Damage Scaling

Damage Scaling (also known as Proration or Damage Dampening) is a mechanic that is seen in many fighting games, which limits the amount of damage a combo can do.

Damage Scaling refers to the fact that, as combos become longer and longer, the damage dealt by each hit will decrease. This prevents combos from becoming too overpowered. Many games have different implementations of damage scaling, but the most common methods include the following:

Damage Scaling by Number of Hits
The most common form of damage dampening, and the easiest to implement in M.U.G.E.N. As the combo's hit counter increases, the damage for each successive hit will be decreased by a cumulative fixed percent until it reaches a pre-determined minimum value, which determines the absolute minimum damage a hit can do. This method usually results in moves with multiple hits doing less and less damage with each hit, even during the same attack.

Examples: Marvel vs Capcom 2

Damage Scaling by Number of Attacks
Similar to Damage Scaling by Number of Hits, except that damage is decreased by a fixed percent for every attack used in the combo, rather than every individual hit. This forces the damage of each hit of a multi-hitting move to be scaled by the same percent, as opposed to additional scaling being applied to the damage of each individual hit.

Examples: Street Fighter 4

Damage Scaling by Individual Moves
This form of damage scaling uses an internal counter that is initially set to 100% whenever a combo is not being performed. This counter is multiplied by the damage of each hit of a move in a combo. Each individual move has a unique percent value that is multiplied by the value of the counter on every hit, and sets the counter to this new value, which is then applied to the next hit in the combo.

Examples: Guilty Gear, Blazblue, Touhou Project

Damage Scaling by Type of Move
Similar to Damage Scaling by Individual Moves, except that the percent values are determined by specific move categories (ie: Light Normals, Medium Normals, Heavy Normals, Specials, Supers, etc) rather than by each individual move.

Examples: Marvel vs Capcom 3, Street Fighter 3: Third Strike

Damage Scaling by Total Damage Inflicted
This form of damage dampening is unique. Rather than scaling damage based on number of hits or number of attacks, damage is scaled based on how much total damage is done by the combo so far. As the amount of damage done by a combo increases, the amount of damage done by each individual hit begins to decrease.

Examples: The Last Blade