Nope. Its not a levy, but a product that can be exchanged.
You could say you have to trade for it with items, but you can also trade it for items.
Point is, it pressures the players to be more skill based by making their shots count. Say, if I want a 250 kill streak and with my old skill level I need 10 permits worth of shots. But now that there's an incentive for me to improve my skills as I could sell a couple of permits away if I can get 250 kills with fewer shots. I.e 8 permits used, so I could sell 2 away.
10 permits is equivalent to 5000 shots and its more than enough since it will not be counted in spars or basing.
Its meant to push for skills improvement, rathed than restrict anything.
Moreover, it changes the difficulty level for pkers. For instance, if I dominated a street with 400 kill streak and I ran out of permits, I could go pk in a base (which is more difficult) to get streaks. This in a way filters the overpowered pkers away from the streets, to allow weaker players to pk or new players to roam.
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