[Malorn]

Originally Posted by Raymac

Or perhaps, instead of in PS1 where you have "time-grinding indefinitely without ever having a hope of maxing out" for merits that do nothing at all, now that "grinding" will give you minor skill bonuses that at least do a little something.

This is incorrect. There was no indefinite grinding in Planetside.

Giving out bonus to those who play the game longer is pretty lame, and as a poster said above it cheapens battles. But if such a system goes in veterans will have no choice but to do it because not doing it means you're at a disadvantage. Its not cool for someone to have an artificial edge on you just because they played the game longer - they will already have the edge of experience and familiarity. There is no need to compound that.

People seem to think this is a totally new idea, when in fact it is just fleshing out principles already established in PS1. (more BR = more power; minor skills instead of merits) Plus, this game is still going to be a shooter so any minor adjustments of stats will always be second to the skill of the player.

This is incorrect. More BR = More options in PS1. You can argue that options is a form of power but it is one thing to give you access to equipment and quite another to improve its performance. This is a very significant difference.

You also had built-in tradeoffs in PS1. Your cert points were limited so you coudln't have everything simultaneously. BR allowed you to have more, but it didn't make the things you had any more effective. There was no artificial differential between say a gauss in the hands of a BR 1 vs a gauss in the hands of a BR 20. That was an important and very awesome part of planetside and judging from this thread and the poll more than a few people are concerned that adding in power advancement is the wrong direction for that system.