As Obscuro did with Oblivion it's up to the modders again to save the day for the part of the community which absolutely hates this feature.
I guess it would be a major mod since keeping the game challenging while eliminating level scaling should be a challenge itself.

These bandits that made your life harder earlier in the game are there to make your life even harder after you went and pickpocketed some people in the town.

Bethesda claims that level scaling is not as dire as in Oblivion, but from my gaming experience until now (35+), i can confirm that raising non-combat skills actually "punishes" you, since the benefits you reap, practically disappear with the levels you gain from them. I would go as far and say that you actually get penalised for raising non-combat skills even when you do reap the benefits, making that armor that you crafted with smithing, look worse than the rags you had earlier in the game, as soon as you visit the next enemy camp with exactly the same enemies.

As i already mentioned, it is not dire as in Oblivion, but still it's there to take your rpg progression experience away. Leveling seems to have not a particular impact - on the contrary - leveling with secondary skills actually makes you weaker which is an irrational thing since it takes away their actual use. E.g. What's the point of forging an armor or picking that lock when you know that the action itself will have a greater negative impact than the item you are getting?

However doing this and keeping the game as challenging as it is now should be somewhat tricky. But, as i see it, for example, it would be best that bandits remained bandits and didn't become hard boiled veteral warriors all of a sudden and at the same time that Dragon should be quite impossible to beat when you are not a hard boiled warrior yourself.

It makes sense, you will not be punished for using non-combat skills anymore and levels will actually matter again (in a beneficial way) as they should in any game that likes to call itself an rpg.
So PLEASE, for the love of god, someone do this if you can.

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1264415-wip-interest-check-static-dungeons/

I've tried to start a project like this but no one's shown any interest.

I don't know what the hell people are talking about with regards to this. I'm level 25 and I'm still seeing low-level bandits all over the place. They die with a single fireball. Even the bandit chiefs and such that used to give me so much trouble I can swat away like flies.

It's not just about difficulty. It's also about the lack of immersion when finding that the current dungeon ends with yet another fight with a generic "Draugr Overlord" or a "Bandit Chief" in comparison to Morrowind's uniquely named enemies and hand-placed loot.

That's not level scaling, though, because the bandit chief is always a bandit chief of a set level. Slapping a name on him won't change his stats.

We are talking about removing scaling here. Removing scaling would involve replacing scaled enemies with static ones. To go through that work without changing the names of your newly placed enemies would be plain dumb.

So it's the actual concept of scaling that bothers you rather than implementation. That's fine. Personally I'm okay with the way it goes now. I still go into low-level dungeons to find weak enemies and crap loot, and have to run away from high-level ones because they're too much for me to handle. This is a matter of taste then and not gameplay.

No, I'm bothered by both the scaling and the implementation.

In Morrowind you could find a nondescript cave off the eastern coast that unexpectedly lead to finding Chrysamere, a legendary sword. The first time I found this it was a "wow" experience. This will never ever happen in Skyrim, because every item you find except a handful of quest rewards has been appropriated for your use and has had no thought put behind it. Finding a generic randomized magic item brings no thoughts to my head other than "should I pick it up and sell it?" rather than (as in the case of Chrysamere) taking it home with you regardless of whether it fits your class or not and proudly displaying it on a shelf in your home. The magic of not knowing what you may find when entering a dungeon feels completely lost in Skyrim.

I hate the concept that locks the level of the area or cave or whatever when you enter to your current level. Anyone else know what I'm talking about?

There's still unique artifacts, though. Looking on UESP, however, it seems there's not a lot of them. I find it works better than Oblivion's terrible implementation ever did, but I can see completely where you're coming from. The problem with static things is that once you know where to find these things it ruins replay value. In Morrowind I know I can go to Vissar-Didanat mine as soon as the game starts, enter it, leave, then take a silt strider to Vivec and go find the St. Olms haunted manor and talk to someone to get a Daedric weapon. At level one. There's a tradeoff.

I could say that problem is with the player and not the game but perhaps we need random unique artefacts? It can be done but would ruin any associated history or story the location may have. I guess it's one way or the other, I don't see any middle ground

I'm with Phitt as far as his leveling comments and ease of dragon killing goes (if indeed you can kill dragons with crap weapons and such). See http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1260732-level-scaling-mod/. Can't comment further since I don't have the game yet.

Yes, that is indeed a trade-off, but the difference is that the experiences of finding those hand-placed items in Morrowind has made me remember the game as something magical, and the first play-through is forever etched in my mind and surrounded with lots of loving memories (this is starting to sound cheesy, but Morrowind really was one of the best experiences of my early teenage years, as sad as it may sound, and playing it is almost a religious experience). On the other hand I remember Oblivion as "that crappy game". It doesn't matter if the replay value is through the roof when the first play-through doesn't even make you want to play it a second time.

The problem with using level at all if you are going to scale for it is that level determines hp/magika/stamina but not much else since everything now is effectively a major skill.

I'm not with you on that. Yes, there are not as much hand placed items as in morrowind. Do you remember this 10 minute walkthrough videos on youtube? I think thats the reason why they r gone. You can get too powerfull items too early in the game. I think not having any real enemies anymore at level 5 isn't so great except you want to be godlike from the start of the game. There are easier ways to achieve this. One of this ways is turning down the difficulty level to novice.

In Skyrim however there are megatons of unique items. The only thing thats needed for them is to clear a dungeon or do a quest. Both ways are including a test of your strength to be sure that no one gets uber-equipment at a too low level, which could make the game too easy.

Of course you need to place powerful items in places where low level players can't reach them. Since ES games are so full of exploits you need to get rid of the exploits first. But other than that the concept is pretty simple - powerful enemies guard powerful items. That's how it used to be in all RPGs I've played before Oblivion.

I didn't find a megaton of unique items yet, in fact I did only find one relatively powerful item that wasn't leveled. And it wasn't that powerful. Apart from that all I found so far was the usual crap loot that was in Oblivion as well, like iron/steel stuff. Not counting the randomly generated leveled loot you can find everywhere you go (currently orcish is the best equipment the game allows me to find).

+1 for Phitt

One of the biggest concerns with all Oblivion overhauls has always been how the world is scaled, and they all addressed this in slightly different ways.

There was the normally level-scaled ones that would just add more enemies and slow down progress to create different challenges.

Then there was the semi-scaled, which used combinations of level-scaled enemies with more enemies and unique enemies that were static. This combination tried to make a much more dynamic world. This sort of partially balanced approach was the most common and covered most of the big overhauls to some degree in Oblivion.

Then there was completely unscaled, there was a few popular overhauls like this and the whole point was the make the world as static as possible.

I personally prefer completely unscaled but would also welcome a semi-scaled approach. I actually think Skyrim did a much better job than Oblivion by default.

Surely scaling is not as dire as in oblivion... but.

I already have made a thread about scaling in general chat, "condemning it" (http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1263380-for-the-love-of-god-ban-level-scaling-completely/) to see how the community will respond. I won't start answering here too, to people saying random stuff like "there is no level scaling because i one hit rats" (and this after they play one character for a few hours) plus, this is a mod req, thread there is no point in people saying they like level scaling. Anyway from what i see, there are a lot of people who want it gone.

Got 6 characters atm. Highest being 40ish. The scaling is dreadful and for those who think that there is no scaling - you will feel it eventually. It's not only bandit chiefs etc it's like they have high level normal bandits and occasionally putting a lowbie bandit (which also scales but less). Leveling non-combat skill actually makes your character weaker in the end even if you reap their benefits, and instead of progression you get degression.

Not entirely sure how Radiant Quests work, but presumably you could have a randomly generated quest which starts with an NPC talking about a lost Loved One. Through investigation you find out the lost Loved One was last seen in x randomly selected dungeon. You head on over to it, and at the end of the Dungeon you find the Loved One has become the warrior Umbra and is wielding the sword he/she (this could be random too as well as race) has become obsessed with. You have no choice but to kill 'Umbra' and return to the quest giver with the bad news. It should be really easy to come up with quests like this if Radiant Quests work the way they were advertised.

Sigh.... There are high level dungeons in this game, if you're finding orcish crap in dungeons, it's because your entering dungeons at that level range, search for a high level dungeon, it'll have ebony, glass, daedric, crap in it, and if you manage to clear, presto you now have a very powerful weapon. The 16(?) artifacts in this game are all fixed not scaled, can't comment on their power or ease of acquisition, but their all hand-placed. I'm not sure how many or if there are any unique looking weapons/armors that aren't daedric artifacts, I imagine before long we'll have a ton of weapon/armor mods that hand place loot everwhere. So the problem could very well be not that they've decided not to hand-place things in dungeons, but that there just isn't a lot of unique items in the game period (not counting randomly enchanted crap).