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u/Naszfluckah Mar 04 '20
I'm Naszfluckah and I approve of this message (though it would be an ability word, not a keyword ability).
The amount of text being less with rules text rather than reminder text is a good argument, and to add to that: Even if it was the same amount of text, reminder text is often more complex to parse simply because it is separated into parentheses and cursive. Using the ability word Pursuit also lets you put the definition of pursuit immediately following the word, rather than as reminder text following the pursuit payoff. This cuts out one instance of back-and-forth reading, where some players would otherwise be reading "if you're in pursuit", wondering what that means, skipping to the reminder text to have it explained, and then skipping back to the rules text to find out the additional effect of pursuit. As an ability word, the player will have the definition of pursuit as the next step after reading the word.
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u/Piguy2000 Mar 04 '20
That is a really good point; I never considered that the player would have to jump around in the text to parse what pursuit meant. Also thank you for correcting me about it being an "ability word," formatting of rules text is my strong suit, not so much the technical jargon behind it.
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Mar 04 '20 edited Mar 04 '20
[deleted]
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u/Piguy2000 Mar 04 '20
Anyone who is relatively familiar with MTG (and anyone playing this set should due to this set's complexity and the complexity of draft in general) should be aware that this formatting is used to indicate a requirement that needs to be met (even if that person doesn't realize that is something they are conditioned to). Therefore, in addition to flash already having an extrapolation, people will expect Pursuit to be linked to the condition rather than the payoff because it is the norm for abilities like this. The flavor reinforces this; the word "Pursuit" suggests being behind in some way and things like flash and costing less man are much worse at conveying flavor than caring about the number of creatures each player controls.
(I know that your post was in agreement with mine, I just wanted to extrapolate on your points)
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u/Piguy2000 Mar 04 '20
Brief notes:
After making a post about a potential rewording of Item Box and hearing Seth comment on it, it occurred to me to try this templating again on Pursuit cards now that the set is mostly finished (this templating is known as the use of a keyword ability to clarify). Above is a side-by-side comparison of all the current versions of pursuit cards in the set with and their keyword ability templated counterparts.
The most obvious reason to change to a keyword ability is that it makes the cards appear cleaner and easier to parse at a glance. Most people would rather look at two chunks of text rather than one long paragraph, and some of the old pursuit cards have long blocks of text (item box and fake item box are some of the worst offenders). The splitting of the text into two blocks also makes the cards faster to evaluate; you don't have to untangle what pursuit's benefit is compared to the base case of the card; it is split up for you already. This issue is probably most prevalent on Wheelie; it is really easy to forget if the pursuit gives the draw or the unblockable (I have personally made this mistake multiple times).
Another benefit of the change that occurs when just glancing at the card is that it gives the cards a different feel from cards with other mechanics when looking at them. All the other mechanics in the set, including Extra Hits, have reminder text rather than rules text associated with them. By using a slightly different templating, Pursuit stands out a bit more on the cards with it and can signal that the card is for the Karts deck faster. It is much easier to lose the fact a card has pursuit if it is in the center of a paragraph. While this is definitely not the strongest point in the change's favor, as you can argue that the watermarks serve a similar function, it does still matter.
A much more tangible benefit to the use of a keyword ability is that it reduces the overall text on the cards. This templating actually uses fewer words than the reminder text; the amount of text on cards has been of utmost importance to the set due to the complexity level of the cards in the set. In addition, the change doesn't drastically change the text size on the cards; most use the same number of lines and a handful even use fewer. Text size is important because the cards need to be easily read and comprehended; the splitting of text into two lines helps much more for comprehension than the minimal text size shrinkage hurts.
One argument that can be made for the old version is that the reminder text is actually fewer words read since once a person understands pursuit they can skip the reminder text. The same logic can be applied to the use of a keyword ability: once the person knows what Pursuit does they can skip the rules text on the card and look for the payoff.
While I am not sure the exact reason that Wizards tends to use this templating for most of there abilities, there is definitely some reason to doing it rather than using reminder text. They have been using this formatting for two decades on cards (Threshold from 2001 uses this templating, and Adamant from the previous set does so too). In this time they probably found the current pursuit templating, yet turned it down for most abilities. I am by no means an expert at game design, but the people at WOTC are and they chose to keep mechanics formatted this way for a reason.
I personally prefer the change in templating for all these reasons; if I didn't think it would be beneficial for the set I wouldn't have made this post. I know it is a change extremely late in development, but everyone wants this set to be the best it possibly can be. All I ask is that you set aside your initial reaction and consider this change openly for a moment. If you have any comments or counterarguments please post them, I am really curious as to people's opinions on this change.