Low level PvP

We have not received permission from Burnzey to share the quoted post.

Except it doesn't share shit. It's a faction-based opt-in pvp game where anyone can kill anyone as long as both sides opted into the pvp. You're not punished for killing a lowbie. Faction-based pvp mmos are the fucking bane of pvp mmos' existence. They've ruined any credibility a pvp mmo could have.

And people keep bringing up L2 here because Steven literally took its pvp system, made it better and more casual/lowbie-friendly and said "go have fun". Now what he also needs to do is to add a proper gear balance. L2's gear tiers allowed lower lvled players to be at least somewhat competitive with higher lvled people. So if Intrepid manage to balance their gear tiers in the same way - lowbies might be able to have some impact in pvp.

L2 also prevented high lvl players from farming low lvl locations because they literally didn't get resources or XP from the mobs. I personally hope that it's the same way in Ashes. Have some step-based artisan progression where in order to move onto higher tiers of progress, you forgo the lower ones. Make a soft tie-in to the character's adventure lvl and make taking these steps a voluntary decision instead of "oh, you were at tier3 of gathering and picked up another flower? Now you're at tier4 and can't pick tier2 anymore. Sucks to be you".

This way casual players who don't care for pvp could gather low lvl resources w/o worry that some top lvl dude will come to annihilate them (not like corruption would allow this, but still). And if that player decides to go higher in their artisan progress - they'll have to risk more pvp, because they'd need to go up in adventure lvls and visit locations where there'll probably be more pvp.

This would also create a soft pvp ladder, where any new player could still find pvp around low lvl resources because there's casual players running around there, while said casual players could still pvp back just fine because the gear disparity isn't present. If anything, a casual artisan would probably have muuuuch better gear than a new player, because they've been farming stuff on the same adventure lvl and have made a ton of money doing so.

This interaction was the case on pretty much all L2 servers I've played. Now it was the case because top lvl people made alt characters to farm low lvl locations, but that was the result of a low playerbase and limited game design, while Intrepid could implement this kind of system as something completely intended and rewarded. Casuals would stay happy, pvpers would pvp each other instead of preying on lowbies (while still having the opportunity to go be a dick for 2-3 kills, before assassinating your own character with corruption). And it would be in line with the "risk vs reward" theme, because low lvl players would have way less risk, but their rewards would also be limited, while to get better rewards they'd have to take higher risks by leveling up and moving up the "ladder".