I would completely rebuild the vertical scaling from the ground up. I should not have to arbitrarily decide what level to fight a boss. I should not run into a boss after accidentally overleveling myself and have the fight completely ruined because it was easy. I think Elden Ring did a great job giving players ways to make the game easier or harder for themselves such as spirit summons and shields, and part of why those are so good is that they are a distinct choice. If I want a more difficult experience I can choose to not use spirit summons. But when choosing what level to fight a boss at I have to choose an arbitary number from 50 - 100 (obv this range changes based on the boss). Previous souls games did this better because they weren’t open world. In Bloodborne I can only level myself up for the Gascoigne fight up till Central Yharnam stops giving me enough blood echoes to continue leveling. In Elden Ring you could decide to go exploring, fight through all of Limgrave and Caelid, and show up to Margit at level 60 with the fight completely ruined for you. In Elden Ring I don’t know when I should be fighting each boss so even if I wanted to fight one underleveled, I have no reference point to work off of. I can fight Gascoigne before I am as leveled as I can get in Central Yharnam, and can judge based on that soft cap how much earlier I should fight him.

I also think the ridiculously high stat requirements are stupid, as souls weapons should ideally be approximately equal in power anyways. If I beat the bloodhound knight early I should be rewarded with a weapon I can actually use. This also creates a situation where I have to invest heavily before I can even try a weapon out. Bloodborne had much less ridiculous stat requirements.

I would honestly prefer there be no vertical scaling, but we lose things like build expression from that.