Borderlands 2 Gets "Badass" Progression System

Going by this piece from Eurogamer, the developers at Gearbox Software hope to make Borderlands 2 "a hobby", by extrapolating data from the 2-year-old Borderlands and applying it to make an uncapped, profile-assigned statistics growth system, the "Badass" system. Honestly speaking, I'm not sure what the gameplay purpose is and how it will fit the design, but here's a description and what Randy Pitchford hopes to accomplish with it:
As you play Borderlands 2 you level up your Badass rank, which is linked to your profile but provides statistical bonuses to all your characters - new and old.

Each time you use a token gained through Badass, the game randomly picks a set of statistics. Then, you decide which statistic to increase. It's all powered by a secret algorithm the developer is keeping close to its chest.

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There's also the issue of value, Pitchford added. He hopes that by creating a game that, technically, will last players forever, they will feel they're getting value for money.

"They got to take a risk. They've got to spend some money. They've got to buy a game. And I want them to feel like, man, the value I'm getting out of this, it's not only worth the $60 or whatever, I'm getting more value out of this than the last $500 I spent on other video games. We want that goodwill.

"So we're thinking about it like a hobby and not like just a consumable, get it done and get ready to buy your next game."