Deeper Design – easy examples included - IDEAS FOR RYZOM

In "Oblivion" and "Skyrim" you can adjust the range, damage, AOE, cast/cooldown

All those are available here as well, you'll get all the options as you level up. There are even 3 individual AoE types, for squiggly lines, circular areas and cones.

The tutorials items I got ruin any hope of crafting something better myself.

As soon as you outgrow these, better can be crafted. However, leveling crafting takes considerably more effort than your combat skills. As such it is difficult to keep up and craft all your own gear.

Whater in which I cannot dive for pearls, walk-ways under which I cannot swim through, cliffs from which I cannot jump into water.

The game engine isn't really 3D as such, closer to 2.5D, and as such the possibility for vertical movement is limited to slopes and such. It is from 2004 after all.

In oblivion, you could level everything individually – swords, daggers, each spell

Here you will notice that you need to level skills individually as well, since the skill tree splits at 21, and every multiple of 50 after that. Elemental magic stays together as one tree, but all melee skills need to be trained individually in the end.

This isn't oblivion, and it isn't your "run of the mill"-asian fireworks show. It is also a very old game with some quite chaotic coding. Don't expect any significant changes to mechanics, models or areas.

That said, it is a very interesting place to spend your time, and you will find plenty of mechanics which simply do not exist in other games. There are plenty of bugs/features/tricks which can provide new ways to go about things.