3.5 hasn't told me what not to do in a long time. It has a whole lot of rules to play out what people might want to do. If someone wants to do something not covered in the rules those rules provide examples for how to deal with things someone wants to do.
Just an example from my last session. The PC's run from some goblins after getting caught (oh my, I've broken another of those rumored restriction by placing goblins in a number far above the CR appropiate number) the last PC is caught between goblins. He wants to feint his way out of it by doing as if he moved into one direction-then running the other. Now how would I have ruled that with a rules light system? With D&D I remembered the tumbling to avoid AoO's rules and just applied the same to bluffing.
Your so called restrictions are guidelines. I've started DMing with 3rd edition and without any expirience as player. If it wasn't for those guidelines I would have been a far worse DM and would have taken far longer to become decent. Now that I'm decent and made my expiriences I can move out of those guidelines, but they still help me gauge the impact of everything I'm doing.
You can always read restrictions and "not to do's" into a RPG set. We call that Rules Lawyering and it's a term from before 3rd edition. At this point I'd want to mention that various 3.5 sources and designers also advise to make ad hok decisions to not disrupt the flow of play and resolve the issue after play. Those same sources also tend to decry ruleslawyers.
We have an open fun group of friends that tends to trust my DMing enough to not always cry for the 100% exact ruling. I'm sure all the people advocating for more ad hoc systems have the same, otherwhise your groups wouldn't want to be DMed that way, right?
If people prefer older/other systems for their gaming that's perfectly fine (I greatly enjoy the recent "glory of OD&D" thread greatly at parts, simply because it's about people enjoying their current RPGing). But the regular decrying of my favored playstyle as inferior is getting on my nerves.
I'm not saying my way is better, I'm just asking people not to call me an idiot for enjoying my style.
Edit: Sorry for getting myself drawn into the whole off-topic thing. After reading something for the xth time in short time it becomes kinda hard to ignore. I'm still to young to be laid back all the time
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Anyway, here's some thought to make this post worthwhile to the topic:
I've started with 3rd edition D&D, so I'm not really from "that time", but I guess I understand the mentality behind expecting "skilled players" since I've shared that mentality for some time. There's basically five parts to it:
-Tactical gameplay: Especially prevalent if the DM or designer is a tactician player himself. A tactician player that designs an encounter often can't help but to optimise, to think in the terms of an exciting and challenging combat. If the players in turn are tactical themself, this is both needed (so they don't swipe it and grow bored) and good for the gameplay. If they aren't, well, that can end up pretty badly. Labeling hard adventures as deadly is good. Labeling it made for "skilled players" can be called into question.
-Puzzeling: Puzzels and riddles are still a big part of RPG's for some. By all I know it was far more prevalent in the old days. Setting a hard puzzle into a dungeon could be defined as the prime example of requiering player skill. These days puzzles are generally seen as a thing of personal preference.
-DM expectations/common sense: I guess most DM's had this one happen to them. You place a crittical element with one way to solve it, but you don't worry, cause the solution is obvious. And then all the players get stuck there for a session/all die. The first idea every novice DM gets on this is of course to blame the players or think they have no common sense (In my early years I've called my players stupid for doing some totally reasonable things-and some not very reasonable things that seemed like the only option). Of course back in the old days there where far more novice DMs and expiriences that it indeed isn't much of a matter of player skill as a matter of good design didn't spread as much because people wheren't wired as much. Many of these DM's where designers and so it seemed logical to say that it needed some "skill as player" to look into the DM's/designers mind. These days that kind of design/expectation is frowned uppon.
-Metagaming/rules knowledge/expirience: You check for traps, you know not to touch altairs of evil, you run from big dragons, you know a demilich when you see it and know how to deal with it. This is the kind of stuff a DM/designer that thinks in "player skill" might expect. Basically a experienced player that isn't afraid to use his past experiences even if his PC has no way of really knowing that stuff. The 3.5 DMG officially frowns on metagaming and that's mostly how this stuff is viewed these days.
-Creative problem solving: You know how PC's something do totally crazy "out-there" things that work? How there sometimes is a ocean eleven like plan that works out? When as a DM your own game totally takes you by surprise. Some DMs don't like this (commonly known as control freaks), but for many DM's and more players it's one of the best things in the game. Of course you then beginn to think how to create such situations more often and beginn forcing them. Which of course doesn't work most of the time. Create a impossible subjective and in 95% of the cases it stays impossible. The other 5% had "skilled players". Since these things are dependand on sudden inspiration as much as some kind of skill the notion of forcing it isn't leading far though.
I'm sure there are other notions of "player skill", some looked more favorable uppon and some less these days, but these are the five prime examples I could identify. That two of these are rather disreputable these days, two depend on personal preference and one isn't really a skill puts the whole notion of "player skill" in a bad light. I'm not entirely sure it is such a bad thing, but DMing a rather casual group, I've put the notion aside for now (I still place hard combat encounters, but if the PC's fail tactically, I don't see it as a game failure anymore, but instead as another kind of fun. Like de-equiped 1st PC's on the run from 20 classed goblins-we all had fun with that so far)
