Anyone who went to Navarro straight from Arroyo knows that getting into a high level area is risky but the pay off is huge. :) Scaled loot takes out the role of smart arse.
BTW, Skyrim has a system of taxi carts, so the space around the cities would be always accessible. Might and Magic 6 worked like this dropping you into civilization in the middle of highly aggressive maps.

And that's good to some extent, but the key is balance. No scaling at all and the game becomes much more linear, especially without gaming the system. Too much scaling and everything is dull and random, plus it breaks immersion. Balance is key.

Skyrim does okay. Not the best, but far from the worst.

Scaling isn't necessary at all to accomplish this, all that's needed is good world design. The most typically used method is increasing the difficulty of enemies the further one gets from civilization (towns, major roads, etc). If the world is then designed well the player can get to and partially explore most major regions, but still have plenty of difficult areas waiting for them as they level up (or if they want to challenge themselves earlier, with a big payoff if they succeed). Additionally, dungeons can use things like rumors and visual cues to alert the player they're potentially heading into a dangerous area (e.g. townsfolk talking about a particular dungeon or area being somewhere to stay away from, plenty of bones or other visual warnings at the entrance to dangerous dungeons, a scary looking enemy towards the start of a dungeon that the player can see before the enemy notices them, etc). Ultimately level scaling is just taking a lazy way out, and it ultimately cheapens the game experience.

Right now im in dragon armor with a Daedric BP and great sword both legendary using a 30% smith potion...

im lvl 27 and im fighting blood dragons... right now its very easy... i know at 30 the game starts spawning new mobs and im concerned... it was not until very recently i was able to fight well again... I guess i can start pumping heavy armor and weapon skills... thats all i have left im hovering in the 60's on them...

the difficulty ramps up way to much, there is no smooth transition.. and im already in the best armor in the game.. all that i can do is enchant what i have... im fighting at my limit in the best standard gear for a pure warrior... if the enemy's become tougher and im only at 30... there is an issue (the only improvement i have is Daedric boots hands and helm)

on a side note, my merc in full dragon-plate downs to one knee in 2 hits... shes also legnedary equipped and uses a full set of Ebony weapons

Well that is how Skyrim is designed, so have at it. Go West at a low level and hit a hagraven and you're fucked. Head into the Northern hills at a low level and find a saber cat and you're fucked. Go near a giant camp before you're level 30 or so and you're fucked. Start certain quests too early and they will be very hard.

Though, I must say, the argument for the Oblivion system is that it allows total freedom, you can go anywhere at any time and do any quest at any time. That was the point of it, and that offers more freedom than the Skyrim/Gothic/Fallout method for certain. I'm not advocating it, Oblivion went way overboard, but that was the thinking and in that aspect it is true.

The only aspect of Skyrim that feels close to Oblivion in scaling overboard is the loot. Even then though, there is a lot of hand-placed and not scaled loot around, you just have to learn where it is. I already know where to go to get a Falmer bow right at the start of the game.

Those giants... -_-

"Ooh, a lone giant! I can take it down!"

~Smack~

"I can see my house from here!!!!"

Not sure if that has been mentioned before, but it looks like that they have also included Morrowind and Cyrodiil into Skyrim, these regions are only accessible in noclip mode and have bad textures.

To the North-East is a way between two mountains, after a long way you will find a gate which leads to Morrowind.

I wish to extract the location of this falmer bow from you, please

Only "total freedom" in freedom of movement. I personally think that giving you the freedom to make stupid decisions and get yourself killed, and/or find exploits and break the game, are important parts of player choice as well. Giving those up just so that you can artificially explore the entire world without feeling in danger is, to me, a really stupid move.

You will not able to run the game without the Steam client after the latest patch .

Man I am Steam raging this morning. Not only do they force in a DRM update no matter what your update settings were, but a moderator closed my relatively respectful thread asking about the legalities of it. Just said "we're done here" and that was that.

This is scary Orwellian shit. Access to my comp without my authorization, misleading options in the program that would void the ToS, yet there's nothing you can do about it really. It honestly makes me want to get all my software from the scene community. Why am I rewarding these fuckers for screwing me over at every possible turn? ARG WTFLGHLGhap;ghaihp;hP:HIGHPGH.

...

Okay, just had to vent.

... and we all know, that this for 99% of the content means: you have no real choice at all - now go follow that narrow path we, the devs, allowed you to walk on.

Edith said: forgot to add, that of course if you managed to break the game, it wouldn't be the players fault, but bad quality assurance / gamedesign.....

I dont know how i managed to get an ice bolt up a fox's arse....

It's good they did this, but why then add level scaling on top of it? From what I've read most of the dungeons are scaled to the player the moment they enter (including the loot). Why? I've also heard talk of the world getting repopulated with stronger enemies as the player levels up. Again, if the world was initially designed with different levels of difficulty in different areas, why do this? If you want to repopulate the world to change things up a bit and keep it from getting stale then much better to tie this to plot events (like Gothic 2 did) so that makes more sense within the world, as well as giving the player a more static difficulty to aim at overcoming as they build their character. Ultimately it sound that while Bethesda did back off on some of the horrible level scaling in Oblivion, they still left vestiges of it when there was simply no reason to.

Also, loot scaling is one of my biggest complaints of all when it comes to level scaling. It often makes going through different dungeons feel pointless, as you're just going to find the same stuff regardless of what dungeon you explore, and it's all going to be scaled to your current level- no challenging yourself with a tougher dungeon to get nicer loot. It's good they brought back at least some hand-placed loot, but the fact that you compared the loot scaling in Skyrim to that in Oblivion doesn't sound very good.