Playing on with this new system, another unintended negative consequence started to appear more and more.
It is a direct result of the new mechanic of being able to switch learned skills freely and the change of what exact effects raising skills such as master of Arms, elemental magic, Expert Amrksman and other in that group have in this new setup.

And its not anything i influence myself, or want. It just forms... naturally, from the system as it is.

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Because all these skills now simply open more slots in specific skill category - while i can change learned skills in those slots freely, whenever i want or feel like it - there is actually no incentive to invest more then 3 points altogether in any category.

1 at the start and 2 more to bring it to the next level, which brings that skill to level 2 and opens five slots which you can use for different spells or abilities - learned from the books.

After that, i can just change spells or abilities whenever i want, therefore there is practically no need to invest more points into that category.

- I have noticed that some talents require specific amounts of levels in these skills to open up. Thats good.

I noticed that expert marksman raised to level 5 will open up a talent that reduced AP cost of bows.
Thats great.

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Of course, in the beta i cannot achieve any of those high requirements. Which seem too high anyway, or not applied in the best way, or at all. There should be more of such additional talents opening up depending on investments in skills - and other features and benefits added to the skills themselves.

To make it actually worthy to invest in any of them. Right now, i usually have spare points and no incentive to spend them on anything. Increasing damage by 10% isnt that important in the game.
Only maybe increasing bodybuilding makes some sense since that makes my saves versus knockdowns, disease, crippled and such status effects better.

Maybe the shield skill but only if im a shield user...

While crafting and other such personal skills have flavor effects in the game and aren't really necessary at all - at this point.

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As i said above, the new "change learned spells and skills freely" mechanic should be changed into a more limited, constrained form (which would then increase depending on investment of points or level of characters or other mechanics already in the system)

Its actually not working well.




- edit -

A correction.

I haven't so far even used that feature, simply because in the beta, you never get so many spells or skill that you would need large number of slots open - and all those spells and skills are not that useful that you would need to switch between them.

You usually just choose a few most valuable and powerful ones and thats it.

The thing is that with this system you actually forget the skill when you remove it.

I first thought it somehow remains in some pool or a list and that you can just put it back later on if you want.
While in fact it is gone, completely forgotten and you need to buy that same skill book to learn it again. If you want to.


Which is not very likely, actually. And there isnt so many useful skills that you would want, or so many skills in the beta, where we are limited to level 10.

So, having five slots open at level 2 is more then enough all the same. and it is quite easy to find the same skill book anyway. So ... this wouldnt matter much even in the full game.