I find the excuse for removing Levitate and Mark/Recall to be damned stupid myself. If its so easy to break certain things with these spells, then make it impossible to use them in these situations. Thats what they did at the end of Morrowind's Main Quest. You couldn't recall or intervention out. There is no excuse to remove these things when all it takes is a simple script restricting these spells where they can break things.
Then you're significantly reducing the effect of these abilities. If you now can only mark and recall while not in a dungeon or a specifically tricky quest, then it becomes a lesser form of fast travel.
If you can only levitate while in interiors for the sake of not avoiding the landscape of the exterior cells, then there's no point to really using it outside of combat scenarios.
Plus, with reduced functionality you kids will still just complain about it being less effective anyway.
EDIT: To put in my five cents, I love the bar brawls being in. More interesting AI, more interesting scenarios for the player. I'd rather have bar brawls, more dynamic friendships/relationships with NPCs, Dungeon crawling with NPCs, etc, than spears any day.