one of the inherent traps in the system is that it is much easier for a person to start with 12 body and then spend XP to get their Mind and Soul to a decent level than to start with them all at a decent level and then get to 12 body. it is more effective XP-wise to make one stat as high as possible and then raise the others ASAP. Players definitely see this, and many of them do it. Especially now because tehre are practically no psions or magi around, they have time to raise their mind and soul stats in the mean time.
I am not even saying tehre is anything wrogn with what they are doing, because I don't think it's abusing the system. In a way they are just using common sense.
I say higher caps becasue it doesn't make sense that someone can start at basically the height of mortal physical, mental, or spiritual performance. Again, it also increases the longevity of useful XP gain for characters. I see medium to high stats being able to hti pretty much any normal TN for a mastery or something, and the really high stats only coming into play for sheet vs sheet stuff. PC vs NPC, PC vs PC, etc. The higher stats are really for that aspect of the game mroe than for the core of the game. Sure, we could have hgiher TNs for mroe amazing feats, but the TNs as they are wouldn't need to change much, because players are still going to reach the point of hitting those TNs the same time they would if we didn't have hgiher caps.
I think staying with 12 for now until we take a look at it is good, but we should definitely look at moving passed these, and icnreasing the caps for all breeds. Even if it is like one day a few months from now we announce that the stat caps have all raised by 2 or something.