I can see one benefit of less augmenting as it applies to setting difficulty level, in that the characters' levels won't depend as much on how much they care. That is, in HQ1, there are times that they might really work on justifying lots of augments, and times that they wouldn't as much. And that varies from player to player. Which made it harder to predict at what level the characters would be operating. (although I think some players kind of helped created that ebb and flow effect by how hard they augmented).
So in that sense I like the more limited, but significant, augmenting rules already: they enable another good thing, totally aside from not spending as much time on augments.
I do see one sort of accidental casualty of the more limited augmenting though, which is actually one of my favorite character approaches: the character who is not skilled directly at what they'll be doing, but who has lots of supporting abilities making them decent. So the farmer who is not all that trained in weapons who is dragged into the rebellion....but who is tall, strong, brave, dedicated, etc, and so on. Or the person called on to take up a priest's role who is really more of an entertainer, and has to find ways to apply all of those skills to the new role.
It does not sound like that sort of character will work as well in the new rules. Which is probably not much of a loss overall (when I've tried to explain this concept before I've been greeted with some degree of bafflement, so I think my preference for this sort of character is not a common one. But I just thought I'd note it.
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