Skill is rewarded in that with skill you get more WP and that means more ISK and SP.
Passive SP gives casual gamers (skilled or non-skilled) a chance to not fall too far behind those with time to play 18hrs a day

SP are not an I WIN button. SP's still require skill to utilise. You can have all your gunnery skills up to Lvl 5 but if you cannot aim to begin with those points are useless. All defence skills to lvl 5 but if you stand still in the open you still die quick.

The "firsts" as you call them are rewarded with as many SP in a day as a Skilled player can make in a match meaning a skilled player will always catch an unskilled casual even with diminishing returns.

And this is more related to a common misconception IGÇÖve seen all over this thread.

You could start Eve today, Scam, steal, beg, kill or trade for ISK make enough ISK in any way you can think and once you have saved enough you can buy a 150 million SP Character LEGALLY for the Isk you made. The possibilities in Eve are endless. If you were a rich casual you could also spend RL money on PLEX and sell them in game for ISK and use that to buy a high SP character.

Someone was suggesting that the sp only be rewarded based off time, like it is in eve. No sp for active gaming, only passive sp. To be clear, I support the current sp reward system.

Also, the idea of creating your own character so that you can use it simply to replace itself with some other character some other player made is unpleasant to me as well. Kind of a "Forget about taking your own path, buy someone else's so you can be on top!" I won't be using that system if implemented but for those who it works for, whatever. I only see the character and could care less who is controlling it, unless its on my team. I like the sp system as is. Passive sp are rewarded, but active sp dominates. You cant get too far ahead as the longer you play, the more diminished the return of sp is for what you do. Skilled players are rewarded with the most sp. Why change this to eve passive sp system? So us beta folk can have the highest sp characters? I don't think we deserve it for being first.

Again TL:DR

I did wee a few post i'll comment on. As a almost 9 year player of eve, i will say that there really is no Cap to your class. As ccp is always changing and adding new things to cretin jobs. There is also no Class, as again you can change professions on the fly.

If dust is like eve then honestly SP will not matter. In eve, my main has 100M SP (i took a year off and never use implants, ya i know odd right) Anyway, at any time a noobie can kill me in heart beat, no matter how bad ass my ship is, i can still be killed anytime, almost anywhere by anyone. Skills only take you so far. From what i have seen thats the same thing with dust. A sniper can take out a high skilled player with the right hits. You can get a lucky shot with a swarm launcher or an AV nade and blow a tank sky high. Skills in the long run will not matter, and that skill point gap won;t make a lick of difference if you just got pounded on, got out with 10% armor, only to have a noob run up an knife you in the back. The point is, Dust seems like it will be more like eve then say WoW, where your skills points give you an advantage, but just because you have 1billion SP doesn't mean you will survive a noob who has a different weapon or gets the jump on you.