Played for a bit after release - dropped it due to a number of niggling issues - was wondering if any of these had been addressed in any of the official patches - or if there were any good mods I should be looking at?
> Awful equipment system - i.e. trying to switch around various combinations of spell/sword/shield in various hands
> Awful inventory/menu system that was built for the console and never properly implemented on PC
> Underpowered destruction magic
> Overpowered stealth system

I think I'm up to date with the latest official patches but it doesn't look like there has been much (if any) rebalancing - it has mostly been bug fixing/optimisation so far - are there plans for an official rebalancing patch similar to what was produced for Fallout:NV?

What do you mean 'are they fixed yet?' They were made to be the way they are. Just like how the loot system is awful and the story is meh. That's why we have mods to change them to something different.

There's interface mods, destruction magic overhauls, I don't know about stealth.

As for your bullet points above, all of them are still there, and still as awful as ever. No balancing has been done, just miscellaneous bug fixing here and there. They did a minor 'fix' to smithing to make it just a tidge harder to speed-level it with the old 'mass produce iron daggers' routine, but that's about it. It's still awfully broken in terms of game balance, as always.

On the positive side, there are a lot of mods that fix or alleviate quite a few of these issues, if you check out the Nexxus. Mass bug-fix patches, crafting balancing, magic balancing, item fixes and additions, etc. You can fix the game up pretty well to your liking, if you spend the time with mods to do what Bethesda didn't bother with.

These issues will never be adressed in official patches. There are some excellent mods available, though - you should browse the Nexus. The first that come to mind would be SkyUI, Categorized Favourites Menu, Balanced Magic/Better Magic (or another of the multiple magic mods), Extra Hotkeys maybe? I don't know anything for stealth.

Thanks very much for the replies - I'll check out those mods - sorry for sounding a bit negative I should probably have pointed out the good bits at the same time not just the shortcomings!

I remember playing a very heavily modded Oblivion (which made it fantastic) - Obscuro's Overhaul or something along those lines? Are there any really serious mod compilations/overhauls like this for Skyrim yet?

Not really. Mostly because the level scaling in Skyrim is handled somewhat better than Oblivion's. There are some creature adding mods though, but nothing I'd consider essential for everyone.

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=9694 (lots of monsters, but some look a bit weird/out of place. This isn't from Martigen)


http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=1269 is a popular gameplay overhaul but it's scope is not comparable to that of OOO.