"We're Making It Accessible to a Wider Audience."

[Bostur]

The thing is though is that unless you spend hours grinding some other skill in Skyrim, like magic if your mostly warriorish, it really wouldn't affect you during level up.

I play mostly a rouge like class with bows and light armor as my main two skills and I have spent entire levels just leveling destruction magic with only one or two increases to my main weapon/armor and have never had it made it impossible to kill things after level up because 1 level doesn't change the monsters and you just spend the next level leveling up your main skills.

You have to try pretty hard to screw yourself over in Skyrim.

Contrary wise in New Vegas if I don't spend mot of my skill points leveling the big 3, science, lockpicking, speech, I find myself arbitrarily denied access to so much content i don't see why I would continue playing the game. Not leveling up those 3 skills is like not doing the loyalty missions and getting the Normandy upgrades in ME2, yeah you can beat the game but why bother if you lose everything.

If New Vegas changed the way those 3 skills worked into something like
-You can attempt to pick any lock regardless of your skill, like Skyrim.
-You can attempt to hack any computer regardless of your skill, like Skyrim does with lockpicking
-Speech gives you a % chance not a definite yes or no ability to persuade someone

Then I would agree with you that New vegas offers the ability to experiment. but as it stands now its either put your skill points into those skill or turn off the game becuaase there goes 1/5 of the content.

You're not meant to get all the content in your first playthrough, and simply by commiting to one side you will probably lose more than 1/5 of the content. Thats the nature of the non-linearity of the game. Making a choice means making a compromise. In the case of speech and lockpick you notice that there are things you can't do, but there are many other cases that are less noticeable.
It's probably true that the big 3 as you call them, are too useful compared to other skills. In the same regard as intelligence is too powerful compared to the other stats. FO3 and NV doesn't make full use of the skill system. If it had more variable approaches to each situation, the skill system would balance better. There are a few cases where skill checks for other skills are used, mostly in conversations but it's not very often. For completionists science and speech are certainly good choices, lockpicking more for the looting options.
In this regard I'm personally looking forward to Wasteland 2. The first game had a very varied approach to skill usage, and with several characters it is easier to cover more bases if desired. It is probably a return to a more old school approach to RPGs, rich skill system, no level scaling, several characters. I believe some of the modern ideas of RPG design has caused more balance issues and usability issues than they have solved.

Skyrim isn't nearly as punishing as Oblivion in regards to skillups. But the cost is that the level scaling starts falling behind at some point, making the game very easy around level 20. It suffers from the symptom of an inverse difficulty curve, that is very commonplace in many new RPGs. Bethesda didn't really solve the problem, they tweaked the system to be less punishing. Partly by making level ups more beneficial and partly by tweaking the difficulty curve. The level scaling ghost still rears its ugly head, it's just that the effect is different.

 

[Frotality]

because this is the internet and id be called a neo-nazi if i didnt specifically counter that point (BTW im not a neo-nazi), some qualifiers:

yes, accessible does not mean dumber. streamlining does not mean dumbing down. done intelligently, a streamlined game can have complex and deep mechanics that are contained within an easy to access package that does not disrupt the flow of gameplay, improving the game overall.

but this phrase has nothing to do with that. it is a stock PR manner of saying "video games werent as popular when we started, now we can just copy CoD and get more money!" that is it. that is all it ever was and ever will be. whether the developers have any intent or ability to properly expand the market for their game is utterly irrelevant to this statement. "accessible to a wider audience" is just a qualifier for the fact that games dont just appeal to nerds anymore, a way to placate older gamers.