If you've ever been scrolling through the esoterica of a game on DustLoop you've probably seen something called "Attack Level".

This is a very important system that you should understand and use in your own games.

What is Attack Level?

The core concept of "Attack Level" is that it's a single number that represents the strength of the attack. It's more abstract than specific damage or hitstun values, but damage and hitstun values are calculated based on attack level. It lets you have specific attacks at specific strengths, while still allowing you to make sweeping balance changes later if you want.

How do I implement Attack Level

I'm going to recommend you to use the system I use, because there's a reason that I use it.

So essentially, every hitbox gets a single "Attack Level". In Blades of Crossed Hearts these are typically 1-10, but in arcsys games they can be 1-5 or 1-7. This level then effects the following values:

• Damage Level
• Hitstun Level
• Blockstun Level
• Hitstop Level
• Scaling Level
• Proration Level (scaling if this is the first hit of the combo)

Each of those can be specified individually on an attack, but the "Attack Level" is what they will default to if they're not specified. So if you have a level 5 attack, all of these will be 5 by default. But if you want you can decide that the attack is level 5, but it has a scaling level of 2.

These levels are then used to calculate the final damage values of the attack. So for example in Blades of Crossed Hearts, the base damage of a move is equal to its damage level multiplied by 100. Arcsys games usually have a table for this, but I like keeping it based in raw math, because then I can go outside the normal bounds of the numbers if I want, or have decimal points for more precision.