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New players should be encouraged to generalize. Whether new players picking up a new game system, or old players participating in a new campaign, their incomplete understanding of the game, its world, and their role in the party, means that, early on in the campaign, they should be encouraged to generalize; and later on in the game, they should be encouraged to specialize, once they know what the GM is likely (and unlikely) to throw at them. "If I'm a mercenary, does that mean I need the NBC suit skill?" A new player cannot be expected to know, nor should they have to spend points early on, trying to out-guess the GM. It should just be more efficient to spend points on attribute levels for the first couple sessions, and take advantage of the base defaults.

This means a few important things... the cost of raising or lowering attribute levels should be the same for new characters, even for characters at radically different point totals, and thus base campaign attribute levels, as long as those characters are both at the start of their respective campaigns. This may be why GURPS has a flat attribute level cost. I don't necessarily agree with a flat attribute cost, but so long as the player is buying attributes near the base level of the start of the campaign, regardless of what that base level is for another campaign, it should cost about as much. I think this means that buying Advantages that increase the attribute levels (or effective attribute levels) to the base campaign attribute level should be at a flat rate. Buying regular attribute levels above the campaign level should cost more, and returning attribute levels should return less. But the point totals of "more" and "less" are equivalent for new characters of different base campaign attribute levels. Skills should be bought at or near their lowest levels, except for experienced players, in those situations for which it makes sense.

At that point, buying new attribute levels should be cheaper than buying up your skills, but the cost should quickly rise at a rate where it becomes less efficient than buying up your skills. This should encourage players to specialize more. The cost of skill levels will probably still rise per level, but will also have to balance out with the cheapness of buying base campaign attribute levels, so that characters of different point totals stay equivalent... "older" characters will simply be more skillful. New players (or maybe even new characters for an old player) should probably start with an increased base campaign attribute level, based on the current point totals in the party. Even if the player has figured out the game system, and the GM, he may not yet have figured out his new place in the party. Since the skills of the older players were bought at costs balanced with base campaign attribute levels, the matching point totals should still make for equivalent characters. What this means for the costs of skills, I'm not sure. But I think a balance can be reached.

The GM may need to play a bigger role in order to maintain this balance, and keep character creation working. But I think this line of thought sheds new light on your musings. This cost structure emphasizes learning the game quickly, easy character development, and improves player readiness at the start of the campaign. In return, it asks the game designer to do some math, to write some clear instructions for the GM so that he can maintain character balance, and the GM to follow those instructions (within reason) when assisting players with character creation. I suspect a system like this can be built, and I believe, perhaps with some tweaking, it can mesh with Escargot, or at least its principles.