Enemy Level Scaling
The reason why leveling scaling was bad in Oblivion is because we had major and minor skills, and the ability to control if we ever wanted to level at all. People would stay at level 1 by purposely choosing to put their most used skills as their minor skills, and skills that they never used as their major skills, thus ceasing to level, breaking the game and just plowing through everything while having the best gear, while every other enemy stayed at level 1 with him. Level scaling in Oblivion was BAD because of the character leveling system.
BUT, in Skyrim the character leveling system will be completely different from Oblivion. In Skyrim, you will level no matter how you play the game, there are no more major and minor skills - which is a great move by Bethesda. With this new leveling system, there is no need to remove enemy level scaling, because you will level no matter what, and you will have to find ways to improve your character and make him stronger, no matter what, enemy level scaling should be kept WITH this new character leveling system!
Bethesda and people on the forums think enemy level scaling broke the game, it didn't - Major and Minor skills broke the game! Not enemy level scaling!
A single player RPG without level scaling is not a good idea. You will be able to walk through many areas of the game and just wack a lower leveled monster in one hit, and it would die because it wouldn't level up with you. I'm guessing by the time you reach the high levels (30-40+), maybe only about 30% of the game will pose a threat to you, while most of the game will stay level 20 and under, and not pose any harm to you, whereas if level scaling stayed, 100% of the game would pose a threat to you at all times, which is much better difficulty wise.
Now, my next point - ITEM SCALING.
This was another issue in Oblivion - weapons and armor from quests and unique weapons and armor did not level up with you. This was bad. My proposal in Skyrim would be to make unique items scale with your level - if you level up in Skyrim, your unique equipment should level up with you - thereby, increasing the damage of the weapon, the stats and defense of your armor, etc. That way, you wouldn't have to worry about what level you do a certain quest to get one of the best weapons in the game, you can do the quest whenever you want and the weapon would stay the best weapon in the game because its stats would grow with you.
On to the next issue I see in Skyrim - Dungeon Level Locking
Apparently in Skyrim, the one place where enemies will scale with your level are dungeons, BUT, they will lock at your level once you enter that dungeon, and stay at that level forever.
There is one HUGE issue with this... What if you happen to enter a dungeon at level 5... fight in that dungeon for let's say... 5 minutes, then you say "hmm, I'm leaving this dungeon to go do other stuff, I don't feel like finishing this dungeon."
What will happen if you don't come back to that same dungeon until you're let's say, level 15? All the enemies in there will still be level 5 because the first time you entered it was at level 5 - this means you will plow through that dungeon like nothing, essentially wasting a perfectly good dungeon.
So my suggestion for that is there should be no dungeon level lock... monsters inside dungeons should scale with your level just like how I think monsters outside of dungeons scale with your level.
Enemies should be getting stronger as you level. It's how single player RPGs should work.
Many people on these forums say "the game should be getting easier the further I get into it, because my character is stronger than he was at level 5."
I disagree with this.
Chunks of the game should be at an average difficulty, like random bandit encounters, or wild monster fights. Other chunks of the game should difficult, such as bosses or quest fights.
No part of the game should ever be "easy" and no part of the game should ever be "impossible", but that's the direction Skyrim is going in now, parts of the game will be super easy, average difficulty, or impossible. The difficulty spectrum will be ridiculously wide, the difficulty spectrum should be narrower... confusing, right?
What do you all think, if you actually happened to understand anything I'm trying to say, lol.