First of all let's think about why the Champion System was implemented as a substitute to VR system.
VR system equals vertical progression in it's purest form:
Where there is a beginning and an end. When you level in VR system, you have 2 things to worry about: your character level and your skills level. Once you have your character and your skills at max level, you are effectively on the same level as any player in the game, no matter how many more hours of gaming he has put into the game. The only thing that differentiates players at this point is: Gear, Skill and the selection of skills you put in your bar.
Gear is virtually meaningless. You need it to be on top and have cookie cutter builds but anyone with crafted gear can finish virtually all the content in the game and the grind for gear is quite easy when you compare it to games like Lineage 2 where you had to kill thousands of mobs that had a 0,000001% chance of dropping the sword you wanted.
Skill, armor and Skill selection/interaction is where the differences are and where the diversity in the current system is not enough. There aren't many skills and the best combinations of skills with the current system have already been found. As per armors, there is in fact a LOT of diversity in the game (which is typical of horizontal progression) but they are far from equal and there are too few "OP" armor sets in the game (whereas horizontal progression advocates for a huge number of armor sets available with a lot of different abilities without one being more op than the others).
If you look at the current VR system, all you need to be in the "top tier" of players, is enough time to reach cap and level up skills, a couple of successful trial runs to get your armor (which even for slow players take about 2 months max), then improve your own personal skill.
One of the problems with this system that made many people complain is the increase of Veteran Ranks and the long time it takes to get them unless you're grinding. Players who felt they finally had finished the game and where at the top level, had to level 2 or 4 extra levels to get a couple hundred HP/MGK/STM and be once again on top. I must admit I never understood those complains since 4 levels is nothing if you compare them to games that increase the cap from level 50 to 60, 75, 80, 90, 100, 120 over time as new content comes. One or Two levels with each new zone seemed like a nice compromise to feel like my character was slowly evolving and had new challenges to take on but also left room for many many many new zones since each zone increased the cap by such a small amount.
So VR where removed because people didn't like them. People didn't like them (yes not everybody, but at least this is what I saw the most in the complain threads on the forums) because : In order to have the feeling of completion that comes with being at max level (with all the perks and attribute gains that come with being max level) they had to spend a couple of weeks (for the slower guys actually trying) to level up.
ZOS implements the Champion System and wants to make you think it's Horizontal progression:
Sure, you reach "max level" and then you "expand your character while staying at the same level".
But it actually isn't.
Champion system is the worst kind of vertical progression: It's an
endless grind with steps and the reason for this is the passives that you gain after investing X points in a given tree.
In theory, you need invest 30 - 75 - 120 points in one tree to get the good bonuses (which means you need 3x as many points since you can't invest all your points in the same constellation) such as 12% wep or spell damage crit, HP restoration when getting hit by a critical attack, restore X magicka to you & your party when killing an enemy (AOE party much?), gain a damage shield when blocking, etc etc etc. Thing is, it's unlikely that people will just rush those bonuses since the first points are the ones giving the most advantages and there are some nice bonuses in many places that one should aim for right away thus making you waste even more time and CP before enjoying them. Still, people will get there eventually and once they do, the increase of survivability/DPS/Healing will be noticeable for the player and make him more powerfull than the other players who haven't unlocked those passives.
If you compare to what you currently have which is 14 extra levels after level 50, then you end up with hundreds of levels worth of experience with huge bonuses every ~360 CP which at current rate of ~4h per CP (if you take into account the people who claim it took them 2h and those who said they didn't gain a CP after 6h of playing content) is equivalent to 360*4= 1440 hours of play which divided by 24 gives us 60 days of non stop gaming.
You where complaining because you had 2 or 4 levels difference with someone? You thought that was actually a gap between players?
Try playing a game where the progression is not only extremely long and slow, but has also steps that immediately give you huge boosts over other players that can't catch up to you in mater of days but months. Imagine a player starting to play 6 months after the CP system has been implemented that tries to PVP against other players when he reaches level 50 (supposedly cap), imagine someone that starts the game, levels up to 50 and tries to get into competitive end game raids, he will never be able to catch up nor be as strong as players who have 600+ CP and many useful passives unlocked which means they will, forever be, locked out of any accomplishment in the game or any PVP leaderboard unless they become zombies and play 24/7.
The whole problem as others have stated before me is that the system is based on XP this is what makes a system that looks like horizontal progression actually feel like a huge vertical progression grindfest.[/b]
I can already see the QQ posts of casual players complaining because they are unable, no matter how much skill they have, to compete against people with OP passives or OP damage, I can already see the QQ posts of new players when they come to realize that no matter how hard they try or how much time they invest in the game, they will never have characters as good as players who have been playing since the beginning of the system.
And I can also see the QQ rage/ I quit posts when ZOS realizes their mistake in this system and either decreases the XP needed to gain CP or redoes the whole constellations or implements some kind of CP boost you can buy with crowns or just moves back to a regular leveling system (which would be the smartest choice given the other options).
Don't get me wrong, I don't like Horizontal progression, I like vertical progression and I'll have my CP and my OP bonuses, but what good is it to be OP in a game that no new players will want to play and where many current players will quit when they see the huge grind they have to partake in to stay even competitive compared to other players?
@ZOS, If you want to know what Horizontal progression really is and try to implement it, here is a post that describes it quite well
http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/strangesands/122012/24271_What-is-Horizontal-Progression-Really
Worst part is I don't even like the systems explained in that post, to me, the best thing in a game is per example knowing there is a new shiny armor that will increase my strength and that I have to obtain it through a challenge, still real horizontal progression beats endless vertical progression grinds, that's what Korean MMOs are for and your public is not Korean and it mostly doesn't like endless grinds.
TLDR and to conclude:
The depth of the Champion system options and possibilities is quite nice and typical of horizontal progression many casuals crave, but the implementation and the fact that it's based on XP will create huge gaps between players in strength and utility and this difference will be the most noticeable at early levels which are the ones that matter most to keep an audience hooked and willing to play the game. If the passives where gained by clearing in game content (quests, trials, arena, PVP levels) instead of just earning XP as it is suggested in the link I shared above, then it would be horizontal progression and it wouldn't feel like a grind to players who would probably enjoy the game and taking onto challenges in order to unlock the nice passives, this would also create a sense of community and guilds dedicated to help players gain these passives thus leading people to play together instead of just looking for the best way to optimize CP grind and just do that over and over and over again with the same group of people.
Problem is, you'd actually need playable content past end game to implement such as system and this is something this game lacks a LOT (then again, since game stops at level 50, you got all of Caldwell's silver & gold to work with now).
Unless you're willing to review the way CP is earned by players to allow them to get the passives faster thus allowing people to reduce the gaps between players in a timely manner, I predict this system in the short run will fail and sadly, so will the game.
TLDR 2:
@OP, is the short version of your post that the attempt to prevent the gap between players from growing too large by applying diminishing returns for CP points is eclipsed by the power of the passives it unlocks, which create a large gap between "haves" and the "have nots"?