Right, but two things:
1) There wasn't (isn't?) an equal distribution of skills that used the various attributes.  Depending on your attributes, different characters would have vastly different total times to learn every skill in the game.  The ones that specialize in the under-represented attributes suffered as a result.
2) For following a certain path (ie. combat skills), some attributes are vastly better than others.  Someone focusing on cha/mem was going to be at a huge disadvantage to someone doing per/will, because very few - if any - relevant skills used cha/mem as primary.  Sure, this guy could go off and train some market management or mining skills faster than his friends, but what if he doesn't want to?  is he forced to because of the uninformed choices he made during the space of 3 minutes 5 years ago?

In terms of learning skills, I didn't mention them in my original post but I agree.  They are another example of a problem that CCP had to deal with for a long time, and the longer they were in the game the harder it was for CCP to fairly remove them.  Only now, this month, have they finally been able to remove them safely from the game.

You'll never even want to get close to learning EVERY SKILL in the game.  If anything you'll want to learn every skill in a particular skill set like combat/ewar, but if you want to venture further than that you either make a new character or account.  It will be cheaper that way and there are so few crossover skills that you wont be hurting yourself by doing things on a new character.

Your pipe dream of learning every skill in the game just isnt realistic.

And wtf is this talk of charisma, willpower, cha, and mem?  Are you sure you know which game forum you're posting in?

I don't.  Pure specialists should always be better in their roles than hybrids.

+1 for comments from paying customers.

Agreed, and I was going to post another load of text on this issue but realized my OP had already grown pretty big, so I'll save it for a different thread.

Then I did misunderstand your point.

I agree whole-heartedly, Cerzi. To "gimp" characters based on starting attributes just seems counter-intuitive. I understand that not everyone will want every skill, but the current system places a (very) slight penalty on people who want to dabble, but that scales to what could possibly be a large penalty if said people decide they want to commit to those roles. The only alternatives are to roll an alt (and split EP), or grab a second account (the best option, though not as financially viable for some players).

There's already enough of a penalty incurred when one splits their EP between unrelated skills, why ramp that up further by making said skills (extensions, whatever) require a higher amount simply because you chose a different role when starting? I'm a fledgling  game designer myself, and can see no long-term gain from such a system aside from the potential of more subscriptions (which admittedly needs to be taken into account in design).

To me games like this are all about there versatility. I would be happy with one attribute re-spec a year to allow me to change the way I want to play throughout my time here. But to be honest I could just roll an alt. So I am not here to argue as either way i'm happy.

I would not call that abusing, but that's certainly a problem. If we get a mean to respect or modify our attributes during the character progression, it will become automatically more advantageous for the players to wait until he has the correct attributes to put point in any skill. And this will incite players to keep their EP the longer they can before spending then. This problem didn't happen too much with Eve since the skills were progressing anyway, attributes correctly set or not.

And I think this is a really unfun mechanic. Waiting to spend before understanding a bit more the game is alright, but having a long term benefit in not spending its points is, in my opinion, a really dangerous design.

Having attributes work retroactively on skills costs would solve every problem. This would of course lead to some negative EP in case of consequent respecing, but I'm pretty sure this is a lesser worry (this could be negated with forbidding to respec all the attributes in a single shoot, and/or allowing partial skill respec -which is more or less needed, anyway-).

It would allow people to become more specialized, perhaps to their own detriment, when they realize later on that their character has to make some money from recycling, research, or repaired items.  People can be shortsighted, and there tends to be no advantage to starting a new character in EVE, unless you are dual boxing or need someone who is always in a particular station to do errands, like a research alt.  What you are doing now with this character may not be what you end up doing in the long run.

In EVE, it is often the guy with the better "core" skills that wins.  It is the ignorant players that level up their ship and gun skills, then hop in a battleship that runs out of capacitor.  Many of the "core" skills in Perpetuum are R&D and industrial, are they not?  I might be wrong about that because it's not in front of me, but my memory tells me they are.

Each route has trade-offs, but there is a lot to be said for hybrid specs.

This was mentioned and admitted by DEV Zoom in General chat 2 days ago. I hope he really meant what he said and he will be looking into this, to give existing char some form of "one time" attribute respec. To correct our mistakes.

But more importantly is them improving the character creation process and give us more control over setting attributes. More importantly to more clearly explain the attribute system for new players and it's implications when they create their firfst character(s).