I’ve always thought that making making “power levels” too detailed was always an issue. Some authors will write like ... with “Joaquin’s cultivation being at the early semi-nascent stage, he could still fight with those in the immortal stage 2 middle stage”. That’s just too much in my opinion. I generally would like seeing a ****** clear cut power level, just with like body, qi, soul, etc. I don’t think one would have to put early, middle, and peak into the levels as well. I feel like the characters can just feel how strong the other person is in their realm. So like wow this guy feels weak he must have just broken through. Vice versa.
Yeah that's a bit of my thoughts too. However I was more of the thought process of removing direct level. So you'd be able to tell early middle and peak. I feel that telling an exact level takes away from the suspense. The reader can be like oh that guys level 4 we know the mc can handle them. However if the mc and reader only knows he's middle of a tier then he might be to strong. Thus battles won't always be predestined. Of course going on about levels and such is a good way to pad out word counts :P.
In general, for many novels at least; they have the foundation stages as 1-9 say, and then pretty soon go to just early, mid and high levels of a stage.
I think if a stage has a number of limitations Hsay you need to form nine pillars using 18, then you should number it, but otherwise, stick to early, mid, advanced type levels.
SilverSeal