I think the tutorial is good for handing out free stuff to new players, but I'd rather see the stat increase happen on your first anniversary or something so that the tutorial isn't something you feel like you have to do if you want to give your character every chance to be awesome. As it is, I just discard any free stuff the game gives me, but that just feels unpleasant.
Game-course completion options are indeed gamey, and we’ll rid of them at some point – leaving only one reals tutorial like course.
Stat increase has been discussed at times, and in theory it that could be added but it had to be based on actual usage of the ability and happen very slowly. We think the stats more like innate qualities of the character and every character shouldn’t ever reach max. stats. This brings up a question “But you get stronger by doing physical work!”, and yes you do, but this is already featured by skill increase. The skill increase for example in bow or swords of course requires appropriate muscles to get stronger too. Now it doesn’t reflect in the game with strength attribute increase but strength is very general term. Is it the strength in your back muscles, legs, shoulders? Sword and bow require different strength, as does the timbercraft and hideworking. The same goes for many attributes.
Are you agile to dodge or agile to climb trees? Base agility helps in both but to train dodging trains different kind of agility than climbing.
So the attributes are more like a generic overall starting point on which you build the physical skills – and the skill increase reflects what you’ve learned and what your body has adapted to. In that sense attribute increase hasn’t ever felt too necessary but if it was added it had to be very, very slow.