Level scaling and the level system is designed horribly. If you aren't careful, by level 20 you will be butchered by NPCs. On my assassin character, I am stuck on a thieves guild quest at level 20 because the NPCs are simply overwhelming, even at low difficulty. You have to be careful not to accidentally raise skills you don't need, or else they will cause you to level up. Because I'm forced to use swords so much, my archery is not very high, yet I had to level up regardless, not to mention all the other useless skills i've accidentally leveled up.

At least in oblivion, only skills that mattered would cause you to level up. At the rate that lockpicking increases in skill, I have to be careful on my warrior not to pick to many locks or else I'll level up prematurely as well.

Speaking of my warrior, at level 23, I run into a bandit marauder with a one hand and shield, with steel armor and me in full orcish, yet he outdamages me by quite a margin, requiring me to drink all my potions just to stay alive long enough.

TL;DR - Skills that aren't important should not cause a level up. It is extremely easy to level, so much so that I have 3 level 20ish characters and I haven't even had the game a week.

Um, if you level up, put points in health and have good armor and weapons you're going to do fine.

This... no idea what OP is talking about. Use some common sense.. hell, even if you don't you will be fine.

As long as companies have a level scaling fetish, character development will be bass ackwards in every single game

I get what OP is talking about, I don't have that problem or seen it yet but makes sense. I am Ok with the leveling system but prefer it like in Oblivion. Commander Adama nailed it.

Only read if you've finished the thieves guild quest line.

And I'd consider my warrior pretty decked out, and I was more careful as I was leveling with my perks and whatnot. I can sometimes just barrel on through a group of bandits, but then sometimes one bandit chief will just [censored] me into oblivion. I can survive, I just need to drink potions and stuff.

Completely agree.

For the people who think that leveling is fine do this.

Save right before you enter a cave (one with leveled enemies) on whatever character you have. Use console commands to level up your primary offense and defense skills, then make a new save on that character. Play through the dungeon on both saves and see which one takes and gives more relative damage. If that doesn't convince you why level scaling is horrible, I don't understand what you think a leveling system is for.

It seems as though there is no real reward for leveling up. Why not just play the game at level 1?

You cant "accidentally" level up useless skills. Skills level up based on how often you use them. You can accidentally pick perks for skills you never used, but who in their right mind would do that? Makes no sense. If you had to use your sword so much, your 1H, or 2H, would be high enough to kill most people. You should be picking perks for 1H, or 2H, whichever you use, because obviously thats your main source of combat that YOU CHOSE, so support the choice of combat youve used all game. THAT makes sense. By level 20, you can level your health enough, and find some good armor, by that point to at least withstand blows from higher bandits and creatures.

You, sir, are "horrid" at comprehension of role-playing games.

From the sounds of it I would also suspect the OP has followed an atypical skill learning route, leaving themselves with perks in non combat skills and very low combat and defense skills. OP about all you can do is turn the difficulty right down and buy the best armor and weapon you can and then hope to run into low level mobs whilst you level up combat related skills.

Of course, depending on just how you have spent your perks you might consider restarting. After all a perked out pickpocket, lockpicking, speech toon is not going to get you very far.

so people shouldn't sell anything or open any locked chests?

PC players are so arrogant they think everyone is using a PC. We're not.

Caves and places have level AREAS, they don't all level 1-50. You're wrong.

Never ran into that problem because I make sure I use my combat skills and use appropriate perks. Don't [censored] about dying if you crank up your difficulty setting.

At least most bandits are still wearing fur armour at level 40. Chiefs with steel or better armour only seems appropriate.

What? The OP said he's "accidentally" leveling up skills he doesnt need. Which is impossible, because you obviously need them if you are using them that often that you are leveling up in them. Unless he meant perk choice, so then why would you pick perks, for example: enchanting and smithing, if you arent planning to enchant and smith. Especially, If youre having trouble fighting, wouldnt you think to pick your perks in your most used choice of combat, whether magic or 1H, or 2H etc. because thats what youre struggling with?

I don't get what the complaints are about. I don't remember having issues with bandits at level 20 and I'm not having problems now at level 35. I suspect I WILL have issues when I run into one of these Elder or Ancient dragons I've been reading about. I look foward to running my a** off and calling for mommy.

While the levelling system does have its downsides (not in the least the fact that we're still stuck with scaled enemies), I actually find it alot more fluent than in Morrowind or Oblivion. There you were basically pushed towards getting the 5x multipliers every level so as to level most efficiently, which I found to be rather immersion-breaking (from a RP viewpoint).

Also, in Skyrim, you can postpone levelling until you've trained your combat skills - you don't have to take every level up as soon as it is available. For example: with a sword-and-shield character, I never actually take the level up until I've gotten at least one level in one handed, block and heavy armor. While this doesn't really make up for the fact that all skills count towards the next level (even if only by a small margin), it does help.

First of all, I am not a noob at role playing games, I am in a top World of Warcraft (a real RPG where stats and the correct usage of abilities actually matter at end game) guild both in PvE and PvP.
Second of all, you can 'accidentally' level up skills you don't need. When I play an archer, I don't want to use my one handers. But I have to. Know why? Because some NPCs are psychic and begin moving out of their seat before the first arrow even lands, and then you get 5 bandits rushing after you. Lockpicking is often necessary to advance, and hey, I need gold, so I'm going to pick them. But of course, i pick one damn lock and next thing I know my lockpicking goes up another point and theres another 1/6 of a level up.

Out of potions and you want to keep going without waiting half an hour for health to regenerate? Oh ok I'll just use some restorati- oh wait, theres another level up.

This is a game about character and story, I should be able to level at my own pace and enjoy the surroundings without worrying about leveling up too much and getting one-shot my a bandit in fur armor.

I've actually done this on purpose to make it more fun. I've created a character with the intent to level all the skills that don't help in combat, as well as only using Conjured beings or companions to fight stuff. It's incredibly fun so far.

If your most troublesome issue is that you HAVE to use 1H weapons when you play an archer and not being able to use restoration well, wouldnt you think to level up archery, 1H, and/or restoration? Its common sense. Why are you leveling up lockpicking, when you know to get to the most valuable chests, you must defeat enemies guarding it first with combat/health OR sneak past them, then you should be leveling up sneak, more so than the, in your case, redundant lockpicking skill?

You are going at your own pace. Youre just choosing a more nonsensical pace.

Your character doesn't level up automatically, only your skills do. While every level in a skill does count towards a character level (some more than others), you're not actually forced to take that character level as soon as it becomes available. Seems to me like that fits the bill of what you're looking for pretty well.

I've been playing for 30 hours so far and I didn't even go past character level 1 until well over 20 hours in, precisely because I wanted to level at my own pace and roleplay.

Ok I have a question. Let's say I level up skills to the point where I get a level up, but I don't choose to level up. So I go and keep getting skills up, but don't choose to level up. Then when I go to level up, is it like oblivion where I can keep leveling over and over and over again in a row?
I hope I made that clear, what I mean is, will the skill ups I got while not leveling up count towards the next level after that?

That is correct. Your levels 'stack' if you get enough experience to level up multiple times, and when you do eventually click level up, you'll be prompted to choose Magicka, Health or Stamina several times in a row, as well as receiving all the perk points at once.

Yep, that is the case. Like the previous poster said, he stayed level 1 until he played over 20 hours, then he finally leveled up that way he could have a better idea and implementation of what hes trying to do skill/perk wise. Takes patience, but it can be efficient.