I wonder if the books were an afterthought or not completely tested. Seemed like they may have figured that the price of the books would make it impossible to buy more than one or the other, or it was a bug that the librarian in the hub would have an "infinite supply." They could have also made the effect like Mount and Blade: you carry a book around for two weeks gametime, then get the effect.The skill books in Fallout were dumb though. Having a specific set of skills for which you can convert money (nigh-infinite) -> skill points (limited) was silly. Should have been limited to one use per game, or being a carried item that gives an effect, or whatever.
I'll forgive them, as books for me became a problem from my meta knowledge of the game, not my first playthrough. If I tagged barter, I knew I could swim in money later, so I could buy massive amounts of books/armor/ammo later on. On my first play-through, I just wanted to get the chip before the 150 days were up/stay alive.
Well, I think the POE talk of "bad builds" is fanning the flames of peoples discontent. CRPG's derived from D&D which limited a player to a specific class. There were tradeoffs and doors open to some classes and not to others based on alignment, class, and magical aptitude. There were no bad builds then either, you picked a class based on your play-style and accepted your choice.Still, these idiots who think that they have to 100% complete everything in the game with the perfect powergamed build are disgustingly retarded. Ohnoes, I blew up the Radscorpion cave while it still had 12 9mm HP bullets in it and now I can't get them, game is broken to let you do that and lose loot. *kills self*
Now, nobody reads the manual or does any work (ie: the game is organic) and developers want to cater to this mob of lazy slobs. They probably know folks don't replay as much as they used to and want people to see all their handiwork on the first play-through. That's fine, but don't tell me you are evolving the genre when in fact you are developing for the lowest common denominator.