Maybe a good way of doing it would be to base a lot of the outcome of a battle on skill/tactic/strategy of the player instead of levels. In other words a low level character could still beat a medium-high level monster, if thet are careful and have a good strategy. Of course there would be no chance for a level 1 fighter to beat something level 100, but this would take some emphasis off of the levels as well.
Also, you could throw in extremely high leveled monsters in strange places as well, just to make the player have to do some running.
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