Don,
Your last sentence is the one that I just don't understand how and why SDS does not provide this. It is such a simple concept and simple technically. It is file and db management and they just choose not to do it. It would take a developer all of 1/2 day to write code to do this. I know the next year will have additional fields that they put in for player attributes database. No biggie. Include them in the data import and make them all a standard value that the user can then edit to what they want.
For example, if a new field is introduced next year for, let's say, languages spoken (silly, I know)...then in the player data import shell just include the field and put the standard value of "English" in...or whatever. We could then change it. This way, the new version would bring forward all previous data as well as have the new fields available that would be included in the new version of the game.
That's all it really is...but they choose not to consider.
C