as always, it depends on implementation.
And the difference is how the player sees those skills, not how they're placed in the engine.
You can get away with a lot of skills, if the player at any time has only a few skills to select. The game engine of RM supports this by giving event commands to change/remove skills or have only a few accessable - while at the same time centering around skills, so that it's easier to make a lot of skills and limit their access than to create variable skills.
What has to be prevented at any cost is giving the player a large list of skills to scroll through when he wants to fight - If I had to scroll three pages to get to the best combat skill for the current situation, then I would probably stop playing the game.
On this board, the topic is game development - which means that the poster talk about a lot of skills even if those don't appear to the player at the same time.
If you find a game on a player-focused forum mentioning a lot of skills, then better start running - here (in this context) it isn't usually that bad ;-)
I agree with this to an extent. My only real complaint? I'd say it's more about personal preference than about implementation.
I have played with both systems of skills. Numerous skills and small pools of skills. In fact, my current system uses both. How? Well, you are given a small pool of skills for every character, but each skill can be leveled up to level 4. Each choice does something different to your skill. So, my database has 15 skills for each skill in the game, and they are added/removed as the choices are made.
My take on both systems is thus: I absolutely love them both when they are conducive to a battle. Final Fantasy 6 has loads and loads of skills. The only complaint I had with their list? I couldn't find uses for the level 1 spells when I was sitting on the level 3 versions and huge pools of MP. Many of the spells had their own uses and utilities. You could tinker around a bit if you desired, and I rather loved that about the magic system in that game. I also enjoy small pools of skills in games like Mass Effect where you can map them to the controller and quick cast a small amount you will use frequently as well as upgrade these skills in the way you want to use them.
The real issue, no matter which system you use, is making
every single skill useful. I don't mean, useful every so often. I mean useful to the point that the player has to consider using it fairly frequently.
Let's take status effect skills for a moment. In most every RPG in recent memory, these skills have become absolutely useless. Why? Standard enemies die too easily to warrant the use of these skills and bosses are typically immune to them. On top of which, a lot of these skills don't actually do much in terms of a fight to warrant their use anyway. If you poison someone and it takes the poison something like 30 turns to kill someone, was it worth inflicting in the first place? Especially since you can just hammer the "Attack" button and kill someone in 4 turns regardless of whether or not they are poisoned.
I know players don't like to scroll through massive lists of skills, but I think that is because of what I'd just mentioned. If most of your skills are never going to be selected and are just taking up space, then why should I have to scroll past them to get to what I do want to use? Why should I scroll through Fire 1-6 when I want to use Fire 7? Especially when I have 99999/99999 MP to be casting these big spells.
If each and every skill you create doesn't have its own usefulness, even up to the end of the game, it doesn't really deserve to exist in the first place. Likewise, there's no real reason to give someone increments of a spell that don't do anything more than buff the damage. If you give me Fire 2, I don't need Fire 1 anymore. I'll rarely use it. Most players will rarely use it. Once we get Fire 3, then Fire 1 becomes even MORE useless. In short, don't do that with your skills. Your players will thank you for it.
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