I've already commented that I think the perks put too much emphasis on skills and make skill choice too important. I'd rather you couldn't get it very wrong and you couldn't get it very right, so that you didn't have to min/max, so that you didn't get to level 6 and realise your party was not going to make it because you weren't able to use a crystal ball and predict things. I think it was ridiculous under D&D rules in NWN expansions where you quite literally had to plan your character at epic level, and then pick everything in the right order and all the right stats so you could get there, and if you didn't you'd end up with a half baked character.
I would imagine the devs released the game fully aware of what level people will reach and how many skill points they'll get. I find it a very attractive idea that the party of adventurers I take through the dungeon will have twice as much still to go before they reach high level.
In RPGs if you put all of your eggs in one basket you become overpowered in some respects. Or to put it differently if you put half of your eggs in one basket and half in another you end up significantly worse. With the way LoG is just now it actively encourages you to go down one skill tree to the neglect of the others.
Let's take armours for example.
Level 1-25 gives you in total.
Protection +3
Health +35
Light armour proficiency
Heavy armour proficiency
Shield expert
Level 26-50 gives you in total
Health +65
Evasion +5
Protection +27
Given the choice of the 1-25 benefits or the 26-50 then I'd obviously take the 26-50.
All other skills follow the same progression, as you go up the skill levels they become progressively better. This means that taking a skill anywhere else becomes progressively worse. The exception is the four elemental mage skills which seem to top out halfway up. However if you have a look at the spellcraft tree then it's very attractive to go to level 18 (50% faster casting).
If you were to draw a graph of characters relative power then it would be a strange shaped graph indeed, because it would increase faster and faster until the first skill was topped off, and then it would move very slowly.
It doesn't make very much RP sense either. A wizard isn't going to gain expertise just with fire spells for a few months and then suddenly get better at casting spells in general but not any better at fire spells. Likewise a fighter isn't going to gain fighting prowess in just wearing armour for a few months and then just wielding a sword for a few months.
I don't think this leads to an enjoyable character progression. I've also never liked uberskills anyway, I don't like extreme powered abilities... I think they're for the realms of modern challenge removed RPGs. So what can be done? The perks themselves can be cut back so that the 26-50 progression doesn't yield such magnificent bonuses, this would mean there wasn't a compelling reason to stick with just one skill tree. Alternatively it could become progressively more expensive to buy skills in one tree if you have no other tree close by. For example if you're buying skills in a tree and you have no tree within 10 skill points then it costs an extra point to do so. Alternatively the game could automatically spend half of the skill points on the core skill tree (assassination, armour/athletics, spellcraft) and that skill tree would be unavailable for extra skill points.
When D&D went for 3rd edition rules they, in my opinion, lost the plot entirely and added a whole slew of game breaking feats and abilities. They had to balance things out by being extremely restrictive with them and ensuring that a character had to build for them from level 1 and ensuring that a complex set of pre-requisites had to be met. The end result was effectively level limiting the skills so that characters couldn't get them until high level. You have to do a cludge like that if you have very high end skills.
There's little balance tweaks that can be done to avoid the game having only one realistic choice for the player to make (I'm aware you aren't forced to pick the most powerful option, but deliberately playing under ability, or deliberately making bad choices is poor).
As for the title of the thread I think it's quite harsh sounding. This was a game produced by 4 guys. It was their company's first game, and they've done an exceptional job. Without a massive team behind them though, and a great deal of resources to test the game out I think it's perfectly reasonable for them to have opportunities to polish the game, and balance things out after release. But it's been clarified and no harm is done, so let's not all get nasty
In principle though, I have no problem at all with having skills that are either unattainable in the current dungeon, or attainable only at great sacrifice in other abilities. That presents players with proper choices about how to progress their character without forcing them to min/max.
