You do realize that in past games, even if your character "spent his whole life studying magic", he still started at level 1, and was totally incompetent in his skills, correct???

Just another baseless complaint about Skyrim that has no actual validity in reality.

Well there′s your problem right there: you always want to play the exact same characters because you have grown attached to the characters themselves and when the game changes and you can′t recreate those exact same characters in the exact same way, you believe that there is something wrong with the game. The problem lies with you, not the game. I always make a completely new and different character to whatever game I approach, that way my experience does not get distracted by some rosy notalgic attachment I may have for a previous character.

I am not saying that the Skyrim system is worse, I am saying that it still does not address the issue the person I quoted says the Skyrim system fixes, which was that they believe the Skyrim system where everyone starts as a blank canvas allows players to play the game and get a sense of what kind of character they want to make and define their class along the way rather than select Primary/Major/Minor skills at the onset, which makes players choose what kind of character or what "class" they want to make before they start playing. I like the Skyrim approach, I think it does help players, however it is just as unforgiving as the old system was. Once I make my Perk investments, there is no going back. I can play around and level my skills up, but Skills have such a minor impact on your character until you have made deep investments in the Perk tree, you really do not know how it will be.

Further, as my previous post was discussing, I think there are things left out that would not "pigeonhole" the player that you could choose as part of the Origin of your character. Really and truly ANY system can be implemented even one that forces you to choose at the beginning - as long as you can change it LATER. Really and truly, this should be an option to players. I myself do not really care as I am always careful to plan my classes. People call us "min/maxers" like this is some new phenomenon, but I have been doing this since pen & paper and Ultima for Apple II. Because people like myself exist, we are able to provide insight to others so they do not exhaust 60 hours into the game and come to the realization they have to reroll because they are unhappy with how their character is performing.

This is at the end of the day an RPG. Instead of a 100% limiting class, Skyrim has perks, which do not limit the character in the beginning at all. As for solving "the problem", I'm not sure we agree with what the problem even is. The problem is you creating a character that you do not want to play with, although it sounded good at first. If you spend over 50 of the 80 perks available on something you do not like, then you've spent them poorly. However, in oblivion, the choice you make in the beginning is made without any knowledge of the game. The chance of you creating a character you don't like in oblivion is a lot bigger than it is in Skyrim. Thus, Skyrim solves "the problem", while oblivion causes it.