In Van Buren, perks were no longer tied to your player character's level, but depended solely on your character's statistics and skills. Only high-level characters would have high skills anyway, and powerful perks being dependent on very high skills would be more of an incentive to specialize in a given skill. In consequence, a skill generalist would get more bang for his or her buck by spreading points around. He or she would make less overall progress, but would have access to more perks that make him or her even more formidable with a skill than the rank alone would indicate.