With some of the "better" abilities it requires a rank to reach them. Would it be a good Idea to remove the rank and instead just use xp?

I'm not talking about having all the abilities be the same price that would be ridiculous but instead of being a certain rank you spend xp on the abilities. The "better" the ability the more it costs to buy. If you want to upgrade an ability like turret 1 to turret 2 you have to pay more than it cost the first time.

This way the game is "balanced" because you have access to all of the abilities at the same time, just like the weapons you just have to choose which ones to use or in the abilities case buy. The ranks could stay for matchmaking purposes but other than that they don't really have a effect, So you still have to work hard to buy an ability but you don't have to wait until rank 5 allowing you to create more characters faster to what you want them to be. After all Brink isn't about leveling up.

Also if you wanted to get rid of an ability you can sell it for half of what you bought it for.

Just some open ideas, there's always don't fix it if it isn't broken.

1. This seems like a huge game mechanic change to something that isn't broken and could take weeks off of things like lag/new maps/dlc and then it would most likely create a huge problem within the game and people would abuse it.

2. totally black is darker than anything else, your sig is simply incorrect, it's pretty much saying "it's always darkest before it gets darker".

Its current system works perfectly fine...