I like the idea about character evolution in its essence but i do not agree with the idea of making one character better than the other. Dayz is an open world mmo game, with pvp on always, this means that you cannot choose not to pvp. To make characters who have been playing longer stronger than the new ones by simple game mechanics would be a major drawback for new players and would result in a gradually more difficult game for the new players that are to come. The second problem about raising skills is that it should not be impossible to survive as a new player, but neither should it be too easy for an older character to survive. That would mean a very difficult balancing of skills which would probably give more problems than good to the game. Thir of all, if you give characters skills, the main objective when you get nto the game, would be to raise these skills as fast as possible, which would probably make the survival part of the game less important. But i do think that some kind of character progression would make you more carefull, since a character which you are more personal involved with (even in a game) would be a harder loss than one which you just need to invest the some time in again. There is need of something that makes every character unique so that the new character isnt just a copy of the old one.