Yeah, I know. Other people are such assholes for having different preferences than you do :-P

If you think so, thats your business, but I find it terrifying that some people would defend such horrible things as DRM or QTEs here of all places. On other forums that kind of bickering is normal, but on gog, the DRM free place...

@Siannah It is not about difficulty, its about having options, a plausible scenario, freedom of choosing between all enemies, which opens up all kinds of strategic possibilities.

Oh yeah, DRM and QTEs are out there to destroy the world. Actually, they exist in symbiosis - destruction of the world by DRM is entirely driven by QTEs. You know, DRM has to press buttons for individual continents to submerge. It's the rule... Or something.

What I find terrifying is people calling individual preference horrible - especially in a post that refers to options about 2 lines later.

I brought up difficulty only to explain how it forces you down a more or less specific path, while claiming available options which never were intended to work out. Aka level-walls.

Having options, freedom of choosing where to go / start / what to do, opening up possibilities.... that's what level scaling at least tries to achieve. How good it actually does, is a different thing, depending on the game and it's implementation.
Take level scaling away in Mass Effect, and you'll take away the illusion of openness where you decide which available mission is important for you. You're pretty much stuck with more or less linear levels which should be done in ascending order, putting you on rails. With the level scaling you just get option a, b, c, d and can decide in what order you'll tackle them.

Plausible scenario? Yes that may take a hit with it. It may - doesn't mean it has to. Again, depending on game / implementation. But then again you take my example of Gothic and tell my how that is more plausible.

Proper level scaling doesn't prevent any of these things. But that is the difference. Proper level scaling, not lazy level scaling.

I am sorry that all games with level scaling you have experienced had lazy level scaling, but that isn't reason to condemn the whole mechanic.

Any example of either with success? (Not only once but with a whole system through out at least one game)

Recent one for QTE I'd say Assassin's Creed 2, since the 4 buttons corresponded to Weapon Hand, Off Hand, Head, Legs, and if you were paying attentiont you would anticipate Ezio's move, so the QTE wouldn't be "Press random button".
Could also add the counter moves in Batman: Arkham Asylum and Sleeping Dogs, since they are also QTE, or the older ones in Tekken and Virtua Fighter (those also had counters, didn't they?).

As for level scaling, I think there have been quite a few examples, with best one to give being Darklands. Feel free to ask for more games, the beauty of well done level scaling is that you don't perceive it at all. It feels natural to the game.

Sorry, but I'm the only one that is seeing the flaw in the topic. Neither Torchlight nor Nethack are scaling the enemies. A monters will have the same attributes no matter what level you are. So this games are encouraging the player to level up to crush the enemies at the low level and be toe to toe or even better with the high level monsters. I failed to see how this should be examples for bad scaling.

And if you are complaining that the higher mosters are harder to kill - that is normal. At the start you may fight against a mob of goblins, but the higher you go the less enemies you have, till you are at a boss fight with different waves. There it will take a long time, till you are killing ONE enemy. And most of us love it that way.

Just a small correction.
Torchlight scales side content with your level (not all side content, but quite a bit of it) though main quest levels remain the same.
Nethack enemy level is the average of dungeon depth and your character level, so it is also scaling.

Yes condemning the whole concept is a bit overboard, but I rather condemn it all than risk encouraging more bad use of it. It seems to me that you want the same as me, and are just arguing with me for arguements sake.

So to be fair, I like level scaling for special places, like the Arenas in MM6-8 or Eador. You can always go there and fight easy to hard enemies around your level.It does not ruin the immersion because it makes sense within the game world, its optional and always rewarding. Other than Arenas I can't think of a good use of it.

I feel that part of the reason why level scaling has become such an issue is that the scaling of the player math has become so extreme.

When your level 1 guy does 5 damage, the level 10 guy does 5000, and the level 100 guy does 5 x 10^24 damage (to use just one value as an example), it's pretty much imperative to have scaling and it's also nigh-impossible to avoid having it go off the rails at some point.

Some of the older games did a much better job in this regard because the numbers didn't actually change much as your levels increased. (The mid-series Ultima games come to mind.) They didn't NEED to scale the enemies, or if they did, it was a very limited degree of scaling (maybe one more creature appears at high level than at low level); being higher level thus actually did make dealing with those enemies easier and/or less resource intensive.

Almost. You condemn something to prevent potential misuse, I prefer to educate on how it should be properly used and condemn only the misuses. I don't care if the concept is gaming concepts, education concepts, transportation concepts, power concepts or any other concept. Educate, don't condemn.

Ultima 3 did have scaling. Depending on how many people were in your party (and their levels), the single orc figure in the overmap may have been 1 to 4 monsters, and not only orcs. So that is a level scaling done right, since you didn't actually notice it. What you did notice was that the fight felt appropriate for your current progress.

I never played Assassin's Creed 2 because my computer couldn't handle it but good to know, I'm actually looking forward to playing that one as I've read it's less repetitive than the first one. I agree about Batman, that combat system is awesome and well done but as you said with well done level scaling feels natural to the game so does the combo system in Batman and that's why I like it, makes it more consistent and if you try you learn how it works instead of the random button system or "you've 0.3 seconds to press a flashing button"-scenario like Remember Me has (it didn't bother me too much because apparently it just worked for me but in theory it was not good).

One of these days I'll have to try Darklands as it's the kind of game I would enjoy once I can get passed the dated graphics and learn the mechanics/UI.

I could go with that, if the concept hadn't ruined so many games already. Now I just prefer if they avoided it altogether.