I agree with you but the silliness of the leveling system did have its own charm. As a kid I spent so much time jumping around and putting points into getting those athletics skills high enough that it became a bit game breaking.

There’s a certainly a balance somewhere in there but I don’t think the game was ever difficult enough, playing on medium difficulty, to feel like you’ve fallen too far behind the curve. For context I’m thinking mostly about oblivion.

I probably played through oblivion more times making builds that weren’t optimal and had weird stats than I did trying to min/max my attributes. I think, for me, leaving room for that kind of gameplay is part of what made the older games so special.