The critical difference between a game series with mining/harvesting/crafting options like TES and a game like M&B is that in the former, you have a one-man (or mer, etc.) party, while in the latter you are the leader of a party ranging from one to several hundred people. In the former game, if you don't do it, it doesn't get done. In the latter, you should be able to assign the task to a lower ranking party member, or simply purchase the items from the local villagers. It doesn't NEED to be done by the player, and that's one more set of animations, menus, and game mechanics which can easily be rolled up into a single line of some other menu. Being able to assign an armor and weapon smith to repair equipment, or even fabricate armor from raw materials, would be a very welcome addition, but the player doesn't need to be the one doing it, which would make it FAR easier to do from a development perspective if it can just happen in the background.
In other words, it would certainly expand gameplay options for a single-person party, but is probably not worth the time and effort for how the vast majority of players will play the game. It would definitely be a positive step to leave those more detailed options open to modding, so those who want such an addition badly enough can at least add it.
Considering that several characters I played in Morrowind delved extensively into mod-added crafting, smithing, carpentry, and other skills (I even turned the lower level of Hlormaren into a workshop), I'd probably download such a mod myself. I even wrote a sub-mod for Morrowind Crafting to add literally hundreds of sources of various materials, and several additional armor smithing scripts for the unique Telvanni armors, into the initial Tamriel Rebuilt expansion mod, but unfortunately I never had the time/ambition to finish the almost complete remake needed when later sections were added and the original region was extensively changed. The mod is effectively dead, unless someone else pursues it, since the effort required to redo it has steadily grown with each new region. I am under no illusions as to how many (or more accurately, how few) players would actually use such a mod for M&B. Hundreds, very probably; several thousand, doubtful. The developers are working on features to best suit tens or hundreds of thousands of players, and this would likely detract from that.
In other words, it would certainly expand gameplay options for a single-person party, but is probably not worth the time and effort for how the vast majority of players will play the game. It would definitely be a positive step to leave those more detailed options open to modding, so those who want such an addition badly enough can at least add it.
Considering that several characters I played in Morrowind delved extensively into mod-added crafting, smithing, carpentry, and other skills (I even turned the lower level of Hlormaren into a workshop), I'd probably download such a mod myself. I even wrote a sub-mod for Morrowind Crafting to add literally hundreds of sources of various materials, and several additional armor smithing scripts for the unique Telvanni armors, into the initial Tamriel Rebuilt expansion mod, but unfortunately I never had the time/ambition to finish the almost complete remake needed when later sections were added and the original region was extensively changed. The mod is effectively dead, unless someone else pursues it, since the effort required to redo it has steadily grown with each new region. I am under no illusions as to how many (or more accurately, how few) players would actually use such a mod for M&B. Hundreds, very probably; several thousand, doubtful. The developers are working on features to best suit tens or hundreds of thousands of players, and this would likely detract from that.
