You ask a lot of questions that are not really related.

why they were never countered with archers/crossbowmen

For many reasons. Primarily, the age of the bow had passed. To raise effective units of bowmen, you need a population skilled with bow from which to recruit troops. This was no longer available in western europe when line regiments gained prominence. Another reason is that bowmen and to a lesser degree crossbowmen require far more training than a musketeer. Firing bows in formation requires long training and a great deal of skill, firing a musket requires discipline and little more. Simply put, raising line regiments is both cheaper and easier.

i have never heard stories of opposing armies using a skirmish style tactic with speed and range to their advantage.

Well, I can't answer for what you have heard but skirmishers were pretty much always a part of musket warfare. Skrimishing was the primary purpose of light dragoons and irregular troops but was gradually taken over by light companies, and eventually regiments, of foot. The rise of the light infantry follows the development of rifled muskets and other technological and tactical developments relatively well.

As muskets became more accurate with greater range, the light infantry became increasingly effective in large scale engagements. This led to the gradual rise of light companies as part of line regiments. These companies were detached with increasing frequency and combined into light regiments. Eventually entire regiments of light infantry were raised and the role of line infantry became that of light infantry.

The Partisan in War - a treatise on light infantry tactics by Colonel Andreas Emmerich is a great little book which gives good insight in how light infantry was used and trained (it was written in 1789), another, although much heavier book, is European armies and the conduct of war by Hew Strachan.

I went into this in a comment chain on the thread but I will put it as a top level comment because I think it adds context for the OP. Essentially the conversation was about the penetrating power of the bow in terms of penetration power and strength with special consideration of the Longbow, the ultimate case of a bows penetrating power in history.

The .69 Brown Bess, used by the British Army starting in 1722 when they began to seriously force line tactics into their doctrine, used 100 grain of powder. It would have a muzzle velocity of just over 850 feet per second (compared to the Longbows 250ft/s at release) and, with some basic math and assuming a 487 grain musketball (and that's a LOW estimate) it would deliver a kinetic force of 775 ft-lb's with, again, the longbow delivering a mere 127 ft-lb's. If we assume a more realistic musketball grain, around 550 grain, that number shoots over 900 ft-lbs.

So the reason they wore "cloth armor" is because spending significant funds to clad your troops in a bunch of metal armor is absolutely worthless in the face of a bullet. If armor won't do anything significant and if by removing it you could field more troops at cheaper cost you may as well just give your men something that breathes easier. Further, skirmishing has always been a part of European warfare. Even in the 1600's you had cavalry 'strafing' enemy pike/musket formations with carbines and pistols from horseback.

I give our FAQ which has an extensive section on muskets and bows, some of which I have written on. The problem is that bows take more time to train and perfect than muskets, further there are problems of supply and needless diversity of troops.

The problem with bow troops is they are vastly more expensive to train not only requiring significant training and skill to be useful but also continous strength teaining and practice to keep the muscles required to draw a longbow in fighting shape while musket troops have a much lower training and physical requirement allowing many more line regiments to be raised for much cheaper because it didnt take years of training this is compounded by the shift in the way people lived and hunted where far fewer people were able to hunt by the 18th century and those that did used muskets which greatly reduced the number of people who already where trained with a bow

I think the answer to your question is not that complicated: cavalry, or at least melee troops, and the inaccuracy and long reloading time of muskets.

The first forces men to fight packed in group in order not to be picked of one by one by light or heavy cavalry, or simply armed men that succeed in reaching them with close combat weapons.

The second explains the fact that they cannot just shoot those men mounted on horse and moving fast, or even sometimes footsoldiers since doing so would require accuracy, and missing would mean they would get their heads lopped off.

The rise of skirmishers was related to the fact that gunpowder weapons got progressively deadlier with time, compared to other weapons such as swords, pikes, sabers...