To be perfectly honest, skills are barely worth it in Character creation, at least in my opinion. The only skills I sometimes invest in are dodge, speech and barter, as they are somewhat hard and/or dangerous to train, but even then, I only take them when I have a point left and donāt know what to do with it.
As it is now, Attributes are worth more. Why would I ever choose to take a skill, knowing that I can get most skills up to level 3 with only 1 book and a mp3 player, when I also know that there is no safe way in increasing your own attributes (besides certain mutations and Granades, both ways which can be quite dangerous).
Hell, investing points in some skills are, in fact, pointless (pun intended?) - take fabrication or sewing for example. I can promise you that pretty much every experienced CDDA player will have both of those skills up to level 2 or 3 in no time. Itās similar with mechanics, you can easily get the first few levels in there when you start playing around with your first car. Cooking is also on the list of the easy to level skills, as you naturally start cooking somewhere down the line, in order to sustain your character.
Itās when those skills hit the higher levels when Iād be willing to spent points, but not the ridiculous amount the game currently asks from me. Level 6 and higher would be attractive to me, considering that this is the point where it starts being hard to train certain skills - you either have to find and read books, which can take a lot of time, or youād have to grind away for a while, which takes a lot of time too. On the other side, whatās the point of playing if you already have a character which can survive perfectly on their own, with great skills right from the start?
What Iām trying to say: There has to be a big change in how skills are gained, how they level and how books work, same with attributes.
My take on it would be the following: Nerf books, a lot, let them take a lot longer. And every skill level you earn should in some way modify the base attributes. There is already a mod out where the attributes are static and only increase by skills, but a hybrid system would be better in my opinion. For example, give the player the base 8 stats and let them haveā¦3-4 points they can freely put into the attributes, simply because every person is different, some are naturally stronger, some are more intelligent and so on - then, ingame, let the attributes slowly increase with the skills. Itās only natural that you become stronger when you keep using a melee weapon, youāll get more accurate/perceptive if you keep firing guns and so onā¦Sounds reasonable?
