These are in fact three issues:
1) the range of equipment power and character power in the game. As it stands now, MMOs have a much higher necessity for rewarding players with progress/wealth, since the less tangible rewards of a PnP game are much harder to get across. We will have to incorporate that to adegree, so players will start weaker than in an average SR game and grow incerementally (not WoW Lvl 1 to Lvl 80, though). Example: Instead of basically using numbers from one to six, we will use them (current working hypothesis, at least) like Essence is used, with a decimal point- 1.2, 3.4 etc. This means we can give away smaller rewards more often and we can also use a less drastic modifier system with finer tuning possible. This does not alter the final power of a maxed out char, but it makes getting there filled with little advancement steps...
2) Item scaling - I think there is a lot of room for rewarding items in the same way - especially since we have a much broader number of factors than in non-tactical turn based MMOs (remember, we have aiming, reload, stance, recoil, speed to ready, cost to fire, bullets per burst and a bunch of other weapon stats which can be affected and the same goes for magic , software, drones etc.). So while I agree that we will probably also have to slightly expand the power range an item can have, there is little need for epic items to find ways to reward players continously.
3) what drives the game - well I would hope three things:
- our plots which are somehow related to factions - especially given the players identify slightly with their chars and certain factions over others - hands up for who likes the Azzies?
- greed (get more stuff, get stronger). always a great motivator

- the chance to affect the storyline and actually see oneself as part of a concerted effort to push the plots into certain directions