Well, my only plea regardless of the final form of the skills system is the following:
Please don't slap requirements on skills that make you able to use said skills only in the last 5% of the game. I mean, I want some fun with my difficulty, and having choices is fun, whilst not having choices... isn't.
For example, look at the D&D mage spell system, both old and new. It only takes getting to level 11 (around halfway usually) to open up the option to use the most powerful (tier 9) spells. But at level 11, is restricted in how many can be used (usually just one or two per rest cycle). So available relatively early, but not in its full glory. The not in its full glory part is already mostly covered by the fact that spell damage also scales with level anyway. I'm just using this example to mention a magic system I actually enjoyed using.
