It may just as well imply incredibly complex and flexible character system.
If your list of skills is long enough, then the character will likely have points in many of them even while staying focused, which means they will be unlikely to gimp themselves with unsalvageable skill selection.
Sounds different from your "No bad builds allowed." decree. Likely or unlikely, suppose, like you did for Fallout, that we're primarily investing into the non-combat non-diplomacy non-stealth side of the spectrum. Either we'll be able to beat the game by Climbing, Swimming and Ancient Literature or the long list gets shorter with the lack of any situational skills.
As for the breadth of character, if you can't balance for different breadths, then you can always try to constrain characters to fixed number of skills at given level of specialization (the way the older TES games have done it).
And if your limited specs only get you part of the way and you need to respec? It's hardly surprising that you'd suggest a design formula that actually demonstratively breaks characters because of lack of content.
See the highlighted part.
If you conserve the character vs list breadth ratio then extending the list twofold will give us about 6 tags.
Selecting six shitty or auxiliary skills is much harder than three, not to mention that if your system doesn't have as many purely auxiliary/flavour/joke skills you will have to take at least one useful one.
In Morrowind, for instance, it's literally impossible* to make a broken build, because they are not enough purely auxiliary skills to go around.
*) Apart from magicka limitation, but this depends on signs, races and base magicka multiplier, not the skill system, and apart from some skills being too useful or buggy, but that's the issue of sloppy implementation. In terms of skillset and the roles of individual skills it's foolproof.
If skills are flexible and problem solving free-form, then there will be a way of utilizing nearly any combination of skills to your advantage in any situation, even though it may be very non-obvious and difficult for player to come up with.
This wouldn't be skill-system reliant, though, this would be game content reliant.
Tactics, my friend, tactics. You have a variety of tools at your disposal, you have rich environment providing many natively mechanical (as in not specifically scripted) opportunities to use those skills, you try to devise combinations of actions using available tools that solve your problem.
I have already given you an example in the form of hostage rescue through use of unusually low level illusion, sneak and alchemy.
But this is content, not skill-system.
How the fuck do you want to consider skill system and content independently of each other?
Is skill for operating electrically powered portable gatling gun good? Depends.
In something like Fallout - probably.
In faux medieval fantasy RPG or nursing simulator? - not so much.
Depends on nothing but fucking content you expect to find in your game.
If you want ancient Latin skill in a game that won't feature any Latin speaking people, or Latin texts, then feel free to just fucking LARP it if you can't help yourself.
It's not relevant to the gameplay and doesn't need to be covered by gameplay system.
As a rule of thumb, depending on gameplay synergies, you'll want a character being small slice of your skill list if there are virtually no synergies, but if there are many, you'll want considerbly greater breadth - extreme case: assuming all skills synergize with each other, will give you the most variety of builds that play very differently for characters with as much as 0.5 coverage of your skill spectrum.
Are we talking about producing new skills? Like, if I invest in Daggers and Lassoing I'll unlock Tailoring? You did say gameplay synergies, so I'm guessing no. Are we talking about tasks that require a certain skill reacting to all skills across the board? Like, he's lock-picking a chest with half the required skill, but he also knows Tinkering so the lock opens. It's just a crutch for an obviously lacking skill-system. Or are we talking about the combination of skills to complete a certain quest-line, like stealth-lockpick/pickpocket-piemaking? Sort of like how RPG's generally work?
No, we are talking about potential for using skills together in ways that may not even be explicitly intended.
For example, if you can summon some creature using skill A and buff it using skill B, then playing character that has both skills will be qualitatively different from playing characters with only one of them.
For example you can raise a skeleton using necromancy and make it heed your commands. You can also cast protective spell shielding one human sized target from fire using certain other school of magic. You're faced by a corridor lined by both flame and arrow firing traps and need to retrieve a non-flammable item. Even if you can't disable traps with your skillset, dodge them, teleport to the item, levitate it telkinetically back to you, or levitate over the trigger plates yourself, you can buff your skeletal servant with fire resistance (it cares little for arrows lodged between it ribs or even piercing its skull as long as it doesn't jeopardize its integrity) and send it to retrieve item. You wouldn't be able to if you didn't have both skills.
Or, back to my bandit camp, if character's magic skill is not useful as anything but short term distraction at its level (making illusionary noise, knocking an item over with TK, lighting a bush) and alchemy skill alone fails as well (weak curative and regenerative potions and mild, disabling orally ingested poisons), the character having both can still successfully infiltrate bandit camp by using temporary distraction to set up long term advantage in form of mass indigestion.
We were talking in a context. In Fallout neither first aid, doctor nor outdoorsman can be used to progress through main quest.
I'm afraid you're just plain wrong. The main quest begins with you leaving the vault, and consists of triggering events that aren't necessarily linked to any particular skill. If you want specific skill-checks, it raises the question whether or not combat skills can be used in order to progress.
It doesn't have to be specific skill-checks, but if at some point of critical path the alternative is combat or using mechanics to bypass combat, then abilities that help in neither can't be used to progress through main quest, unless the combat is easy enough to be essentially skill-less.
Followers can be a buffer of sorts here, but outdoorsman only helps you on travel screen, while there don't seem to be many medical opportunities along the way.
If I tag those three skills I am expected to use them as axis of my character, so either the game fails by providing unsupported builds, or it fails by allowing you to progress ignoring your build.
Wrong. You tag the skills you want to cap or get a boost in as early as possible, and that's it. All characters know all skills to different degrees, and there is no rule stating which skills are out of bounds for your build.
Tag mechanics doubling the amount of points you put into skill says otherwise. For just buffing skills of choice to begin with merely distributing points would be sufficient.
Either make it so that you can only tag the skills that get high starting values based on your SPECIAL, make you tag more skills than you have shitty/purely auxiliary skills in your skill list, or some combination of both.
But why? Limiting skill choice to stat affinity does nothing other than ensure you'll get the most out of your skill-points, at the cost of freedom. Three tags is almost too much as it is, two would probably be a better option.
Sense? Why should an IN 1 retard be able to advance in science at all, let alone 2x faster than hitting shit with a stick anyway?
Also, make adjustment to the number and breadth of individual skills - why the fuck are doctor and first aid separate?
They do different things?
How can you be a fucking doctor without knowing first aid? Yes, they do different things - first aid does simple things, doctor does complex things. They should be tiers of the same skill, not separate skills.
how exactly is firing laser pistol different from firing a regular one, but similar to firing laser rifle?
No recoil.
Gunpowder powered firearms have varying recoil, bullet drop or travel time can be insignificant at short ranges and most important part of operation boils to sighting in, aiming and squeezing the trigger trying to keep it steady.
If anything, skills should be separate based on operation - direct fire, indirect fire, burst, single, gunpowder based, rocket, laser and so on - how is firing a gatling cannon similar to firing a flamethrower, and how is any of them similar to rocket launcher?
You can't have it both ways - either you separate based on principle of operation or weight class. Ok, you can also make it a tree or treat both divisions as orthogonal, but not divide half of your weapons based on this half on that.
I think it makes perfect sense that you, and probably your character, find medical skills overall a surprising disappointment. Heck, everyone in the vault probably thought they'd be a big success, but the outside world has had quite a number of years to compensate for a dangerous, hostile environment.
By producing magitek-level universal medicaments despite being unable to produce proper roofs?
And, hang on a second here, you can reasonably expect to find high-end, military grade overkill weapons early? In the fucking wasteland?
You know how it's '50s future where everyone and their grandma has a raygun? I might just as well expect conventional arms to be rare relics of the past, while rayguns not exactly common, but they were presumably common before the nukes fell.
No you can't. You can't expect your first ever lvl 1 character to beat the game, and you can't expect that your random skill selection will be the most useful. You can't expect that the game will accommodate for your particular lvl 1 build.
Then I can expect that the game won't force me to commit to that build by tagging skills with meaty 2x increase rate.
Too entitled for you?
DraQ saying there's no value in research and that practice doesn't make perfect, how quaint.
Trial and error isn't exactly research, and I would rather play my game without consulting wiki.
Practice also isn't exactly why I'm playing a game - if the game keeps effectively throwing me back to chargen screen because I guessed a bad build, forcing me to experience the same fucking content over and over again, then it goes in the trashcan. I'm not interested in guessing games, I'm interested in games where I make critical decisions (those that can effectively cripple me for the rest of the game or force a restart) based on sufficient information I'm given and my ability to use this information.
I want to explore systems and content, not developers whims.
On a second or third playthrough I may sperg my build to eleven (or go for some zany flavour build), but one playthrough is pretty much all you, as a designer, can take for granted. Everything past that point is extra.
Not sarcastic, stupid.
Multiplayer games rarely make your mistakes trail after you for multiple hours. Multiplayer games also don't force you to experience the same fucking content again and again as part of the necessary learning on those mistakes.
Wrong, that's pretty much what mp games are all about.
Next time you will tell me Go involves experiencing the same content over and over because it's only black stones, white stones and a piece of plank.
Even fairly low level of proficiency should be sufficient to thoroughly fuck an unproficient combatant up. Even relatively high level of proficiency shouldn't give you much chance against master.
In perfect agreement there. Now, suppose you're going against an "unproficient" combatant with a total of X invested into combat skill Y. Now, suppose you've invested 3X, how will the difference manifest?
Won't? Because either way you will have him on his ass in three seconds flat?
It's like expecting that if a person with repair skill at 1% is capable of identifying a loose screw, then tightening it up in about 15s, the person with repair at 100% will tighten the same screw in 0.15s.
If your skill is very low or very high relative to the problem then it falls below or above cutoff level, meaning that changing it has no effect.
Being an expert engineer doesn't make tighten screws super fast or super well, being able to apply band-aid doesn't make you any more likely to perform brain surgery than a person that can't.
Are you implying that 3 combat skills at 30% should be the norm for any average encounter, while optional encounters mean 100% in 1 skill?
No, I imply that with 3 skills at 30% you either attempt to solve a 100% problem via some alternative means or fucking run from it, while with one skill at 100% but remaining two at 0% you do the same with problem requiring skills you do not have.
Naturally there won't be any real problem for a master swordsman to handle any average encounter
What if this encounter just happens to be a golem? Or mundane bear? Or two guys with aimed crossbows?