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[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

The AI director actually is not a scaling mechanism. What it does is based on where the players are spawn waves of zombies in a variety of spots so as to provide exciting combat with lulls in it so its not all combat all the time. The difficulty does not scale with this its just a fancy way of choosing where the zombies spawn. Or at least thats how I understand it.

[Darkmere]

Ah, I was under the impression that the harder you play, the more spawns happen. I guess that detail would make the difference between scaling and a mission randomizing device.

[LostEnder]

I've generally been able to overlook even the most egregious examples of level scaling (Bethesda...) when the story is engaging or the world interesting enough to keep it away from my conscious notice.  I've spent countless hours in Morrowind and Oblivion, but it really really hurts when you've done all this epic stuff, saved the world, blown up the castle, etc. and you're still challenged by the most mundane and frequent encounters.

Ultimately, I'd like to see a world created with the openness and craftsmanship of a Skyrim or Fallout, but the decisive combat and careful encounter design of a Dark Souls.  I've only recently been playing the * Souls games, but they've really hooked me with the sense of urgency and danger that the design builds.  When you think about it, you have most of the same player action choices (phys attack, sneak, magic, evade, block) in each game, but while Skyrim lets the PC growth drive the whole world, Dark Souls controls the player's power while still providing interesting choices for advancement. 

It might also be interesting to consider the level of actual player skill the gameplay is designed around.

[Draco18s]

I don't have a source either, but I'm fairly sure HL2 generates items based on what you need, just in a fairly subtle fashion. Not like that's relevant to enemy scaling. HL1... no, never heard anything on that front.

Well, I think L4D runs on the same engine as HL2 or something similar?  Co-op difficulty is partially scaled by how well the players do and some of their actions. 

Half-Life 2 and Left 4 Dead both run on the Soruce engine however the Left 4 Dead engine is a much more upgraded engine than the Half-Life (Now the Episode 2) engine.

IIRC, there's the Source HL2 engine (Half Life 2, predictably), the Episode 1 branch (HL2:Ep1), the Orange Box engine (TF2), and then it branched a lot.  There's now the L4D branch (L4D1 and L4D2), the Alien Swarm branch (Alien Swarm, duh), and the Portal 2 branch (Portal 2, duh).

Ep1 obsoleted HL2.  Orange box obsoleted Ep1.  Portal 2 obsoleted both Orange Box and L4D.  Alien Swarm continues to do diddly all, as bloody no one makes maps for it.

[G-Flex]

Then, of course, you have the buggy, shitty alpha version of the Source engine they gave to Troika to work on Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines.

[Zangi]

Mount and Blade has level scaling. 
Enemies don't exactly get harder in the sense that they individually get tougher to beat down. (Except maybe the Lords.) 

How they scale it is that enemy armies/parties have a higher troop cap, doesn't necessarily mean that they do get that many troops, cause it takes some time for them to build back up their numbers. 
I believe they also get more higher quality troops in the mix... I don't know the mechanics, but it may include a higher % of troops being high quality or just simply having more troops = more high quality troops.
At the least, Lords have 'income and expenses' which can limit their troop size/slow down their recruitment, if you keep looting their sources of income and smash their armies, if I remember correctly.  (They usually have a reserve of gold put away for such occasions...)

[Virtz]

Are you sure that's actually level-scaling? I was under the impression that their armies grow in strength with time regardless of what you do. Are they actually dependent on your level?

[Shadowlord]

Just forget about the hype. HL2, and episode 1 and 2 are all good games. They're not OMG BEST GAMES EVAR.

[Draco18s]

Just forget about the hype. HL2, and episode 1 and 2 are all good games. They're not OMG BEST GAMES EVAR.

Of course not!  That's Skyrim.

[Sordid]

Are you sure that's actually level-scaling? I was under the impression that their armies grow in strength with time regardless of what you do. Are they actually dependent on your level?

Bandit parties and such, yes. Lord parties have their numbers and composition determined by a fairly complex system that is AFAIK independent of your level.

[Zangi]

Are you sure that's actually level-scaling? I was under the impression that their armies grow in strength with time regardless of what you do. Are they actually dependent on your level?

Their max troop cap, yes.   Pretty sure it is level scaled...    either that or its tied to Renown, one or the other.

TweakMB, from last I checked, 2-3 years ago, seemed to indicate that bandits get more troops...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I just went to research it, to make sure I wasn't hallucinating.

But yes, most notable are the bandits raiding villages and the bandit lairs... number of them increase by a heck of a lot as you level.

http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,110457.0.html
http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,140651.msg3423950.html#msg3423950
http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,106608.0.html

Its all moddable by TweakMB, if its native I believe.  If it is a mod you are trying to mod, you'd have to research it, since some of them change the heck out of the code/whatever.

[capnpaco]

So perhaps this example is too old to be relevant to what you guys are talking about, but I would submit the original NES Legend of Zelda as a critically and commercially successful open-world game with character progression and without level scaling.

It used techniques that I believe have been already mentioned in this thread: if you go to an area that's too hard for you, you generally become aware of it and are able to leave before you get killed (or if not, you are re-spawned at the starting location, but this could easily be modified in other games as re-spawning at the nearest safe, level-appropriate area).  When you get more powerful, it's easy to avoid most of the low level guys when you go back through their areas (if you recall, you can leave only one bad guy per screen, thus not having the whole 4-6 of them re-spawn).  It is sometimes worth-while going back to level 2 or 3 and beating up on the low-level baddies to raise money, which may or may not be a feature that newer games would want.

Just wanted to throw that out there. 

[Sergius]

Well, from some of the comments about what is and isn't a RPG, I know many are going to disagree with me but not all RPGs have leveling in the D&D sense. In some games a "low level" bandit can be dangerous no matter how "high level" you become. I don't think open worlds are well suited for exponential character growth like you get in MMOs - lv 50 can't be touched by a lv 20 and so on.

If power levels scaled more subtly, there wouldn't be a reason for scaling. Killing end game enemies from the start would be harder but not impossible, you would just need more strategy, also no reason to punish the player for trying... if you want to railroad, just use some unopenable portal

I have an idea... probably stupid but... how about a Wanted level for open RPGs then if things get too tough you just bring your horse to the pay n spray