Elder Scrolls 4 Oblivion's level scaling was a "mistake", says designer, so why is it in the remaster?

I never played enough of the original Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion to be seriously annoyed by its infamous level scaling system, but I gather from the anguished recollections of colleagues that it was like having a fistfight with a mirror. You'd pour all that blood and sweat into the RPG's obtuse skill-massaging systems, and the simulation would toughen up in response, with hitherto modest bandits showing up garbed in armour and items that matched your capabilities.

There's probably a life lesson in this. Something about, you know, not trying. Something about accepting that "progression" is a joke, that all of our feats are dust in Creation's compound eye, that we neither deserve nor are capable of change. Oh wait, hang on, the level scaling was a massive error of judgement! So sayeth original Oblivion designer Bruce Nesmith, speaking to Videogamer, which invites the question: why haven't they gotten rid of it for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered?

As Nesmith notes in the interview, the Remastered version's creators have made some significant adjustments to how you gain levels. Instead of improving major skills and then sleeping to boost your attributes, depending on said major skills, the new version of the RPG doles out XP per skill-up and lets you pick which attributes to improve.

"They actually went ahead and changed the game design underneath... some of the systems design," Nesmith commented. "That's pretty much unheard of in a remaster because the whole idea is that they want that old experience, so I consider that to be a very brave thing and probably help the Oblivion remaster to be significantly more popular - assuming they have done what they said and bring it to a more modern understanding of things, that's going to make the game more playable for modern sensibilities".

So why is level scaling still in then? Today's kids are going to hate it, Bethesda, because they are, after all, kids. They still harbour the hope that they will someday amount to something, that there will be a measurable distance between what they are and how they began.

Nesmith is as confused and horrified as you are, reader. "I had a very substantial hand and voice in both levelling systems," he told the site. "The nuts and bolts work, the mathematical mechanics, that was my work and I'm intimately familiar with how both of those things work."

"I think the world levelling with you was a mistake and that's proven out by the fact it did not happen the same way in Skyrim," he went on. "That we came up with a much, much better way to continue to provide the player challenge without making it feel like 'oh, it doesn't matter that I went up in levels, the dungeon went up in levels with me"."

Are you an Oblivion survivor? I'm interested to read your doubtless seasoned thoughts about whether the level scaling system could be salvaged or improved somehow, rather than simply removed. I don't know whether it's been rejigged at all for the remaster - we've got somebody working on a longer assessment - but modders have already stepped in and stripped the fittings. Take this Unlevelled Item Rewards mod from trainwiz, developer of Freelancer homage Underspace and also, the person largely responsible for Skyrim's plague of Really Useful Engines.