There is harm if you pretty much can't avoid maxing out your skills. In Fallout 3, when the level cap was 20, you had to carefully plan out a way to max out your skills, and it involved using other items to get permanent skill increases. When the level cap was raised to 30, it was nearly impossible not to max out all of your skills. What's the point of raising your skills one at a time if you're just going to have to max them all out eventually anyway? Plus it makes the game too easy, if I don't want to put any points in a certain skill, I don't want to be forced to because I need to spend skill points. I'd be fine if you could max out your skills with items and stuff you had to work to get, but not if skills naturally max out. As for perks, I don't want to be able to get all of the perks, why would you want to? You have to choose to use certain perks and not others, the game shouldn't just spoon-feed you all of the perks, you should have to choose which perks to take or not.
Those are some very good points.
Also, some perks would neutralize each other too, which would be pointless.
I would think something as simple as an option to not force someone to spend level points and combing it with the difficulty setting could keep the game "truer to form".
I also agree that adding additional items/books/et cetera to allow someone to max out would be a good idea. Or even add a downloadable content package that has the options to continue like the Broken Steel pack.
I am certainly not suggesting that the game should be made simple, but rather, if the game normally averages 60 hours to level up to the "standard" maximum character level, then an additional 60+ hours could allow you to continue leveling to top out everything possible.
For me, it is more about creating the most powerful/capable character and then just playing around with it. Not trying to make the core and side quests easier.
After spending $60 on a video game, I would at least like the option to create a major kick-buhtt character for simple slaughter purposes.
But, that's just my opinion.