The daeric quests in Oblivion had minimum level requirements. yes you could also just have suggested requirement, even used an boss as an gatekeeper.
The nightingale gear could just as well be upgradeable as the thief guild armor is, not much else is level scaled. http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Leveled_Items

You should also be happy you did not get the level 46 blade as it can not be upgraded at all so an steel sword would do more damage.
However the armor looks cool and I use a version of it.

The problem isn't the game or the leveled loot. The problem is teh OP decided to grind a way for hours to try and get a sword at a certain level, instead of just playing the game and enjoying it. You really have no one to blame but yourself, if you go online and read something that ruins the game for yourself.

I wouldn't mind a system similar to Diablo that was also adopted for Borderlands. Must have "X" skill to use, or must have "X" minimum attribute to use. Would be a little tougher in Skyrim since there are no attributes, but they could still use "X" skill...like ebony short sword...must have 75 1h skill to use. Would also eliminate 100 skill smithers from walking around in legendary daedric armor at level 10, one-shotting ancient dragons. (exaggeration I know...)

Even a system like that would be better than a system where there is no chance of you finding a "really cool" item. I liked finding a sword or a chestpiece of badassness in diablo and knowing what attribute value I needed to work towards in order to use it.

I hate finding loot and realizing that 95% of the time, it's just simple mediocre gear for my level. Or opening that master level lock on an "end-of-dungeon-looking" chest, only to find 20 gold and a minor magicka potion.

It's really funny that they went out of their way to make sure you don't find overpowered loot in the game by exploring, but then put in crafting skills that allow you to have the best gear in the game fairly easily. All of the enchantments you need can be purchased from vendors if you look around long enough. You can basically outfit your character with the best without really doing much of anything outside of town and without achieving anywhere near the level you would need to for the "leveled loot" to catch up.

That's why I loved OOO so much and I really hope someone does a similar mod for Skyrim. Vanilla is fun for awhile, but things like this take away the excitement of exploration. Vanilla Oblivion was worse because you could enter any dungeon at any level and find all creatures are exactly your level with loot exactly for your level.

All leveled/unique items & artifacts are decorations for me anyway. 2+ extra base damage that Dragonbane has over a blade sword, just doesn't stack up in usefulness once the blade sword is customised with enchantments.

Item leveling is one of the core flaws I listed for Skyrim. It really ruins the game. Worse is when enemies who appear to be item based kill you with one shot from a bow or sword you know can't do X amount of damage even at its best.

Another aspect of leveling is enemies do the exact stupid thing they complained about in Oblivion. I should never find a Druager with and elven weapon. EVER!!!! for those that don't know why it is because Druager are ancient Nords who hated Elves so they would never carry an elven weapon in a million years. Or you find one with an ebony weapon and this takes away from immersion and makes you think about how stupid some of the features they put in the game are. Like the soft level cap.

No, the problem is that it is pointless to get a 1-time item now, when in 5 levels it would be more powerful... and in 5 more levels more powerful and so on.

The even bigger problem is that there is nothing really worth looting in the game, because whatever you find, be it random loot or a daedric artifact, is ALWAYS inferior to what you can make by yourself without ever needing to even leave the city you're in... so, there is no real point of doing dungeons, since you can get better gear and make more money just by staying in Whiterun 24/7... and that is why the loot scaling ias awhole is simply stupid.

Maybe he kept it as a prized possesion, like an enemy's scalp. Since they are no longer in the realm of mental consciousness, they just pick up whatever that is in their inventory and fight. I don't mind it. It makes for better loot to sell at higher level and makes the challenge a little bit more worthwhile. Not that I should be raiding tombs and coffins. Oh-no what have I become?

Cry me a River.....................................

Yeah from a selling position I love it too. Ebony weapon= coins in my pocket. Point being though is that it contradicts the games lore though and ties to the stupid loot scaling. Just give up this scaling crap and go back to set levels. It would be vastly better.

Wow, I've found elvish weapons on all kind of Draugr and never thought about it or knew the lore. Yeah, that is stupid. The lore behind Werewolves is supposively all retconned in this game, ignoring the lore set forth by previous TES games.

Why did they even need to do that? They could just have just made a line of "legendary ancient nord weapon of X (ice, fire, etc) to beef up draugr damage instead of handing them weapons they shouldn't be using.

Your contribution to the thread was immensly helpful, tyvm... nice arguements...

Exactly this. Enjoy the game, as it is. To pay that much money to play a game, and then let one or two items ruin it for you - seriously.

They should spawn with legendary Draugr weapons.

I completely disagree with this thread. Op is doing it wrong. Just enjoy the damn game, who cares if the sword is maxed? There's a whole world to explore and hundreds of quests. Stop looking at numbers and just have fun. Why is this so hard for some people?

I hate them, too. They really destroy the feeling to gain an unique artefact.

I already thought about making a character that starts at level 50. Dear God, I even stopped playing Skyrim for 2 weeks, because I'm so pissed off about that.

I don't see why they don't have quests with powerful weapon rewards only triggered after a certain level (and they already do have level triggers for some quests so it's not a problem) or make the dungeons so badass you either wait until you're powerflu enough or really earn it. the game could warn you it's a badass quest - people would still whine about it, but so what. An uber sword should be an uber sword, not crappy because you got it at a low level. Fallout manages well enough without levelling unique weapons.

There are a lot of posts like this one, i cant understand this complaint. I dont get what they really want, this game allow you to play in very different ways, and people complain like there is only one way to play it, only one skill to level, only one weapon to use. Make a character who is allergic to everything but iron. Go iron all the way and be happy.

if you improve it a lot, that is high smithing and decent smithing gear it does not matter much that the base damage is and the enchantment do little damage compared to the physical one.
In this case you would want to stay away from the nightingale gear as it does not get benefit from any smithing perk so even the level 46 gear would be weaker than steel or elven.

Self made gear has always been better in elder scrolls with a few exceptions.

I just never understood why leveled items couldn't be: Level with you, items.

It's just really annoying to get a sword after a quest, only to realize that if you'd waited that sword would have been 100x better if you'd waited 4 levels to do the quest.

As has been said: The system rewards grinding.

Leveled items should not be removed (Dear god Bethesda, do not remove another feature here) but they need to level with you or something like that.

Yeah and I hate that. I don't want to play the game thinking "no I shouldn't do that quest yet because the reward will be redundant in a few levels if I do it now". I want to do what my character would do and when they'd do it - and the game punishes you for it.

I never approach the game from a "if I grind this skill I can max out that stat and get 20 extra points to my enchanted codpiece of fury" perspective. So getting a top weapon after a hard slog seems (or should seem) a satisfying reward for the effort. Earning a reward seems so hollow if the game decides your reward is crappy because you can't already one hit everything you encounter and don't need it that much anyway. The less you'll appreciate it, the more you'll get - that's how the system is geared.

+
It is not about if it is good enough or not - it was never about that. It's not all about the sum of numbers. It's about collector value. And, simple put, the lesser version of a unique artifact has very little collector value. So, from a collector's point of view, it's pointless to get them until they reach their max level.

Self made gear being better is not necessarily bad, but when it is so easy to get it (read: you never have to leave whiterun after level 15 or so and you can still get the best gear in the game) then there is a problem. A big problem. Because you don't have a reason to do anything apart from the few major questlines (which are actually anything but major in size). Why go raid a dungeon - a few self-enchanted daggers will give you more money than any dungeon, and 20 times as fast... self smithed-enchanted armor is 10x better than anything you can find in a dungeon. Who needs items of the daedric lords themselves - the weapons and armor I make are so much better that Molag Bal would run away screaming if I ever stepped into his realm.
Skyrim is doing it's best to be both an RPG and an adventure game, but it kinda fails. It does have the big open world to explore, and madeit beautiful and all, but it's a pity that the gameplay is bad and gives you no reason to explore it. From an RPG point of view, there is nothing to gain from venturing out in the wild. From an action point of view, the combat is not good enough to keep you going down the same generic and linear caves/tombs/ruins, fighting the same bandits/undead/creatures/automatons... It's overal enjoable, but gets old really fast, once you stop being impressed by the world...

Item leveling kills a large part of the RPG value, at least the way they implemented it. Imho, for their next title, they should stick to focusing on either rpg or adventure, instead of trying to balance things, because it's obvious that, with the current team and time restrains they have, they can't do both...

It has been said many times that a static world would penalize casual gamers because of the frustration involved in dropping quests or avoiding certain areas till 'strong enough'. Looking at these boards, it seems many people would favor the constant challenge and rewards associated with unique loot, static items and enemies.

True, these boards represents less than 1% of Skyrim Customers but there are successful examples of RP/adventure games with a static open world that sold very well despite being less known and hyped than Skyrim.

All of this talk makes me want to go back and play OOO's version of Oblivion with the Morroblivion mod to allow playing the entirety of Morrowind as well on the same character.

Hopefully by the time I'm done, there will be an OSO mod out...

I agree. Ever since I made my enchanted+upgraded daedric armour set and daedric greatsword (quite early in the game) I knew that I will never find anything that is better in the game ever again. There was no more excitement from opening a treasure chest, or killing the final boss. Everything I find I will sell for gold. If I find a unique item, it just turns into one more decorative piece for my house.

For me, the main appeal of an RPG game is the loot. I basically play RPGs for the loot. Once that is taken away from you, the game becomes merely a shadow of what it could have been.

I disagree that the main appeal of an RPG game is the loot, i think the main appeal is the world, character developing, npcs and quests. If you play rpg for the loot, why would you level enchanting and smithing early game? If want to rely on loot, just dont make your own things....