I'm a huge fan of the series, and I enjoyed my first couple hundred hours of Skyrim, but certain issues bugged the hell out of me. I've noticed the creation kit came out recently, and I was wondering which of these issues have been sufficiently changed in game updates or mods to warrant me giving the game another play through:

1) Few (or no) rewards worth seeking out. I want to find powerful ancient treasures. The best items in the game came from finding/crafting unenchanted high level armor then copy/pasting your favorite enchant(s) onto them. Even without enchanting, gear hunting typically involves hoping for the best random stuff.
2) Magic dmg scales poorly and magic regen doesn't work in combat.
3) Enchanting, blacksmithing, and sneak: any builds that optimize these skills will be overkill. Lockpicking, speech, pickpocket, alchemy, etc.: these trees are essentially worthless. Do you still have to limit some skills to avoid being too powerful? Has this been rebalanced? For example, if enchanting/smithing could only lead to armor/weapons that are placeholders for more powerful unique treasure, there'd be no harm in spending an hour or two boosting your skill.
4) Game speed. Skyrim anolyzes my system and puts the settings on high. However, even on low i get occasional bouts of extremely low framerate (like dropping from 35 fps to 3 fps).

How big of an issue are these problems these days? Any recommendations for mods that help with these?

1. Not really afaik
2. There are several magic mechanic mods out there
3. Same, there are mods that lessen the strength of these
4. There are a few mods for this, as well as the 64 bit exe if you can use it. But the main thing you could have done for this is to go back and lower the graphics that you don't really need. I can run it on Ultra High but I go and turn off the distant object detail and stuff like that because I don't notice them.

Content wise, nothing has changed. You aren't asking for things that can be addressed in a patch with those complaints. The game is much more stable and runs noticeably faster than it did when you played last. Many quest bugs have been rooted out and there is a high res texture pack for the PC. If that doesn't sound like enough to bring you back, wait six months to a year for the DLC and expansions.

Also, mods wont be out for another few months. The really good, indepth, game changing ones at least.

Thank you for the response. It's pretty much what I expected. Was hoping this game could keep me interested until d3, but doesn't look like the timing will work out that way.