The unrestricted armor/clothing in Morrowind did have a downside in that you were encouraged to wear every single piece of armor and clothing you could find. In essence, no matter who you were, you ran around wearing an exquisite robe, pants and a skirt, etc. I guess that could be solved via some lightweight layer-checking, though (no pauldrons with a robe, or something like that, and no skirt and pants at the same time maybe, or no skirt with leg armor).
What stopped you from wearing every piece of armor was role-play. That's the difference between Morrowind (and Daggerfall) compared to Oblivion. In Morrowind, you could meta-game the crap out of that game and beat the whole thing in 10 minutes if you really wanted to.
You see, people who have a passion for RPGs love having those options so
they don't have to use them. It sounds ironic and weird, but people loved Morrowind because you could be anything you wanted and didn't have the game tell you "no you can't do that - it's cheating". They gave you an empty slate to work with which allowed you to express yourself in your character in whatever form you wanted.[/quote]
You don't have to give me a lesson on role-play or intentionally limiting yourself. I know how that stuff works, and I know why roleplaying is fun.
However, I find roleplaying less fun when I have to make intentionally stupid choices. In the case of Morrowind's clothing, if I asked myself "why wouldn't my character wear a skirt, pants, and a robe?" I wouldn't have a good answer. The only answer would be a metagame answer, which is
the antithesis of good roleplaying. Roleplaying is saying "my character's personality is such that he would reasonably do This", as opposed to predicating your character's decisions based on avoiding exploity gameplay.
Morrowind is not a freeform do-anything-you-want-no-matter-what sort of game. It's a
game, where you exist in a consistent world and try to roleplay what a character would do in that world. It's not a Lego set, nor is it Minecraft. Roleplaying is seriously diminished for me when I have to take myself
out of my character's head just so I can make metagame decisions to prevent him from doing something he would reasonably do, like actually trying to be good at alchemy, or using the best weapon he's found, or wearing the clothing that suits him the best. Good roleplaying in a game like Morrowind is when you can just
act naturally, doing what you feel is right for your character without accidentally stumbling upon exploitative bullshit that totally breaks the game because certain gamesystems are poorly-implemented.
tl;dr you cannot excuse poor balance and design decisions with the word "roleplay"