Well, I believe there are 4 stones at the beginning. Warrior, mage, theif, and thent he lover stone. The lover stone grants equal skill gain for everything. Hence Jack of all trades, master of none.
Perks are much more important than your skill. I want my character to get better in a skill as he improves, instead of unlocking perks to make your skill useful. Most perks don't even make sense. Some of the magic perks could be done with spellmaking.
In Oblivion, you gain bonuses when you hit 25, 50, 75 and 100 and I think it was a nice feature.
I loved the perk system in Fallout 3. It didn't change the gameplay much but it was fun. It didn't force you to specialize and you couldn't get some of the perks if you don't meet the SPECIAL requirments. That's just my opinion and I'm sure there will be mods for people who think like me.
But I think attributes sytem and level scaling doesn't go well together. You have to pay attention to what skills you are training if you don't want to be squashed under level scaling. It was good in Morrowind though.
Well, races used to matter in Oblivion and Morrowind. Now even an Orc can be a spellcaster. You just get a very small boost to some of your skills, depending on your race.
By class sytem I meant minor skills and major skills. It's replaced by a perk system which is ridicilous, at least for me. I always played TES games (excluding Daggerfal) by combining combat, stealth and magic skills and now I can't do them all because of this specialization system. I have start a new character if I get bored with my fightining style.
Both of these things are inaccurate and false. You could be an orc mage in Morrowind. It would be more difficult and isn't as wise a choice, but the games were always about freedom. It only really mattered in the beginning how hard you needed to work to get needed skills to a usable level. Thanks to skills rising faster at lower levels you could do this pretty quickly. Magic Resistance was also pretty nifty for a few magical artifacts with negative effects.
There is nothing in gameplay really unlocked through perks. No mechanic of the game is restricted because you didn't invest in some tree. It simply made some mechanic more accessible. It is a wildly more open system where you can be a jack of all trades and do decently. Or invest in one aspect like magic or stealth and be pretty good at that.
I fully understand not digging the feel. It's a perfectly valid reason for disliking something and I get a similar feeling when playing. But your other reasons are a little silly.
Intelligence determines your total magicka. Orcs have 30 (40 if female) intelligence. You say that yourself, it would be more difficult and won't be a wise choice. You have to carefully train your Int governing skills to raise your Intelligence. But still, an Orc mage doesn't have potential of an Altmer mage. In Skyrim this doesn't have any effect. In Morrowind, an Orc mage can't be powerful like an Altmer mage. In Skyrim, Orc mage and Altmer mage is the same thing because every race has the same potential.
Perks are more important than you think. You can't be a jack of all trades and do decently. Level scaling will crush you. There is a guy on the official forum who complains about everything can kill him easily because he made bad decisions when it comes to perks.
There are pretty good perks which you can get only by specializing.
Shadow Warrior (Sneak perk) - Crouching stops combat for a moment and forces distant opponents to search for a target. So you can deal sneak attacks if it's not an open area.
Dual Flurry (One-handed) - Dual wielding attacks are %25 faster. Second upgrade makes it %35 faster. This is like a must to have if you plan on dual wielding.
Shield Charge (Block) - Sprinting with a shield raised knocks down most targets.
You can double your damage by spending 5 perk points in Two-Handed. I think perks are pretty important. Believe me, I tried evenly distributing perk points among my favorite skills. It doesn't work well.