From a certain point of view. And as a ardent RPG-Gameress.

I love good designed levels. I love character levels, spell levels... and all such things.
(if they are good implemented)

Levels (in RPGs) are a very good, abstract system to become stronger over time.
Levelscaling on the other hand, is a poorly design choice. Mostly inspired from bad JRPGs and uncreative developers.
It makes the entire leveling process obsolete.

Because at some point you want be able to crush this ugly, giant Ogre like a tiny little bug.
At some point you want to become as powerful as Ainz Ool Gown, from the Overlord Anime.

I also hate classless RPGs and RPG - Rules.
They often have the tendency to destroy individualism. They also have a tendency to more powergaming.
And last but not least..... they are boring and i just don't like them. :P

Honestly, level scaling seems more of a WRPG thing than a JRPG thing to me.

In fact, if I look for JRPGs with level scaling, all I find are:
* Final Fantasy 8, which is rather unusual mechanically anyway, so not a typical JRPG
* Romancing SaGa series and SaGa Frontier, but those games are really Japanese-developed WRPGs anyway, and furthermore, these games don't actually have experience levels (instead using a hidden value that increases as you fight enemies)

Whereas, for WRPGs, looking for level scaling does yield some more mainstream entries, like Elder Scrolls (if you count them as RPGs, that is), or things like the NES versions of Ultima 3 and 4 (still WRPGs, despite adapted by a Japanese company). Or, for that matter, Wizardry 8.

With that said, it's still a poor design choice; I've hears of Ultima 3 players not leveling up past level 1 or 2, except for a single level 5 Druid named SHIP.

Yes there is:https://diablo.fandom.com/wiki/The_Secret_Cow_Level.

Unless you are in the first game.

Or Starcraft.

:P

Absolutely this. Honestly, I was having a blast in my first playthrough of Oblivion until I noticed that the walking skeletons in the little caves were crushing me (and were armed with some of the best weapons in the game). Just killed the experience. I know why they did it in this case: since the game was open world they wanted the game to be just as difficult no matter where you went first. The most common way I've see people deal with this issue is to just start a new game when the game becomes too big a pain for them.

Hard disagree. Aside from thugs and soldiers guarding sensitive materials, what dungeons support an ecosystem where the larger and presumably energetically costly monsters are isolated from readily available food sources? Do they eat each other or are they given rations from the dungeon master? It would make more sense to park the tougher monsters up front or at the perimeter to devour weaker adventurers and fight off the stronger ones who want to get in and loot the place.

An alternative, of course, is to use the console to lower your level.

Yes, but how will the player characters get enough XP to gain enough levels to fight those stronger enemies?

(In other words, from a game design standpoint, it makes sense to have the deeper enemies be stronger.)

I don't play "open world games with leveling characters" (i.e. Skyrim). Aside from those, all other RPGs I've played in recent years (Divinity Original Sin, Wasteland etc. etc.) don't have any level-scaling enemies. So I don't see where you're coming up with "they haven't for a very long time now" since it's objectively wrong.

Referring to character levels, it's a staple that just about everyone who played a few games that had at least some RPG elements, and sometimes not just those, can readily understand and be used with. That said, I dislike the mechanic and will complain about it if the matter is brought up, but at the same time will usually just accept it as a given in games, not pointing it out as a flaw, though if a game manages to have decent, not to mention truly interesting, character development without levels I will definitely praise that.
One clear problem with levels though is if there are too few of them, and even worse if their impact is too great, so the character will pretty much stay the same for a long time, then suddenly leap ahead, instead of a more reasonable, gradual improvement.
As for level scaling, don't even go there, always an awful idea, no ifs or buts there.

Some interesting cases:
* Disgaea, particularly in the postgame. There are a lot of levels (cap is 9999), with each one having only a small impact, and in the postgame, gaining multiple levels per kill is the norm.
* Most SaGa games (including The Alliance alive) and a few other games like Darklands. There's no experience levels; instead, stats and/or skills improve based on your actions.

Both? Depends on the game and how it implements it.

Some games use them when it suits their design purposes, others don't. Both can be entertaining.

You can definitely overdo levelling to the point of ridiculousness (ie, the "god" fixation some games suffer from), but otherwise it is just a meta metric to help the player ascertain the degree of awesomeness of something (much like damage, speed, hp or other things when they are explicitly spelled out with stats).

For stage levels, it can help developers on a budget transition between environments without having to believably render the transition between those environments. It is nice to see the transition to get a greater feeling that you are in a coherent world? Often is. Is it an absolute pre-requisite to have a good game and the thing that devs with time constraint should always place the emphasis on? Definitely not.

I like it more when level difficulties are only applied to the AI. Meaning we don't ever level up, but we can adjust difficulty level of the AI that we will be playing against. And of course the AI should be more competent the higher the difficulty level without them having to cheat. I also think this is why Unreal Tournament as well as many RTS games tend to have a high replay value since you don't really need to have someone else to play the game with you since the AI or bots are good enough for you to play against (ofc I'm not limiting the list to those games only, as fighting games could also be included into the list, but those games tend to rely more on multiplayer to keep the player base active).

As to why I'm not quite fond of games where you can level up your characters is simply because there will come a time when the game becomes less challenging as you've finally leveled up your character to the max, and how such games tend to be the ones that will demand a lot of your time, like RPG games (this can vary one person to another, but I tend to lose track of time when playing RPG games, which is something that I cannot afford the older I get).

Well, good of course, how else you would be able to identify the difference between a troop that patrolled alongside the border of your empire, fighting of bandits, trolls and dragon on a daily basis compared to those fresh young lads who just finished their basic training, having difficulty with keeping their swords pointed in the right direction.

Don't be misled by all those sorry types of developers who just happened to ...... tones down a bit .... those poor fellows who maybe have, had some trouble with also pointing their swords in the right direction

Well, levels help to stretch game play and give people a feeling for progress. Sadly more often than not it's used as replacement good story design.

I was a bit shocked when a friend of mine talked about Elden Ring and "if you don't pay attention, you run into a guy who can kill you with one blow!" and thought that was something special. Isn't that exactly how all role playing games were back in the days? Sure, ER is not really a role playing game, but like so many other games it has role play elements.
Isn't that exactly what we should expect from them?
The one and only real purpose of levels should be to keep the player away from areas which he is supposed to be visit later.

Yea, ok, but again, really... It is not like the whole level thing should be disregarded because some people implement the feature in a more 'abusive' sense, i guess in a game. Most of the time it is partly because of commercial data wizards conclusions that we sometimes see those 'weird' implementations. The other part is, a lot of people enjoy to level for the sake of levelling. We've all been young guns.

Personally, i'd enjoy games more that include a more restricted approach to their open world design and if i'm remembering correct, that is also what most games, back in the days, presented. Or the follow the story, and you will be quite all right implementation. Off the beaten track live seems to be always a bit more difficult. That should be expected i guess.

It is a good thing though,that most games in the (action)strategy genre have implemented xp and mild rpg elements in quite the right fashion. Levels, as a means of creating attachments to otherwise nameless entities, set out to die by the dozens. Or as mentioned before, to separate the rookie from the professional.