For something like bandits I think that their equipment should have a very hard (and low tier cap). so level 44 bandits with steel seems ok, however if the bandit has a story or it is appropriate, minor named magical item wouldn't seem our of place. For bandit style treasure it makes much more sense to me that the material gain from their spawn areas would be whatever swag they have hoarded, be it precious gems, large amounts of money / skooma / etc. Magical relics and artefacts dont particularly fit unless there is a story or reason for it.

Yeah, I do agree.
What I dislike the most is the high risk with little reward situations that we are often facing in current system.

Regarding the "active effect"; I know, and that's a great reward, but what I'm implying is that finding a magical elven shield stuffed into a chest at the end of a Dwemer ruin makes no sense and ruins immersion. A better reward would be to simply buff the active effect and skip the crap items at the end, instead placing relevant (in this case Dwemer) equipment in logical locations throughout the dungeon (armour pieces in armoury or an enchanted sword in enchanter's area). The delivery of loot via a chest at the end of the dungeon is simply lazy and illogical. "Hey guys, I just put this unlocked chest here, so let's dump all our most valuable stuff in here and hope no one steals it!"

Regarding "screw with the story you are trying to tell with each dungeon"; that's exactly what level scaling does. Legendary dungeons are reduced to low-level hack-em-ups and regular bandits become much too powerful - all depending on your level. Finding stuff that's generated due to level rather than to fit the environment and history of the dungeon happens all the time in Skyrim. Finding an elven dagger in an ancient nordic tomb is simply blasphemous seeing how many wars have been fought between nords and elves in ancient times. No one would want to be buried with a weapon crafted by an enemy. That's just one example of things that have pissed my inner lore-lover off when playing Skyrim, and it's always due to scaling.

And, as I stated in the OP, removing scaling does not mean removing randomization.

Will there be a sweep-through based off the descriptions to double-check the standards for x-leveled dungeons? If someone finds a map with all the PoI marked, it'd be great to have that in the OP, for purposes of determining remoteness & the establish standards thereof.
Imho, it makes perfect sense, and most of the locked chests in the game make no sense. To get to that last chest, you need to kill everyone in the dungeon. That's all the security they have any reason to care about. But the chests in-between the entrance and the final area? Why in the hell would the draugr lock them? It makes sense for bandits (this is MY STUFF and NONE OF YOU CAN HAVE IT) but I don't see any reason why selfless creatures like spiders would lock their chests.

Out of curiosity.. Has anyone looked at the mod I've already made?

If you haven't, take a look at it. Many of the things requested, or some of the semi-fixes suggested, are actually in there. Including a higher level scaling for players, a wider loot range (loot inside a dungeon can range from .4x the player level all the way to 1.8x, compared to .6x to 1x the player level that vanilla has). Increased spawns are in the game, as are NPC's with potions and a couple AI tweaks.

My next project was to create a large list of names and do named bosses. There'd be chances to have the same boss names, but the objective would be to have different names for each set of levels, and a quite wide set of those names, so I'd hope it'd be unlikely to have repeats - at the least it'd be a say, 1 in 20 chance.

I've also been considering going through cell data and changing the references to create a less leveled feel, radiating outwards from the cities in range of difficulty. I've been considering it, only, because it's a long project in itself to do in hex code alone and I don't know if it's really worth it, because it'll change the entire layout of the game. The other alternative available is to make everything unleveled - basically, it'll spawn enemies from any level at any dungeon. Which could make things quite hairy for the game.

The other project I've been considering is revamping the loot, to make it more unique. This is probably what I'll do, because it'll be a bit less extensive and more people would enjoy it.

Now, bear in mind, these are things I am doing NOW, not when the CK comes out. No need to wait. These things don't take massive amounts of scripts. Heck, even the cells are editable. If someone gave me a location, I could go through and edit the loot inside it to be more specific.

I'm at the point where I've accomplished my main initial goals, and I'm looking for stuff more specific to achieve. So I'm fairly open to ideas.

Been meaning to find something out here

How does level scaling and difficulty affect followers if at all?

Reason I ask is because my first playthrough I started on adept(and unmodded) and my followers seem to get their buts kicked just as easily as I did, especially after raised the difficulty..but since then starting out anew with changes to difficulty and scaling mods my followers seem incredibly tough which I suppose would make sense if they scaled as enemies do. If this is in fact the case I'm wondering if there is a way to avoid/change this. I'm hoping I'm wrong about this and just delusional...but when I see Sven stand toe-to-toe with the first dragon in the game (in no armor) without getting insta-gibbed I start to wonder.

Difficulty affects all NPCS equally, followers or not. It's the same as it's been since Morrowind in that respect.

This so much. Nothing is more annoying than having your (Daedric) artifact out-classed by a medium range sword that you could craft and upgrade. My dawnbreaker was worse than an Elven sword I crafted myself. Those sort of things just shouldn't happen.

There is a guide "out there" with tactics and a full resolution map which could help on ALL the locations available before the Kit is released.