I am hoping that I can boil down a discussion that has been going on outside the forum for over year into a few lines.
RPGs in general have skill progression in a linear curve*. Your character spends or gains experience as a gradual progression. +1 to +2; 30% to 32% and so forth.
However, the thrust of thinking at chez Walsingham has been that progression in real people doesn't go this way. it is less of a curve and more of a staircase. For whatever reason (and there has been a LOT of debate on this) the effective capability of people/trainees etc. tends to move in bursts. They achieve a certain level, sweat and fume, and make mistakes for a while, then suddenly change a lot of what they are doing all at once, and improve.
Hopefully, those of you who are trainers or coaches or teachers are already pretty familiar with this point and will back me up.
My point is that the affective experience of improvement is periods of frustration interspersed with massive elation and improvement.
The current system is just a gradual and unimpressive slide into getting better.
Therefore, would it not be more dramatically exciting, and more realistic to implement character progression that worked in the staircase fashion?
*straight line or not, it's technically a curve.