>What does Joe PK'r do when his range is nada? he
>logs off - right now Joe PK'r can go and explore/enhance his
>game during PK downtimes (more frequent than they used to be)

You mean: "He can go grind up some explore / observation xp".

Joe can still explore new areas that he legitimately hasn't been through before without the incentive of edge points for observation / exploration xp. Because he wants gear, preps, area knowledge he can later use for PK, etc.

Initially I was against the "choice" idea as well, but I warmed to it after thinking about it some more. My first reaction was, "This will exacerbate the problem of one-sided characters." But think about it:

If observation / exploration XP actually does motivate PK characters to "explore" (i.e. grind) then that's not actually a "benefit" to the game.

If edge points for PK actually motivated non-PK characters to participate in PK (and have success) then it would be beneficial, but I don't think it does that. The set of characters wishing to "opt out" of PK completely is generally not that good at PK, and generally know it. Ergo they know they won't amass very many wins, meaning the incentive to participate is correspondingly smaller.

My one concern with the "choice" strategy is that it shoe-horns a character for life. Maybe I think I'm going to be all about exploring, then decide mid-way through the characters life that I want to spend more time on PK. Etc.

Also: allowing the choice would necessitate re-balancing the point rewards (for PK and for observation / exploration xp) for certain classes. Consider healer. If healers get the same # of edge points for PK and observation/exploration as every other class, then no healer is ever going to choose the PK path. But if healers got more points-per-PK than, say, warriors, then some probably would.

The rule would need to be: If you take player A who's aces at exploring and is going to spend all his time exploring, and player B who's aces at PK and is going to spend all his time PKing, and both of them play the same class, then they should ultimately acrrue approximately the same # of edge points. You don't want one choice to be "obviously better" than the other one, for a given class, or everybody who plays that class will choose that particular path.