It amazes me how many people view this as 'either/or' and see perks as a direct substitute for Attributes. They're not.

For the thousandth time, Attributes relate to your character's physical/mental characteristics - e.g. physical strength, etc. Perks relate to Skills - ie. things your character learns or specialises in. All perks should do is expand skill progression and add another layer of uniqueness to characters. Unfortunately, rather than just compliment Skills, what Bethesda have tried to do instead is put almost all the emphasis of skill progression into perks. So instead of a load of unique perks, you have a ton of % multipliers which just speed progression up without actually making your character more unique than they would be with ordinary skill progression (there are some exceptions). So really, if perks are acting as a substitute for anything, it's regular skill progression.

What the game should have is:

Attributes (for your character's physical attributes - e.g. Strength)
Skills (for skills your character can learn and improve gradually throughout the game - e.g. Archery)
Perks (ONLY for more specific skills your character learns once with limited or no improvement after - e.g. how to craft a certain type of sword).