What is the best skill leveling system?

[Zorafim]

In PSIV, you got skills as you leveled. Skills were just part of a character and you needed to accept that.
In PSO, you got skills as random drops. If you really wanted a strong ice spell but got fire spells, your only choice was to switch to fire or be gimped (ignoring the elemental resistance system for a minute)
In PSU, skills leveled as they were used. While this theoretically meant you got to use your favorite skills more, in practice it meant having to modify your gameplay to grind skills until they were useful.
In PSO2, they went back to a drop system. If you'd rather have a slow, powerful attack but only get quick spammy attacks, there's nothing you can do.

So, what we've seen is that random drops work best in practice. The weak skill may be a higher level now, but eventually you'll find the good skill. I believe this only works because of the grindy nature of the game. Leveling up works fine if the rates for leveling are quick, but that wasn't the case because of what kind of game this series has become.

But can this be improve upon? What kind of skill leveling system would you like to see?
Personally, I think some kind of buying system would work best. You gain points through some system, whether it be random drops or exp, and you spend these points on PA levels. This way, the way you're grinding is just by playing the game, and you get to chose which skills you want. No more spending ten levels without your favorite skill, and no more having to stand in one place shooting boomas for skill exp. Just run through TACOs or AQs with your best setup, and use the PA exp you gain on skills you prefer.

[Xaeris]

I liked PSU's system. Granted, the amount of grinding to get a bullet or a technic up to par was pretty bonkers, I think the work involved in leveling up skills was just right. Not only did it make thematic sense (you get better with a skill by practicing it, duh), it also didn't leave you at the mercy of RNG, and gave you yet another treadmill to walk on that at least went at a consistent predictable pace and had a definitive end.

[Unnamed Player]

I like the special weapon skills from PSO.

[Kondibon]

Grindyness aside, my favorite skill leveling system on a conceptual level was Mabinogi's, as it encouraged you to use a skill in specific ways, as you could only gain a specific total amount of skill exp from a specific training method, instead of just spamming it on garbage mobs until it leveled. On top of that skills had an Ability point cost, that varied from skill to skill. This meant they could balance certain skills to have really grindy training but cost a negligible amount of skill points (most crafting), or have easy training with a high AP cost (lolmagic).

Unfortunately in practice most of the skill training for offensive skills ended up being pretty shallow, especially as they started adding new skills, and while crafting . 3:

EDIT: Also, yes I know Zorafim was talking about games in the PS series, but I really liked Mabi's skill system OK? ; w;

[yoshiblue]

Mabi's combat (Before the changes) and skill system was pretty great. Though out of all the Phantasy Stars, gonna have to go with PSU's skill system. Though I also want to be evil and lock certain PAs behind certain races.

[Kondibon]

My problem with PSU's system was just how grindy it was, but if maybe the cap for PAs/Techs was tied to something else (like level, or some COs) it might be easier to pace instead of needing to be super grindy to keep people from caping everything faster than they level.

Also, while I have Mabi on the mind, I also wish more of the skills and PAs in PSO2 had functionality changes at specific break points, like some skills in Mabi did. Smash is a good example, normally it's a single target attack, but at rank 5 it starts dealing splash damage, and at rank 1 the splash AoE and damage increase, in addition to the base damage increase. Or bolt spells which are normally canceled when you're knocked back, but at higher ranks you lose only one charge.

They could merge a lot of skills with their secondary skills that way, but with the way skill points work I guess that would require an entire overhaul.

[yoshiblue]

I could see it being locked behind the crafting system, requiring a certain level of PA to be already learned to craft the add on. Or the disk too.

[Kondibon]

I was mainly thinking about skills with that. I feel like having functionality changes on PAs past a certain level would be kinda weird, and now that you mention it PA crafting is SUPPOSED to fill that niche, too bad they seem to have forgotten about it.

I'm getting tired of them adding new systems to basically get around re-balancing stuff, especially in regards to gunner

[landman]

In practice, in PSU you would end not using your awesome lvl 40/50 arts/bullets/techs because you'd still have others to level up, and using the capped ones was a waste of training time!

I don't really mind the disc method, specially after the rebalance which means that if you are unlucky you are only missing a small % of damage output.

[Skyly]

PSU buff parties >