Really demoralized by the recent skill point overhaul

[Ransurias 36]

I mean, why? What purpose did it serve to lock smaller, newer companies and solo players out of content by forcing them to specialize to such an extreme degree and dramatically slowing down their progression? Version 7.0's skill point rebalance has utterly crippled progression for solo players and small groups, who are now forced to choose between being almost helpless in combat and being useless at playing the resource gathering / building meta.

Which developer sat down, thought about skill points, and decided that the majority of players wanted to choose between being a helpless crafter or a useless fighter? Which developer decided that forcing players to be high level in order to access advanced crafting was solid game design? I'm baffled -- perplexed -- dumbfounded by this change. While I don't believe that everyone shouldn't be able to do everything, forcing players to specialize into just one skill tree is outrageous. Forcing players to rely on one another is one thing, but screwing smaller gangs of players over is UNACCEPTABLE.

I don't personally find it "fun" to be forced into the role of a drone in a large company just so that we can meet crafting goals. Funny enough, when I bought this game, I had this naive fantasy of being a plate-wearing, cutlass-toting marine who raided ships on the high seas in epic PvP encounters. I guess that's a foolish little fantasy when the company I'm affiliated with wants me to stop daydreaming and get to work farming and building for countless hours like a sweatshop worker. Oh well! At least this is what the devs intended, so I should just stop being an entitled fool, am I right? Screw everyone that isn't in a relatively sizable and well-established company -- they don't matter. 

[Thana 6]

As a solo player until official launch, I agree that this needs to be looked at once again. I don't want to work for another player, or be forced to seek others for help. I want to work on things and craft them myself.

[TNSEE 7]

So, this patch skill change has basically broken the game as far as skill goes.  I'm all for specialization, as long as it doesn't impact your ability to play.  The way the skills are currently laid out ends up in hyper-specialization that makes players useless in 99% of the other aspects of the game, and frankly robs them of ability to contribute in other content which isn't fun.

In Atlas you NEED to be able to do the following to survive:

• Fight
• Craft
• Sail

Thus I propose the skill point system be broken out into 3 sets of trees.

• Combat  (Melee, Bows, Guns, Tarot)
• Crafting ( Armor, Weapons, Buildings, Ships, Food / Medicine, Beastmastery)
• Seamanship (Captaining, Pirate, Dance / Music, Artillery)

Each level you gain points in each of these trees so you can specialize in how you want to play, but not be totally useless.  You can still fight, you can still craft, and you can still be a useful part of a ship crew.