I LOVED Morrowinds Armor system, I could put on w/e pieces I wanted L/R Hands, L/R Shoulders, Chest, Feet, Legs, Helmet, a shirt/pants underneath the armor, and a robe over it [Though if I remember right only certain robes worked].

Then Oblivion came out and the armor system was...dumbed down imo. Now all we had to work with was Chest,Hands [No longer L/R] Legs, Feet, Head. No shirt or pants underneath and no more robes overtop.

Now we have Skyrim where it was dumbed down even more. Head,Body,Hands, Feet.

So my question is...why. I'm not a game developer nor am I implying I am. Was dumbing down the armor a way of cutting corners? Was it to much hassle to put it in the game? What was the deal.

Btw I have not played ES games before Morrowind so what was the armor system like in Daggerfall, Battlespire, Redguard etc?

It is a performance compromise. The reduction on armor slots lets them put more NPCs on screen at the same time. Open cities are another thing you can expect from next-gen consoles.

Makes sense, though open cities were in Morrowind, so if I'm following because the number of NPC's could be increased due to lower armor slots they had to make "instanced" cities in Oblivion and Skyrim?

If combined armor is truly for performance, then TES VI will have more armor slots. If not, it's another Bethesda lie.

Lol what? open cities were in morrowind, and all of the cities were bigger than those in oblivion or skyrim.
and that was 10 years ago