YACO

Skill is a brilliant idea... things like you adapt your body so it's harder to get sick, don't need as much water and food, you loose less food when opening your cans with a knife (since you're better at it)... love it! I'd also suggest a strong rank system... based on different metrics like time alive, maybe even amount of encounters you survived, blood bled out, broken bones, etc... kinda like battle scars... that should encourage people to stay alive even going through the worst situations to keep their record going.

My only problem with this approach (fixing security wholes without punishing hackers) is that it only encourages them to keep trying to find new wholes... becomes a cat/mouse game that the mouse will always be a step ahead. The only way to stop hacking is to punish hard the ones that are doing it.. that way they won't risk trying new ways to hack since they could eventually be caught and punished for it...