Transhumanism or superheroes - without essence cost, how hard would the game break?, When money and BP/Karma are the only factor... Options

[Brainpiercing7.6...]

So I keep thinking about this: how important is essence as a game balance tool? (Because it certainly serves pretty poorly as anything else.)

So now there are two train of thoughts here:

1) Every character, as in, special person, is awakened for free, and does NOT suffer magic loss, either. People who wish to be mundane can cash in on their magical quality (5bp/10karma for adept).

2) magic loss is the only consequence of augmentation

Even cursorily glancing through the books brings me to a money stop when starting to install serious cyber/bio. Also, bioware instantly loses some of it's advantage, since you're not splitting the pool anymore, and the high cost holds it back. The only way to make really filthy use of it is using used cyber. Also, a lot of ware needs Restricted gear at a useful rating, so you're not buying endless high rating wares.

So basically, how much does the game turn into a clash of demigods? Is this like epic D&D, where the game basically breaks, or does the scale simply shift? I'm thinking the game is actually less likely to break, because DP creep is less bad than bonus creep with a fixed RNG. What will likely happen first is that characters will not only have obscene offensive DPs, but rather obscene defenses, too, due to cyberlimbs/armour/dermal sheath/etc. So will the game overall become more deadly, or less?

The other thing is that now fairly well-rounded characters can still have large DPs in some areas. When playing around with DK's sheet a bit I immediately don't find my attempt at a character much more extreme than some of the chars posted on these boards - however, he can sport a 20dice offensive pool while still having around 30+dice for damage resistance (which clearly isn't really that much). I also don't need to min-max much.