Don't get too off-topic guys.
I'm starting to think that hermit is either trolling, has never used spellmaking or he just can't part with his "devoted fan" glasses....
I'll quote again cause i didn't get an aswer:
Really with fans like you i can imagine TES VI
"we decided to exclude maces and axes" "ah good they were cheesy and redudant, swords do the same thing"
"we decided to have a bolt spell for each school instead of complexing the game" "yea cool what did we did spray and aoe for? You can do the same with a bolt np"
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Interestingly enough, the variety of spells range and shape are part of the reason I'm defending Skyrim's combat as these do create significant differences. Pretty much every spell used to be either a bolt or "on touch" with the option of a spherical AoE for either. Skyrim has a much bigger variety. And Skyrim also makes maces, axes, swords more significantly unique than they were previously via perks - bleed, armor pen, and crits.
Granted, there are visual/RP reasons for having different weapons obviously even if they hadn't done this, and I won't say I'm against having more weapon variety like spears and such, but I'm usually going to prefer they make each weapon function differently and with smooth/fluid animations and mechanics in combat over just having tons of weapons. If I can have both, great, but that's just my preference when I can't.
All of these things could have still been implemented with both spell crafting AND all our classic effects. No reason to remove them.
Balance was a good reason to remove them, as well as just getting rid of junk effects.
If they felt they could've included spellmaking while retaining balanced magic, I'd be all for it. Unfortunately, they couldn't manage either in Skyrim, but I'd still prefer they work on getting the balance right before they make that infinitely harder for themselves with the countless variables spell making adds to the problem.