I don't really see an advantage in cutting the misc skills down so you can have one on every party member - no choice there. Putting a few points into a few skills isn't busywork for me though, so I can't relate to that. I just like having to balance my combat skills with a good number of non-combat skills, knowing I will definitely miss out on a few of them unless I want to sacrifice my combat skills.
You don't seem to understand what I'm saying. I'm not saying having the skill would get you access to anything. I'm saying you'd still have to invest a lot to get the best loot, which means you'd have to choose between being efficient at combat or the skill - so you'd just get rid of the redundancy.
Simply giving one to each member would do nothing unless you invested - and that'd get you 5 members who suck at combat.
As for busywork, I'm not talking about putting points into skills, I'm talking about having 3 different icons on my hotbar that I have to click in the correct order - waiting for a progress bar for each one - before I get access to one crate of loot.
To you, that's great gameplay - and that's cool.
For me, it's busywork that adds nothing positive whatsoever.
I love having to choose and I love having to sacrifice for appropriate rewards. I absolutely despise staring at progress bars for no reason at all.
We all enjoy different things for different reasons.
Skills were also not redundant IMO because they played out quite differently - the things computers and toaster repair did were differing enough to warrant two skills.
I'd simply have designed the game around giving a similar variety of outcomes based on level of investment instead. Another alternative is to motivate a smart combination of skills and/or stats. As in, being quick and having a decent level in, say, "mechanical" would make you great at picking locks and disarming traps - while being strong with the same skill would enable you to break locks instead or whatever.
I prefer a smart and economical design to lazy and bloated design.
But simply having a lot of skills adds nothing positive that I can detect.
I'm sure we can agree that there's a limit to how many skills are appropriate, regardless. I think Fallout is an appropriate example of the sweet spot, even if I think there might be one or two skills that aren't used enough.