Although it's too late for VO, here's an interesting idea.

Imagine any MMORPG type game, and remove all "license" and "level" requirements. OH MY! Instead, higher "level" items are just massively more expensive. After all, to go fishing, you don't have to prove you're a good fisherman. All you have to do is pay for a license. You don't have to prove you're good with a pistol to buy one. You do have to prove you can drive though, but that's for the sake of common welfare. It will still take "grinding" to get "high level" items. Who knows if it works, and I kind of wonder if it will if someone would try.

Wasn't that how licenses were before. You had to pay more and more for each license test?

You had to do both. Gain xp and pay.

That's somewhat how VO was before the first big push to Beta. I liked the fact that it made things a bit more skill oriented and less level grind based.

On the other hand it was rather annoying that a player could make a new char, transfer a zillion dollars to them and then immediatly be able to fly around in triflarevalks or with instanukes being a jerk.

Been there, done that, it was a hassle having to return to a station and pay (you often forgot!) and so 'twas removed. End o' discussion.