Even as an intermittent player over the years, I've found the disparity of knowledge of equipment and preps between someone like me (who played the first day CF opened) and off and on over the years with the current hard-core serial players and the rank newbies.

What I've noticed is that it does look like most of the rewards, both in PK advantage and in Immortal rewards are garnered by the serial players to the detriment of newbies.

What about a revamp of the current attitudes of the Immortals to reward PC's that are vets who purposefully gimp their character to make it more challenging? I'm not talking about flaws per se, but rather making role choices and gear/ target choices that are anti-power gaming rather than trying to set a new PK record by waxing everything that moves that can even marginally be justified. Having Imm rewards for choosing this path might help develop more niche characters that will never roll over everyone in range but can still be successful within a narrow range of enemies.

The way the game is structured now, it simply is geared pretty much entirely toward vet knowledge for the vast majority of in-game perks whether it's the nifty gear, PK'ing success or Imm awards like virtues, legacies, quest forms, spells, tattoos, etc..

Years ago when I was an Imm, I tried to make it a point to almost randomly award perks to PC's that were doing what I viewed as appropriate RP'ing, particularly to those who hadn't been receiving any other perks. Though I will admit that my role as an Imm was focused on role-playing (as it was viewed at the time), religion and cabal politics, I didn't do any coding or area writing. The upside of that was that it freed me up to watch a lot more PC's and interact more freely with them.

But that's just my humble opinion.