Yeah, I got bored of my Mage in Skyrim fast. If they're going with set spells instead of scaled effects, they really need to put 100% into it and give us something more akin to a tabletop game spell list, so the flexibility is still there. I just want Morrowind-style spells back, with balanced enchanting (enchanters are restricted by their skill for one, top level enchantments require high character skill), and a more interesting spellcrafting method.
What I dislike is how the current spell set is even more of a regression from what Oblivion offered.
One would think that after having wrested good ol' attributes out of the game, in an effort to seemingly move towards a more direct and realistic "low-level" approach to RPG design where things are represented by what you can see/do instead of arbitrary numbers, there would be the potential there for some far more interesting spells than ever before.
You may no longer be able to drain a warrior's strength attribute, but one could hardly appreciate that most of the time anyway. They could've had Illusion spells that cause the target's arms to feel weak, causing them to have greater difficulty swinging their weapon - making it easier for the player to dance around them in combat. Or perhaps an Alteration spell that
literally could have made their weapon heavier, again hindering their abilities in combat, but also causing their weapons to hurt twice as much if you happened to get hit by them. Spells with multiple factors and effects like that prove to be the most interesting, in my opinion - especially because increasing your skill rank and/or perks could allow you to gradually mitigate the negative effects instead of just providing mindless bonuses to casting potency and spell cost.
But do we get a system that's even half as thoughtful as that? Nope nope nope. Just a rehash of Oblivion's spells for the most part, with a few being merged or otherwise reorganized.