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DA:O has what I refer to as a "fake open world": while you have a lot of freedom as where you should go, you have to eventually do them all, and because of difficulty you are much better off doing the mage towers first.
I also dislike the "zone level lock". That the zone would be scaled to the level that you first visited. I believe the reasoning is so you can return on a later date and easily overcome past challenges.
I believe zones should have constant scaling. Acquiring of new equipment and abilities, as well as an increase of player skill should be sufficient enough. Each zone should probably have a pre-defined difficulty. Ie: the early zones should always "feel easy" regardless of levels, while the zones towards the end of the game should always be challenging. If people find something too difficult they can always turn down the difficulty slider.
Bioware needs to learn from From studio (Dark Souls) on level design. I like the integrated puzzles and secrets, as well as how well mobs fit into certain zones (giants that can knock you off small platforms, and ghosts that can ambush through walls for example).
For true difficulty to happen, bioware needs to spend more time on balance. Once a warrior in DA2 gets the "core skills" they become this unstoppable meatgrinder. As a somewhat hardcore gamer, I want to be able to optimize my choices and still feel that I barely got through a zone.
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