Terminology in card descriptions and mechanics.

[dragtom]

Hello everyone.

We don't have a proper list for terms anywhere on the forums, while it can be very usefull.
Having a proper name for mechanics and ideas will make it quick and easy to describe a card.
Additionally, different people might give different names for the same idea, or worse, the same name for different ideas.

An example is the use of terms 'mono',  'duo', 'trio', etc for decks.
While not everyone uses them correct automatically, once they learn about it, it becomes clear.

Below this I will put terms with their effect. In the second post I will put effects and ideas that need a term.
Please discuss terms for those effects. Also, please post effects and ideas that need a name.

Spoiler for active / active ability:

An ability that can be lobotomized or replaced with another ability.
A creature can only have one active ability at a time.
When on the field, the name of the ability is beneath the creature.
Examples:

• Shrödinger's Cat's "dead and alive".
  
• Vulture's "scavanger".
  
• A creature that has "light" after using Luciferine.
  

Spoiler for passive / passive ability:

A creature can have multiple passives. Their effect is automatic.
When hovering over a creature, the passives it has show in the pop-up box in the right-bottom corner:

Spoiler for hybrid:

A card and/or an active ability can have an hybrid cost.
An hybrid is the combination of 2 or more elements. It can be paid with quanta from any of the used elements, in any combination.
The player cannot decide how the quanta used is distributed; this happens randomly from the available quanta.
'Other' is an hybrid of all 12 elements.

[dragtom]

Activate abilities can be put into two groups:
Manually activated abilities, like Forest Spirit's growth, or virus' infect,
and automatically activated abilities, like Dune Scorpion's neurotoxin, or hammer's "hammer" ability.

Both groups need a name.

[Treldon]

Activate abilities can be put into two groups:
Manually activated abilities, like Forest Spirit's growth, or virus' infect,
and automatically activated abilities, like Dune Scorpion's neurotoxin, or hammer's "hammer" ability.

For manually activated abilities I have always used acitvatable ability, no special word for automatic - it could go by automatic ability

Or, in RPG fashion, we could call the activatable ones skills, the automatic ones feats

[Fippe94]

I call them Activated Abilities, and Non-activated or Automatic Abilities.

[Monox D. I-Fly]

A creature can have multiple passives. Their effect is automatic.

Huh? I didn't know that. Can you give me an example? Is a flying Arsenic both Airborne and Venomous?

[dragtom]

probably the easiest example:

[EmeraldTiger]

The was a classification of abilities called "Innate" , but i forget what it applied to.

[AD TienzuStorm]

Aren't the terms "Active", "Innate", and "Passive"?

Active is where it must be manually clicked.

Spoiler for examples:

Innate is an ability that can be lobo'd but doesn't require clicking.

Spoiler for examples:

Passive is an ability that cannot be lobo'd (although Airborne can be removed through Web), never requires clicking

Spoiler for examples:

  Devour      Airborne   

Either way, this thread was a good idea. +1 to you drag!

[Treldon]

I've found a similar, quite old thread here

Spoiler for Sample:

After the passive abilities were added, I saw some major confusion going on in the community because a lot of people started mixing up active non-triggered abilities and passives.

Most people would call Bioluminescence or Vampire (ability) passive abilities than something called 'non-triggered active abilities', especially since those abilities do not look active at all.

But then again, passive abilities are actually different abilities such as airborne, voodoo, swarm, etc. What a confusion.


Therefore, I suggest making a new name for passives rather than calling them passives. Since most of them cannot be removed, why don't change them to something like innate abilities?

@AD: that naming looks good to me.

[Monox D. I-Fly]

probably the easiest example:

Wow... So, it's just a card which is created by another card (not available in the real cardpool itself). No wonder I didn't know that. I didn't expect a golem can fly, let alone have a voodoo ability.

[Treldon]

A Shard Golem's abilities depend on the shards that it as created from.

[Monox D. I-Fly]

^
So, was that example created from Shard of Freedom and Shard of Void?