[Fiberwyre_P2P]

I don't really see how giving players an incentive to spar is counterproductive to what you're suggesting. Giving people rewards for actually playing the game gives them less of a reason to mine for 1000 hours when they can just PK for money.

It's essentially how most games do progression these days. CoD gives you experience for killing people, which unlocks things. LoL gives you IP for playing games, which lets you unlock champions, Etc. That's essentially what you have to do to get away from people needing to work for 1000 hours to buy a decent gun to be competitive. What other way is there short of just giving people free stuff for doing nothing?

The similarity between the examples I gave is that they're easy to pick up because the difference between what the top-end players have and what the bottom-end players have isn't huge or game changing.
In CoD, the gun you start with is competitive with the gun you unlock at max level. In LoL, the champions that cost 450 or 1350 IP are balanced with the champions that cost 6300 IP.
It has nothing to do with incentives.

I agree that Era could and should be easier to pick up, but I think you're in the wrong thread.