The only thing I think that has "dumbed down" TES are quest markers. And last time I checked, those were optional.

I don't miss Morrowind's dice roll mechanics. I don't miss having to micro-manage my characters skills to level up. I don't miss having to use a cheat code to regain magicka like I did in Morrowind (resting for an hour after every fight got really old, really fast). And, as far as a lack of "RPG elements" I find that argument to be utter non-sense. I've never considered any of TES games that I've played to be traditional RPG's anyways, so that argument to me is baseless. I started playing this series with Morrowind in 2005, and it was and still is one of my favorite games of all time. Having said that, I think most of the changes that Bethesda has made since then have improved the game drastically. The move to voice acting instead of text based dialogue has limited character interactions quite a bit. But, Skyrim is as much of a fully realized world as Morrowind was. And, it looks a million times better. Plus, bows and crossbows are actually a viable form of combat now. Nothing was more aggravating than to fire 25 arrows at a mud crab, have each one of them hit it and not do any actual damage to the stupid thing.

edit - I do think removing the abitlity to make custom spells was a mistake though. I also miss skill requirements to go through the different guilds.

1. Of course they can do it! It's the same damn principle as friendly fire off/on in an FPS game.

2. I'd like to see some statistics to support these "facts" you're blurting out, please.