I've never understood the love for Oblivion. I played it and enjoyed it well enough, but meh. I joined the franchise at Daggerfall and Oblivion is the worst of the four big TES games since (Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion, Skryim). Oblivion's level-with-you system was awful. Skyrim is still too closely tied to the character's level for my liking, but its certainly a giant step in the right direction (towards Morrowind, away from Oblivion). Oblivion tried to make the game systems more accessible than Morrowind but I think largely did what you're complaining about Skyrim for. It removed the fun parts of Morrowind's systems without actually replacing them with anything. It felt dumbed down and unimaginative. At least Skyrim gives you a trade off for the over-simplification.
I think you mistake people's satisfaction with some elements of Oblivion for love. The spell crafting, while less flexible than in Morrowind, was better than in Skyrim by magnitudes, because Skyrim doesn't have it and even the hard-coded spells are lame-duck cousins of Oblivion spells. Character creation, to me, was an enjoyable part of the game as well. Stats and all the things that could be done to stats (they could be damaged, buffed and altered to do things like run faster) provided a lot of places to affect game play in positive and negative ways. Getting to jump higher or run faster because you chose to be an acrobat was cool. I was satisfied with most of the character elements (after I got used to the fact that many things had been reduced down to which skill it was important to.) It was always the leveling rate that stuck in my craw. I wasn't satisfied with the world or the quests at all. TBH I'd put my long-term like of Oblivion only at about 75%, even with mods. I only kept playing because it was the only thing like itself at the time.
Anyways, these kinds of personalization elements are completely missing in Skyrim, from a character perspective. We got the chance to make ourselves LOOK how we wanted, but it's not backed up the game play at all. Except in the very generic sense of you perk toward what you want to be and the late game rewards specialists.
For an example of the lack of character definition, the brawling quests? What really sets apart a good brawling character from a not brawling character? Putting points into HP and Stam? That one perk in Heavy Armor, or that one enchant? What about how strong the character is, period? There's no metric for that in game. These things get no consideration in Skyrim and to a hardcore gamer, it's a pretty stupid and willful oversight. In that regard Oblivion _is_ better. The things that are keeping my attention in Skyrim like crafting, at the end of the day, aren't much more than a super fancy version of what Fable offers. The systems don't mix and match at all....they're linear, covered up the fact you'll need to reforge the same weapon 2 to 3 times because your BS skill keeps growing. But there, again, what are you honestly doing? You're improving the damage/armor value. That's _it_. Remember how materials used to be important to enchanting? They're not in Skyrim. An iron ring (if you could make an iron ring) can hold the same enchantment level as a Gold Diamond Ring. All that the material affects is the selling price.
And as for people attributing Skyrim's sales to Bethesda's simplification of the game...I call BS. People don't buy games because they heard they're simpler and more intuitive (and honestly, Skyrim isn't super intuitive. It can be really vague even when remaining simple and the UI makes it worse.) That stuff doesn't make it out to the general public's consciousness and it doesn't win you any fans among hardcore gamers.
The game has sold well because it has amazing visuals and produces a lot of player stories that sound interesting. Giants chasing dragons into towns and all that. Not because John Q. Public heard that the game was more accessible to people like them. If I wanted to be really cruel to Skyrim, I could say it's the best screenshot generating game out there and that's why its selling so well. Because let's be honest. A huge part of the draw of the game is crawling to the top of a rock, zooming the camera out and going "IIIIIIIII'MMMMMMMMM EEEEEEPPPPPPPPPPIIIIIIICCCCCCCCCC!!!!!!!!" I don't think a game since Prototype has quite made me feel like this in that regard. The game play systems in the end are a vehicle for that.
(I will say though that the dungeons in Skyrim are vastly improved and I've yet to come across one that I thought was boring. Compared to Oblivion where the copy/pasting was so obvious it killed your immersion. Each one feels like it's got its own thing going on...even as I'm starting to see the same textures and stuff a lot now.)
You guys need to shrink up.
How am I doing so far? 
