To my great disappointment are there no more Cultural Rewards in TOR 2 edition (ALPHA). Cultural Rewards and Cultural Virtues was specifics that I really liked with TOR 1 edition.
I understand that later on can Player-heroes add "features" to the weapons and armours/helms/shields (just as in 1 edition). But what is no more is that each culture has their own Cultural Rewards that is unique for the culture. Not only did the Cultural Rewards give more character to each culture. These extra unique "artifacts" could be a very good reason to what's "weights in" when you picked a culture.
What more is that in the ALPHA, a Reward can only be applied once to the same gear. Virtues can be applied multiple times. In 1 edition was it possible to add a Reward (Qualities) to armour more than once (to a maximum of 3). Any weapon - including a weapon that was a Cultural Reward - could also see a Reward (Qualities) and/or a Virtues (Masteries) upgrade once per feature to a maximum of total 3 Rewards/Virtues (Qualities/Masteries) - including the original feature a Cultural Reward-weapon came with.
The Player-heroes could along their personal development thereby design their weapons to fit their personal style/philosophy in Combat by adding Damage, Injury, Edge.
Finally, there is only six (6) Rewards totally. One of them are for Shields only. Other is for helmets (and armour and shields). Not all players wants to use shields or helmets, and a Player-hero can only upgrade an armour once. This is a problem, especially if the Player-hero has a 2-hand weapon. That means that when a Player-hero that has a 2-hand weapon has reached Valour-rank 5 won't there be no more Rewards when she/he wants to increase the Valour-rank (Many players chose to only use one weapon why they have no need to upgrade a secondary weapon [extra load]).
But if the Player-hero stays alive and not being to badly touched by the shaddow, and therefore don't retire, is it possible to increase the Wisdom-rank to 12 and even higher, and get a new Virtue each time. Hence, in the ALPHA is there now a slight imbalance between Rewards and Virtues, since there are Cultural Virtues, but no Cultural Rewards. This will most likely affect the Valour-ranking negatively since it will always be attactive in increase the Wisdom-rank since it comes with a new Virtue.
Please, is it possible to reconsider the removal of Cultural Rewards?