Any gimmick ideas? Sometimes I think it's fun to think of the gimmick that would make the concept fun.
With a crossbow maybe you have turns of the wheel / tension?
I would ask what are people looking for gameplay / visually? For example when I think Ranger I'm thinking not a lot of attacks like Bard or Machinist (who both pepper more like a machine gun lol), and a bit more like hyper devastating attacks. Though when I think of crossbow specifically I think of the repeater crossbow lol, which is machine gun like XD (though Machinist does have that under auto-crossbow skill). Like Demon Hunter in Diablo 3. So then maybe the job is a more selfish 'mobile' damage job? That's a bit hard to balance 'kindly' to other jobs since if you had the damage of a samurai and black mage but the mobility of a bard, . . . . . Then again you could say who cares as long as they're all very viable options, for example many times SMN was very mobile and very very good damage yet that didn't mean no one played SAM or BLM.
Another thought to mind is a ballista XD... Which could be a fun super move or something. Call forth a Ballista that gives the job a huge line attack they can fire off multiple times.
So given ranger I think less frequent but very heavy attacks (thanks to FFXI mostly probably), and with crossbow I think Diablo 3, autocross bows, and then the more realistic cranking and tensioning that creates insane strength in a small package (but isn't a very fast process, unless you've two people). So... my mind goes all over the place on what a crossbow job might mean.
Say you could have tension mechanics as I said above, which could be magically augmented like each smaller shot causes the magic in the crossbow to store energy and you can then release that for significant effect.. some cross between the ammo system and dancer feathers if they were more consistent.
On cranking, lol, and the wheel, maybe there is a mechanic of runes upon the turn of the device that causes augmentation of skills based on what is currently active. Meaning each time you crank the wheel new augments come about, which would be when firing off abilities and also perhaps a augment fishing / error correction skill (perhaps doesn't do damage, adds bonus potency to the next attack and moves the wheel once). Which I could see easily moved towards a corsair like trappings for theme if one wanted, add a little bit of variability into the wheel and perhaps amount of tension gained such that players are actively having to in a sense create their own combos as they fish and minorly-gamble for effects.
Then again I did like the idea of a more hunter vibe, since we don't have a ranger could be quite nice. I did have a pang of nostalgia for beastmaster being brought up since in WoW I had loads of fun as hunter- the ranger and animal combo is quite classic. As a wild aside, going back to the two people thing above, the job has a pet of some sort, not like a 'beastmaster', but still a buddy that helps them load their crossbows while they fire off the other. In which case you could have the job wield two two-handed crossbows :3, and have a cute minion who helps support you and could have some oGCD actions as you work on your next shot while making your current shot.
Anyway, just curious on the more specific things people wanted to see out of the job. I don't really have a big horse in this particular race, but I still think the discussion is fun to join in on and see what people were looking forward to.