I guess the problem is that you're so focused on what you loose with this change that it make you unable to see what you you can gain from it...

Yes you're loosing customization possibilities. But I think the main reason you customize your chars is to be more deadly and/or survivable right? Edges help vet's, who usually are better at PK than newbies, to become harder to kill or escape from in PK fights.

I think this change is, on the long run, better for playerbase growing because it advantages newbies (and less talented players) in their chances to succeed at pk. That what I mean by a more "balanced" game.

What you have to understand is that the best way to keep someone interested in a thing-game-sport he's learning (and God knows there's a lot to learn to be good in CF!) is to make sure the student experiment some "success" in his learning process. I know many thinks that surviving at PK is a form of success and it's true. But believe me, "surviving at someone trying to pk you" satisfies one to a certain point. After a while, as a CF player, you want to be able to pk someone sometimes. That is why I will always be for changes favoring newbies and less skilled players over vet's because pking a vet is one of the hardest thing to do in CF. The very common equation being "vet kill newbie".

I think the actual PB has a lot of very good CF players making it very hard for newbies and less talented players to experiment the success at PKing someone. As PK is a major aspect of the game, it is easy to understand why less and less players spend their limited leisure time playing CF when they're almost never able to pk someone.

So yes you loose customizations and powers lots of edges use to give you but, on the other side, you also give a chance to have a bigger PB. So in the end, you have to ask yourself what you like better: having a uber char in a 10 PB game or a char with less powers in a 50-100 PB game (like CF used to be in early 2000's)?