My opinion is that the effectiveness of skills should be somewhat related to the difficulty of maintaining that skill.

We're in Beta so I expect much to change, but currently one of the strongest skills is psychology. It requires no weapon, no support skills to develop (e.g. alchemy/carpentry), no spell research (like fire magic/ice magic), no equipment (spore bombs/throwing knives), and yet it's probably the strongest skill in game.

Then there's archery which requires a bow, alchemy/carpentry/foraging/fletching/mining to make arrows, expensive beakers and fletching supplies, gathering loot like cat eyes/fulgurite/feathers/etc, giving 6 inventory slots for arrows, but doesn't have any distinct advantage over other skills.

Even cows lose the ability to talk to half of the NPC population, but hey at least they get lots of milk!

I see Wolf/Psych builds where players are doing well over 10k in one attack. There's Bard builds that solo Pask.

Should we expect to see any advantage or valuable characteristic to one skill over another because of the set backs to maintain it?