Pretty shocked at this thread to be honest. As one of the oldest crossbow players in NA, in my opinion, crossbows are definitely nerfed. The already poor accuracy is worse, and the crossbows do less damage than before. Archery is dead accurate in comparison, it doesn't even come close. It has always been like this, I've compared accuracy many times with some of the top archers, even with Bagge, for EU reference. And it's pathetic for the crossbow honestly, when you compare shot per shot placement(groupings). But now it's even worse(I thought it was bad back then). Overall, this is probably not a bad thing, rather a good thing, maybe it’s a little excessive with the new changes in my opinion. But a lot of these points are not taken into account by the community. Another trade off would be, of course, that the crossbow can absolutely choose when to discharge their weapon. There is quite a lot to take into account. That’s what the balancing team has to do.
For you people who think (currently) crossbows are anti archer: granted this indeed used to be the case, but is not in the current state of the game. Yes, if I can headshot an archer without being noticed(this is not a class *thing*, anyone can be “stealth”), I will. Since the archer clearly out classes me in overall damage output(which isn't a bad thing, since they are a more dedicated range class), I should take him out earlier rather than later. I'm also surprised that nobody is mentioning the insane damage bows are currently doing. A bow would NEVER approach the damage it's currently doing to me in the past. Bows effectively do the same damage as crossbows in terms of shots to kill with the current *possible builds* that are commonly in use now. And they shoot way faster. However, this is not a problem? I’m not sure. I don't disagree with the changes, but the reaction from the general population is surprising. Of course, I am holding out on the fact that this may be completely the fault of the armor soak being up in the air right now. We just have to see.
Balancing should be looked at from all sides of cRPG, from every classes perspective, and finally how they all interact with each other. The most common reaction posts I see in general are "what this means to me", instead of "what this means for everyone". I see "you buffed crossbows" when I *personally* would MUCH rather go back to "the way it was", since crossbows were much stronger before... The mix of character level changes, damage mitigation, stat changes, and speed mechanics have nerfed crossbows quite a bit. But the community perceives this as a buff... I for one would be all for reverting all these changes if the community *perceives* it as a buff.....
@DaveUKR, saying someone "forced" you to insult them is pretty extreme... That’s like saying someone “forced” you to hit them. While I can see your points, I'm not sure if you necessarily see where Nightingale was going with this. You should have just pointed out what the, in your opinion, flaws were, what you think should happen, why, what you think could possibly be the reasoning for the changes, and why they may or may not be helpful to the game balance. And by the way, Nightingale has extensive history as a crossbow player as well. So even though we may not agree with the changes, it’s not like they were coming from absolutely nowhere.
/tangent: Why can't we just have an actual constructive conversation over balancing and come to a conclusion as a non-toxic community? I, for one, have always been embarrassed at just how toxic the cRPG community is(no reference at all to DaveUKR, whom I’ve actually always viewed as a person that generally knows what he’s talking about). We have a blatant pool of the worst offenders who will never be permanently banned for whatever reason, and they themselves advertise this. Hopefully when Bannerlord comes out we can aim for a better experience, since we'll have the population to not make all these exceptions.
