That might be a good thing for you my friend. But the patch has affected a lot of people differently. The zero magic resistance on everything in my opinion is inexcusable. Also in my game it causes worse AI decisions like dragons flying in the wall and not moving, then passing threw the mountain then appearing over my head. I had no insane bugs like this until 1.2. Not sure why its effectiveness and bugs affect several different players differently.
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I think that the patch does a few things that put a higher demand on the computer. This kind of insanity you're talking about I've seen with other actors teleporting around the place, as well as disappearing land meshes etc. both before and after the patch. In my case, it is a performance issue and is resolved by saving and restarting the game. The bug known as windows and the plethora of parasitic programs that insist on running in the background and hogging resources when one least expects it is another source of frustration - which i seem to have under control, I think. Quick! Where's a piece of wood I can touch for luck! On a more serious note, if I see something only slightly glitchy, I take this a a cue to save and restart.
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I have to agree with you about the magic. While the magic looks pretty, I find it very difficult to use and limited in its variety. It would be nice if the magic were less fiddly and more cerebral. Being able to cast with a full hand, as was done in
Oblivion, made sense to me; although I'm sure Gary Gygax's followers would have been appalled. It sounds like there is room for a major magic improvement mod (and a hardcoe mod, and a ballistics mod, and a range of ranged weapons mod, and a sword variety mod, and a metallurgy mod, and a steel smithing mod, and a horsemanship skill mod, etc.). One might hope that the new Construction Kit, when it comes out in January, is up to the task of getting this basic stuff out of the way quickly so that modders can begin to move onto more creative work by sometime in March.
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I guess it's things like this, which we all have different opinions about, that makes the modding such a mandatory part of the game. In fact, I can't wait to see what modders like http://www.tesnexus.com/modules/members/index.php?id=192, http://www.tesnexus.com/modules/members/index.php?id=478599, http://www.tesnexus.com/modules/members/index.php?id=135101, and http://www.tesnexus.com/modules/members/index.php?id=8 cook up for
Skyrim.