Well, different enemies in different regios...ok, maybe (but not all). but when it's about the levelling, it's another matter.

Actually, I don't like the idea of 'uber-level area's'...it's a bit too much MMORPG a la WOW. It also does not make always sense; sure, there could be 'different' enemies in certain parts of the country, but it's difficult to make it realistic that all creatures are. Also, it doesn't really solve the basic problem of it that, at a certain point, you've just become too strong for whatever region .

I don't know why people say the levelling of MW was so good. It wasn't. In fact, it is JUST the reason they made the level-scaling in OB, just *because* there were many complaints about it.

The main problem with MW-leveling was that it was insanely difficult to kill even a weak creature at the start. (I died a few times just trying to kill a rat, I mean, c'mon). And at the other hand, at the end of the game, you're in absolute god-mode, killing off even the strongest of opponents with one swing. Thus, it is frustrating (at the start) and boring (at the end), respectively.

To remedy this, in OB they provided another kind of levelling, which, in principle, was/is a good thing. ONLY, the *implementation of it* wasn't all that great.

The problems with OB's leveling, while good intended, had the following drawbacks:

1)Almost every opponent levelled automatically with you; meaning, you lost your sense of 'accomplishment'. You got stronger by hard work/quests, etc.? Big deal, so did everyone else.
2)The levelling was also implemented in the stuff people wore. This can be done up to a certain level, but at some point, it becomes ridiculous: why would every low-life bandit and road-scumbag suddenly have expensive glass-armour gear, where they had none before? This also leads to a sense of devaluation of the stuff you found/bought, and thus, your feeling of accomplishment in finding/looking for good loot.
3)Even at level1, you could beat the strongest of opponents, like the champion of the arena. This does not make sense; how could a total newbie just starting to wipe the milk of his face, beat an experienced fighter as if it was a simple rat?


All this could be remedied if OB used another approach to the same levelling. For instance, if they were to divide the opponents up in 3 or 4 main 'groups' of attackers. Low-life bandits and other 'simple' opponents could indeed start at the same level, and level up with you until level 10, or something (in any case, before they got ridiculous expensive gear). 'Medium' opponents (bandit leaders, second-best characters of a quest, mid-bosses, etc.) would start at level 2-3 and level with you until level 20, at which point they would stop levelling (meaning, they would be equal to you at level 22-23, if all other factors (like armour/weapons) remain the same. Strong opponents (end-bosses, last characters to defeat in a quest, etc.) start at level 3-6, and stop levelling with you at level 30, meaning they would become equal at 33-36 and maybe level equally with you again when you reach that level.

Now, this would solve all the major dislikes of the OB level system:

1)It would prevent you from being frustrated that even low-level creatures and npc's pose an overwhelming difficulty-barrier; a lot of (lower) enemies would be more or less equal, which makes sense, since your more or less of their level at the start anyway. Immersion from the start, but being more realistically implemented against lower level opponents.
2)It would stop from 'getting' expensive and rare armour/weapons/etc. suddenly coming into the hands of every roadrobber out there. This would also create more sense of accomplishment when getting that gear; only higher-level opponents would also have a chance of getting it, after all. It also would it make it more difficult to get it simply 'along the way' by killing some idiots, as it was with glass armour in OB.
3)It would mean you would have difficulty at beating mid-level, and almost impossible to beat high-level opponets from the start. This would augment you feeling of accomplishment and immersion too (grrr, can't beat that guy yet, I'll get stronger and then come back) and it would cause things to be more realistic, since a total noob couldn't beat the strong opponents, at least not until they either have become very experienced and strong themselves, or, at least, have medium experience and found exceptional loot (armour, weapons, etc.) that make up for the (by then) smaller gap.

Such a system would keep the good things of OB's levelling, but would get rid of the drawbacks of it.

How about more varied level scaling? What you like is monsters that are easy and monsters that are hard? so... how about random level scaling? Rats and Thumpers will allways be realy low level, like level 1, Monsters like Dagoth Ur or Ice Atronachs will allways be 10 levels above you, and NPCs or bears or any other creature would be between (randomly) 1-10 levels below or 1-10 levels above your level. So you would never feel like you are a god compared to other creatures at say level 20, because there would be easy creatures to fight and hard ones. You would still see easy goblins around the place and you would some times see giant bears who will maul you if you get too close.

Now that I've been watching Lets Play Morriwnd, and I've been thinking at how generic Oblivion was and that it lacks lore and story and everything, Im thinking that Oblivion was realy rushed, they've just quickly said, "rat, cat, wolf, bear, there there and there, ok done, next..."

I'm sorry, but I couldn't help but chuckle at the irony of that.

But anyway, you two are on the right track. All the powerful artifacts should be all but impossible for the low level player to get, but they should still be the powerful artifacts that they truly are, whether the player is level 1 or level 50. Just make the NPCs in possession of the artifacts really high levels, like 35 or so, so you never 'whip' them, but as you progress you have a definitive edge over them. Or put some artifacts on a cliff somewhere so they player has to either be a high enough level to levitate up there, or a high enough level to accumulate enough money to buy some scrolls of levitate. But the artifacts would still be there if a low level player found a way of getting enough money to buy enough scrolls to get it.
This, coupled with having like 4 possible dungeons around the world that the artifact and NPC could spawn in at the start of the game, would help prevent early levels from getting it anyway. If a player is on a quest from level 1 to find a certain artifact, and he's played before and knows the 4 potential dungeons it could be in, by the time he's finally found it, on maybe his third try, he could be a high enough level to deserve it anyway, without having to use some intensive strategy.

And essentially have different spawns that kind of level with you. Have 20 spawns in an area. At early levels, 15 spawns would be level 1-10 spawns, 4 would be level 10-20, and 5 would be level 30-35. As you progress, say you're level 20 now, only 5 spawns would be level 1-10, 11 would be 10-20, and 4 would be 20-35. When you're level 35 or highe, 5 spawns would be 1-10, 6 would be 10-20, and 9 would be 20-35.
These are just rough numbers, and I'm not even sure if it's a good idea, but it never hurts to suggest. And I think it somewhat includes that sensation of danger when you're a low level and keeps that sensation of challenge until your very few levels, while not making certain species extinct, but rather only slightly rarer. Also it wouldn't be completely locational; some areas which are considered to be 'safe' would still have one or two scary NPCs or creatures running around, while areas that are considered to be 'high-level' would still have 5 or 6 low level NPCs or creatures.

Hopefully though, (from my perspective, some of you might dread this thought) combat becomes more lethal and 'realistic', and blocking actually blocks all damage at a cost to fatigue. You could run into a high-level creature and it doesn't necessarily have more health, but it avoids getting hit better and can perhaps hit you more if you're not careful. So you can battle it very defensively and look for an escape or slowly look for an opening, rather than just being dead the moment you try to engage it.

I've always said, we should have a slider, similar to the difficulty setting.

To the left of the slider would have no silly levelling enemies, and the the right of the slider would have enemies level with you (although, gear should never level, only stats)

i got to disagree whit some of you,finding powerful items early is a great feeling and hurt no one.

I don't think that the consensus is to put a scripted level cap on where / when / how to find the items. But to qualify that; in many cases I want that daedric longbow to take more than just a crappy levitate potion and an intervention scroll. Maybe not even on all the artifacts, just on a majority. I would enjoy that more than MW's completely static artifacts and OB's required level(ed) artifacts.

Most important: enemy level and loot value should foremost depend on location:
The more remote an area, the more dangerous the enemies and the more valuable the loot should be. It really gives you a sense of exploring.
In contrast: Oblivion allows you to walk into any place and always gives you a guaranteed opponent/loot level. Very predictable, very boring.

A limited scaling should be done (Morrowind did this quite well).
The reason: when exploring a new region with tougher enemies then expected, limited scaling gives you a chance of surviving such an encounter. I'd like to call this the 'run like hell to get out alive, but i'll be back' experience. In Morrowind this happened quite a few times.

What was nice about MW is that one could deduce the level of difficult in a dungeon by looking at it. At the lowest you have the mines and caves (save for certain circumstances like 6th house or accidental daedra cave). Next it's the dwemer ruins. After that the difficult caves are accessible. Lastly, the daedric shrines and 6th house dungeons.

Plus, the world would scale just like in FO3. At early levels, you fight lowbie friendly enemies. As the game progresses and the player becomes more powerful, different and more powerful enemies begin to appear, but there are still weak ones from the lowbie days. Unlike OB where bandits would scale with you, and gobbo warlords would go from annoyingly killable to a completely tedious fight that has no point other than to bore the player into hating himself for leveling so much.

Im not sure that making some enemies all but extinct while introducing new, more powerful enemies into the game would be the best answer...it still begs the question "what happened to the missing creatures?" If there was some plausible explanation in the game as to why these creatures were disappearing, such as hunters over-hunting certain types of creatures, or another creature taking over the less powerful creature's niche in the wild. But if this is the case, you should be able to watch as it happens, see the animals fighting and the hunters making easy prey out of something. I think this would actually be pretty sweet if they could implement it well; the world would be more dynamic and the changes would make sense, instead of the "well, you've been leveling up, so let's make some beast appear out of thin air" trick. The game world should make sense as you level, which is why this system would be more immersive.

As for the leveling of enemies, I liked the idea NeBy had about some enemies just beginning the game at a higher level than the PC and still leveling with the character. The only thing I would change would be the "stop watch," if you will, for enemy leveling. Having enemies level with you until they hit a certain level sort of sets up a "milestone" leveling system, where the player gains ground over enemies at discrete levels. That is, if you take the guys that begin two levels above you and level with you until level 20, you remain 2 levels below them until you hit level 20, when all of a sudden you begin to gain on them. Instead of having that stop time, have enemies level with you, but at a significantly lower rate. That way, instead of having the milestones, the player continuously gains ground on the opponents, not quickly, but enough to where each level shows a noticeable increase in the player's mastery of skills and prowess in combat. This, coupled with opponents learning new skills as they level, will keep the combat fresh and the player gets rewarded for the hard work they put in to level their character.

The reason why I support specifically high level areas and the dungeons that scale with the player is that I like the idea of having elements to the game that really allows the player to sink his or her teeth into the whole experience. The high level areas I talk about are the ones that there would be stories about, the contain the most powerful artifacts, that are even inaccessible without the right skills. After the main quest is over, these areas are the ones that keep the game going; they should be extremely challenging, and the reward should definitely be worth it. I would also like to see some very high level enemies that roam the province (sort of like WoW, not that I want to see the game turn into that, but this one concept in WoW was very well implemented) or have specific areas where they live out their lives, undisturbed until the character arrives. These should be very hard to find and kill, but again, the reward and myth behind the creatures and beings are well worth the time put in.

I want enemies to level with you. I don't feel like swing once and the enemy is dead, waste of time.

I want different enemies to show up when you up when you get stronger, this does not mean that the old ones should disappear! And the new creatures should be consistent with what would seem logical to encounter on the road, not some golden saint suddenly standing outside of town.

I want general areas where enemies just are stronger, or more challenging, that way you can start off in the low area and newcomers can learn the game without getting killed left and right, but can also be challenged without feeling like there's no progress.

The problem, of course, is that the scaling system in Oblivion is pretty much SpawnLevel = PlayerLevel + Offset, where offset can be negative or positive, and HP is "SpawnLevel * SpawnHPRate". This leads to cases where an Ogre can accumulate well over 1000 HP, while the player's ability to deal damage is potentially maxed out shortly after level 20. Effectively, the creature takes longer to kill, even though its ability to deal damage to you is stagnant. That means the creature is "no threat", but it takes longer and longer to kill every time you level, while it takes it longer and longer to kill you.

Fallout 3 has a somewhat more advanced scaling metric (although rarely used). Billy Creel, for example, actually levels twice as fast as the player. He just caps out at level 10. Meanwhile, your average Brotherhood Initiate levels something like half as fast. (This is base game, though. Don't ask me what changes Broken Steel added) This, however, doesn't address the issue people are (rightly) complaining about: the goblin you could slap silly at level 20 is a multi-minute slugfest at level 30.

This requires more than just "scale the enemies".

The essentials of ANY creature leveling system need to be:

1. Each individual enemy should come in several stat configurations. There should not be one level 1 rat which will be all rats you face. Some level 1 rats should be faster, others a little tougher. Level 2 and 3 rats should be common enough, but less common than level 1 rats. There should be the occasional level 4 and 5 rats (figure these are the toughest, the survivors, etc), and maybe a VERY rare rat that levels at a fraction of the rate of the player (by fraction, I mean less than 1/4th as fast). The same should apply for most enemy types to various degrees (example: a Bear or Wolf enemy should have a much larger actual difference in toughness than a rat, and so more levels/stat changes/HP may be necessary)
2. While the individual rat spawns may not all be available at a given level, any point that MAY spawn a rat at level 1 should ALWAYS include at least one rat spawn, regardless of level.
3. The HP growth of leveled creatures that approach a 1-1 with the player need to be restricted to a reasonable level (some goblins achieve 30 HP/level, while my damage output with a 125% Daedric Longsword was only 29-ish).
4. Low-quality equipment should still spawn for high-level characters. If necessary, Bethesda could spawn multiple low-level bandits in place of a guy at the PC's level decked out in head-to-toe glass armor.
5. Ordinary enemies should scale in such a way that the "base" version clearly progresses from "extremely tough" to "absurdly easy" over a much larger range than is possible without scaling. This is to say that an enemy you'd be afraid of at level 9 should be one you'd still prefer to take on one-by-one at level 12, and by level 18, you don't sweat three to one odds, unless a "deviant stat version" spawns and catches you off-guard.
6. Spawns should vary in reaction to game events. Suppose a city has "a rat problem". Obviously, two things are desirable here. First, non-rat spawns should be comparatively rare. Second, the nastier rat options should appear, even if other rules indicate they generally should not. However, should the player complete a quest that resolves the rat problem, you'd want a much different spawn picture (although stepping it down over a few cycles would be nice, to give the appearance that the problem's cause is over, and the rat population is slowly getting thinned out.
7. Individual areas should have thought put into the spawns available. Cities should be surrounded by "few monster" spawns, and heavier on human and scavenger-type wildlife. Churches should generally* not be surrounded by undead. Footpaths in a forest are more dangerous than patrolled roads. You get the idea. Band the map up and color it by "law-abiding human activity", and the hottest areas get the weakest spawns. Simple, effective, and gives people a reason to get off the beaten path!

* Rules ARE made to be broken. In moderation.

I'm not going to get knee-deep in the debate over the scaling system. All I think is that it could scale the occasional random enemies, but for the most part we still want a fair distribution of weak and strong enemies to help emphasize how strong (or weak) the player is and how their character levels over time. Challenging combat is fun, but at the same time, you want to continue to destroy weaker enemies with the snap of a finger just for the novelty and to give the player a sense of improvement. Loot is another thing, in that I'd much rather be motivated by, "I'm now probably strong enough to survive that Daedric ruin and grab some nice equipment". I mean, there's so much to do here - the desperate player can try sneaking, invisibility, whatever they want to try and get higher level items. It's this improvisation and flexibility that makes open world RPGs like The Elder Scrolls so fun. It serves as a source of motivation for the player to want to improve, because they know there are tangible rewards that they could not previously attain. In Oblivion, you are instead thinking, "oh boy, I'm now strong enough that I'll be able to FIND nice equipment everywhere!" You can see how different a mindset this is.

Back on topic, know what I want to see return? I'd love to have the humanoid enemies from Arena/Daggerfall back in the game. They're always one of the default classes, but they are always the same level as you so you may be up for an unpleasant surprise when you find Battlemagi are suddenly able to shoot off new spells at you and Nightblades can cast invisibility. Keeps the player on their toes.

I think another solution to OB lvl scaling is to increase the player ability to do damage. I dont like how my spells do a set amount of damage. The damage should increase with int, mnd and skill lvls. So at end game spells and swords become much more able to handle the tougher creatures. I agree with most on the loot, armor and other things though.

yh, i think there should be places where the enimies level up as the character does and have high level monsters tht dont. these high level monsters guard places so you need to train to be able to kill the monster to gain acces to the place its guarding.

This means: wherever you go and whatever level you are, the enemy will always be matched to your level.
-This makes it useless to explore other regions (enemies and loot are matched to you everywhere, so why bother exploring ?).
-This makes it useless to level up (enemies level up thanks to your effort, so why bother to level up ?).
Don't you get bored of this after a few hours of playing ?


Without your proposed enemy-leveling the opposite is also possible: swing once and realize the enemy is way above your current abilities.

I like Mass Effect 2's level system. The level curve was pretty damn flat, and enemy stats didn't grow with the player. As a result, you got a very tangible feeling of power as you gained levels, but the challenge curve was flat enough that you never completely stomped over everything, nor were fights impossible (though on higher difficulty levels, they could get very hairy).

The problem with talking about levels as a metric for power is that player characters aren't made of levels, they're made of skills, attributes, spells and equipment. One major issue with Oblivion's leveling was that it royally screwed PCs that didn't focus on damage dealing skills. However, it really tends to screw every character, since it assumes all ways of dealing with enemies are roughly equal.

It would be better if enemies had a variety of different strengths and weaknesses, so that different characters would have a completely different sense of "hard". E.g.
- A powerful but unobservant enemy would be "easy" for a stealth character (not necessarily to defeat, but to avoid), whereas a moderately tough foe with supersenses would be incredibly difficult for the rogue due to his lack of combat ability.
- A flying enemy with ranged attacks would be hell on a melee-only guy without some special tactics, but it's no thing for an archer.
- A group of armed (but not too well trained) goons might gang up on a mage and do some damage, but a skilled swordsman would be able to counter all of their attacks and take them out.
- All of these characters might be stumped by something like a room where the bridge has fallen into a chasm aside from the supports, but an acrobat would easily make the jumps without falling to his doom.

For one definite fix, enemies should have a specific resistance to mental tampering, rather than assuming that illusion spells automatically fail based on enemy level. Also, Health, Magicka, and Fatigue should only be modified by attributes, not level, and should increase by no more than 200-300% by the end of the game.

As far as learn-by-use is concerned, it's got a lot of things to recommend it. However, it tends to promote grind even worse than XP systems. It isn't really feasible to do mission based XP like ME2 in an open world game like TES, but they should try to find ways to restrict skill improvements to doing things that are fun and challenging (for the player and for the character). They should definitely ditch the stat multiplier garbage.

a leveling system such as borderlands while u level you go to new places where monsters and stuff are higher and you progress with your quests also talent points making you able to learn new spells and techniques would be cool like one talent every certain amount of levels so that when you level up your guy doesnt feel like hes the same old character with a couple of more hit points

Why would it be useless to level up? I never felt the despair that seems to be going around about the strong creatures. I always feel stronger as I level and get acess to spells and abilites. maybe its a warrior thing but my pure mage and archer assasin both felt very strong. There is more then just damage, as you level you get access to more strategies that you couldnt do at lower levels. I agree the system was flawed but it wasnt terrible it provided many fighting challenges. Only one that bothered me the most is the damn goblins.

well i want them to level up but they don't get rare armor like daedra armor.

and mages don't get uber powerful magic unless they are boss

The thing that bothers me most about enemy scaling is that it doesn't make sense. It's completely unrealistic and illogical and it strains my suspenssion of disbelief over it's limits. It basically means that my character is the center of the universe and reality itself gets reshaped based on how much he improves himself. What I want from a TES game is a believable and internally consistent world to play in and enemy scaling and leveling ruins that. The world doesn't have to abide by the laws of physics, but I'd appreciate it very much if it followed the laws of logic.

They put scaling into games (not just Oblivion) so that enemies would provide a more constant level of challenge. So that a level 10 and a level 20 character would both face a reasonable amount of challenge (let's ignore the fact that in Oblivion they don't). But you can achieve the same goal in other ways. Ways that don't make the world absurd. One is leveling by geography where you have some areas that are more dangerous than others and you can then design the game in such a way that the player visits increasingly dangerous areas as he levels up. The problem with this is that it's much better suited to linear games than to TES sandbox gameplay and sloppy game design can still lead to an absurd gameworld where enemies in one area are significantly stronger for no logical reason (essentially it's a sort of scaling to estimated player level). For example in a MMORPG I played a while back there was a low level area with fierce looking level 8 bears and a later area with level 22 frogs.

Another is to take out leveling up alltogether. *waits for the screams of outrage to calm down* Right. Most people consider leveling up in one way or another to be the core RPG gameplay mechanic. I disagree. I think the core RPG gameplay mechanic is that you can customize your character. Leveling up and putting some sort of points into this or that is by far the most common form of customization, but it's not the only one possible. An RPG can easily compensate for lack of leveling up by giving the player more options when creating a character and then making those options count for something during the course of the game.

For example let's say we have a game that's basically like Oblivion, except you don't level up and character creation is different. At character creation your skills all start at 5 and you get 21 skill points that you can use to improve them. You can spend 3 points to upgrade a skill to 50, 6 points to upgrade it to 75, and 12 points to upgrade it to 100. Skill trainers still exist in the game, but they can only ever improve your skills to 25 (essentially you're resticted to basic training), though on the other hand the number of training sessions would be unlimited. There'd also be a similair system in place for attributes.

This would make your characters feel very different from each other (can't get 100 in all attributes and skills) and if you spent your points to become a Master in Sneak and Expert in Marksman you'll actually be forced by the game to play as a sneaky sniper because your other skills will be Apprentice level at best (once you've spent some money on training) and you will never be able to confront a group of enemies in frontal combat. (NPCs in this game would generally just have 7 skill set to 50.)

Hmm. Come to think of it, I could make a mod like that for Oblivion.

Note the difference between "Levelled" and "Scaled".

Levelling causes higher difficulty adversaries and better loot to appear, either in addition to or instead of the more basic ones. For example, at Level 1, you find Rats and Mudcrabs. At level 4, you start finding tougher creatures appearing as well, until you encounter things on the order of Daedra, Minotaurs, and Goblin Warlords. A few of these might be tougher versions of the same creatures (Dire Wolves and Gore Rats in OB; Diseased and Blighted versions in MW), but these should NOT outnumber the basic version, unless some particular in-game situation makes it rational for that to occur. Levelling makes some sense, as long as the higher-level adversaries and spawned items aren't NON-EXISTENT in the game before that. There should be unlevelled (or at least much less levelled areas (obvious to the player - such as Red Mountain inside the Ghostfence), and/or occasional local exceptions where something of the next "stage" appears at lower-than-expected levels. Such "regional" levelling, which gave the player the opportunity to easily find more challenge if you looked, but not have it wander into your back yard, was one of the things that made MW so enjoyable to so wide of a player-base.

Scaling means that the creatures which appear and the individual items which spawn are then adjusted to your level (scaled quest rewards in OB were a prime example). The levelled list calls for a Goblin, which you used to kill with ease at Level 1, but because you're now Level 20, a lowly Goblin is now tougher than most Daedra, or something silly like that. Minor variations in basic creature strengths, within narrow limits or in certain areas, could be a good thing if done right, but that shouldn't depend in any way on your character's level (Random variations, NOT Scaling). SOME human adversaries could be scaled, or else appear randomly along with unscaled ones, others should definitely NOT be scaled. It's a good thing to have a FEW of the opponents in the game train, practice, and advance their abilities throughout the course of the game, just as the player does. That gives you a relatively "fixed" degree of difficulty, regardless of your level, although having some of those scaled adversaries use some levelled and some unlevelled gear would add further degrees of difficulty and uncertainty. Having every adversary improve ("scale") as the player does makes the whole point of levelling up your character meaningless.

In both cases, careful use of either of these game mechanisms can be positive, and can add considerably to the game for both RP immersion and FPS action play; excessive or improper use can be bad. Like any other tools, they can be used or abused, and I seriously hope that Bethesda has a little better understanding, after the last TES game, of how to and how NOT to use them in the future.

SOmeone suggested generic mobs not leveling but bosses to level with you along with their gear. I'd have to disagree with this, the idea of a boss is like a goalpost, something for your character to prove, I think of all things bosses need to be what they are and not change. FUrthermore bosses need to have unique loot, so it shouldn't depend on level

I agree. Bosses should mark milestones of your ability, and the gear that you obtain should showcase that. I hated the idea of leveled loot in TESIV as it didn't really feel like much of an accomplishment to find glass armor, daedric weapons, and even artifacts svcked at low levels. I would rather have some goal to work towards rather than some bland leveling scheme where there is no real sense of being stronger. Bosses are an integral part of that.

That being said, what does everyone think about the idea of a few special quests for different classes (warriors get a couple just-warrior quests, mages get a couple just-mage quests)? These could open up based on certain skill levels, like a destruction skill of 90, and allow for players to find armor, spells, weapons, and abilities that are not open to all classes. I felt that one of the downfalls of TESIV was that I could be the head of the mages' guild, fighters' guild, thieves' guild, dark brotherhood, etc. with just my heavy-armored warrior. While I don't think it should be completely impossible for a player to become the head of all guilds, there should be some extra work for a warrior to be head of the mages' guild; that is, you should actually have to have well-developed skills in the schools of magic in order to complete the quests of the mages' guild (or the respective skills of different guilds). Just being the best of the best in magic with a guy that has a highest skill lvl of 6 in any school of magic, it seemed pretty stupid for my character to be archmage. It was even worse when I became the heavy armor-sporting grey fox...

I think things should be half-scaled. That is, every enemy gains half a level for every player level gain.

For example: Bandits might start at level 5 when I'm level 1. They'll be level 7 when I'm level 5. I'll catch up to them at level 9 and then exceed them. Marauders meanwhile might start at level 10 and I'll only catch up to them at level 19ish.

This has all the benefits of level scaling:

-Most enemies are likely to pose some kind of a challenge to the player because it takes a while to hugely exceed their level
-Players can revisit old locations and find different enemies with different gear than they were in previous levels

But it has none of the drawbacks of level scaling:

-Players will be rewarded for leveling up because they're either closing the gap with enemies or lengthening their lead
-There will still be "oh crap it's so powerful, run away" and "haha you used to be strong, but now I am the master" moments.
-Different locations will have different levels of danger, giving the world a sense of variety and freshness instead of Oblivion's flatscaled puree.