bethesda really need to do something about making the patch work with exisiting game saves i understand the difficulty with this problem but i have amassed an amazing amount of hours that i am unwilling to just throw away. tbf we should have been informed of the problems with this game from the begining so i didnt waste 429 hours of my life playing it to have to start again
Patches alter components and routines of programs, that's just the nature of the beast. Depending on what they alter, it can impact on existing save games. This isn't a Beth or Skyrim specific issue, it happens with every game, and pretty much with every patch, to a greater or lesser extent.
I do in-house beta testing for a strategy game company, and during a project we would see patches coming down the line every few days. In most cases, those patches do have impacts on the programs we are working on, although we are using the developers own models...and in some cases it has necessitated the beta team in restarting or re-installing the patched game...and when a company is working to tight deadlines, they seriously try to avoid that sort of problem.
In all honesty, Beth will have done everything it could to ensure the stability of the patch and game, and would have tried to ensure that the impact of the patch is only limited to what was intended to be fixed, but issues do happen which can't be avoided.