This I get & personally feel there could be a number of better ways that would expand player perk templates for more variety.
As I only play solo, and like to build, there are a number of perks that I always wind up buying.
And those heavily influence my toon from early to late mid-game.
Certainly I could choose not to buy mining perks. And I'd give it a try if the Auger wasn't behind such an expensive gate, or were more readily available in either loot or traders. My current playthrough I did manage to buy one from a trader before day 21. But that's the first one I recall seeing for sale in quite a while. Plus I'm guessing I only saw it due to buying a couple lvls in BB far earlier than I normally would since there was a motorcycle for sale and I was trying to afford it.
Yet were that to change, then there would be significant pressure to buy the Intel Chem perk that allows for much cheaper gas crafting.
Another way to consider things is to look at a build focused on the Strength & Fortitude trees.
Shotguns ---- Brawler
Clubs -------- Machine Gunner: AKs unlock at Lvl-1, so can skill up & benefit using AK till u get M60, and they use same ammo
Sledges ----- Hvy Armor
SexTrex ----- Pain Tolerance
M-Chef ----- Healing factor
Miner69er -- Rule 1 Cardio
Motherlode
For tank type builds most of the goodies they'd be after are in these two trees.
But what if you want to be a fast sledge using light tank? Light Armor is under Agility. Or a blade wielding heavy? Need Agility for blades.
I think I understand what TFPs were after with the new system, more diverse builds which would encourage taking different paths.
End result however seems like there are just a couple combos that have significant advantages,
in the way the game currently plays.
By that I mostly mean the noticibly larger gap between the effectiveness of Archery in A17+ & any firearm than previous alphas.
Not certain but I think the arguement was that if Weapon Skills were stand alone, then folks would just all gravitate to the most effective weapons.
And I'm sure there's more than a bit of truth to that. But isn't that happening anyway?
Based on all the recent discussion on min-maxing won't those folks dig into the trees and figure out the 'best' build templates and always use those?
And not suggesting that TFPs cater to min-maxers, but on the flip side, if the min-maxer crew always bought Machinegunner, but it was stand-alone, and then they'd have to choose heavy or light armor, and debate whether to go Clubs or Blades or Brawler, even knowing they'd be spec'ing into the perks/tree which offered Pain Tolerance.. well wouldn't that actually result in more variety in templates?
Heck, if we assume that there are a not insignificant number of not-total-hard-core-min-maxers, that player block might decide to take a chance on their 2nd-best options, just to change things up, maybe?
To be fair I would say that TFPs have a tougher road to hoe than some other games have.
The template framework must support both Single & Multi player games, and Multi isn't built around a minimum sized group.
Meaning there's some sort of lower 'effectiveness' limit that the majority of combos need to be above, otherwise the torches come out
Not saying they absolutely couldn't, but likely wouldn't make business sense to build out a major percentage of templates that wound up heavily gimped in some area, like some other games do.
Anyway, all this from the cheap seats, pay no mind
