In reality, mid-to-high level archers (with lots of money/resources) can often deal more damage than their melee-inclined counterparts. This is due to the fact that, although enhancements bonuses don't stack between projectile weapons and their ammunition, special abilities can be applied to both to full effect, meaning that an archer could fire +1 flaming, frost, shock, corrosive, axiomatic, holy, merciful arrows from a +1 brilliant energy, psychokinetic, warning, collision, screaming, prismatic burst composite longbow (+?) for a pretty absurd amount of damage with each shot (given the right target.) An archer can also choose to buy fewer than 50 arrows with a given set of abilities (ten of one, twenty of another, etc.) to prepare for several sets of circumstances under which each type would be ideal.
I've seen a few archers kick some serious rear end doing stuff like this of late, even at middling levels (2 +5 weapons are far cheaper than one +9 weapon). While you do essentially waste a +1 bonus somewhere, the ability to have up to a +18 bonus worth of special abilities with each shot is a pretty good tradeoff, IMO. Like I said, however, you do need a lot of money/resources to get it that crazy, but it's beyond that of which any other type of non-epic weapon is ever even capable.
