What determines level?

[Yosuke-kun]

I was looking through some of my old cards out of nostalgia and couldn't help but notice a few things. One of those was the fact that each monsters level seemed to fit it by looking at the effect, ATK, DEF, that kind of stuff. Then I thought "Does that sort of system still hold up?" I mean there's some cards that are level 8 that have nothing going for them other then that they're good to get a fast level 8 Xyz out, then there's really badass cards that feel like they're not leveled properly. So, what determines how high a monsters level is? 

By the way, I'm not really sure if this belongs here or somewhere else. I figured it would go here because it does kinda have to do with the TCG? Anyways, if this is in the wrong place please lock it.

[Timeline15]

Really? I always felt like the levels of old cards didn't fit at all. Like, really weak cards being level 5 or 6, when even back them no one in their right mind would tribute to get them out.

 

Regarding how it's done nowadays, I think the art is probably made last. When designing a card, the probably make the effect, decide what function it servers in its archetype (if it's in one), then give it stats. The level probably matches up with the stats, except in some cases where the level has another function, like the raidraptors all being level four for xyz purposes, despite differing atk.

lower level monsters often get smaller or cute art, in the case of archetype monsters. In the case of other random ones, this obviously doesn't apply. You'd never guess, for instance, that meklord emperor wisel was a level one.

[玄魔の王]

I remember doing the math on this back in the day and figuring it out. In the oldest generations of cards, before effects were prevalent, Levels was a function solely of ATK and DEF, and Level = (ATK + DEF)/700 rounded up to the nearest 1. This is why Summoned Skull and Dark Magician have different Levels but the same ATK, because (2500 + 1200)/700 = 5.28 = 6 while (2500 + 2100)/700 = 6.57 = 7.(Funny enough, this only applies to the OCG; Kaz' manga doesn't appear to have this rule, as Celtic Guardian and Dark Magician are both LV6 despite having their OCG ATK and DEF.) If a monster's total power was too heavily concentrated on one stat, they'd often balance it with a negative effect.

 

Some time after that, when Konami realised that only one stat mattered on any given monster, this rule got thrown to the wind. Now a combination of the more useful stat and the effect often determine Level. However, some cases still violate this, such as DD Galilei (to better represent the mirror thing with Keplar), or Swarm of Crows (which is just absurdly underpowered for no reason). 

[newhat]

Nowadays Level comes with a bunch of added baggage counterintuitive to the original setup. If two 1900 monsters were functionally identical except one was Level 3 and the other was Level 4, you'd be better off with the 4 because it's usually better for Xyz, Synchro or Pendulum Summons, in spite of the Level 3 one being "overpowered".

[Zauls]

Because levels matter a lot more now with all the post-Synchro mechanics, cards are given levels that best suit their function and that give them synergy with cards they are supposed to synergise with. For example, Mythic Water Dragon only has 1000 ATK, but it was designed to synergise with Mythic Tree Dragon to make Rank 8 Xyzs because there wasn't a good enough Rank 8 engine in the game at the time, therefore they made Water Dragon a Level 8. Same goes for all Burning Abyss Monsters being Level 3 and stuff like that.

[Marco Polo]

I remember doing the math on this back in the day and figuring it out. In the oldest generations of cards, before effects were prevalent, Levels was a function solely of ATK and DEF, and Level = (ATK + DEF)/700 rounded up to the nearest 1. This is why Summoned Skull and Dark Magician have different Levels but the same ATK, because (2500 + 1200)/700 = 5.28 = 6 while (2500 + 2100)/700 = 6.57 = 7.(Funny enough, this only applies to the OCG; Kaz' manga doesn't appear to have this rule, as Celtic Guardian and Dark Magician are both LV6 despite having their OCG ATK and DEF.) If a monster's total power was too heavily concentrated on one stat, they'd often balance it with a negative effect.

 

Some time after that, when Konami realised that only one stat mattered on any given monster, this rule got thrown to the wind. Now a combination of the more useful stat and the effect often determine Level. However, some cases still violate this, such as DD Galilei (to better represent the mirror thing with Keplar), or Swarm of Crows (which is just absurdly underpowered for no reason). 

how is 5.28 rounded to 6 and not 5?

[玄魔の王]

how is 5.28 rounded to 6 and not 5?

"Rounded up to the nearest 1". I straight-up said that. They never rounded down, only up.

[Agro]

To be honest, it wasn't until Xyz where Levels stopped mattering in a balancing sense.

And even before then, the "power levels" were's between lv 3 and lv 4, but between anything under 5, lv 5-6, and anything 7 up. Obv this was all due to the tributes required for normal summons. If you wanted to help balance a card, you could make it harder to summon by giving it a higher level. There were exceptions to the rule (CED, BLS, DAD, JD), but it was basically how it worked. This still applied in the synchro era because to get out a strong synchro monster with a high enough level, you'd still need to either get out 3 or more monsters, or would still need to manage to get out a Level 5+ monster to work with 1 tuner.

The thing with Xyz though, is that they started making it so that you need the higher levels to make those monsters. Inherently, that should mean that high ranking monsters should be very hard to summon, and decks with rank 4s would be much better as they can summon their bosses more easily. And that's basically what happened, we had a few Xyz-centric decks (Wind-Ups, Inzektors, Rabbit) that focused on Rank 3-4 xyz monsters. But once Hieratics got released and Chaos Dragons made their appearance, Konami decided they didn't want that to happen and just make it easier to get monsters leveled 5 or higher onto the field. Enter Dragon Rulers and Mermails.

It kinda snowballed from there, really. Idk, I stopped playing about the time they announced Rulers.

[Sleepy]

Levels matter in a different way on each generation depending on what the needs are.

 

 

Back when the game was new, even though there were 12 Levels available, you only really needed to care about how many Tributes they needed: 0, 1 or 2. Double Tributes were almost never used, single Tributes were reserved for 3 or 4 spots in a deck (at most), and 0 Tributes were divided into 3 parts:
Level 1 and Level 2: Flips or trash.

Level 3: Gets under Gravity Bind/Level Limit Area B. Some have good effects but all have less than ideal ATK.

Level 4: Beater.

Rituals were not relevant and Fusions did not care for Levels, and were also largely irrelevant.

There was pretty much no Level Manipulation in the game out of Cost Down and A Legendary Ocean.

Certain monsters with too high of an ATK for their category of Tributes needed received a drawback 

It was alright but it had room for improvements, and outside of just Levels, the only thing that the game could do to evolve was to release ever stronger stats in their monsters. Which was a logical but overly lineal route.

 

 

Since Tributes did not need Levels in a detailed way and Rituals were not really a success, the era of Synchros came with a lot of space to explore. All of the above rules about Levels would still hold up in this one, only now the game tried to give a purpose to outclassed Levels to fill the gap. Any Levels that were previously more uncommon in builds were now the focus of Synchro. Level 1 and 2 sees no play? Now they are capable of a swarm of Special Summons in order to give you a good Synchro Monster. Level 5 was originally inferior to 6 but effects like Cyber Dragon began to give it a purpose during the GX era, and further evolved that path with Quickdraw. The Levels mattered more than before in a sense, since now there was a mechanic most decks actually used that depended on it.

 

 

The Synchro era left a little tilt in balance though, the speed of low Level swarms overpowered high Level decks. The game had the tools to make up a Synchro of virtually any possible Level at the player's whim, so where could the game go from there? That's where Xyzs came to be. They were introduced with easy Rank 4 and lower cards, which take about the same amount of Levels to make as Level 8 or lower Synchros. Though later down the road they tried rising the bar in a couple different ways. One was to make archetypes able to go for a range of Ranks through Level-changing effects. For example Wind-Ups could go for Rank 3, 4, and 5 without many problems, and later on Inzektors could get to Rank 6s. The second way was to make decks based on Special Summoning monsters whose's Levels were already originally high like Dragon Rulers' 7 and other cards' 8s. This was overlooking balance because Konami wanted these to be out of reach for previous cards in the game (like the Synchro support of its era) to be able to make.

It threw out the window the concept of Levels being used as balance measures, to a degree. Though it makes up for it with the fact that those high Level materials are underwhelming on their own if Xyzs did not exist. This sadly created an era where many main deck cards' only purpose was to be used as Xyz Materials.

 

 

Now the Pendulum era is taking things from all generations. It sounds like a mess to try to have all those Level ideologies coexist, but it can be done. Though Levels have a new use to them, this time as an addition to the game rather than a focus replacement. A Pendulum's range, though due to many factors, that range is not the single main reason to use a Pendulum gate, but the effect is just as important.

 

 

Levels past 8 are often not even accounted for here since they either require to be Special Summoned on a specific way, or tell you for the most part that they require 3 Tributes and no Level-changing effects will be able to change that.


So Levels have different purposes, including balancing out, depending on what they are made for.