Regarding abillities
Posted: Fri Dec 08, 2017 04:15
So, one feature of Arcmage (I assume inherited from Magic or something considering that Duel Masters has it too) is that some cards either have or grant abilities that have very specific meanings and are given a name. I think this is fantastic; it helps to standardize common effects, unlike in Yu-Gi-Oh where every card has to reinvent the wheel.
One thing I think is a bad idea, though, is that these abilities are usually not defined on the card. I'm looking at this game as a new player, and I'm seeing all these creatures and other cards that mention abilities like "Sanctuary", "Flying", and whatever else there is, and I'm left wondering what that means. There's a page on the wiki, but it's a bit of a hassle to have to go to a Web page indexing all of them every time I see an ability I've never seen before or simply forget exactly what it does. This could become a real problem in the distant future: if there are several dozen different terms for abilities you have to remember, it becomes much more difficult to dive into as a beginner.
I would like to propose a simple solution, which is used by Duel Masters (and Kaijudo, its more recent iteration): for every card that either has an ability, or has an effect that has something to do with the effect of an ability (e.g. one that grants the ability to creatures), always denote the ability, once per card, in parentheses.
On a creature's text, that would look like:
Aggressive (I must attack if able.)
On a card that grants an ability, for example, what that ability does only needs to be mentioned once. So for example, the text of the card, Sanctuary, might be:
Level 3: All my residents have Sanctuary.
Level 5: All residents in your cities have Sanctuary.
Level 7: All creatures in your army have Sanctuary.
(A creature with Sanctuary can't be the target of abilities or cards that an opponent controls.)
If there is any interest in this, I would be happy to help implement it. One thing that would be really useful is if the software that is used to generate cards did one of these two things automatically with a simple tag (which could also take care of the formatting rules for ability names). There could just be a database of abilities with two descriptions of what they do, one for permanent statuses of creatures, and one for other uses that appears at the end of the card's description. The software could simply replace e.g. an "<myability>" tag for the permanent status version, and e.g. a, "<ability>" tag for the other versions. The software would mark-up each one appropriately, then place the personal text if there is exactly one <myability> tag and no <ability> tags (after the <myability> tag), or place the general text on the bottom of the card otherwise. <myability> would be forced to be its own separate paragraph, and if it isn't, it would be treated the same as an <ability> tag.
Of course, there would be situations where the definition part would be unnecessary, such as when a card simply targets other cards that have a certain ability. In such a case, card makers could simply use manual formatting the same as they do now. No need to include irrelevant information, after all; if a card just kills creatures with "Sanctuary" or counters the effect of "Peaceful", you don't need to be reminded what that ability is on that card. It's easy enough to look up for deck-building purposes (possibly from some of your other cards), and in gameplay you can get a reminder by reading the text of the card you'd be targeting. You probably wanted to look at the specific card, anyway.
Please do let me know what you think.
One thing I think is a bad idea, though, is that these abilities are usually not defined on the card. I'm looking at this game as a new player, and I'm seeing all these creatures and other cards that mention abilities like "Sanctuary", "Flying", and whatever else there is, and I'm left wondering what that means. There's a page on the wiki, but it's a bit of a hassle to have to go to a Web page indexing all of them every time I see an ability I've never seen before or simply forget exactly what it does. This could become a real problem in the distant future: if there are several dozen different terms for abilities you have to remember, it becomes much more difficult to dive into as a beginner.
I would like to propose a simple solution, which is used by Duel Masters (and Kaijudo, its more recent iteration): for every card that either has an ability, or has an effect that has something to do with the effect of an ability (e.g. one that grants the ability to creatures), always denote the ability, once per card, in parentheses.
On a creature's text, that would look like:
Aggressive (I must attack if able.)
On a card that grants an ability, for example, what that ability does only needs to be mentioned once. So for example, the text of the card, Sanctuary, might be:
Level 3: All my residents have Sanctuary.
Level 5: All residents in your cities have Sanctuary.
Level 7: All creatures in your army have Sanctuary.
(A creature with Sanctuary can't be the target of abilities or cards that an opponent controls.)
If there is any interest in this, I would be happy to help implement it. One thing that would be really useful is if the software that is used to generate cards did one of these two things automatically with a simple tag (which could also take care of the formatting rules for ability names). There could just be a database of abilities with two descriptions of what they do, one for permanent statuses of creatures, and one for other uses that appears at the end of the card's description. The software could simply replace e.g. an "<myability>" tag for the permanent status version, and e.g. a, "<ability>" tag for the other versions. The software would mark-up each one appropriately, then place the personal text if there is exactly one <myability> tag and no <ability> tags (after the <myability> tag), or place the general text on the bottom of the card otherwise. <myability> would be forced to be its own separate paragraph, and if it isn't, it would be treated the same as an <ability> tag.
Of course, there would be situations where the definition part would be unnecessary, such as when a card simply targets other cards that have a certain ability. In such a case, card makers could simply use manual formatting the same as they do now. No need to include irrelevant information, after all; if a card just kills creatures with "Sanctuary" or counters the effect of "Peaceful", you don't need to be reminded what that ability is on that card. It's easy enough to look up for deck-building purposes (possibly from some of your other cards), and in gameplay you can get a reminder by reading the text of the card you'd be targeting. You probably wanted to look at the specific card, anyway.
Please do let me know what you think.