Bethesda have been dumbing down their RPG's for ages. I actually prefer more stats and levelling options. But I think the two games to get the balance right are Dungeon Master and Wizardry 8. Oblivion was the last Bethesda to have the balance right - Skyrim dumbed it down a lot as did Fallout 76.
Honestly the old ES leveling system in Morrowind and Oblivion was too convoluted for no real benefit. It encouraged you to play in counter-intuitive ways, like putting your most desired skills into the non-leveling categories to prevent leveling. I wasn't sad to see that go.
In Skyrim, you just play the game how you want and your character naturally evolves along those lines, then you "solidify" those choices with perks. Much better than picking everything permanently at character creation and being stuck with that choice forever. I think it works pretty well. People complain that it technically allows you to get every skill to max, but A. all the previous games had the same problem, and B. you'd have to play for an overly long amount of time for that, so whatever. Some people also really want a 100 hour game to punish you with a full restart if you don't like your weapon pick you made five minutes in. I consider that bad design. I do miss the custom spell options though.
The problem with Skyrim is the dumb writing, bad quests, effortless dragons, and overall half-baked plot ideas (like the civil war that's resolved with one dialogue in a conference room).
Skyrim had terrible game balance. Magic scaling was atrocious. Also, level scaling is a trash mechanic for shit devs who are too lazy to properly balance their games.
Bethesda have been dumbing down their RPG's for ages. I actually prefer more stats and levelling options. But I think the two games to get the balance right are Dungeon Master and Wizardry 8. Oblivion was the last Bethesda to have the balance right - Skyrim dumbed it down a lot as did Fallout 76.
Honestly the old ES leveling system in Morrowind and Oblivion was too convoluted for no real benefit. It encouraged you to play in counter-intuitive ways, like putting your most desired skills into the non-leveling categories to prevent leveling. I wasn't sad to see that go.
In Skyrim, you just play the game how you want and your character naturally evolves along those lines, then you "solidify" those choices with perks. Much better than picking everything permanently at character creation and being stuck with that choice forever. I think it works pretty well. People complain that it technically allows you to get every skill to max, but A. all the previous games had the same problem, and B. you'd have to play for an overly long amount of time for that, so whatever. Some people also really want a 100 hour game to punish you with a full restart if you don't like your weapon pick you made five minutes in. I consider that bad design. I do miss the custom spell options though.
The problem with Skyrim is the dumb writing, bad quests, effortless dragons, and overall half-baked plot ideas (like the civil war that's resolved with one dialogue in a conference room).
Skyrim had terrible game balance. Magic scaling was atrocious. Also, level scaling is a trash mechanic for shit devs who are too lazy to properly balance their games.
Level scaling takes the fun out of litteraly every aspect of a light RPG like Skyrim
It makes every reward pointless and dull, and gives you no real sense of progression.