I think it changes it for the worse. The trouble is that skills need to be balanced against each other, at least to a certain degree. 3.5 isn't great for this, of course, but the consolidation doesn't help. Perception and Stealth are just too cheap for what they do.
What do I mean by this? Well, in Pathfinder everyone takes Perception. Furthermore, the Wis-based characters are a lot better at it than the Rogue is. Skill consolidation makes sense where there is a skill that is too weak, like merging Jump/Climb/Swim into Athletics or folding Use Rope's paltry uses into Climb and Escape Artist. Search, Spot, Listen, Hide, and Move Silently are fine as they are.
Keeping Perception as two skills
hurts stealth-based characters, as I outlined in
my first post. To successfully be stealthy, you need to win at
both opposed checks. If you're at a 50-50 success rate on each of them, the chance of you making
both rolls is 25%.
Sure, that's two skills someone needs to max out to stay good at perception, but even if they only max one of them (they're already doing this in PF, right? So theoretically, they could spare the points to max Listen or Spot in 3.x), they still likely have a non-zero chance to win with the other. That second chance they get to detect the stealth character
hurts their chances.
