So I guess by this logic the VL form should be weakened just cuz its stronger than the werewolf form? the only thing that is truly messed up in this game is destruction. That needs some major attention, but bethesda seems to love making destruction ridiculously weak.

Nah I wouldnt call it overpowered, even with the quickdraw an stagger perks enemies still charge at me with relative ease; with a crossbow id just knock em back like Van Helsing but with Auriels bow I need to quickly run away and give myself a bit of distance. The crossbow shoots slower but the bash deals a decent amount of damage, so it comes down to the way you feel like playing it; brutal hardcoe vampire killing grunt, or speedy evasive sun bursting butterfly. (yes I chose butterfly to finish the metaphorical comparison - cos it reminds me of Muhammed Ali)

When the lore gets broken, black holes form everywhere...

since any bow can do 80,000 damage its not really an issue. The entire issue is self control. The game is made in a way that your role play actually controls it. I do kind of agree that you get it a little too early in the quest but I also think the quest is too short and should have had more branches then some radiant quests. I loved Dawnguard though no matter how rushed it felt,

it is preference because crossbow does affect sneaking so it would need higher damage since enemies would come right at you and need to take them down fast. The bow is for sneak so you dont need high damage when you take them down while they're confused and unable to find you

Crossbows historically packed a way harder punch than bows, it's time Skyrim went the way of Mount and Blade and packed some historically accurate combat. I just hope it doesn't reload like a machine gun.

It is a bit off topic, but I laughed so hard I almost choke on my spit when I saw OP's topic in Forza Motorsport 4 forums suggesting they add crossbows to kill other drivers =D

Personally I dont have DG so I cant know for sure how bad it is, but it seems like a fine solution to the archery damage nerf we took recently.

And more importantly, I find the point about silence very important. I use stealth and bows alot, and the noise the xbow makes (even if that seems weird to me), is definitely a major weakness for the weapon. Worse than the reload speed.

As far as I know, the sound does not actually affect sneaking. I've had no trouble using it just like a higher-damage bow.

No it doesn't reload like a machine gun, it's rather slow compared to the bow. Your toon has to take the bolt out of the quiver, then place it on the cross bow, then pull the reloading lever in order to reload. Compared to taking you arrow out of the quiver, placing in bow, draw back bow string. The cross bow is mainly meant to put someone on their ass just like a shotgun, a bow is comparable to a sniper rifle.
Is it lame that your able to get the cross bow at low levels, yes I'll give OP that much and yes Beth are pretty bad when it comes to the whole " balance " thing. But in the end it's up to you the player to choose weather or not you want to use the stronger weapon at lower Lv.'s. There is no logical reason that you would not be able to lay hands on a cross bow just because of inexperience, I myself don't really know how to use a cross bow properly but it would still be a VERY dangerous weapon in my hands.

Steel crossbows at lower lvls aren't too bad damage wise and ammo for them is limited until a few quests into dg....so it's not really op

This. Crossbows are insane with sneak attack criticals. The only reason why I don't use them that much is because I think the bow and arrow looks much more classy.

The fact is video games are to nice when it comes to crossbows, your traditional bow had ten times the rate of fire when compared to the crossbow. But it took years of training and good physical condition to use the weapon. Crossbows first appeared in the 5th century BC, they existed along side the bow for over a thousand years before they were both replaced by guns. If one was truly superior the other would have died. The crossbow was prefered due to economics and geography.

The early crossbow had little to no mechanical assistance to pull back the string, so it was actually weaker then the bow but anyone could pick up a crossbow so it was popular. As the technology evolved the mechanical assistance allowed the crossbow to get more powerful without getting larger. It soon became a weapon of terror because it could penetrate platemail. Crossbows were also better for firing through arrowslits in castle walls so it was the prefered defense during a seige.

The real prime advantage it had from the begining was anyone could pick up a crossbow and use it, once it could penetrate heavy armor it become a common ranged weapon on the battlefield in europe(excluding England), yet it never replaced the bow. A traditonal bowman required years of training good upper body strength(compared to a crossbow). But they had five or ten times the rate of fire of a crossbow. If you wanted arrows to rain down in a hail of death you used a bow.

The bow wasn't cheaper it was infact far more expensive once you took training into account. Even the cost of the bow alone wasn't much less them from a crossbow. And like armor a traditional bow actually had to be sized for your height. Using a medieval bow designed for someone six inches taller then you was a problem. Crossbow didn't care. If you lost a dozen crossbowmen you could salvage the weapons and train some knew recruits fairly quickly. If you lost a dozen longbowmen it was far more expensive to replace. English law mandiated children start training with the bow at age seven just to keep their armies supplied with longbowmen. The crossbow also had a SHORTER range then the famous english longbow. So it lost out on both range and rate of fire.

Then along came firearms, around the 15th century arming your soliders with crossbows cost about the same as a musket. But the musket required even less strength to use then the crossbow, could actually achieve a greater rate of fire and when you lined up fifty guys and fired in unison you created a wall of bullets so accuracy wasn't much of an issue. The english longbow managed to survive a few decades after the demise of the crossbow but the economics of training longbowmen just didn't make sense so in the early 16th century the weapon was abandoned completely in favor of firearms.

That is why the medieval crossbow was deadly, it allowed a lowly peasant to kill an armored knight with a decade of experience.

This is better then the post I would have made, on this issue...
So in another words..
QFT.

Um... Skyrim is a singleplayer game and someone is complaining about a weapon?.. Seriously?

Not being mean here but I can expect this kind of rant happening on Jagex's RS Forums or WoW forums etc... But on a Singleplayer forum?? Seriously??

Just don't use the crossbow or something...

Now.. To join the argument.. The Dwarven Crossbow is the best type of Crossbow there is so therefore, it should do high damage for those who only wishes to use Crossbows (Like myself) instead of bows.. Now, if they had Daedric Crossbows in the game then it'll be a different story..

_{i used a crossbow once....didnt like the aiming reticle so i went back to my dragonbone bow with 25 point fire damage...auriels bow was cool...but needed recharged way to much.}

The trade is that it is slower.. Lets say the crossbow does 40 damage at 10 secs per shot... The Bow does 30 dmg at 5 secs per shot.. Which is better?

The thing is....you can't include Crossbows of any kind without them packing a way higher punch than Bows.

Crossbows were always easier to use, packed a way harder punch than bows (as some people have pointed out, they can annihilate even plate armor), and were relatively inexpensive to produce and deploy.

However, bows had the advantage of rate of fire, range and also being relatively silent.

The only thing I could see that would make the two slightly more even in terms of gameplay is if they slowed the reload on the crossbow down (you reload like a freakin' pro with the crossbow) and made it so that firing a single bolt made you insta-detected due to the sound, so that crossbows wouldn't be nearly as useful for sneaking or sniping. But in terms of raw damage, the crossbow will always do more than the bow.

Um, a crossbow was designed to put big, nasty and usually lethal holes in opponents,. often fully armoured opponents.

If anything, they're underpowered.

Indeed.
There was a version called a Scorpio used by the Romans which was the 50cal sniper rifle of it's day.

It boils down to bad weapon balance. Self control applies to things like console commands and mods, but players should not need to restrict themselves from using content in the vanilla game - and in Skyrim there's really no way to make the game's combat balanced no matter what kind of arbitrary limitations you pile onto your PC.

Exactly. It's just bad design if you have to do that.

I'm not sure how it's "bad design". A crossbow was and is the ultimate medieval ranged weapon. These were knight killers. I remember seeing a steel briastplate on display with a hole the size of your first 2 knuckles in it, from a crossbow. It was on display not for the size of he hole (which was typical), but because the wearer survived.

But, again, the obvious choice here is, if you don't like it, don't use it. It's the .50 cal rifle of the medieval world. Not sure what people expect. Tickles?

I don't, i went back to New Vegas that has some balance on it's weapons for the time being. Maybe modders come up with an equivalent of http://www.oblivion.nexusmods.com/mods/28537 (Medieval Oblivion Equipment Balance System) in the mean time

And once again, gameplay > realism, unless you're making a simulator.

Along with spears they where best weapons from old days

Crossbow usage was banned when fighting landlords because of its deadliness (and it was better to get the higher ups for ransom anyway), but usualy a knight/lord had some "crossbow-fodder" along that was mented to be crossbow'd


But in this case it should be balance > realism