Hearthstone's Chadd "Celestalon" Nervig provided some insight onto the popular topic of the much desired Elusive keyword in Hearthstone.
For those not in the know, Elusive is an unofficial keyword that has been proposed since the early days of Hearthstone and is used as an unofficial keyword. Elusive is meant to replace the effect text "Can't be targeted by Spells or Hero Powers", which can be found on cards such as Faerie Dragon and Winged Guardian.
Back in a developer AMA in 2014, Ben Brode mentioned that Shroud (the same word used in Magic the Gathering for a similar effect), Untargetable, and Ethereal were all discussed as being potential "Elusive" keywords and it was a case of being on "the razor's edge" when they decided not to give the effect a unique word. Mike Donais was the next developer to go into detail on the keyword a little more than a year ago in the 2019 August AMA. With that being ancient history at this point though, Elusive always being a popular topic in the community, and there being some good content, here's the latest from the team and what Chadd had to say.
Quote From Chadd Nervig Let’s talk about why we do, and don’t turn some effects into keywords! It’s much more than just “do multiple cards use it”. The downsides of keywording are usually small. It’s not that it's “too confusing”; our players are smart. But it is something that players need to learn. That’s not a big downside, but it’s not zero.
The upsides vary dramatically between potential keywords.
- It saves card text space and reading space. Now, importantly, saving text space isn’t much of an upside on its own; to capitalize on that space, we need to have some designs that we want to do that make use of that space.
- It also lets us interact with it from other cards. We can make effects that draw cards with that keyword, or buff cards with that keyword, etc.
- There’s also a vague sort of “weight” that is implicitly given to a keyword, which can be good, if it’s fitting for the set.
Consider these upsides/downsides for Outcast. We’ll put it on a ton of cards. Lots of cards will have Outcast along with a bunch more text. We want to make cards that interact with it (“Draw an Outcast card.”). It also matches the expansion flavor (or class flavor in this case), and delivers on that in a meaty way. Small downside, huge upsides.
Compare that to something like Cleave. All of the fun designs involving Cleave that we’ve found are already doable in the card text space we have, and none interact with it from other cards. Same thing with Elusive. It’s only a small downside, but the upsides just aren’t there, at least not yet. We certainly might find those designs in the future, or feature them heavily in a fitting new expansion, and then it’ll be Cleave’s time (or Elusive’s). We’ll see!
Comments
at this point I almost feel like they don't even know why it's not a keyword yet, but it has gone on too long and now they can't just admit it.
Either way I can at least agree that there's just no point to make it into a keyword for no other reason than novelty. Unless there's distinct synergy it's just pointless
Maybe they can’t put a keyword on these cards because they are untargetable, even by designers.
Elusive, Evasive, Shroud, "Nyah Nyah"... I don't care what it ends up being as long as there is a keyword that would allow other text to be present and doesn't junk up the text box.
The point was exactly that, there are no cards with "Elusive" + other lengthy text, yet, so writing "Can't be..." is no problem of space.
It's not a keyword because there are no cards with more text or there are no cards with more text because it's not a keyword?
Poisonous became a keyword with Mean Streets of Gadgetzan. Let's take a look:
Cards with the keyword Poisonous released before Gadgetzan (9 sets*): 4 (0.44 average per set)
Cards with the keyword Poisonous released after Gadgetzan (13 sets): 30 (2.3 average per set)
*8 if we count Classic and Basic as only one
Source: https://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Poisonous
I may have made some mistake when counting or classifying, but it's obvious that it became more common after it became a keyword.
To turn your first point back around... Or it was made a keyword because they were planning to make it more common. Remember that they are several expansions ahead behind the scenes, so if they make a keyword now and it turns up lots in the next few expansions, they already had that cooking.
Winged Guardian has three abilities, this included. Replacing instances of "Can't be blah blah blah" would make cards like this less bogged down with text and get straight to the point. It also allows future cards that may have a done of abilities, (cough cough Zilliax ) to capitalize on the space allotment
Elusive? I thought it was evasive
With DoD, we have:
Evasive Feywing
Evasive Wyrm
Evasive Drakonid
Evasive Chimaera
hmm I wonder what the keyword is here...
Did you even read the source?
"It’s much more than just “do multiple cards use it”."
"Compare that to something like Cleave. All of the fun designs involving Cleave that we’ve found are already doable in the card text space we have, and none interact with it from other cards. Same thing with Elusive. It’s only a small downside, but the upsides just aren’t there, at least not yet."
I am pointing out the card names as a joke, lol.
They basically named it themselves with those dragons in DoD. Does that give the "Evasive" keyword any substantial credibility over "Elusive", "Untargetable"? Who knows? They've made concepts with far less
Then I'm sorry. I thought "hmm I wonder what the keyword is here..." was a sarcastic way to ask why it isn't a keyword. mb
I used to wish that Hearthstone had a lot more keywords. Then I started playing Runeterra, which has a lot of keywords, and now I see the Hearthstone team’s point. I would still clean up their keywords a bit (Recruit is unnecessary, and Rush vs. Charge is truly confusing to new players), but their approach works overall.
RIP Enrage
I think Enrage move was good because there is no difference between "Give a damaged minion +2 attack" and "Give an Enraged minion +2 Attack.". It just complicates the consistency and was a good choice to remove from game if you don't want to produce cards like "Draw an Enrage minion from your deck" or sth. like that and they don't seem like they want to produce such a card.
I call bullshit on that reasoning. They're just really inconsistent and trying to come up with a reason later.
Take Poisonous. There were 4 cards with Poisonous on them before Un'goro and it was described as "Destroy any minion damaged by this minion." In Un'goro, they've introduced the keyword and added exactly 3 cards with it. So, at that time, it was a keyword for 7 cards. Since then, more have been added, some granting Poisonous, but no synergy cards like Double Jump that NEED a keyword. Also, most cards with Poisonous have 1-2 lines of text. So basically all 3 of Celestalon's reasons don't apply well to Poisonous, yet it's a keyword. List
Now take Recruit: Just in Standard, there are 10 cards that have an effect which works exactly like Recruit, and the replacement text takes up 2 lines. There were 6 Recruit-like cards before Kobolds & Catacombs, but they didn't grant them the keyword for some reason. Officially, 11 cards have Recruit. Also, Captain Hooktusk was printed since. This time, compared to Poisonous: the design space is widely used, the keyword replaces 2 lines of text, but they didn't make the keyword evergreen for some reason. See here
There are 28 "real" Recruit cards and 29 Poisonous cards.
Reborn: Desperate Stand. Wow, so creative.
Start of Game is a keyword for some reason, yet 3 cards use it and it really needs no explanation.
And don't even get me started on Counter.
Poisonous needed to be a keyword. The other new keyword in Un'goro - Adapt - would have been a lot clunkier without it, not to mention it just generally fit the theme of an unexplored prehistoric jungle. Plus, cards like Plague of Madness and Ambush would have had too much text without it, and Deathstalker Rexxar would have had a much more limited pool for its Hero Power. Plus, Toxfin, Professor Slate and Plaguebringer would have been way more difficult to make.
Desperate Stand is not Reborn. The created minion has 1 Health, not 1 Health Remaining (it cannot be healed). It is more like a targeted Redemption.
I agree with you on the issues with Recruit and the fact that Elusive really should be a keyword (and Enrage tbh). But Poisonous is actually a case where Blizz made a good change that was simple, logical and positively impactful. That's what your arguing for with Elusive, so don't rag on them for it.
Desperate Stand actually does work exactly like Reborn. It be more specific, it works exactly like Redemption. Just that classic Blizzard inconsistent wording. The only minor difference is Deathrattle synergies, which don't really exist in Paladin.
Honestly Enrage was always a fairly pointless keyword as it was only ever a shortening of 'when damaged'. It feels like something they came up with when they were initially designing the game looking for keywords, but later sensibly went: "hang on, why are we using this thing when it's not actually making our cards any cleaner or easier to understand?"
I personally agree with their philosophy with both Elusive and Poisonous: don't add a keyword until card space demands it, because however slight the difference may be, the game is still more accessible without it.
Recruit however... they should have just made that span expansions since it already exists.
Can't upvote more. Funny when they constantly treat us like <snip>. Do you rember explanations when they didn't want add more deck slots? :(
//mod edit: removed profanity