If the skills are going to be a major factor in spell effectiveness then Intelligence has to stop being a major factor, or the flexibility of character design takes a huge hit. At present, Str/Dex/Int drive skill power and the skill ranks allow for more skills of that type. It's not ideal for hybrid characters, but it works a whole lot better than making the skill ranks also power skills (as was the case in earlier versions) - you just don't have enough points to work with to make anything other than a pure/dedicated character type work under that earlier approach.
Talents based on skill ranks seem to be where they're heading instead - a lot of them now require (whatever) 5 when they used to be something like Bodybuilding 1 or had no prereq at all.
