Reading the topic about scraping level scaling made me want to post this. I give a couple thoughts about leveling in TES. First, one you all have seen many times before. Second, one that you guys may not have though of and while it may not be right for TES, is an interesting mechanic in itself. Please leave your thoughts and discuss constructively. I'm interested to hear your thoughts.

I have so many ideas about levelling, although that doesn't mean they are viable, correct, fitting of TES, etc. In general, I agree that the game should allow you to reach a Godlike level, but still present more of a challenge late game.

Like many people have said before, I think attributes should be brought back, but instead of Oblivion's increase on level up system, it should be more like Fallout 3 where you are given a limited amount of points to spend on upgrading any of said attributes. Any increase in attributes after this would be due to completing tasks/achievements that are related to that area (e.x.; Gaining an additional +2 to strength for completing a line of sidequests that are based around your characters physical strength). Of course, this would need to fleshed out more, but the idea stands. As for level scaling in quests and dungeons that could use some change as well. Nothing irks me more than solving a major issue for an individual only to be rewarded with like 100 gold. I feel as if quests should be a more major source of income, but that's just me.

Now, I've read and discussed another idea to make games more challenging late game without enemy scaling as much, but I don't know if TES is the series to implement something so radical so hear me out.

Leveling DOWN.

Now for TES purposes, I don't think this should be taken at face value, but picture this. You start of as a character who is average in some skills (these would most likely correlate to race buffs). Throughout the opening 1/3-1/2 of the game, your character becomes more skilled in whatever skills you use and attributes go up based on some tasks etc. Now you reach a major event in the game (a main quest battle or something) where your character gains some kind of strain on his attributes. At this point, you have to learn your characters limits. Now I haven't though it out that much, but say you have the ability to do power attacks with an empty stamina bar, but each time you do so, it goes towards a negative value in one of your attributes. If you do it enough, you start losing points in said attributes. Like if you try casting intensive spells without any magicka left over, you are straining yourself mentally and this would have a detrimental effect on your wisdom and intelligence ratings. There would obviously be counters like if you have negative points, but not enough to -1 in an attribute, you can rest out of battle and if you rest long enough those negative points will go away.

Now the reason this will work, is that you can have God-like powers, but if you decide to spam them, it will make the game tougher for you in the long run. This will make engagements not only tactical, but skill-based. Oh you're a battle-mage who is dead out of stamina and a couple more power attacks will kill a tough enemy. You can finish the enemy with your powerful sword and risk injuring yourself or you can whip out some stamina potions, pull out some weaker destruction magic or some defensive magic to keep you alive until you can make these blows.

Obviously, this is as rough an idea as any newly though up idea and it would need some polishing, rethinking and balancing, but what do you guys think of it as a game mechanic (not necessarily in for TES, but RPGs in general)?

I don't really know about this one. It is definitely not a bad idea, but like you said yourself, it is extremely rough. I'm also not too sure how refined it could be. I would say no, but I haven't really been able to imagine good implementation.