Most games aren't balanced. Rather, they have certain abilities or combination of abilities that can be combined to make the game a lot easier (sometimes, trivial).

If you plan things properly as you level up, you will win more easily at higher levels even if the monsters scale with your level (they tend to scale with players who don't abuse game mechanics in mind after all).

It will take an extremely well balanced game (or a cruel one) for monster scaling to keep up with a player who plans properly with higher levels in mind.

At least, that has been my experience for the RPGs I've played (haven't played them all, but I've played many).

People seem to equate lack of level scaling with boring fights later. But thats not because theres no level scaling, that is because they forgot to put in tougher enemies! If you get stronger there should always be much stronger enemies somewhere. And if you beat those, you won. The end.
For example, once you can easily beat large groups of dragons and titans in Might and Magic 6-8 you have pretty much won. Whether that is at level 20 or 80 is up to your party design skills. Level scaling would just ruin any point of doing anything in that game.
And yes I remember scouring the countryside of Morrowind for strong opponents that give mad phatz, but there were none. First there were no strong monsters at all (just scaled ones up to a point), and second no monster ever dropped anything good anyway. When I found out that these golden things, saints or whatever were among the toughest it was a huge letdown. Then I modded in dragons, but it still didnt feel good. Bad game design that was lazily remedied with even more level scaling in Oblivion!

I've always viewed level scaling as you're describing it, so I don't mind when previously weaker enemies toughen along with you; it's all part of the challenge.

But I think it's too simplistic to just have enemies which are proportional in strength etc. to the player. I'd like a more natural occurrence in games, i.e. a group of enemies should have both weak and relatively stronger attackers; their strength etc. should vary relative to each other's , not the player's.

Also, I think the leveling up reward is overrated- when I level up, I'd rather face newer, different, more cunning, devious and inventive foes; I don't want a pat on the back for racking up imaginary points, I want to play a (challenging) game ;p

And what exactly do you propose for an Elder Scrolls game where you can't 'win', as you put it? The approach Bethseda has taken is the correct one, probably the most polished in Skyrim. Their games are about freedom and exploration, not really about phat loot or killing the strongest baddie. If you approach them that way, well, you approach them wrong.

Whats the use of freedom and exploration if everything is the same?

All the people that have ever enjoyed Morrowind have not actually enjoyed it. They have watched events unfold with boredom in their eyes, right? Don't worry, you don't have to 'get' all the games in existence, it's fine. I'm just telling you that TES games work the way they do for a good reason. If you want me to elaborate, well, here you go. Bottom line is, me and loads of other people have enjoyed exploring in Morrowind. You didn't find it appealing and that's fine, there are other games for you to play.

It uses Leveled lists. Yes it means that at certain levels, the mobs will be different than before, but the challenge of those specific mobs won't change as you level. Most likely what you were meaning, and likely semantics, but I don't feel that this is actually "scaling".

I also love how nighttime can change things. Vampires are much more challenging than mudcrabs ;) But the vampires are still static, as you mentioned.

Probably beating a dead horse here, but I hate Oblivion for this very reason. To me, it feels like the game is actively discouraging leveling up. Not to mention it breaks immersion when some dirty highway bandit is wearing Daedric armor. I wish I had Oblivion on the PC so I could fix this with some mods, but alas I have the Xbox 360 version.

What are you talking about, I enjoyed it,too, probably played through it 3 times. But it could have been much better.

What I'm talking about is that the game was packed with content already. Adding more of what you prefer about the game would cause other sides to suffer - the game was barely finished on release as it was. So no, it could not have been much better within realistic expectations.

Oh so you were talking about something else then. The topic was level scaling, and not using that could have made Morrowind much better without suffering.

Not really - the best loot in Morrowind was fixed, just as the dangerous areas in the game. The only thing that lack of scaling would have achieved would be player character being restricted in where he can go in the wilderness, which is completely against basic design of TES games up from Morrowind.

As pointed out, if you want to see really bad leveling look at out-of-the-box Oblivion. Beat each & everything with a lvl 3 char, get your (highly enchanted, super armored) ass handed at level 35 by a lousy goblin.

I have no problem with encountering thougher enemies when leveling up. But as my char gains more and more levels the amount of enemies that could steamroll my char should go down, not up.

Glad I have the PC version; modded to the teeth its really awesome.

No it's not. Lazy design is the Gothic way.

Sure, you have more dangerous areas you could venture into, but there's no real reason to. And once you wiped the world clean of every possible enemy, you proceed past a specific mainquest goal and the world get's refilled with enemies...
Gothic 1 was the worst offender in that department. At a specific point you stood in the main area / castle and approximately 200+ Orcs outside, waiting to get beaten - all by yourself. That the AI was so braindead that only the one you're beating on ever tries to attack you, even with 20+ others surrounding you, didn't helped either.

Compared with Skyrim where a single wolf / bear / sabretooth encounter later may appear as a pack of 5 wolfs or 2 bears / sabretooths working together or Dragons which get mightier and later versions coming with more / better abilities - I'll take the Skyrim level scaling any day.

Can't compare the (great!) M&M series with TES - TES is open world from lvl 1 on where M&M is pretty much lvl-walled completely.

As soon as you put up lvl-walls, be it with a strong encounter at a chokepoint or higher area-lvls, you pretty much narrow the way the player can approach or play through the game.
You want to play an assassin, following the Dark Brotherhood questline first and foremost? Can't proceed at certain points, because it leads you into areas waaaay over your current lvl - get back to grinding.... Yes, and it should be. You want to play a trader, focusing on crafting, mixing potions and enchanting every dirt patched rag to get as much coins together as you can? You can do that. Just don't expect your armor rating or your weapon skills to get better, though.
So if you follow that road (which you can in Skyrim, even more so with mods), use those potions / improved weapons and throw a few coins towards one of several possible mercenaries.... tell your friend or who ever he was, to start playing the f@@king role he took....

I played as a trader, focusing mainly on speechcraft and crafting from the start on, relying on mercenaries / huscarls to do the fighting, while running away from every encounter screaming like a little girl. At lvl10 I grow in confidence to stay and heal my fighters. At lvl20 I grow some balls and supported them with ranged weapons. You can play that way through the game, with only a few handpicked points where it doesn't work.

Now please name a few RPGs where I can play that way, with that role..... but hey, Skyrim is a bad RPG with little to no roleplaying. At least that's what I hear all the time.

Yeah, as I keep repeating over and over - people always look at the aspect of TES games they enjoy and ignore the rest. Then you get claims like "It's a shitty action RPG!" or "It's a shitty story-based RPG!" even tho all of these are just small parts of the greater whole.