Rewards are nice but real rewards are better than participation medals. Perks are real rewards.
You can spend them. New players look at perks because they don't have enough to fly the 262.
New players don’t care about perks. Neither do I, come to think of it. And if you think a new player is even THINKING about Me-262s and on even the most basic level understands the perk system or how to “spend” them you’re dreaming in Technicolor.
Perks are probably number 2,457 on the list of things noobs care about.
Start giving them medals and things they can grasp early and often for awhile...
Give them a mission debriefing summary popup so they have some tangible feedback as to how they did. Showing they earned 0.14 perks hidden somewhere on the bottom of the clipboard menu where it is almost never seen is NOT going to do anything...