I despised it in World of Warcraft, but I actually loved it in The Witcher 3. How I feel about it seems to be at least somewhat related to whether it’s a singleplayer game or multiplayer. But it’s more complicated than that - in TW3 without scaling enabled the whole game becomes piss easy even on Death March so it’s kinda required for me to even enjoy the gameplay at all. There are still many ways to gain relative character power that exceeds the level scaling that eventually you just WILL overpower everything regardless.

Unless it’s basically broken I will play games on the highest difficulty possible, because that’s just more fun to me. It makes each game an epic saga and something that can grip my (limited) free time for many many months. Which is good, because I have issues picking up and putting down fictional universes, I get a bit too attached. I don’t get super emotional about it, I just really don’t have the mental energy to deeply engage with something new unless I’m truly done with the last big thing. (I am also neuro-non-standard, I have heard of a term for this, “inertia”)

Correctly done level scaling should be optional. Like in Dark Souls 2, after you defeat a boss of an area, you can use a special consumable to increase the difficulty of that area to NG+. And it's stackable, too. That was one of DS2 unique mechanics I'm actually sad they didn't add in DS3 and Elden Ring, because sometimes I don't want to restart the whole playthrough in NG+.

Don't know about CRPGs in particular, one way or the other. But in general I agree with you op.

If you level up, and it means your stats go up and all your enemies level up and stay at the same balance with you, it's pointless. It still affords a moment of happiness 'cool I levelled up', but in a much less satisfying way.

The point of level up early in RPG video games was, to my knowledge, so that any one with time and patience could beat a game regardless of skill. The idea of level scaling is almost the exact opposite, to remove the advantage of levelling. They cancel out and both player level and enemy level should be removed if that's happening.

That's assuming a 1:1 unversal scaling though, which is rarely the case. In the details it can be tuned to something worthwhile - which enemies scale, how much they scale, etc.

Still, my thought is when games want level scaling, they should consider why. If you want players not to overpower enemies via stats, maybe get rid of the stats (or don't change them on lvl up). Levels can still augment your player with new spells, unique abilities, or more options. Or maybe more carefully consider the placement of enemies and what their default level and stats are set at. Or maybe consider a lower level cap, or a lower range of stat values.

The possibilities are wide open, but level scaling done poorly can make level ups feel like a punishment.

Level scaling is never fun and never will be, I think. There is no progression if your fights with early enemies are just as hard as they were 50h ago.

You could probably design around that by providing in-depth build options such that optimized builds outscale other entities of the same level. Later game enemies themselves would be optimized better and better. But that's really hard and I've never seen it done. Why even provide a dynamic build for each enemy with each level if you could just have a normal non-scaling progression?

These systems often lead to me avoiding combat altogether. While not exactly a crpg, Oblivion was more fun to me without ever leveling up (which was optional, but made fights kinda pointless).

Something that’s being heavily overlooked in this thread is the difference between a CRPG and an RPG/ARPG. I’m not sure which one OP is referring to, but if you want an easy guide, Fallout 1-2 are CRPGs, Fallouts 3-4 are not. Skyrim, the Witcher, latter Assassin’s Creed games, Elden Ring, etc are not CRPGS. Games like Divinity Original Sin 1-2, Baldurs Gate 3, Pillars of Eternity, Pathfinder, etc are CRPGS

It depends. When done correctly it can be fun, if all creatures/enemies are always scaled to your level, no. Dragon monsters for example should always pose a challenge or some kind of monsters that are you mirror images/copies, that type of thing. Maybe it's your rival or someone that has far more experience then you do, why wouldn't their level also grow?

It's generally implemented in a way that takes away fun. If a game had fun fights that were always intended to be strategic, it'd be ok, but when you have to kill identical mob after identical mob to progress in the plot, i don't see the point.

i remember getting bored and annoyed near the end of oblivion.

Agreed. I really enjoy being able to one hit enemies that made me shit my trousers a couple of hours ago. The rats I killed for that innkeeper when I arrived shouldn't even be worth my attention during endgame.

What CRPGs have level scaling? I think almost every CRPG that I played doesn't have any level scaling.

I like it, but only as an alternative to very good balancing with very slow power scaling. Unless I’m playing a superhero game, I don’t want to one-shot starting enemies once I’m higher level.

This is all tied to my preference for immersion above all and my tendency to fiddle around in a game pretending I’m playing a TTRPG rather than rushing to the end.