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But that's the point. Steven said that corruption clearing will be even harsher than L2's, the drop penalties are harsher (because you didn't drop any resources in L2), the BH's whole existence wasn't a thing in L2, and stat dampening wasn't a thing either.
I totally understood the stat dampening change, because I agree that lowbies shouldn't be harassed, so giving a shitton of corruption to a PKer who's killing lowbies so that he loses the ability to PK more is right imo. But L2's penalties were already quite hard even w/o the additional penalties that Ashes will have. And I'm sure you've seen other L2 players say that PKing wasn't even that widespread most of the time.
So when I see that we'll have an even harsher system in Ashes and then I see Steven adding mechanics that go around the corruption system - to me that's a red flag showing that Intrepid is scared of the backlash and are preventively enharshening the system w/o even testing it.
Of course it could all be the case of "this was planned from the very start, but we're only now learning the details", but then I'd have to ask "if you were already making the system as anti-owpvp as possible, why not advertise that as a feature? Way more people would be glad to hear that, instead of just hearing "we have a system to protect the pve players, trust me bro"".