In Skyrim they seemed to have catered to the regular warriors most, and given mages the shaft. Probably so regular magic wouldn't overshadow Dragon Shouts. Which they would if magic was implemented right. I still can't believe that Detect life is a hold spell.

Bull.. [censored].

Acrobatics .

Eh.. I was never a fan of Acrobatics. Always seemed pointless, and a bit ridiculous that a non mage, non khajiit, and non argonian could jump ridiculously high.

I loved Athletics though.

What better way to troll dragons than stacking Fortify Acrobatics in a custom spell?

True. But still beth didn't have to axe it. Just tweak a little so that my character didn't jump to ridiculous heights. I had fun with that skill. And yes Athletics was a nice skill.
Now I really wish we had acrobatics in skyrim.

It would be so awesome to have the Burden spell again. Just cast it on a Dragon or another flying enemy(if they implemented more flying enemies), and watch them crash to the ground.

Or better yet just make a Gravity spell. That makes sense for Alteration.

IMO they removed too many spell effects. Dispel, spell absorbtion/reflection, cure disease, silence, open lock, water walking, etc. It is a pretty long list and many of them were very useful. Still, mageplay in Skyrim can be fun and as you say there is no penalty for wearing armor, other than some alteration perks for mage armor, but real armor works better than mage armor. Also, you cannot do the same enchantments on armor that you can on robes since the magicka regen from the robes is capped at 10%, but with spell cost reduction, you don't need the robes dual cost reduction/magicka regen boost.