Well, you can't do something about first two. Someone will think it is OP, someone will think it is not. But the other two are mechanical problems, you do no try to skew reality to address a subjective problem. The players can balance the game for themselves for most of the part.
Getting an item at start and complain its OP, is not a logical complain. There are skills in this game. If you don't have the skill for that item, its effectiveness might be lowered to a not OP state easily. And you don't have the skill at game start now. There is also crafting now which makes sure you don't get an item at its OP state, you get it in its basic state. Smithing perk tree needs special customization(put 50 perks in there!!!) for each type and that would solve most other issues.
In my opinion, if something is rare, the spawn chance must be low, if it is common, the spawn chance must be high. That goes for everything, from loot to creatures. The play time for this game is so high, the chances would balance themselves.
Please don't take this personally, but your division into 'subjective' and 'problem in game design' seems arbitrary to me. I don't think it's correct to say that people who prefer scaled items suffer from a subjective problem while people who prefer static items are justified in holding on to their positions. That might come across as condescending.
Many people like statically leveled quest rewards, probably because there is an intuitive relationship between unique items and fixed stats; but I don't think that scaled quest items are wrong or a poor design choice. They just produce different results which are sometimes better and sometimes worse. The problem with these arguments is that most people (myself included) make them from the 'ideal case': they imagine how it will work ideally and neglect to consider other possibilities.
Static items are wonderful when you receive them at an appropriate level. Should a level 5 player receive a level 25 item? Or a level 25 player a level 5 item? Plenty of people will be fine with this. About 50%. The people who like static items. The other 50% will see the first as being unbalancing and the second as unfair. Who is right? I certainly can't say. That would just be one more opinion.
We can try to avoid that issue by saying that the quest won't be available until the player reaches an appropriate level, but this is pure alchemy: it turns an item scaling problem into a quest scaling problem. You'll just have a different group of people complaining that they should be allowed to try any quest at any level in an open world, whether they can succeed in it or not. People complained that Morrowind was no longer challenging on high levels. Oblivion's level scaling was designed to resolve the complaint. It did. Player's decided they liked Morrowind's system better after all. Were they right the first time they complained or the second? Different mechanics, different results, different complaints. The only constant is a game mechanic's inability to satisfy every type of player.
First of all, take a look at points 1 and 2, they are the same thing. You get an item that has fixed stats.
#3 svcks donkey balls because it encourages linear game play eg discourages doing certain quests when you're low level as the rewards are gimped. This is the whole reason to have scaling in the game in the first place is to take away the penalties for going anywhere they want that other games had by putting super high monsters. Now people defend both scaling of monsters ever upwards but artifacts remain scaled downards? Unbelievable.
#4 is acceptable (I prefer static artifact stats but will live with this compromise)....why would they not look forward to getting items that are different? You're assuming every artifact is the same in the game with the same looks and affects? No. That's a stupid argument you've made. And yes, an artifact SHOULD be extremely powerful and useful the entire game. It SHOULD be better than anything you can craft yourself or buy from a vendor. It's an artifact.
Only Bethesda thinks that its artifacts should become worthless in a few levels and the poorest Riften begger merchant should sell things that are infinitely better. How ANYONE defends that choice is beyond me. People are stupid.
I'm aware that point one and two are the same. I'm sorry if I didn't make the point clear enough.
I'm pretty sure that your argument against point 3 is what vtastek would call a subjective problem. And a very common one, judging by forum posts. If I receive a quest item scaled to my level, is it actually better if I wait until a high level to receive it? Sure the stats will be better, but so will the stats on everything else in the game. The benefits of waiting are neutralized by the increase in challenge. If I actually use the item when it is given to me, it is just as useful to me if I receive it on level 5 as it is if I receive it on level 15.
I guess the answer to this, then, is to do away with level scaling altogether and make everything static. But I'm not convinced that this makes the game less 'linear'.
And your arguments in favor of point four don't work very well for me. Should every quest item I receive be "extremely powerful and useful the entire game"? Should they unbalance the game in favor of the player? How can they be 'extremely powerful' without providing the player with unfair advantages over his opponents? We certainly can't scale the difficulty presented by the enemies upwards to accommodate this change in the character of artifacts. As we've already presupposed, all level scaling is bad. I might agree that unique items should be worth more, and somehow better than non-unique versions of the same item, and that they should possess characteristics players can't easily duplicate themselves, but I don't think making all quest items extremely powerful really solves the problem. Either they become too powerful and the game becomes too easy or the developers just adjust the difficulty upwards to accommodate, in which case they are no longer extremely powerful.
Note that I'm not saying that your preferences are wrong. You are certainly entitled to have them. I have plenty. But it's wrong to assume that your preferences are superior to other preferences.
Sometimes I think that many of the arguments advanced by people made in favor of static design boil down to complaints that the game is just too hard. There are many valid arguments to support static design. Just as there are many valid arguments to support scaled leveling. One is not better than the other. They are simply different tools that produce different results. The trick is determining which aspect of game design to scale, and which to carve in stone. Ideally, developers will take the best features from both methods and combine them in a way which satisfies more people than it annoys. Fallout 3 and Skyrim have already made steps in this direction by using encounter zones.
I confess, the amount of negativity on this forum regarding scaling is somewhat baffling to me, which is why I started investigating the issue. For the record, I prefer a mixture of scaled and static items and creatures, and encounter zones work very well for me, but I seem to spend most of my time defending dynamic level scaling. I guess I just feel bad for the screwdriver, because everyone seems to prefer the hammer.
» Mon Dec 12, 2011 8:04 am 
