Why does 4e give a flat cost for attribute increases?

[Ashtagon]

Originally Posted by Bruno

Simply put, it produced dirty dirty point crocks. The most glaring problem is non-humans - you could have two characters with a ST of 18, but one payed a lot less points for the privilege if he had a racial bonus of +4 and bought up his ST by 4, and the other was just buying from 10.

This could have been resolved by making it the final attribute value that determined the point cost, rather than counting the racial modifier, other templates, meta-traits, and after-creation upgrades separately. However, this would have meant that it would be impossible to provide a fixed price for any template that included a modifier for an attribute.