It's weird that it didn't work for you, would you mind sending us the project (even without images, we don't need them) mentioning this topic to test out your problem?
I'd warmly suggest deforming meshes through bones if linked meshes aren't an option due to different sizes, but this is my personal opinion! If you have a huge project, then direct mesh deformations for each mesh of each skin are not a good idea, but for smaller projects, they should be fine!