I suppose when they did that, Skyrim was that new big **** 2011, too bad they've let this crap in.
you don’t HAVE to run around and do things of no interest to you to level up.
You have at some quite early point indeed.
You level your general level up by getting skill-levelups.
Once you have spent the highest possible amount of focus on your chosen core skills, you can't do much more but... raise the fitting attributes.
To raise attributes you need general level ups.
So once you have raised your core skills to 175ish you won't get any higher because your exp rate is at 0.3 or somewhat without focus.
So you can either wait that you die of old age (or your char for that matter) or you start to grind skills that you're not interested in to get general level ups, to get attribute points which will give you new focus for your chosen core skills.
It is indeed Skyrim-Bull**** at its finest.
Some of the earliest and most popular Mods of Skyrim was changing this tedious skilling-system.
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I agree that this game at this point is a foundation for a brilliant game, but the character develeopment-perk-system is no part of it.
It wasn't 10 years ago in other games, it won't be one in 10 years elsewhere.