I don't really mind that much that the skills are gone persay. While I did always enjoy the system, you could game it somewhat easily to get the most of your skills even in Fallout New Vegas, where as this system does place harsher limitations on your character meaning they might truly be more unique to the next. Now provided a lot of what I saw what made characters unique in New Vegas was it's perks, you could only at most get 25 perks, and while one of our Wall-Texting friends (Curse you for typing more than me!) may think New Vegas doesn't have interesting perks, there are certainly a good few that allow for most styles of builds to be viable. Though to be fair, the guns stat is the one with the most potential for varied builds, whereas energy weapons you can superficially choose laser or plasma but the perks are low enough that you can just choose both. Unarmed and melee fall into caveat of it just being easier to carry 6 weapons for every situation, with only pyromania having any real push towards any specific weapon. With this new system you are really tied down to your choices though early in the game, you won't be able to be a master at everything. This means each new character you can gear towards different traits based on the SPECIAL system more easily. Now Fallout New Vegas's SPECIAL stats didn't account for much, you could easily leave a few stats underpar for various reasons and minmax into any character archetype almost. Perception was the most useless stat, only providing a boost to your radar range that really doesn't effect much and is supplemented with Ed-E. Provided there are probably more perception checks in speech than any other stat, but you can circumvent most of them. Charisma didn't affect much in game either, other than even fewer checks that don't matter much and is used mainly to boost your companion damage which is neglectable at best.
However while it might tie SPECIAL skills more into the mix and fix many of the problems of the Fallout 3/New Vegas system it cuts out the main draw to really any RPG. Progression. While yes, "You need multiple perks into a skill" does provide some form of progression it's weaker just numerically compared to the Int-bound skill system. As well it can have the possibility for more true-empty levels depending on perk variety as well as just in terms of perk usefulness. 20% better as a perk in new vegas is great, something you plan for, but your skills also provide better damage boosting or better boostings elsewhere, giving you two forms of something to gain from, making perks a lot more optional almost. Skills were what mattered most and perks went over it, balancing out a curve for gameplay through the levels. But starting with all of your stats themselves already made up, and only applying perks every level your curve slope is rather low and I feel it'll probably feel rather empty.
Though to be also fair I don't fully know how well you can game skills Fallout 2 or 1, while I'm familiar with them I never truly looked too much into that. I do know however that SPECIAL stats are given much more weight than 3 or New Vegas. Charisma is used for your companion count, which was cut. AP points matter a lot more, making agility much more useful. Int wasn't changed much from 2 to 3, but is useful in both. Perception has interesting effects that I'm not too knowledgable on, but from what it appears it affects a lot of when you go in combat, and how far away you are effective at, which is a hell of a lot more than in 3. Endurance is fairly the same, though health is probably (In the sense that it doesn't really matter at all in 3 and New Vegas except to survive a deathclaw while stimpack spamming or in hardcore mode) more useful in the sense you are more likely to be hit. As well Strength is relatively the same. Lastly luck is overall more useful in that it affects more even if I don't fully know how much it really effects.
