Well, now that this topic has been aired again and the comments are flowing I will add my own list of Where the Hell did all my (fill in yourself) go to.

One of the biggest problems for me right off the bat was the Magic system. To simple give you a bunch of generic tomes and then never allow you to custom craft spells is unforgiveable. That was half the fun of Morrowind and Oblivion. I am so glad there is Midas Magic at least for the PC community.

The whole magic system and the pathetic College of Mages is just annoying and a total step backwards for the game devs.

Removing the damage done to armor and weapons from use and combat is also a big deal to me. I am so used to just whipping out my repair hammer after combat and banging away at my broken gear. That was a major factor in the realism of the combat and battle of the last 2 games. I get hit by a freaking bear or Giant and I want my armor to get shredded like it would in real combat.

Limiting the enemy scaling to 25-30. That just kind of makes the game pointless after level 35-40. Even on Master it still gets pretty easy to get multiple kill-moves and savage kills on most enemies. I want to encounter bad ass enemies who will give me a mighty test of my battle skills and experience. A lot of people evidently wanted the weak and limited enemies. Thank Talos for Wars In Skyrim and a few other mods that add new combat difficulty and enemies.

I could keep going for a few more hundred paragraphs, but I think I made my point. I started with Arena, then spent a whole lot of time on Daggerfall. I have played well over 1500 hours of Morrowind and about 2000 hours of Oblvion due to a chronic disease I am suffering from. I guess that makes me pretty qualified to be critical of the new and stripped down ES.

I'll shut my gob now and try to help make the game better by posting to the developers and supporting the amazing modding community.

Hokay.
Philosophical point: A difference that makes no difference -is- no difference. Where are the choices that actually make a difference?
Choices in the main quest. That actually have an effect on the game world. I'm not talking about 'I choose to pretend I have relevance in the game world'. I mean your in game actions that change things. You earn a reputation, good or bad.
Where are they? NOTHING YOU DO MAKES ONE DAMN BIT OF DIFFERENCE IN THE GAMEWORLD. You can sit on your butt for 1,000 game years and nothing changes. Alduin doesn't eat the world. No one seeks you out because you might be the chosen one. Empire or Stormcloaks, the only thing that changes is the armor the city guards wear.
Mages Guild. Do you have any options besides doing that quest line bing bang bong hey, you are Archmage even though can't magic yourself out of a wet paper bag! Can you side with Ancano? Can you just let the twit blow the college off what's left of the cliff? No. You do the linear quest or it sits there in your GUI forever....as does the situation you leave it in.
Branching quests; where are they? You are treated the same if you are the archmage of Winterhold or the Nightingale of the Dark Brotherhood. Your choice in the civil war makes no difference whatsoever. You have no option to refuse the vast majority of quests.....or accept them and betray one of more characters (outside of -very- specific instances).
What about the choices you should be having to make as Dovahkin, Hmmmmmmm? You alone wield a power given by the Divines. Aside from a couple of cheesy assassination attempts as you walk along the road, none of the power centers pay one diddly-damn bit of attention to you. Ulfric wouldn't be out chasing you down, as having a Dragonborn on his side would enhance his position....or if you weren't on his side, he wouldn't be out trying with all his might to kill you, as you could shout his ass into Oblivion? Why isn't one faction trying to make you Emperor, as you are Dragonborn as has not been seen since Uriel Septim VII, never mind Tiber Septim? Why isn't the Emperor doing =his= damnedest to have you killed, for obvious reasons? Where's all the choices that the Thalmor's meddling should force your way?

No matter how you chirp about all your imaginings, if the game doesn't recognize it, it isn't relevant in the game world. People are having to gimp themselves to even halfway play a character they want to. Think about that a moment; a player has to deliberately break the game in a negative fashion to have the character they want to play. Not metagame. Not grind. Gimp. Sure Skyrim is a fun tech demo.......and that is all it ultimately is. And no, I don't want Morrowind (although another game -in- current day Morrowind.....the whole province, or whats left of it.....might be nice); I'm still waiting for the game that is worthy of the title of 'Sequel to the 1996 GOTY Daggerfall'. Because Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim certainly haven't earned it.

Oh, and Daggerfall certainly was -not- my first CRPG.....or even my first Bethesda CRPG. That was Arena (Ultima's and Might and Magic were in the firsts).....and DF was a huge improvement.

And I keep responding to the fan-drool as having ridden the whole ride, it is painful to watch a once encompassing roleplaying experience sink to the lowest common denominators in graphics vs story, thought vs linearity, challenge vs 'Even Bubba can play this game!'.

Where does Bethesda go from here?

I disagree somewhat with this, but this is my opinion. Going along the means why you think this current system is better and Oblivion's isn't, just doesn't seem to allow for role playing. If it is RPing for you, that is fine and I am not going to get into definition wars here, just pointing out. When you mention when someone chose an attribute in Oblivion, like Willpower, they would cast spells (this follows your strength comparison as well). Exactly what is wrong with that, as it has the player follow the style of character class they want to play and especially what they chose? Being a mage, one wants to raise the appropriate atts. to make being a mage powerful. In Skyrim, this doesn't matter anymore, because every skill levels easily and there's no real thinking (or even worry) about what a class to play, and in reality, class has been removed since all skills can be leveled earning XPs. You only earned XP in Oblivion according to the 7 major skills you chose and that kept the player sticking to the class they started playing.

There's so much wrong in that :'(

The realism part of taking your hammer stack between each combat and repairing your bow and your leather armor by banging them and breaking hammer after hammer after EACH fight is for sure such a good thing I can't see why Bethesda decided to get rid of it.

Oh and you should know that monster level goes up to ~50 and not 25-30, dunno why you talk while you obviously know nothing about the subject. For example, Arch Necromancers are cute little boys and girls level 46 with an earnest desire to melt your face off and raise your body afterwards.

It's rather unfair to point out 'missing' features from Morrowind in Skyrim without mentioning any of the new features it actually adds.

I've sliced myself while cutting up foodstuffs, it didn't require a great amount of strength to do an annoying amount of damage. Sticking something sharp into someone's back and killing them in one hit is a less a matter of strength and more an issue of dexterity and stealth. If my character's blades are sharp, he doesn't need to be strong to get the job done. A behind-the-scenes stats system like what's been suggested would muddle up his concept in an entirely unwelcome way.

As I said before, it would also be utterly pointless if players could max out all stats. Where's the customisation in a system like that? Well, it's where it is right now, in the skills.

Not in their present state. You'd need a whole new way of locking chests and the like to counter magic.

You'd think you were listening to someone weeping the ruins of a bombed-out village...

Except the new features it does add do not make up for what has been lost.

Except the new features it does add do not make up for what has been lost.

Number 1 RPG series lol? This is barely passable. It's as shallow an RPG as you can get.

first of all there is way more content in skyrim then really any game i know of ever.....who gives a crap about crossbows and levitation, they left out stupid crap like that, as far as spellmaking, i don't miss spellmaking either, and who cares about jump height,, acrobatics was a stupid skill anyway..you just want a lot of useless crap in the game....they might of left out some stupid crap but they added a lot of cool things like having a couple hundred perks to choose from and standing stones, plus you get to decide directly how much health, magic and stamina you get....so you're just stuck in the past. skyrim blows away every elder scrolls game to date. easily.

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Changing to what? Mindless idiocy that puts games like this on the level of silly flash games for all they're worth?

Change is fine when progression is actually occurring. Change is not fine when its a digression that is occurring.