As the age old adage goes, to each his own.
That said, there are parts of this discussion you have left out. For one, I specifically stated that these titles are better than Skyrim and Oblivion, not the Elder Scrolls as a whole. Morrowind was likely the pinnacle of the immersive RPG experience and it is a shame that they've dumbed down the franchise to the level they have.
I'll start with Mass Effect. Definitely not just another space game. After five complete playthroughs with five distinct gaming experiences, this game is definitely at the top of a short list of excellent and complete RPG's. FarCry 3 stands out as being bug-free and a massive amount of fun. In fact, all of the titles I mentioned were nearly completely bug free on my Xbox. The same cannot be said for Skyrim, which is horribly flawed to the point of frustration.
That is one of the biggest points, but not the central issue here. That issue is how ridiculously simple the puzzles are and how easy the game is on a whole. One unforgivable "stripping down" of the Elder Scrolls experience in Skyrim is the taking out of the need or even use of exploration whatsoever. When given a quest, you are almost always supplied no details aside from a little triangle on the map and the words "Travel to Blah Blah Keep". As someone who enjoyed asking around and exploring in order to locate the next part of a quest I found this aspect of Skyrim to irreparably ruin the immersion. Going from point A to point B with nothing to of interest in-between (Oh look! A giant!) is boring enough, but then you toss in buggy visuals, poor character mapping, game freezes, walking through solid objects, falling into the environment, and - my personal favorite - a dragon who glitches out and starts teleporting across the map, and you can see why the game is longer in my collection.
With that in mind, you may keep your Skyrim, and I will continue to have fun playing games that are finished, bug-free, immersive, and do not hold my hand if I do not wish them to do so. As I am having a blast taking over pirate ships and raiding European citadels on Caribbean Islands in AC IV, you can enjoy another playthrough in Bethesda's table scraps if you wish, it troubles me not.