Yeah. I just stopped checking my skill levels and don't care about them.

Skill levels are impactful in gameplay in chunks of like, 10-15, but to be totally honest I have stopped paying attention to them and don't really feel the difference... which makes me start to think they shouldn't be a mechanic at all. If I can just ignore the entire mechanic and have fun, then maybe it shouldn't be there?

But then they've included the feelsbad of skill loss on death. Which, in order to be a meaningful deterrent against dying (as if corpseruns weren't enough of a deterrent), needs to have a higher impact of skill levels.

They could definitely do interesting things with skill trees, or "locking in" certain skill levels by making costly sacrifices at some altar or something. But I know they won't.