I agree with many things you wrote, and the stuff about economy and the chance of random loot still being in there is something I already plan to implement (some randomization is good, as long as it isn't affected by the player).

But those two statements in the quote are something I don't agree with. The mentality of "go wherever you like" is what makes me unable to play Oblivion and is the reason to why Skyrim feels a lot more dull than it should. I'm so sick of the whole "every choice is right" attitude every game leans towards nowadays, trying to make the player unable to fail. Back in Morrowind, the world was open - but you better not go wherever you want, 'cause there are places where someone will carve you open from head to toe, and there isn't anything you can do about it but play the game until you are strong enough. This sense of mystery and danger can't possibly coexist with the knowledge that the game is trying to adjust itself and give you 'a comfortable experience'. If I were to go to a dungeon and find that it's way too hard, I'd take that as an indicator that I'm not the most powerful being in the world and I need to level. As for finding dungeons when they are too easy; that's also a part of the experience, since you need to be reminded not only of the need to level, but also of the progress you've made. If there aren't places in the world where you can eventually slice and dice enemies on a whim, then what's the point of leveling? I don't want to get my character to level 40 only to realize that all the simple bandits have disappeared, and I still have to fight my ass off in every dungeon.

In my eyes, I think this would be an easier solution to my immersion problems:

• Decrease high level guys HP, but add elemental resistances and increase their 1 handed, 2 handed, destruction, alteration, light and heavy armor... (depending on the npc) so they deal more damage and force you to think, not just spam them with spells or hack at them for 20 minutes.
  
• Redo loot tables so it makes sense. Things like no elven/orcish/dwemer/cristal/ebony/daedric on anyone, save for logic places, like Thalmors, Stronghold Orcs, Dwemer Ruins and very special bosses and handplaced loot in the case of crystal, ebony and daedric.
  
• Redo economy, so most vendors don't have those ethnic/high tier stuff unless it makes sense (Dwemer stuff in Markar(SP?) from time to time; some, but little cristal/ebony on Riften, and VERY expensive)
  
• Buff up dragons' damage and resistances A LOT. No more HP, that's ok, but make them more dangerous!
  
• A complete overhaul of Magicka and Spells. Magicka should regen at same rate then out of combat, if not faster, when in combat (under pressure, most concentrate better). And Spells need to have their damage dynamically altered depending on the player's skill on the school they belong to, as well ass inherent effects in people, like running in panic when in fire, for people your level or less; fainting after spasming for shock (your level or less, again), or iceform effect after several hits with ice magic (depending on NPC's level)...

That, and http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1279582-females-wearing-male-armor/, and most of the game's problems will be off, in my sight.
Of course, I'd love to see a lot of different tweaks, like more people on the cities, actual caravans on the roads, more complex weddings (4 people for the friggin hero of, like, everybody wedding? really?)... But that's a different matter.

You mean that instead of scaling to player level monsters/loot should scale to say 80-120% of player level?
I don't think that would solve the major problem with level scaling. Combat efficient characters would still feel that most mobs are too easy, regardless of which dungeons they go to. Characters that have spent too many levels on non-combat skills (Speechcraft/Mercantile/Alchemy/Smithing?) will find that most of their opponents are too tough wherever they go. The weaker characters do have one workaround in that they could enter areas early, run away and come back there a few levels later. The stronger characters will be stuck with mostly weak opponents and unrewarding loot.

Danger level based on area/dungeon just feels more natural then everything leveling up as the same time as your character does. Some areas should be harder then others and not just because I visited them later in the game. The thing I like the most about RPGs, compared to action games, is that if I find an encounter/boss too hard I can go grind a few levels and come back when my character is powerful enough. What's the point of finding some really remote dungeon after hours of climbing when it contains the same loot and monsters as the ones just a stone throw away from town?

Edit: This thread does seem to be derailing into a discussion of static levels vs "go where ever you like".
Nothing wrong with discussions, but I and other OOO/FCOM fans would very much like a static level mod for Skyrim as well.

That is everything in a nutshell of why even though I love Skyrim I'm still a little dissapointed.

Just want to add to the voices of support for this mod. I am in the camp that feels the games have lost something since the days of Morrowind. OOO and other similar mods really made Oblivion much more bearable for me, and this mod seems like it would have a similar effect.

I would also like to add that adjusting early main quest dungeons to high levels for the sake of making them fit the lore really doesn't seem like a problem for me. But I can also see how that would be a major problem for some. I personally probably would be OK with just doing the main quest much later on when I was ready, but this obviously is probably not the ideal choice for most people. Maybe, eventually, after this thing really gets of the ground there could be two versions of the mod. One with quest dungeons scaled by how early on they are and another one scaled to fit the lore. Just ideas.

In addition, I don't have a ton of free time, but I would be willing to fill in some information from time to time on the google docs if you want more help.

Thanks for getting this thing going!!!

I'm definately supporting this mod. The level scaling didn't bother me that much at first, but the lack of interesting loot and rewards is a big killer for me.
Besides that there's not much sense of accomplishment or progression because of the scaling.
Once I play some more there's a good chance I will contribute.

Good luck & have fun.

I'm thinking a bit like that as well; that the main quest should require a decently high level and not allow you to waltz around and kill Alduin at level 15. The major quest chains will have to be anolysed step by step when all information has been gathered, so balancing of that sort comes later.

And if you want to join in, then just send me a google-connected email address via PM so that I can add you to the spreadsheet editor list!

I 100% support this initiative. The level scaling might be fine (or even great) for some players, but it makes the whole world feel like a dream the player character is having to me (the whole world exists for you). First some bits about OOO, and why I think it's the standard to aim for here (not the parts that change player stats, etc. but the dungeon leveling):

I just recently decided to give Oblivion with OOO a serious chance. When OOO originally appeared I was already at Oblivion saturation and never really gave it the time it deserves. I can't imagine how much more I would have enjoyed Oblivion if my first play-through had been with this mod installed.

Just as an exaple of how it plays out (I'm sure many of the people here have played OOO) I've been cautiously approaching dungeons near the starting area and finding various different and interesting things; the "starter" dungeon (the one everyone goes to after the sewers) is populated with I'd say level 4-8 bandits who I can take down, if I can pick them off 1 by 1. The second level (with the undead) seems to be a much higher level, so I'm leaving it for later. I found another dungeon nearby which had a locked, trapped chest near the entrance. I managed to survive the fire trap using some potions, the heaviest armor I could find, and a defensive spell, and the reward was a Dwemer 2h axe (at level 1).

It was an impressive find for lvl1, and it really didn't break anything for me to have it; I was more capable of fighting enemies a couple levels higher than me, but I still couldn't put a scratch on the higher level enemies who take advantage of spells, enchantments, and just generally much better equipment. (I've since moved on to higher level gear, but I continue to find stuff above my level by exploring carefully).

I think this is pretty much sums up the kind of experience that's desired from a static system:
-The potential to face challenges above the player's level by choosing to enter difficult areas,
-The feeling of progression from being able to return later and clear a difficult area,
-Appropriate rewards for beating challenges above the player's level.
-Make increasingly difficult challenges available to keep players from outclassing the game using those rewards.

-------------
Now, some bits about methodology. Optimally the whole mod will be leveled by hand like OOO, but I had an idea for getting a basic mod out the door literally the same week the CK comes out. This is an idea for players who really want their first playthrough to be un-scaled.

Just for fun, I went to the first dungeon you encounter (Bleak Falls) and used "player.setlevel 12" right before I entered (was actually level 2). Immediately after entering I used "player.setlevel 2" so my leveling would continue normally (and it did, this didn't seem to break my character in any way; I was level 4 before I left).

The game definitely did the best it was allowed to in order to make this a dungeon fit for a level 12. Obviously this place is intended as a tutorial, so a lot of the enemies were clearly hand-placed as lvl1 (generic bandits, generic draugr) however it leveled what it was "allowed" to -- higher level bandits were lvl 9, "restless" undead were level 6, and the chest loot was about right for lvl 12 (found an elven helmet in a random chest, some higher level scrolls). And the boss at the end was a lvl 15 "Druagr Wight Lord" which immediately disarmed me with a shout. I wouldn't have been able to beat this fight, but I console-killed it so I could look at the chest loot here.

Now it's pretty clear that this dungeon was mostly static-leveled to level 1, so I'm going to try this out on some others. Obviously each dungeon has some set level, so a dungeon that's leveled for 5-20 won't really go up to 50, but a little trial and error would match up the ones intended to scale to higher levels with static level values appropriate for them. Optimally every dungeon would get a static level assigned that falls within its original scaling range.

My Oblivion modding experience is super-limited, so for all I know there's going to be an even easier way to hook into the scaling system to use it to create static content (like, going to each dungeon and setting its level in some script to X) but I don't recall this ever being a thing in Oblivion... as I understand it you had to change which leveled lists the spawns drew from 1 by 1 in each dungeon. If there's a script that actually handles the scaling, this becomes even easier as you no longer need to temp swap the player's level and can just replace the value in the script, but I again recall nothing like this in Oblivion (scaling is probably a hard-coded mechanism in the engine, right?).

Using this for exterior locations is probably far less realistic, since it requires making some judgement about when the player is close enough to the region (but not too close) to do the level swap -- probably not viable, so these will only end up being done by hand-placing stuff.

Again, I'm *not* suggesting this idea replace hand-leveled content and I'm also aware this does nothing to deal with the "generic loot issue, I'm just pointing out a way that a static dungeon mod could be produced extremely quickly for players to use now. We likely have enough time before the CK is released to test every dungeon's existing scaling range and pick appropriate static level values for each one, and I'm sure there are many players who would love to have some form of this available for their first (or at least second) play-throughs.

I'm going to try out some other dungeons with different level values and see what I find. I'm especially interested in whether or not the scaling system can produce an "epic" dungeon by being forced to the max level, or if the results will be something that's only "average" difficulty for a player with their main skills maxed. I have a feeling any "end game" content intended for these players would need to be completely built by hand.

Thoughts?

-------------- Edits Go Here:
So I've done some more experiments, and I'm starting to wonder if there are multiple components to how scaling is done (for example, does it use the level *and* the actual skill values to do some types of leveling?)

Just changing the level seems to produce only partially scaled dungeons; the loot is definitely upgraded, and "boss" monsters will scale to the level, but the "trash" monsters don't really want to scale up (some of them staying at level 1). I tried leveling up "naturall" (by using advskill and going through the level-up process) and the scaling came out the same, so this is just a matter of how individual dungeons are built (it's much, much better than Oblivion, but it still presents all the issues we've talked about above).

The other issue is that not all things that seem like dungeons are. I found a fort which had 2 interior "levels" but they were small and both exposed to the outside. This area would only scale up if I were already a higher level when I approached it for the first time, the entrance door had nothing to do with it (well, leveling up for the entrance door did scale the loot up and not the bandits inside, which is actually worse, because I'd created a zero challenge for high reward situation). So... this trick could only work with actual "dungeons," which are basically always things you go down inside, often with more than 1 level. I would have thought the fort was a dungeon but apparently it takes a bit of trial and error to be sure. Unless, like I mentioned above, there's an actual script somewhere that handles the core scaling system where we could inject the level values we want to use for different areas, but that sounds too good to be true.

So... I'm not sure how well this can actually work in practice now, it seems like the scaling may be quite a bit more elaborate than Oblivion's, and hand-placing may simply be the only option. I'll keep playing with it though.

The fact of the mater is this mod needs to happen. Some of us want a static (morrowind) feel to it with some type of limit to how powerful you can get. Some people prefer not to be static and that's fine. If you want to be able to kill the last boss or go through the game with vanilla skyrim... then great this mod is not for you. But for me, I prefer to head into dungeon only to find to tough opponents, retreat, level up, and come back to conquer it.

I think every area should be difficult. I don't think any area in the game should be tailored to be easy or hard. It should ALL be hard. Realism can help achieve that. Low quality arrows not affecting heavy armor, Iron/steel weapons useless against dragons, Weapon types and armor types interact (maces doing more damage to metal armor than leather). Undead monsters should be frightening in ANY dungeon, Dragons should be FEARED no matter your level or equipment or location, Bandits should be a mix of both tough and weak, city guards should be Tough as [censored]! (they take on dragons with you and apparantly keep cities safe from everything else you are out fighting aswell), Magic should be devastating! And only through proper training and skill should one master its awesome power! Dark dungeons should be DARK.

I dont think it should matter where you go on the map and at what level you go there. It should be difficult. Low level characters should feel safer near settlements (and hunter outposts etc) and only when you feel confident in your skills and equipment should you venture into mountains let alone dungeons, crypts and bandit camps, and you should then still feel scared...

I think scaling can help with this. Because pre placed static mobs will not cause any difficulty once you pass their level. But scaling can help monitor it.

I am not suggesting that scaling is great. But i do feel that it should be possible to improve on the system already in place. If we can understand how the scaling works in script it might be possible to set it up in a way that works... And i also feel that some static placed stuff would be great too. I just think there is a balance that can be found.

I have the idea of scaling entire areas, and then scaling entire monster types based on a to-be-determined system. All bears should be somewhat the same level (snow bears higher, cave bear higher), but your average bear should be a rather static-like level. say 15-25. No matter your level. Depending on the region the bear is in you could increase that scale... I dont know, im still goign through a lot of ideas and churning through everything posted on this forum. I am holding out for the CK before i make any decision on what path i want to venture down. The bottom line for me is to make the game more challenging and realistic and just more fun... So i am still open to any direction as yet...

To be honest that sounds a lot like OOO, which is a mostly static-leveled mod. I've tried artificially inflating my stats and skills in OOO, and many enemies still pose a massive threat and would require the highest level gear, enchantments, spells, etc. Because the player spends so little time at lower levels, the end result is that most of the content is extremely difficult, and the harder stuff tends to be farther from towns. I *think* that's basically the goal of the mod being discussed here (can't really speak for the OP though). If you really don't like that idea and want to maintain the scaling entirely then I think this isn't the mod you're looking for, but I propose 2 options for modding ideas that might meet your requirements:

1) Do all the scaling at your level +5. You'll still be able to tangle with the weaker enemies (bandits, wolves) but you'll be more likely to encounter stuff above your level. You'll switch over to encountering bears over wolves 5 levels earlier than you normally would, for example. To be honest I think you could just start a new game, do "player.setlevel 5" immediately, and you'd be set (this sets your level for scaling but doesn't give you any perks or +stats for those levels)... you might not be able to get every skill to exactly 100 because of the 75 cap (is that a hard cap?) but that's not much harm.

2) This is extreme, but it would actually work well... start the game by allowing the player to assign 40 (or whatever makes sense) levels worth of skill XP and just remove leveling entirely. With that much XP the player should be able to build a character with several maxed out skills that essentially makes them an adventure game class. Now you can static-level the entire world in a way that would feel realistic, by focusing on difficulty of enemies based on type and how dangerous the area seems instead of having to contend with an unknown level of player character. It's technically more realistic too, since your character couldn't really go from nobody to godlike in the period of several weeks (try learning to be a master blacksmith in 4 days in real life ;D). Maybe that sounds boring to you, I don't know... to me the fun part of the game is the experience of playing it, not the leveling system, which always seems to be screwing things up.

You seem to be very interested in the subject
You have many good theories and I appreciate the time you must have spent to write all this down. I have been thinking a lot about this sort of stuff too (for example simply setting all dungeons' general level to a one-level interval and letting the game sort out the loot and enemies itself), but I always come back to the same conclusion; with so much time spent on mods like OOO, it can't take much more effort and time to skip the whole trickery with game mechanics this time and do it by hand from the very beginning.

These sorts of discussions can obviously never progress past the tentative stage until the CK has come out, and the real decisions regarding how to implement the mod will come then. If you in any event are interested in helping out with a mod such as this, you are of course most welcome to help out here.

And these latest posts about realism and such; there are good ideas in there, but I don't feel there's any idea discussing things like revamping gameplay elements such as armour realism and so on before we have even begun implementing this first stage of this mod. If you are interested in developing a mod like that you are of course welcome to start your own thread, but discussions like that won't really help this mod as it's outside the current scope. If this mod becomes as popular as OOO, then of course continuing into gameplay changes seems a logical next step, but it's far, far away.

*edit: M'Aiq, just noticed your reply after posting this. I tend to get a bit long-winded on the theory element of stuff, don't mean to derail anything. I agree that any effort right now needs to focus on the basics, like gathering info about dungeons and deciding which ones should have which difficulty levels/loot levels. As shown below, my testing has kind of deterioriated my initial theory about using the scaling system itself to set the static levels; the scaling system is just too complex and has a lot of limits and odd behaviors. The results of using that trick wouldn't really be that different from what's in the game already, as it seems especially poorly suited to increasing the difficulty of dungeons (but it loves to add higher level loot anyway).

So I've been testing the limits of the scaling system a bit, here are some initial results. All of these values are based on the min/max enemy levels seen in the cave at various levels.

Some dungeons (mostly caves, forts near towns, etc) seem to be scaling in a range of about 1-20. These are basically your bandit caves, caves with spiders (those do about 1-15, with most enemies being lvls 1-6).

I found one spot, a sort of crazy ruin, that scaled like this...
At level 1, the trash enemies were lvl 9 while the "boss" enemies were 26.
That's great. At level 1 this place would destroy you entirely, that's what we want to see. Unfortunately the loot is appropriate for a lvl 1, so that means there'd be no point to trying to beat these odds. That's extra-bad.
At level 50, the trash enemies were lvl 15 whiel the "boss" enemies were 44.
Very curious. I can definitely see why high level characters are feeling like everything is too easy.. level 15 enemies for a lvl 50? Difficulty settings can kick in here and probably help to some degree, but I'd honestly rather encounter more advanced enemies with better gear, more advanced spells than just increase their HP blindly. (note: I don't have a "real" lvl 50 character to test the difficulty here with, but I might actually gear one up just to help gather data).

Anyone else been starting to track the scaling ranges? I'd like to compile some results but it takes a while. I'm guessing there will be a couple "epic" dungeons that scale higher than this, but I haven't found them yet.

I can definitely see the attempt being made to reduce the scaling. It's certainly not as bad as Oblivion. I would argue that, if you're okay with scaling, they've actually done a decent job, the only issue being that it's actually very hard to find high level content that's properly difficult. I don't have a "real" level 50 character to test with, so I can't say for sure whether that dungeon with the 15s and 44s would be challenging or not. I will say that what I'm seeing appears to be kind of throwing my "maybe we could just use the scaling system for static stuff" idea out the window -- Certain types of enemies just don't scale beyond certain limits, so it wouldn't really be viable to just tag each dungeon as "you're level 50 now, you're a level 10."

TL;DR: So far it seems like stuff scales down more than it scales up. And the loot scaling is much worse than the monster scaling; you can find a dungeon with lvl 20+ mobs at level 1, but if you open a chest you'll get the same loot you would from a chest in a dungeon with lvl 1 mobs.

You're condemning special rare items, for not being numerous enough?

Why is giving these special items extra flavour in the form of quests surrounding them downgrading the experience?

I think the issue is that, beyond the aforementioned quest-based artifacts, there are barely any other unique/static items in the game. It's all leveled, which means that if you find a hidden alcove behind a waterfall (or something) instead of finding a unique item or anything special you get another chest with random, leveled junk.

You shouldn't find an ultra-powerful artifact everywhere you go, but why shouldn't there be a non-leveled 'Glass Helm of Falling Water' behind that waterfall? In an unleveled game loot can be locationally and thematically appropriate, which makes much more sense from a world-building perspective and greatly enhances exploration. In a leveled game you know exactly what you'll find; randomized level appropriate stuff. While the things you get may be powerful (or not), they are always generic.


@ M'Aiq

Skyrim desperately needs a mod like the one you're making (or will be making), and I think it's great that someone with a bit of experience is leading the project. Unfortunately I can't help with data gathering because until some kind of static level mod is actually released I won't be playing Skyrim much, as I have no interest in playing the game in it's current state and don't want to spoil the game for modded playthroughs.

However, I would be happy to help with unique item/NPC creation and placment once the CK is released.

Back again to celebrating the system we have in-place. The only thing you would have to change to make things your way, is to simply remove the level ranges or make them all 1-70 so that you can encounter anything, anywhere and yet it will still be dynamic.

Take notice, leveled loot is not just inside of containers, but in Skyrim it's actually ON TABLES and out in the real world. Theoretically, with the way things are you COULD wander upon a kick-ass item just laying on a table in somewhere obscure, the only difference is now you have to be a particular level before it can appear and certain things never appear randomly.

Unique items != legendary artefacts. What I'm talking about is not only Chrysamere or The Lord's Mail; I'm talking about little surprises you can find like The Sword of White Woe or The Boots of Blinding Speed, which are unique but low level enough to make even the level 15-30 dungeons a bit more interesting.
And there is a huge difference between finding a unique item through chance and getting it as a quest reward. One encourages random exploration and one locks you down to certain dungeons you've been told to go to.


@Headless; I've experienced the same as you - enemy scaling can be good and give you a challenge now and then, but loot is scaled to hell and back and makes random dungeoneering completely unrewarding in 99% of the cases. I remember when I went on a smithing spree and finally managed to make a glass dagger; lo and behold, the nearby blacksmith suddenly had glass armour in stock. Ugh. Not to mention all the glass weapons I suddenly started finding in pretty much every dungeon...

You can create unique items and add them to the leveled lists, so they will be a nice suprise but you will never know where they can be found. It wouldn't be difficult to make them allow only one instance to exist either. Then you will have your unique items laying around the world and not even you will know where to find them. Simply add them to the leveled lists as a new leveled list with a 1-70 range to they can be found at any level.

Dude, I'm not going to change the whole project to match your "1-70" idea. It should be easy enough to implement that, so you should be able to start that project on your own. You are not changing any minds by posting it in this topic.

I wasn't trying to change anyones' mind. Least of all yours. Just throwing out ideas... that is what this forum is for... right? Even the ideas you disagree with.

Back from more dungeon-delving in Skyrim, I'm totally convinced now that the game really needs a mod of this kind.

I've found myself passing up additional exploration and wandering inside dungeons, because in the back of my mind I'm aware that anything hidden away is going to be matched to my character's level. One of the things that made Morrowind so rewarding an experience for me was lingering in a dungeon I'd cleared of monsters, looking into nooks and crannies, absorbing the area's atmosphere. Skyrim is so close to recreating that experience -- its actual dungeon area design seems to be wonderful so far -- but the fact that the world is constantly and rather insidiously leveled for my hero is destroying that.

Some of the very thorough posts in this thread have also made me realise that I very much understand and agree with the direction you're taking this mod (not that my opinions have any particular weight, but it's encouraging to know several of us are on the same page).

M'Aiq, I'll PM you my GMail address so I can [hopefully] start contributing something more than forum posts.

Seems like some general conclusions about the current scaling are coming into place. Enemies generally start out as a higher level than the PC with a lower level curve and/or cap. A good idea really as far as enemy scaling goes, but I think it could have been improved upon. They seem to just get tons more health instead of becoming more powerful. This makes the game far too easy later on, especially with a character that majors in restoration. Sounds to me like it might be neccesary to have more tiered enemy types than there already are. All that of course is post CK release crap so I'm wondering what can be done in the mean time. Despite the fact that there are already several level slowing mods out there you are still going to go up your first few levels relatively quickly so I'm guessing the decided "beginning areas" would need to encompass a larger level range than the areas that succeed them.

Found something interesting (playing while replying). When I went back to Helgen at around lvl 7-8 the bandits there were incredibly easy to kill. This leads me to believe that they were scaled the second I escaped Helgen. I'm not sure what to make of this since I know that in other areas they scale in a way that chickens pointed out. I was just thinking if wilderness areas are/can be scaled by region it might be good to throw in the odd incredibly tough monster with the better chance of unique (omg this is getting diablo on me) loot for the purpose of keeping some interest in travelling through areas that would otherwise offer no excitement when beyond a certain level.

Sorry, this is a really old post... But after doing that quest maybe you should hit tab and check "active effects". That quest reward was not an item at all. The shield was filler loot, and not intended to be anything special.

I wonder how this will play with the radiant story system... Maybe some of the less unique bandit encampments, and the regular crypts should be left scaled, and generic places for npcs to send you to get their lost statue or whatever. Npcs randomly sending you to other handcrafted areas would seem to screw with the story you are trying to tell with each dungeon. (Enter dramatic tomb that has been sealed for centuries... retrieve lost glasses for some tavernkeeper that he lost in the boss room last week)

Also are you proposing to take away ALL randomization of loot? (not scaling, randomization, like if for some reason I want an ebony waraxe of shock, but no-one explicitly put it in any of the dungeons, I would have no chance of finding it?)

I would assume the plan would be to leave lots of random loot around (pretty much as is). Only the 'reward' loot and 'surprise' loot needs to be static.

By surprise loot, I mean, great items which you happen to find by looking in the right area; in a tight alcove, or a hard to reach room for instance.

Oh, and some vendor items (not all) need to be static too.

Completely static? Why?
I mean IMO the special reward loot could use some randomization too. (not scaling)
For example level 20 static dungeon boss could randomly drop either X, Y or Z. Where the X, Y and Z are hand picked special items fitting to that dungeon/boss.



It might just be that those bandits did not scale at all. Its like Headless Chickens Inc said;

Some enemies like standard "bandit" won't scale much and have very low level cap.
Yet in the same dungeon some "bandits" seem to turn into higher level ones like "bandit marauder". Making them "bosses".
The end result is kinda weird. All the bandits look the same, yet some die with one hit, others take 15 hits. (And they all drop the same loot.)
So it's true that the scaling system has some problems when scaling up. It often results in very mixed level dungeon.