Try to keep up.