Skills

[KidKourage]

For this year's anniversary, I feel the need to share the last of my thoughts and ideas about City of Heroes. 
Skills
I can remember that through about 2009 it was often discussed in the forums about characters that were more skills than powers driven.  Batman obviously, but really many of the golden age detective style comic characters fit this concept.  Much of that seemed to die down because the idea of using power and enhancement picks for an ability presumably weaker than any power seemed ridiculous. 
There were some interesting ideas. A Skills or Background Pool, with each 'power' picked representing a collection of skills, such as Professor, Detective, Athlete, and Doctor.  Even so, what professor-ly attributes come into play crime fighting?  And what exactly game benefit could these skills provide?
This is an age old question in pen-and-paper RPG's – when do you make a persuasion skill check and when do you actually have to talk out your attempt because the referee is waiting to hear a particular word or phrase?  Detective missions are more about the player's own deductive reasoning and puzzle solving skills than any ability score of the character.  So if this was a desired style of play, then City should have done something similar to Investigation missions in The Secret World.
What Would Skills Be?
I've played enough RPG games where an entire scenario hinged on one skill roll, and when (inevitably) every character in the party fails it, then the entire evening is a waste as the players attempt to find ways to get back on track.  So a skill cannot be a showstopper.  That led me to three categories of useful 'skills'.
Training
The most obvious use of a skill in the game was whenever a character interacted with an object.  Basically click and wait for the timer to count down.  Training thus represents a buff on a timer, allowing you to complete the task faster (or at all – when doing so does not violation of my previous point on making a mission impossible).  Such as using a computer, opening a safe, disarming a bomb, etc.  This kind of stuff showed up in about one out of ten missions. 
Most of those timers where 10 to 30 seconds and out-of-combat, so even cutting the time in half makes very little difference.  No-one in your team is going to waste time asking, they'll just click.  And by the time you can even raise a fuss about it, they'll be done.  So this concept is certainly not worth wasting a power pick or even exchanging an enhancement slot for. 
Language
In the course of playing the game, I ran into two other types of things that fit into the 'skills' category.  Languages was the first.  Italian, Portugese, and Oranbegan all itch my memory as having been in missions where you'd find a clue written in the language and then you'd have to go track some contact down to interpret it for you.  Of course, if your character already knew the appropriate language, the mission could just auto advance (but might need some window to share whatever information you would have garnered from the contact).
Now skipping an errand mission – five-ish minutes for at least one team member – could be worth having.  But again, rarely used.  And teammates often used those 5 minutes to unload their pockets and then reassemble at the door of the following mission.  Again, worthwhile or not?
Insight
Which brings the third group of 'skills' into focus – expert knowledge.  There were many errand missions where you went to a contact for information.  Mostly Azuria for the lore on some whompas thingamajig.  But, much like a language, if your character was a master of magic or a published scientist or a trivia genius, you should have been able to auto-advance such missions without the need to seek out assistance.
What Other Games Do
I have seen three other MMOs that include decision making options.
In The Secret World, there is the investigation mission.  These mission engaged the player's problem solving abilities and rarely offered visual clues to assist.  The game encourages players to use the internet to look up information. Judging from the forums, these missions were reviled.  I suspect there were a fair number of players who enjoyed (most of) them; and that it was the badgers and werebadgers venting their frustrations at having to challenge their own weaknesses.  But these missions come with a fatal flaw; the challenge only exists the first time through.
In Elder Scrolls Online, players are allowed to make open ended decisions.  It's not really what I would call an exercise in deductive reasoning.  Some cases are very much like alignment missions in terms of picking your preferred consequence.  Others seem to have a right or wrong answer (which you could generally figure out from reading the text) which may add complications or consequences but end with the same result.  Which can get very weird when playing with a team where all choices get selected by at least one member.  Overall, it feels more like the illusion of choice, but it does give me a slightly different experience when playing my alts.
Finally there is Star Wars the Old Republic.  I didn't play this one very long, but here again, overall the choices didn't appear to have tangible impact on the mission victory conditions.  Instead it seems more about improving your relationships with any NPCs you've acquired.
How To Implement Skills
It seems relatively simple to give a timer bar or a mission task a tag (like "Read Latin" or "Safecracking") and if your character has that tag, then you debuff the timer or skip the mission entirely.  If would also seem easy enough to add sentences or paragraphs of additional information to textboxes where you have a skill like "History of The Council".  And it should be possible to make a 'clue object' that can be acquired much like a temporary power and needs a keyword to be unlocked.  The 'power' is a text box, another tag, or even a buff that lasts for the duration of a mission, story arc, or specific period of time.
This would provide a ready list of available skills to choose from and their frequency of use.  Which is certainly better than pen & paper games where a skill exists as a concept, but may never see application during play.  But we return to the questions of acquiring them and the effort needed to update every mission in the game to add these tags. 
It might get tricky. I can see where "Ancient Magical Societies" fits for most magical tasks but then there would be missions where you more specifically need "Legends of The Mu" or "Dark Rites of the Banished Pantheon". 
How to Acquire Skills
I certainly cannot imagine trading in a power or enhancement pick for something I use maybe every tenth mission and outside of combat circumstances anyway.  So what would you do?
Just earn a skill point with each level and pick from a list.   Maybe add a bit of complexity saying that some skills can have multiple levels, so you can make repeated picks and/or have some skills as prerequisites for more advanced/esoteric ones (such as the above magical history example).  Do the Devs create Skill Pools, where each power you take gives you 5-ish skill points to pick from this list?  What would enhancements mean for such 'powers'?  Exchange an enhancement slot for 3 picks from the skill trees? 
Straightforward but weird given that you are earning elements of what is most likely your backstory or alter ego while playing the game.  So maybe give a starting player 5 'background' skill picks with new ones earned every 10th level?
Would It Be Worth The Effort?
Would this lead to more timed missions, or missions where interacting with an object in combat becomes a necessary thing?  Are these temp powers optional for success?  Having them just quickens or otherwise makes completing a mission, story arc, or task force easier?  Good stuff for summer blockbuster content or Architect missions (where the 'only works the first time' conundrum is less of a problem as repeat play is less likely)?