The point would be, if done correctly, to reward you with (necessary) progression. An enemy, area or quest not doable before becomes manageable or even easy depending on your player AND character skill, the latter to help you with a certain lack of the former.
In many open world games and some so-called "RPGs" they just give you a reason to do mindless busywork, to keep you in the hamster wheel, to see stats increasing and feel the sense of progression without real progression, though. Worst cases gate you from proceeding just because one or two numbers (mostly the level) not even consider your whole stats (or your stats are diminishing in regards of overall character level).
Naturally, there shouldn't be strong scaling. A bandit or monster has a certain strength and that's it. There's no sense in scaling them according to your own level or stats. The legitimate reason might be that you'd meet a certain character throughout the game multiple times and they get stronger, too. Or there's some slight scaling on certain enemies so you can't steamroll EVERYTHING after hours of endless grind (if the game allows it).
The Gothic series don't need scaling at all because there's no infinite grind; enemies only re-spawn when proceeding with the story, e.g. it's not possible to go beyond lvl 21 in the first chapter because by then you have killed every single monster, beaten every NPC and did every quest in chapter 1. You can't go any further. In that way the game prevents overleveling (to a certain degree, because you can also proceed to chapter 2 with early as lvl 4, for example).
In MMOs, however, which aren't "true" RPGs because it's not about choice and consequence the modern trend is to unite players. So instead of offering zones with certain level ranges and the NEED to level up and increase your stats, the zones scale to your character so you can do zones/quests in any order, with any player without missing out, skipping or one-click everything.
It seems hardcore MMO days are over and the majority of players prefer this recent trend. At least WoW offers you WoW Classic if you want oldschool progression. It's still not very RPG in a classical sense.
Also, a good game with skills and level ups should be played differently on level 30 than on level 5 because even if enemies scale you get more options, more skills and perks and should make use of it in order to survive or achieve your goals. Ideally the first few levels is to familiarize yourself with the game and basic mechanics and later, when you get more options, the gameplay should become more intricate but also opens up on the options at your disposal. Something The Division is actually very bad at (also not a cRPG), because you can only have two active skills and it doesn't play any different or is getting harder on level 30 compared to level 5.
It feels the same and the progression is only noticeable by the numbers. And this is generally bad design but is highly accepted today because the gameplay loop itself feels highly satisfying to the mass audience.