I like full auto: when a level triggers you get up to 600 per minute if you keep pressing the level up button.
Then you have to reload with xp.

I am not keen of leveling in the first place, so I am good with Auto Leveling.

It's not pure randomness, as there are ways to influence this. For example:
* Quite often, lower stats have a higher chance of increasing, particularly when fighting stronger opponents. (For example, in SaGa 2 if your human has never used magic and is fighting endgame enemies, using a spell as their last action will probably lead to a magic power increase. Or, in SaGa Frontier, if a low HP character survives a high level battle without perfofrming any action that has a chance of raising another stat (a situation that's quite likely with that one mermaid mystic), the character is *guaranteed* to gain HP.)
* Some of the SaGa games have a hidden "luck" value. This increases when stats fail to be gained, so that the player doesn't get starved of stat gains for too long, and drops once the stat finally increases. (I'd actually like to see games use a system like this for rare drops.)
* Wizardry 8 does something like this for skill increases, though you need to pass 8 checks to gain a point in the skill, smoothing out gain somewhat. On the other hand, Wizardry 8 also has conventional leveling, and at level up you get some points to distribute to skills. Wizardry 6 and 7 have a more primitive version of this, with only some skills increasing through use, but in 8, every skill can increase this way.
* Elder Scrolls handle skill growth deterministically, and without any catch up mechanism (maybe there should have been a catch up mechanism?). To improve a skill, it must be used a certain number of times, with no RNG involved (aside from Morrowind (not sure about Daggerfall) requiring the skill use be successful

Also, the randomness of this style of growth is more acceptable to me than random stat growth in conventional leveling, because with conventional leveling you have a limited number of level ups, with leveling up becoming harder the higher your level is. On the other hand, growth by use only becomes harder when the skill actually improves, and doesn't become harder when a skill fails to improve. (In fact, once can design the system so that further improvement becomes *easier* when the skill fails to improve, and I'm thinking of doing just that for the RPG I'm making.)
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The stem is:
"Do you level up as soon as you get the XP to do so, or do you have to go pray at a shrine/camp outside/find a save spot before you can level up?"

Some people seem to be focusing on level-up choices or stat distribution. That can happen either way in either system. And, while it's true that games without "choices" tend to favor automatic, and games with choices tend to favor player-initiated leveling, it's not always true.

And it's fun and interesting to discuss game designs, including with other people who tend to have good contributions (not you in this case) to the topic?

and that;s fine. what i object to is wheter one has to be "better" than the other, because it completly depends on the game.

...

Immediately.

I remember playing a game where it was basically a linear tower/dungeon crawl, if you 'died' you lost all experience you gained plus a level. And I'd have gained 3-5 levels during a run, so not being able to run away to get my earned XP in levels which would have helped in those fights, really is annoying.

Manual levelling can add the element of strategy. Like, with the Sphere Grid, you were forced to decide which attributes and skills to prioritise. Making intelligent decisions rewarded you with more effective characters and good tactical options.

Edit: some of this is illusory, because they dump your characters in grid locations that skew it to their specialisms, and obviously in the late postgame everyone can have everything.

I could mention a different way a game could have handled it. Instead of losing all that XP and a level when you die, instead make it so that dying is how you level up. In order to level up, you would need to get enough XP and then die.

Rogue Legacy is something like this.

Ultima 5 can actually give you a level on resurrection if you still have enough XP after the resurrection penalty (which can be eliminated if you max out your karma); the catch is that you don't get the random stat boost that you'd get if Lord British would level you up.

Incidentally, Ultima 5's form of levelling is particularly annoying. To level up, once you have enough XP, you need to rest and hope that Lord British shows up, and whether he shows up is random. It's certainly worse that either Ultima 4, where you just talk to Lord British in his castle (which is always in the same place), or Ultima 6, where you need to go to a shrine (which are always in the same places).

The correct answer is: it depends.
Some games have a level mechanic that benefits you and it's better to manipulate it how you want. Other games have a level system that just incrementally increases your stats, I don't need to control it. If there is a manual allocation of stats/skills I will always want to control when I level up, or at least when I allocate the rewards.

and now define "preference"

That sure is a problem, and in fact another topic when it comes to game design, always had a problem when I saw skills that carry increased cost when they improve. Not sure if I saw skills that actually changed to something entirely different on their own, eliminating any way to get the old effects, but also sure wish I won't, what messed up design concepts...
Then that's not level scaling of the game. But even so, if such a separate training area exists, shouldn't the player be able to choose what to train against? Or, if "appropriate" enemies are selected by the game, shouldn't they actually be different enemy types as the player improves instead of level scaled versions of the same ones?

That's actually how Wizardry 8's level scaling works.

It's also how Elder Scrolls games handle creatures when it comes to level scaling. (This applies to all main series TES games, including Morrowind. You need to be a higher level before you start seeing random Golden Saint spawns, for example.)

I wonder if someone who has an interest in the subject would rather engage with OP and others who kept at the topic by stating opinions and interesting tidbits of information about how game X and Y handle it in a unique way or waste their time playing word games with you.

Imagining your answer:
"Define 'interesting', 'unique', 'word games' and 'the' "

To the OP: I find threads like these interesting and read some of them when I have the time, even if I have nothing to contribute (like this time. My own examples wouldn't bring anything that hasn't been said already). My personal insight about moments when it's better to hold the level-up was covered right away by mistycoven (post #2) and Cavalary (#8)

Please keep the discussion flowing. Thanks.