@randomwizard@vivaldi.net it's a hard solve. I personally love games with skills - I like to exploit and extrapolate based on what my character is capable of in a style determined by what's on my character sheet. Many of the people I've run games for or played with, however, are just as you described: when presented with a problem they look at their sheet and if no solution is obvious (not just with skills - magic and fighting, too) they will be like "I've got nothing".
I'd love to pin it on a 'videogame mentality' that I despise, but I don't think that's fair or completely accurate (when I am being rational).
I've seen the same sort of paralysis in games with no explicit skills, so it's not always a result of a game system constraining players' thought processes.