- 30,900
- 26,934
The topic of this staff-only thread is to discuss our current policy of upscaling between characters who show clear superiority, and what exact guidelines are required if this policy is going to be allowed to continue.
Overview
All the tiers are just terms that encompass a range of values to keep things simple on the wiki. They should not be treated like targets, or checkpoints, or benchmarks for characters to reach. If you have two characters in the upper regions of Island level and one of them one-shots the other, we shouldn't say "Might as well upscale them to Large Island level because they're not that far off anyway." This kind of mindset leads to an inflation of values and ratings on the wiki.
At the moment, with upscaling we’re basically treating it as if it is okay to apply a 1.5x multiplier to somebody's AP so long as it brings them within the boundaries of the next tier.
Example 1
If Character A one-shots Character B - and Character B is rated as 700 Gigatons, then it would be treated as okay for Character A to scale to the next tier which begins at 1 Teraton.
There isn’t any guideline on why this would be okay on any of our pages, just a generally accepted notion that if you can multiply Character B’s tier by 1.5 and it is within the next tier, then Character A can be upscaled to the next tier.
The problem is that it is no better than giving them a random value.
Example 2
If for example the next tier began at 1.5 Teratons instead, then scaling Character A to 1 Teraton just for one-shotting Character B is not allowed. It would be an arbitrary, weird increase of 300 Gigatons because at the moment we don't currently grant characters multipliers just for one-shotting characters.
In both Example 1 and Example 2, Character A should simply scale to 700 Gigatons instead of the value of 1 Teraton, regardless of whether the next tier up begins at 1 Teraton or not. If we think that there is a good chance that the character could be stronger than that value then instead of assigning a random number like 1 Teraton or 1.1 Teratons or 1.2 Teratons, etc, we can amend their rating to include "possibly/likely higher" or "far higher", or say that is "at least 700 Gigatons". We have those qualifiers for a reason. We don't need to upscale to arbitrary values.
Conclusion
If you don't want to prohibit arbitrary upscaling, then upscaling needs to be allowed for all cases of superior powerscaling. Not just if it leads to the next tier. Every time characters one-shots each other, give them a 1.5x multiplier, no matter what the result is. Otherwise we're being deliberately inconsistent just to rate characters higher than what the feats and calcs suggest. And we need to acknowledge this on our pages somewhere.
Our current page on Powerscaling says this:
My proposal is simply that we adhere to this principle and stop upscaling characters just because they’re stronger and a higher tier would look neater on their profile. We don’t need to say; “Character B can lift a truck because Character A lifted a car.”
Overview
All the tiers are just terms that encompass a range of values to keep things simple on the wiki. They should not be treated like targets, or checkpoints, or benchmarks for characters to reach. If you have two characters in the upper regions of Island level and one of them one-shots the other, we shouldn't say "Might as well upscale them to Large Island level because they're not that far off anyway." This kind of mindset leads to an inflation of values and ratings on the wiki.
At the moment, with upscaling we’re basically treating it as if it is okay to apply a 1.5x multiplier to somebody's AP so long as it brings them within the boundaries of the next tier.
Example 1
If Character A one-shots Character B - and Character B is rated as 700 Gigatons, then it would be treated as okay for Character A to scale to the next tier which begins at 1 Teraton.
There isn’t any guideline on why this would be okay on any of our pages, just a generally accepted notion that if you can multiply Character B’s tier by 1.5 and it is within the next tier, then Character A can be upscaled to the next tier.
The problem is that it is no better than giving them a random value.
Example 2
If for example the next tier began at 1.5 Teratons instead, then scaling Character A to 1 Teraton just for one-shotting Character B is not allowed. It would be an arbitrary, weird increase of 300 Gigatons because at the moment we don't currently grant characters multipliers just for one-shotting characters.
In both Example 1 and Example 2, Character A should simply scale to 700 Gigatons instead of the value of 1 Teraton, regardless of whether the next tier up begins at 1 Teraton or not. If we think that there is a good chance that the character could be stronger than that value then instead of assigning a random number like 1 Teraton or 1.1 Teratons or 1.2 Teratons, etc, we can amend their rating to include "possibly/likely higher" or "far higher", or say that is "at least 700 Gigatons". We have those qualifiers for a reason. We don't need to upscale to arbitrary values.
Conclusion
If you don't want to prohibit arbitrary upscaling, then upscaling needs to be allowed for all cases of superior powerscaling. Not just if it leads to the next tier. Every time characters one-shots each other, give them a 1.5x multiplier, no matter what the result is. Otherwise we're being deliberately inconsistent just to rate characters higher than what the feats and calcs suggest. And we need to acknowledge this on our pages somewhere.
Our current page on Powerscaling says this:
So if Character A is capable of lifting a car. And Character B has proven to be stronger than Character A, then it is safe to say that Character B can also lift a car.
Although a misuse or over extrapolation of powerscaling can lead to grossly inaccurate ratings, a logical and moderate use can be both helpful and essential to properly determining one's power.
My proposal is simply that we adhere to this principle and stop upscaling characters just because they’re stronger and a higher tier would look neater on their profile. We don’t need to say; “Character B can lift a truck because Character A lifted a car.”
Last edited: