I think crossbows would solve one of the more annoying balance issues I have with the game, namely the bow and arrow murder queue tactic. The more powerful bows will 2- or 3-shot even enemies wearing face covering helmets, so while it isn’t particularly fun, running backwards with your bow and arrow out and shooting people in the face remains the most efficient way to deal with groups throughout the entire game. If we had crossbows, longbows wouldn’t need to be as effective against armour as they are now, so you would use a crossbow to take out heavily armoured targets - but at the same time, reloads would be so long that you couldn’t just keep leading entire conga lines of enemies through the forest, dropping them one by one with shots into their faces.
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Accuracy of a crossbow was not good at anything other than point blank. Much less range than bows.
The biggest advantage of crossbows was how easy they were to use. Relatively little training was required, and they were effective. So you could line up a bunch of relatively ill trained crossbow men and fire a pretty devastating volley.
Bows also were not some sort of sniper weapon ala Robin Hood. They were mass attack weapons. They had many times the rate of fire and effective range of crossbows. So why not just use long bows? Training and conditioning. Most people today could not pick up a long bow and do anything useful with it. The draw took a lot of specific strength that had to be built up with practice. The English could field lots of longbow men because archery practice was enforced by law. On the continent they tended to stick with crossbows or lesser bows.
In game, I agree with the crossbows would be pretty useless crowd. The load time might let you get off one shot. The accuracy is no better than a bow at short range and much worse as range increases. Their use really did come in larger battles where they could be used en masse.
Last thought … if you were the one initiating combat, where you could load a bolt at leisure, sneak up on the enemy, and fire … I can see that being useful.
I think the answer to that is decrease backpedal speed. Really decrease backpedal speed with a drawn weapon.
Not true what so ever.
Depends on the bow. We know from accounts in the third crusade, that lightweight crossbows during the third crusade were capable of out ranging Saracen re curves (probably 60-80lbs draw weight) and packed far more punch. This greatly limited the Saracens tactics of attempting to harasses the Frankish army, because they would simply get shot to shit, while their bows had limited affect against gambeson+ mail.
Anyone attempting to argue that crossbows are useless, have zero understanding of history.
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Straw man arguments and insults. True internet warrior BS.
My statement began with “In game”, not “In history”. Learn to read before you declare that somebody has zero understanding of a subject (hint - the subject is the game, not history).
Crossbows have limited value IN GAME because the game does not exploit their most common use case. You present significant battles as “proof” of your position. The battles presented IN GAME are pretty small. Most of the combat is limited to very small encounters. IN GAME crossbows would mostly be limited to one shot weapons in scenarios where you control the terms of engagement. When you don’t control the terms of engagement they would be useless as you would not have time to load and get off a shot.
You also present Crusaders vs. Saracens as “proof” of the crossbow’s superior range. Meanwhile my post clearly states English long bow. Do you really believe that referencing a 12th century battle with entirely different equipment is a proper refutation of 15th century English long bow vs. 15th century cross bow?
If we get larger battles with more archers, especially more sieges, then crossbows will come into their own. As long as the game is a “Swords No Sorcery” quest style game with very small encounters, I think their value is limited. Nothing to do with history.
Still, they’re pretty cool.
Yeah, and that is probably reason enough to include them. The last post of mine was more argumentative than called for. being told I know nothing about history (I know something … I know more than many people … I certainly don’t know everything) pissed me off, especially since the quality of the arguments didn’t match the arrogance with which they were presented. 
In Skyrim I always forced my character to use a crossbow until his archery skill was good enough to warrant a bow. I did the same in KCD with melee weapons - I spent some time using only axes or blunt weapons until my warfare skill warranted moving to a sword.
So I will eat my words and admit I’m wrong - they probably would be fun to have, if for no other reason than to recreate the feel of being an unskilled blacksmith’s son early in the game.
And because they’re cool looking. All the medieval hipsters use crossbows and flails.
Maybe we could load it before going into combat? A guy sees you, starts running, then shoot him in the head? Then engage with sword. Also horse combat would be fun if you can reload it while riding.
What do you consider point black range? I have seen recreational (made verrry similar to medieval times) crossbows shoot about ten inch group at 100 feet consistently. And to me that seems very accurate for those times. Not in person but on internet.
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I think you’re just trolling at this point, i never once insulted you.
No i presented significant battles of proof that your statement of “crossbows are worthless past point blank range” as wrong.
I often have plenty of time to run away from the enemy, if you were on horse back, this would be no issue.
English longbows are not the only bow in the game, in fact they are the rarest.
You’re right, the crossbow int he 15th century would likely be much more powerful than a crossbow during the Third crusade. 
The draw weight of a Saracen bow would be about the same as most bows used in the game 60-80lbs draw weight, so a crossbow would be much more effective in KC:D than most bows in game already.
Eh, i’d say the longbow is more the hipster weapon. People greatly over exaggerate its effectiveness, and it’s become something of a mythical weapon along the lines of a Katana.
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You claimed crossbows were worthless past point blank range. If you truly believe that, you’ve done very little reading into Medieval history.
If that makes you butthurt i could care less.
I especially like skallagrims videos about crossbows. They pretty much prove that to pierce armor and kill someone you would basically need a mini ballistica.
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Thread mancy but this is the reason I joined the forum since I didn’t try to play the game yet from work and a backlog of games.
First off, precision has been questionable because archers (to loosely paraphrase Lindybeige) generally put arrows/quarrels down field, as accuracy was less important than endurance and rate of draw. You have that luxury in sieges to pick off targets, or King Richard in the morning if you’re a newly orphaned French boy on a battlement.
Secondly, this is also the period where crossbows started to be mass produced with steel prods, as a result of improved steel making and that composite bows are harder to construct and maintain.
As for damage, heavy crossbows and arbalests at around 1000 lbs draw are somewhat equivalent to a 130ish lb longbow. You’re not drawing war grade crossbows, light or heavy, without a loading-assistance device. Crannequins were used by nobles and mounted cavalry, so even in that timeline you need an excuse to get one. So as bluntly as I’ll put it, you’re going to be more useless than breasts on a Hanar, or hammer, unless you’re putting yourself in situations where you can reload efficiently regardless of whatever aim you’ve got.
The argument is meaningless regardless because the game is set up differently than real life, no matter how much HEMA they throw at it.