What if they stripped all of this stuff down on purpose, not just "to appeal to casual players" but for the general welfare of the ES series as a whole? I'm sure they were aware of the heat they got for that catastrophe that was a leveling system in Oblivion, and they realized that they couldn't simply just refine the system a little and have that pass for acceptable.
So they stripped everything down to basics when it came to attributes (Health, Magicka, Stamina), made the combat simple so where basically one arm = one function, and had a small number of spells. Also, with every 'main quest' requiring voice acting and writing, they used a radiant quest system for small quests and to make eveything somewhat randomized.
So are you guys like me, and believe that over time, especially in the next game, the radiant quest system will be far far better then in skyrim, there will be a more robust spell system, and that the weapon types will work better with more moves, attributes will return in a way that helps the game, and that certain things that are missing (unarmed combat and attributes) will eventually make their return, or do you believe that they are simply going to continuing simplifying the game to a point where it becomes too simplified?