Iksar Explains why no Keyword Exists for "Can't be Targeted by Spells or Hero Powers"
Referred to as Elusive unofficially by many community members, this block of card text is a subject that's been brought up in the past and recently hit the front page of reddit again.
- There's now 10 collectible cards in the game with the exact effect or a variation on it.
- This year we've seen 5 cards added to the game with the effect, and an entire keyword that can add it to cards (Adapt).
- Interestingly, a change to a single word could make Deathstalker Rexxar's hero power change as it's shorter text.
Noteworthy historical blue mentions on the card text.
- 2014: Ben Brode stated the team had discussed Shroud, Untargetable, and Ethereal as potential keywords. (Source)
- 2014: Yong Woo stated when they have enough cards with the same effect they may turn it into a keyword. (Source)
Now, here's what Iksar is saying today.
- There isn't a great word for the effect that clues you in to what it does.
- Trying out Elusive or Ethereal ending up being more misleading than helpful.
- The effect isn't going to be used on many cards in the future as having too many of these minions decreases the ability to interact with an opponent.
Blue Posts
Quote from IksarWe've talked about this before but opted to spell it out. A keyword is essentially something we ask you to read and understand, so in the future you can look at a card and quickly understand what it does without having to parse through a bunch of text. Sometimes when we can use the right word, you already have a pretty good idea of what a keyword does without reading the description. Divine Shield does a pretty good job of this. People on the team have different opinions on this subject, but one of the reasons not to keyword it is that there isn't a great word for 'can't be targeted by spells or hero powers' that would clue you in to what it does. It's sort of a strange concept to begin with that something can be targeted by a battlecry or an attack but not by a spell. When we used something like 'elusive' or 'ethereal' or various other words I think it ended up being more misleading rather than increasing the ability to understand it quickly, which is counter to the point of making a keyword in the first place. Lastly, this isn't a concept we plan on using on many cards in the future. It's cool to have one-offs like Shimmering Courser or Soggoth but having too many of these types of minions greatly decreases your ability to interact with your opponent. (Source)
Or, and this is a long shot, but what if a keyword was a descriptive-enough single word that defined itself when you hovered over it.
We often state, then restate, then restate this again.... but trying to keep the game easy to pick up and grasp does not also equal a belief that the playerbase lacks intelligence. It's very rare that one particular thing is so complicated that no one will understand it, it's more that in order to protect against a death by a thousand cuts we have to stay vigilant when accessing all decisions (no matter how minor) to make sure that by adding an increase in complexity we are getting something valuable in return. (Source)
Except that it protects against targetting from spells and hero powers. It can still be damaged by spells (so it's not spellproof) it can still be targeted by abilities from creatures so camouflage is bad. Also how is camouflage different from stealth?
It is actually hard when you think about it.
It totally does actually. You are completly right there.
As far as reasons go, those are pretty fucking stupid - par the course for the Hearthstone dev team.
how about "shroud"?
new 3/3 dude has "hexproof"
you copypasta from mtg anyway
Hearthstone is very nice game, but I hate when they start to throw random stupid problems to people to describe their development process. I know that games from many years, became casual fest, but one game dictionary with mechanics is nothing complicated and this can't be your moving factor in order 2 years kid to understand it. Neither Adapt is descriptive, nor battlecry. I am sorry but does the battlecry effect goes first or minion is summoned? How the hell this is described in battlecry keyword? To be honest I would prefer to play in the game, in which it players can open 1 page tutorial and to understand it.
I would just call it spell immunity (hero powers which target in reality are spells).
If one word can't capture the description (which is really two effects rolled into one), then maybe they can break apart the description into two parts and use two words? I.E: "Spellproof" for the cannot be targeted by spells part, then "Heroproof" for the cannot be targeted by hero powers.
The words could be better but the idea is that they could use two words. This also leads to some flexibility if Blizzard were to release minions that cannot be targeted by spells but can be targeted with hero powers...they can just use "spellproof" to describe it without including "heroproof".
Two words is still much shorter than 8 words.
Taking this a step further, Blizzard can then also come up with a keyword for "cannot be targeted by effects" to cover battlecries and other possible effects. Or come up with a keyword for "cannot be affected by random spells".
Hero Shroud
I can see if they don't want to use Shroud or Hexproof because MTG uses them and they're basically the same thing as Hearthstone's "can't be targeted by spells or hero powers," but something like Spellproof is really straightforward. That's basically all it is, anyway, immune to spells. Mage and Priest have the only hero powers that normally behave with minions anyway, they don't need to be that descriptive.
By the way, does Blizzard just forget that every card with keywords will display what they keywords mean when they're moused over?
4. Ward
5. Magic Shield
I can understand why they can not have a keyword for this, because they can be targeted by battlecry so if thou saw something that said "spellward" then your opponent might not really consider that battlecry is an option, and so they might lose.
If this confuses someone they are already an easy mark.
"spellward"
Would have been fine, explanatory and describes what it does. yep and hover over with mouse full explanation.
Yirk!
Hero powers are not spells thus spellward is misleading.
I was just about to say this or spellshield. Pretty much perfect. And literally the only hero powers that it affects are the spell-like ones.
They shouldn't Keyword it because people will inevitably forget that you can still Fire Elemental things or whatnot, then lose.
You also don't need to keyword "at the end of your turn" because it's just easier to use English.
Edit: They *definitely* shouldn't use "Elusive" because in the WoW TCG, that meant "couldn't be attacked".
"Ethereal" seems like a great word to me, the only problem would be Ethereal Arcanist, Ethereal Peddler and Ethereal Conjurer.
The issue with "Ethereal" is that in Warcraft lore, ethereal entities are ones you can ONLY cast spells at, and cannot attack.
It would literally describe the opposite of what it's supposed to do.