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Okay, before I start<_< I must say by all means I do love Skyrim, but there are just things that Oblivion did that were better.

The Guilds and their questlines. They require a lot of work in order to progress. Look at the mages guild and their requirments for the Arcane University. It is hard work but the reward is worth it and the quests are interesting. Where as in Skyrim, you just join without much effort.

The soundtrack. It's very relaxing and if i remember correctly, every song sounds different. Skyrim, er... it's excellent but some of the background songs do sound similar.

The mainquest. Oblivion made you work for it. From saving Kvatch to escorting Martin to the IC, you had to work for it. Yes, some quests were fetch ones but interesting fetch ones. Skyrim, yeah, it's too short and doesn't really feel like you're saving the world. Alduin should have been an excellent one on one fight for the fate of Nirn. It's not. And just disappointing.

The ability to mix and match. Bethesda, graphical bugs is a poor excuse from you for not including it in Skyrim. Oblivion allowed us to create our own unique look. Want to wear ebony gaunlets with a brown shirts with elven boots and glass thingy, go ahead.

I enjoyed that in Oblivion you could use a lot more spell types, and could make a viable hand to hand character for the duration of the game. Don't get me wrong - I have a super strong Khajiit fist fighter in Skyrim, but he relies a lot on potions, Sanguine's Rose and dumb luck. My Khajiit monk in Oblivion just kicked all kinds of ass using just his fists (and admittedly his bow, if he could get the drop on people.) He could have made short work of Alduin. He kicked Jyggalag's ass.

Given the way I play my game, the thing I miss most when playing Skyrim is that you can't have a weapon and a shield and a spell. You have to choose - shield in left hand, or spell in left hand?

I also miss the guilds. I like the camaraderie of the Guildhalls in Oblivion, the way you had somewhere free to stay in every city. I also prefer most of the guild questlines to their equivalents in Skyrim.

I miss the Speed attribute. I like being able to cast a Fortify Speed spell on myself or my horse before fast-travelling.

Oblivion > Skyrim

Everything *moves* so much more fluidly in Oblivion than Skyrim (except for water). I absolutely detest how horses move in Skyrim (and the directional controls are sooo much worse). The sight of a Khajiit sprinting from one town to the next is a lovely thing in Oblivion. When I switched from Obliv to Skyrim I was shocked to see how much worse movements looked. I really like watching the girls walk in Oblivion -- but not in Skyrim. Same with horses galloping.

*Fast* horses. 'nuf said.

I like the fact that Obliv has "nice" music, when you are safe, and strolling along, and enjoying the scenery. The constantly minor-filled edgy music of Skyrim really gets to be a drag.

The lower rate of random nuisance monster encounters in Obliv is good (and the difficulty level of the fights is better). Being in a fight for my life every 2 minutes in Skyrim is unrealistic and annoying.

Running fast, and being able to jump high/far.

The lack of color in Skyrim is annoying. When real flowers on a real tundra bloom, they are quite showy. And the plants themselves are less realistic in Skyrim. Lavender doesn't look like that. Neither does nightshade. Even the frost-covered trees around Bruma are prettier than the trees in Skyrim. Why? The aesthetics of a game are important, and graying everything out was a huge mistake. All Skyrim has is the aurora -- why can't it have the beautiful blue sky and flaming sunrises/sunsets sometimes?

Guildhalls. I don't necessarily need the quests, but the halls themselves add a lot of atmosphere.

Safe containers.

"Open" spells -- but even more so waterwalking!!!

The less flashy nature of the menus and maps in Obliv -- they went way too wild with it in Skyrim just because they could.

The fact that damage is more manageable in Obliv -- in Skyrim it seems like most melee enemies always have a chance of 1-hit-killing you.

It's a little too hard to make money at the very beginning of Oblivion (unless you cheat a little), but it's way way too ridiculously easy to make thousands of gold every night in Skyrim just by chopping some wood.

The seemingly-less-random nature of respawning in Obliv. In a game like this, it makes it a lot more fun if there are some things you can count on. The dead body still being outside the door an hour later when you come back out of the dungeon. The particular plant or ore vein being able to be reharvested at *some* time.

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Skyrim > Oblivion

I like the way Alchemy works, better.

The Arcane University was vastly overpowered in Oblivion -- the custom spells were too damned good, the custom enchanted weapons and armor were too damned good. So I am in favor of the Skyrim limitations on all that. For that reason, I also like having to learn spells from books that you have to find.

I enjoy the custom skill perks.

The followers are much better -- and I love being able to swap inventory with them.

Fewer beggars, not nearly so annoying, and they actually do something for you.

The world seems a lot bigger -- if you don't fast travel, it takes quite a while to get from here to there.

The better-looking NPCs in the vanilla Skyrim vs. Obliv, with better voices for the humans.

Visually, the rivers everywhere are an awesome improvement, of course.

Something I don't like about Skyrim is that they removed the attributes like strength, intelligence, willpower, etc.

Money is all over the place in Oblivion if you know where to look (not in clutter boxes and goblin caves). I think the general needs and money availablility are well balanced early in the game. Crime doesn't pay= real life, but stripping the first floor of the Bruma mages' guild house bare >>> fenced to Ongar yields just over 1000g, which (I think) pays for all of the Thieves' Guild benchmarks in one shot (my stripped down Breton girly still wet from the prison sewers carried out 995g in one load w/ the help of the apprentice feather spell.) The rest of the house gives up nearly that much a minute later after you join the guild. That haul will pay for 100 lock picks, 20 hammers and the few Skingrad destruction spells you need to make your first super weapon and super spell. I only strip that one house. In the others, I only take alchemy equipment from the respawning cabinets and off the table tops. I don't agree with that part of the game. The guild houses shouldn't give up that much for free.

The Ayleid ruins give up 700gld per Varla stone plus 500g per statue, so you can probably pay for the Skingrad mansion after the statue quest--long before expensive armour shows up. The Hrotanda Vale ruin gives up over 5000g in stones. Black bows at 100g a pop net over 1000g per trip to Milk Rock cave all by themselves. The only "must have" piece of store-bought equipment for a fighter IMO is/are the Hands of the Atronach at ~11,500g (at basic haggle). The most convenient house in the game (White Stallion Lodge) is free.

It took me a while to think of these, but I do like the portable alchemy in Oblivion, and the ability to skip the tutorial is really handy. I also miss the Atronach birthsign, sort of strangely. My only Oblivion character is an Atronach, and I quite like the challenge of hunting down Ayleid wells, and really relying on Alchemy. I like the Atronach Standing Stone, too, but it just isn't the same.

I'm torn on classes. On the one hand, I like being able to give yourself a label, on the other hand, there isn't a class for my prefered playstyle, and I really like being able to change what I focus on mid-character.

I vastly prefer Skyrim's melee combat. It might be slower, but it feels less floaty. In Oblivion, at least with my character, it's all a game of dodging in close enough to use a touch spell, dodging back out before you get hit, and when you fail at that getting staggered all over the place. Or else backing in a circle, flinging ranged spells. When you're actually in combat, there's no incentive not to block constantly. In Skyrim, there's a lot more tactical decisions.

Unpopular opinion time: I really like Skyrim's restricted list of spells. All of them are distinct from all the others, and feel really different to use. I feel a sense of accomplishment because I've gotten to a high enough level to use the next spell, whereas in Oblivion I keep thinking "nah, I'd have to spend more magika. Not worth it", because the only thing that would change with that more powerful spell is a shorter fight time. Which you'd think I would spring for, but somehow I can never justify it.

Spell making, naming potions in alchemy, athletics and acrobatics. Was there any good reason to remove naming potions? Who decided, yeah, we want to try to improve the menus, we are removing class systems to encourage customization and to make the game more realistic, ...Oh yeah, that potion naming has to go. Did it really hurt anything,...

[seriousvoice] Ok, so the real reasons I like oblivion much more than skyrim are that: 1. A lot of the quest lines in Skyrim feel way too short. The Companions quest line seems especially short since it uses a lot of radiant quests, which always seem like chores rather than being any fun. The thieves guild quests are much better, but they pale in comparison to Oblivion's thieves' guild quest line which, IMHO, was great. The main quest also seemed kinda short, but my main problem with it was it had so much potential to be so epic but ended up being disappointing. The final fight with Alduin, as it has been said a million times, was a complete letdown. It seemed like my only purpose during that fight was to use dragonrend to bring Alduin down so that the three heroes could wipe the floor with him. I felt more like a support using a stun to set up a gank than the last dragonborn fighting against the World-eater, first born of Akatosh for the fate of the world. To be fair, the Oblivion main quest wasn't that great either, but Skyrim's had so much potential to be so much more.

2. I just don't like the snowy setting of Skyrim. This just my personal opinion and is not really the fault of Bethesda. I liked the setting of Oblivion and I absolutely LOVED the setting of the Shivering Isles.

3. I really hate how Bethesda decided to change the names of various materials used in armor to names which sound fancier but are already used for various real-life substances. I mean really, why use the name "corundum" for a copper-like metal when the real corundum already appears in Skyrim in the form of rubies and sapphires? And even worse, why do we use this metal to make steel instead of using something more realistic, like charcoal? And why on earth did they decide to rename glass, which had been previously well established in lore, to Malachite? That just causes confusion since malachite looks a lot like glass and the name makes it seem like glass actually is malachite, which would be absolutely ridiculous. Also, why did they make mercury a solid that is used in armor rather than keeping it closer to reality and having it be a liquid and an important ingredient in alchemy? Maybe I'm the only one who is bothered by this since I'm a mineral collector, but it just seems way to ridiculous even for fiction.

4. The most of the dlc for was not very good in Oblivion, excluding the Shivering Isle which was absolutely fantastic. I probably spent as much time in the Isles as I did in the rest of Oblivion. There were plenty of quests, lots of interesting dungeons, loads of unique loot, and many memorable characters.
Skyrim didn't have any extremely good dlc. Heartfire was basically a mod, Dawnguard had exactly the same questline no matter which side you chose, and Dragonborn was extremely small and suffered from to few dungeons and quests. I probably took 12 hours to completely finish everything in Dragonborn while I've probably spent 10 times that amount on the Shivering Isles.

As much as I like Oblivion, there are things that Skyrim did a lot better. In Skyrim, characters no longer have cheesy conversations about geography (I actually miss this, some conversations made me laugh so hard xD). Cells in Skyrim are often way more interesting than those in Oblivion, which often felt like they were randomly generated. Also combat in Skyrim is more interesting normally, but the deadly reflexes mod makes Oblivion's combat just as good. [\seriousvoice]

I have a number of Skyrim > Oblivion points but I'll only name the Oblivion > Skyrim ones, and my personal favourites in no particular order (and not necessarily the best);

Arcane University and Spell Creations (We were given a small number of destruction {et c.} spells in Skyrim and I actually felt restricted).

Disposition. This is by far my favourite part of Oblivion, e.g. in Shivering Isles' final quest (even halfway through the questline), your status(es) really shine/s, unlike in Skyrim (exception of some minor notices).

Trading, this goes with disposition so not much else to say about it, bartering was a hell of a lot more realistic!

Liveliness and Bloom of the colours... I don't want to go into this

Finally, the quests, well, they certainly know how to get you absorbed into something such as when renting rooms to speak to someone in private (Anvil's Recommendation, Golden Road quest compared to Delphine's)