They dont need to. Just write the errata whenever they do a reprint. Or just make the keywords and trust me you will learn to skip the rest of the words like when they put piercing on cards. I bet you dont read the whole sentence on cards that had the older expression for piercing
@@TraaaaaasshBooooaaaattttexactly this. They won't need to errata everything, anymore than they already did when psct happened. Or they can have an actual good idea and implement set rotation but what do I know
@lit_wick i honestly dont know how set rotation would even work in yugioh. The reason other games can have it is that they print a lot of cards that do basically the same thing even though they have different names even when they dont reprint the exact specific card. Whereas for yugioh, cards dont have to be reprinted because they are always available. The problem this poses in yugioh is now what they would consider generic to reprint over and over and what they would consider to rotate out. Because yugioh is archetype reliant now instead of individual reliant is that, sure they rotate out tearlaments or kashtira now. But then, in 5 or 6 years, they reprint it and bring it back into rotation again? I'm not a game designer, so I'm not sure how to tackle this problem, but if we look at pokemon, for example, set rotation is built into the core of the game. Every single set prints professor's research, but they dont always print all the same pokemon so that when they do print a new version of mew, it can now have different abilities to the previous version thats rotated out. Yugioh, being reliant on archetypes and having the type of effects that it does, would mean kashtira ariseheart of 2023 and ariseheart of 2025 would be 2 entirely different monsters by effect but still have the same name. Or maybe magic, for example, where 2 different cards with different names have the exact same effect? The way yugioh is designed makes set rotation inherently difficult if not impossible to do because it was not designed that way at its foundation. I have no solution on how it could be done. But i do see how it would be almost impossible to do because of the design. Maybe a pokemon approach where they just keep reprinting things that are considered staples and essential like ROTA in every set, but then that might mean sets would be much much bigger on filler because they would need to put in new cards while also reprinting essential cards. But then, who's to say what card is essential? Komoney? If no other ROTA, for example, is legal for the current rotation except the one printed in the set that's in rotation, they would just make it a secret and then make it be hard to get amongst all the other junk. You see the problem there. Sorry for the rant, but it's 25 years into a system, and changing it into something it was never designed for is practically impossible. That's like trying to change the foundation of a 100 story building after it's complete
@@TraaaaaasshBooooaaaatttt ygo is a ccg, like the games you mentioned. It's model is successful if people spend money on packs. Currently, the game is doing horrible in sales, boxes are rotting at lgs all over. Many people sooner buy their deck cores online these days. Konami could do a side thing like they did with speed duel. Simply retrain, or make new, busted cards (as in generic searchers). Every deck doesn't need a Stratos, if there's a generic Stratos, or elemental Stratoses (strati?). Or even a new game with yugioh esque rules, but some pre-built, asymmetrical character decks. Something more like exceed, or battlecon. This could give them the ability to "retrain" some older cards too. All I'm saying is, a retrain/reboot of a 25year old card game doesn't sound like a bad idea.
i think you hit the nail on the head, there's been just way too many design decisions around how card text currently works to try and refactor the entire card database. There's so many effects that do basically the same thing, but because of minor nuances like if/when conditions or soft vs hard once per turn clauses, would need completely different keywords to communicate those nuances. At a certain point it just ends up being EVEN MORE noise than is already there on the cards.
Search: Warrior 4- (Warrior 4 or less) Search: Spell Card (Optional: Specific Word) Search: Creature (Specific Type) I don't know, I think that saves a boatload of text. It doesn't have to be perfect, it just needs to be succinct.
Ok, so, how do you specify the keyword for pot of avarice and card like Runick Fountain? One shuffle, one put card to bottom deck without shuffling. Avarice draw 2 only if everything is shuffled sucessfully, Fountain draw depend on each card put back to deck and still resolve even if the target move location. At that point a "Keyword" lose it's meaning and become "Key Sentence"
@jps_user20 "Shuffle 5 cards from your GY into your deck, then Draw 2." It doesn't need to be any more complicated than that. No keywords are necessary. Nobody is saying add keywords to every card, just the most common effects. Runic Fountain can be similarly simplified, without needing any keywords. It doesn't even have that much text really.
Not each and every single thing needs a keyword. Just like you'll have cards in M:tG with no keywords to them. Common effects that might normally take 10+ words could be truncated to two, though, if the effects are common. I'm basically saying 'it isn't impossible'.
@@ChristopherLaHaise EXACTLY The words being replaced by the keyword aren't "Add 1 "Kashtira" Monster from your deck to your hand", it's "Add X from your deck to your hand" replacing the above example with Search would lead to "Search 1 Kashtira Monster" which as described in the video is a sentence, but they're wrong in that it's not a KEY sentence the only keyword there is Search
What about searchers that can add from gy or banished as well. What about conditional searchers, what about specific monster searchers that can also search those that mention the monster in their text. Turning Search into a keyword is actually overcomplicating it, when it is one of the easiest to parse effects in the entire game where reading a quick sentence is in general is easier to understand the application, than learning a frankly more complex lingo of multiple keywords to parse and try to understand when a card can search what(Search, Mentions, You/Opponent Controls, Reveal/Revealed etc). Only the most simple effects can be universalised into keywords, and those are the ones the quite frankly do not need them, and still cause problems because even something as simple as piercing gets you messed up by how some are worded and applied. Keywords yugioh actually needs are better codification of soft and hard once per turns, better indication and differentiation between activation, cost, effect, conditionals and how those interact with those. Keywords in yugioh already exist, frankly they just need to be highlighted and called attention to. Effect should be highlighted in cards(would save so many people from misunderstanding Dark World) Target should be highlighted and quite frankly non targeting should be highlighted in some form as well. Problem solving card text if it is gonna stay should be part of the freaking Master Duel tutorial.
I think the bullet points the OCG cards could be added to TCG cards, it would juat be like how the changed "Graveyard" to "GY" or "Removed From Play" to "Banished". And i don't think they would have to reprint every card, just reprint cards like normal with the updated text. Plus adding the bullet points would also be a way to know if cards are fake since i have some fake Japanese cards and how I could tell they were fake was thr fact they didn't have the bullet points, fakers don't put in the enough to put in the bullet points because thats means they would have to understand the language they put them in
I've had this conversation with people before about how keywords just don't work in Yugioh and I'd like to add some things. Yugioh's effects actually tend to be rather simple, just very precise most of the time. The bulk of the text comes from the cost, the activation condition, and the limitations it applies afterwards. All of which can be anything at all. There's a lot of minutia that you can't really simplify without drastically changing how a card works. If you did manage to compress a Yugioh effect into a string of keywords it would still be an entire sentence just from how the card works so you might as well make it a full grammatical sentence. I don't think keywords are on a card to make that card's effect simpler, I think they're on a card so that other card's effects can be simpler. They determine if a card can interact with another card based on keywords. There are other benefits but a lot of how other card games feel to play does come from how they interact with the keywords, not just from having them. Yugioh's effects don't interact with other effects like that. Yugioh cards determine if they affect another card is usually by something like the stats, name, type, attribute, ect, basically everything about a card except it's effects. The interaction with effects is generally done by stopping certain kinds of effects rather than by interacting directly with cards that have certain kinds of effects, which might sound the same but it isn't. Even then, those sorts of effects are highly detailed. MtG has cards that can change what a card does by adding or removing keywords, and it can determine what a card can do things to based off of keywords. Yugioh doesn't work that way. In Yugioh, you're opponent can't remove a specific effect from your card, only negate all the effects of it. Cards in Yugioh don't care what effect another card has, only if it does have one or if it can activate. Keywords aren't just shorthand, they actually serve a purpose, one that Yugioh doesn't need. Adding key words wouldn't do anything for Yugioh because the design ethos is different. They only work for others because others are designed to work that way. They're different games you can't just add mechanics from one to the other and expect them to work. People saying Yugioh should have keywords don't understand Yugioh, and honestly I don't think the understand the point of keywords either.
I think the point of keywords is to 1) save space on the card, and 2) to unify effects. And I think Yugioh has enough common effects that keywords would work. Draw, Search, Bury (remove from play), Sacrifice, there's specific things where you could narrow down a dozen words to 2-4. It would make reading a card a LOT faster, and it would make it easier for the opponent to glance over and figure out what the hell your cards are doing.
@@ChristopherLaHaise Yugioh effects go like this "Activation requirements: costs; effects, limitations of the card, restrictions it places on you," not all effects have all that but you will see it often. So you'd need about 5 keywords per effect, probably more. It's not the effect that's the problem, it's that one effect can do a lot of very different things, and there isn't any sort of limit on what those effects can be. I'd argue that if Yugioh tried to use keywords it would only be slightly shorter, but more confusing cause you'd have to parse how all the key words are working together. So you'd have a sentence worth of words anyway, really all you've removed is grammar. In regards to your second point; Yugioh doesn't have a lot of unified effects. At least not these days the old stuff had a few like union but a lot of those were phased out and replaced with unique effects. Cards don't share effects in yugioh, even archetypes don't always have the same effect, they have similar effects. The uniqueness of the effects is part of the appeal of Yugioh. Oh, and on the terms you used, we use banish for bury (there's cards like foolish burial which are graveyard set up) and we use tribute not sacrifice. Not a big issue, just figured I'd clarify.
@@Streptovarius I agree with most of this. However, some conditions are too closely worded that can use less conciseness "If this is destroyed by battle or card effect:" Only excludes game mechanics "If this is destroyed:" Includes game mechanics such as Setting a field spell over existing field spell. "If this is destroyed and sent to the GY" - cannot activate if card goes somewhere aside from GY this turn. "If this card is sent to the GY" doesn't require destruction; can be cost or any send to GY effect. "If this is leaves the field by an opponent's card:" -can include bounce, banish, sent to GY. You can argue that this adds "depth" to the game, but I'd argue that the first three should be condensed to just "If this is destroyed". Obviously stuff like Unchained conditions would stay as-is, but there such a thing as being too nuanced that can just be simplified.
@@KevinTangYT Replacing a field spell doesn't destroy (so that you can't easily trigger their effects like that). The people that play Yugioh actually like the complexity, of effect interactions, and those aren't even that complicated. MtG keywords include shroud and hexproof, which do almost the same thing, as well as fear, dread, and menace, are different but have the same end goal. Then there's all the various kinds of protection, not just colors either. There are others like this, but not my point. This isn't a Yugioh specific problem, TCGs tend to become rather intricate as time goes on now matter how they are worded. Yugioh doesn't need to simplify itself just because people don't want to make the effort to understand it. It is entirely functional as is, people just like to complain.
@@Streptovarius except it does; that's how people trigger Geartown: by setting another Geartown. If you activate Geartown on top of another Geartown, it misses timing because last thing that happens is the activation of second Geartown rather the first one. And that's super unintuitive. The game and spirit of the game isn't to rule shark the game. To new players, that interaction is completely unreasonable. Your response is basically just gatekeeping because you already spent the time to learn the types of card interactions and not be critical about it. MBT just made a video on this very topic too.
1 of the things i really dislike about keywords aint so much about keywords itself but the proponents of keywords instead 9 out of 10 times someone advocating for keywords cant even properly define what an actual keyword really is but would still go and call anything and everything a keyword slapping the label on to whatever they deem necessary for convenience which is especially true of mtg players like ive seem them call things like the graveyard and extra deck a keyword as justification that yugioh can have keywords because they're already using them hell recently came across someone in the comments of rarran's yugioh vid that try to proclaim that yugioh's card types of all things are keywords to justify it... wut the actual fk?
Great video, the amount of players and youtubers who talk about it in the laziest and most superficial way is disturbing. Card games are niche and most people who think that YGO is too complicated will continue to think the same if there is a "requirement" at the beginning of the cost of a card instead of ";" at the end for example. YGO is so unique and different... it would be really sad to see it turn into a generic game after all these years.
I keep seeing people saying you can simplify it to just "search [card]," but the formatting is actually "move [card] from [location a] to [location b]," (with the prepositions and stuff changed to fit the sentence better). This includes stuff like sending things from deck to graveyard, or vice-versa, and stuff like returning cards from the field to the hand or deck. This provides a consistent way to right a bunch of similar effects. I'm sure you could come up with keywords for every permutation, there's already a couple people use informally (bounce and spin for the last two examples) I just wanted to point out that it's the way it is for a reason. Whether you think it's a good reason is up to you.
Before reading this and thinking I'm just a mad MTG fan (I have other reasons to be a mad MTG fan than such a discussion), I love the absolute insanity Yu-Gi-Oh has become. It truly is a one of a card game with many things exclusively unique to it. But I do feel that codifying a few simple effects would greatly streamline the learning curve. Keywords don't have to be as generic as you think they need to be. For your example of "Search" at 3:35 through 4:20, you can add quantifiers for what can be searched by a card effect. Fenrir could read "Search a 'Kashtira' monster" while Unicorn could be "Search a 'Kashtira' spell." RotA could be "Search a level 4 or lower Warrior-type monster." Search would be the keyword to truncate "Add from your deck to your hand" instead of writing out the effect to add a card every time it appears on a card. Which also saves a lot of the extremely limited space an effect text box has on a tiny Yu-Gi-Oh card. Which card size is another massive problem but that is a whole other topic. The examples of Baronne de Fleur and Ash Blossom are great examples as to why not every game action needs to be keyworded. Negation effects do not need to be fully keyworded PRECISELY because of how negation effects differ. Some negate the activation and some negate the effect. Keywording those would be a nightmare and would not benefit the game at all. Third point has some valid reasoning, but part of it also falls a little flat precisely because Yu-Gi-Oh is an eternal format game. 100% agree that the TCG should bring over the effect bullet points from the OCG. But the point that old cards mixing with the new isn't anything new in Yu-Gi-Oh. You can run cards that have never been updated to have problem-solving card text alongside cards with problem-solving card text. How is that any different than having cards with useful keywords like Search and cards that read "Add a [[LEGALTARGET]] from your deck to your hand."? There really isn't any difference. And a good example from Magic is the latest game action to become keyworded, Mill. The effect had been around since the beginning of the game fully written out as "put the top {N} cards of your library into your graveyard (or mentioning an opponent in place of yourself)", but had the fan terminology of "Mill" because of the card Millstone. They codified it into Mill a few years back and there are cards that are played in various eternal formats that still have the effect fully written out. And it doesn't cause any issues in Magic, so I couldn't see it being an issue in Yu-Gi-Oh either. And also spoiler alert: Yu-Gi-Oh already uses keywords! Excavate is a keyword for revealing the top {N} cards of your deck (Why they don't word it as "Excavate {N} cards" when the old "reveal" would actually take up less text space is beyond me). Banish is a keyword for "Remove from the game." Any card summoned from the Extra Deck that reads "When this card is Fusion/Synchro/Xyz/Link Summoned" is a keyword for "When this card is Special Summoned from the Extra Deck through the proper summoning method". So the argument against Yu-Gi-Oh using more keywords is absolutely farcical to me because they have been using keywords since the GX era, if not earlier.
for the search thing it isnt so much that they're searching something from deck but rather "add to hand" itself is a mechanic and is also an umbrella mechanic over "drawing" too so cards that would prevent adding cards would also prevent drawing but cards that can prevent drawing cannot prevent adding "searching" itself is also a very loose term in yugioh used for more then just adding or drawing cards, on top of special summoning from deck there are effects that actually just goes and straight up either activates or places from deck to field face-down (set) or face-up and in the case of placing it face-up it actually activates them without ever actually having activated them (yes this is different from activating cards from deck) and the cards that this is subjected to never had a point of being activated either but players would still consider this searching, even banishing or sending specific cards from deck to grave would count as both milling and searching since it places cards is locations that is more easily reached if not advantageous basically searching in yugioh isnt a unified definition but a collection of various effects both conventional and unconventional that just simply has the shared trait of making cards more accessible as for some terms being keywords these are easily debunked "excavate" and "reveal" is a similar case to drawing and adding where the latter is an umbrella term that the former is under association of so effects that fall under "excavate" is also "reveal" but not the same in reverse but basically they were never one and the same, "reveal" even has a sibling mechanic in "look" where "reveal" reveals the card's face to both players but "look" only allows the owner to perceive the card's face and "excavate" is also not a keyword because the localization team simply decided to be grandiose when localization the mundane めくる (mekuru) which simply means to turn or flip over and in fact the very same mechanic can even be used for cards set on to the field too as some archaic cards has this effect under the same terminology in japanese which back then was localized as "pick up" but this effect has been discontinued now only existing exclusively to effects that pick up cards from the top of the deck so excavate in this case is probably used to differentiate it from the older localization of めくる that was previously translated to "pick up" rather then as a completely new mechanic but again its grandiose because something like turnover or even upend wouldve sufficed if "flip up" wouldnt work because its too close to "flip" mechanic banish is a similar case to pick up -> excavate because "remove from play" literally meant what it said, the idea was that cards removed from play were probably never gonna see play for the rest of the duel since methods to bring them back so were incredibly rare and scarce hence the term being worded as "remove from play", however it was increasing becoming inaccurate as more and more cards printed that made removed from play cards more accessible and so with the introduction of PSCT the devs had a chance to change the terminology and they took it replacing it with "banish" instead shortening it and removing the connotation that these cards would never see play for the rest of the duel meaning "removed from play" is no longer a legal term because it doesnt even exist anymore so "banish" cannot be a keyword else its trying to shorthand something that no longer exist but the way the term is used remains identical as no effects that would reach for banish cards ever refer to a zone and there is never an official zone for it either as it zig-zags between being next to or above the graveyard across various yugioh media with it most recent location being somewhat diagonal to the grave in master duel the last point about proper summoning is debunked by certain effects allowing you to cheat them out (most notably xyz) without proper summoning but fulfils the proper summon rule by clause that treats it as the respective summoning mechanic and yes this will trigger on (proper) summon effects as long as it doesnt misses timing another thing is that these arent rule-text for keywords to shorthand but mechanics instead
Yeah, I agree basically with what you said. They'd have to change how card effects are made entirely in order to account for keywords, not just errata existing cards. I think it could be done, but it'd have to be done in a way where they can be adjusted on the fly imo, like having them be an optional format for Master Duel. One thing I could see them do, though I'd much prefer to digital route, is starting to print new cards for formats (Similarly to how they do Rush Duel, I guess), but these are built with keywords in mind. I'd prefer the Master Duel route though, because this would probably effect the TCG and OCG a bit too. Konami doesn't exactly have the greatest track record when it comes to getting things right upon the first release as well. Honestly, I think having Master Duel work as a sort of optional test server for new cards, mechanics, formats and ideas would help give Master Duel something that it's missing. With Konami's current payment model though, I don't see this ever succeeding, because it'd cost too much for stuff that may not exist in the future. --- Small side rant about MD, but I think having a $60 version of Master Duel where you get 3 non-holo, undecraftable copies of all the cards available in the Secret, Master and Legacy Packs that are available at that time would be good. There are still people who will go for new cards in the Selection Packs, holo cards, and other cards that aren't available in any of these as well, so it isn't like gems just become redundant either. Then if they did the testing server route, they could do a $5-10 monthly subscription to access the test server stuff? Idk, but I feel like they could be doing a lot more with Master Duel, but are just sticking to what they know will work/feel comfortable doing, rather than pushing any boundaries, innovating, or making something new.
i think they should change the format of how cards are written honestly just so people arent starting at a wall of text all the time ocg does it with its numbered circles but sometimes that isnt enough, like there could be more ways to signify the difference in text such as maybe having an icon before a sentence that tells if this effect involves the player, opponent, both or if the following text is simply restrictions/limitations which would make the cards easier to parse as now at a glance you know what to ignore and hone in on just certain lines
Many YGO Cards have the text: "Once per Turn" it could be "OpT: Draw a card"... And then (Quick Effect), could be "QE: Discard a card, destroy target Monster"...
But see, this is where a lot of this goes awry. There are 3 different "once per turn" clauses as well as a few fringe other restrictors on usage. Once per turn: once per turn per unique instance You can only use effect of "card name" once per turn: once per turn at all, no matter what. You can only activate "card name" once per turn: as above, but if the activation (not effect) is negated, you can activate the same named card again legally. Once per duel: as it says. You can only activate "card name" once per duel: as above, but if activation is negated... blah blah you get the picture. There are also once per time its face up and other wierd crap too. Youd have to keyword each of those individually, which would be hard fir new players to track with. As it stands now, reading the card explains the card.
Massive reboot and set rotation is right. I don't think that's a bad idea though. I think they've been easing us into this change. How? By making legacy formats more official like Edison and goat. They can reboot, and make new tournaments with older formats. I think this is a change the game needs to make.
Well in the case of “Spellsearch (Kashtira)” or “Monstersearch (Warrior Lv. 1-4)” it would save card space. Magic has “keyphrases” too where they can just add a specific thing and not have to make a unique keyword for each possible variation.
I want to start by saying yugioh already has keywords. Piercing is literally already a keyword. So is banish. 1) too many cards do too many different things. Wild point because this kind of implies there are not even more unique magic cards? 2) other games have cards that do the same things. And yugioh has a bunch of normal monsters? Very weak point. 3) cards do similar things but have slight differences. This nuance also exists in games like magic. Lifelink is a keyword. There are also cards without lifelink that do what lifelink does but slightly different on a trigger that uses the stack, making it counterable. So still a bad point. 4) too many cards to errata. Worst point on the list tbh. MTG has done HUGE errata’s exactly like this. They simply only update the text on cards they reprint, and announce that older cards with “this” text now have “this” text which means the same thing. If the cards do the same thing then there is no need to reprint them for the keyword. Just announce future cards will have the keyword.
But keywords/simplification of effects has been done over time. Such as Graveyard to GY and "During battle between this attacking card and a Defense Position monster whose DEF is lower than the ATK of this card, inflict the difference as Battle Damage to your opponent." To "If this card attacks a Defense Position monster, inflict piercing Battle Damage to your opponent." And "Remove from Play" into "Banish", which not all cards have been reprinted with these wording. Not all effects need to be keyworded to add keywords into the game. So they can easily add bullet points csuse not every card need to be reprinted to add them as it doesn't fundamentally change the cards. If they added BPs starting with the latest set going forward, any reprints would get BPs if needed.
As someone returning to Yu-Gi-Oh! who has played many, many other card games a lot, I would like to summarize your arguments and offer my opinions. This is not meant to be an attack on you; I’m just addicted to debating. You hit the nail on the head on why players want keywords, and I couldn’t have said it better itself. I do want to propose the following Keyword Arguments: A: Keywords do not change existing card effects B: Keywords do not prevent cards from having effects that aren't keyworded or prevent card design teams from designing mechanics that aren't keyworded. Point 1: Too many cards do too many things. Keyword Argument B. 2:24 - 2:43 What you’re describing is called Vintage in Magic the Gathering and Wild in Hearthstone. What’s unique is that, to my knowledge, Yu-Gi-Oh! does not have other officially recognized formats. 4:16 -- 4:20 Note how “Search 1 Level 4 or lower Warrior Type-Monster” is 6 words less than the printed 15 word card (assuming numbers are counted as words). What you’re describing is called a Keyword Action and is actively used in other card games exactly as described. And yes, you can errata the existing cards to say “Search,” (or not if the game design team never wants to interact with the keyword except for using it to lower future word count.) 4:20 - 6:04 This argument frustrates me. Your argument does not prevent cards from having actions and phrases keyworded aside from being afraid that cards can’t be unique if keywords are used to replace extremely common returning lines of test. I’d like to refer you again to the Keyword Argument B. Point 2: Too Many Weird Rulings Your example is two different effects that would have two different keywords (if they were keyworded at all). Keyword Argument A. Point 3: All cards are legal in Yu-Gi-Oh! This is actually a very good point. Other games have had to deal with this exact same thing, and it’s never pretty. Most card games just divided into different formats, but that’s not why people play Yu-Gi-Oh! Inconsistent templating wouldn’t break the game though, and it comes down to personal taste.
As for my personal experience, modern Yu-Gi-Oh! is miserable to look at, and personally I’d much rather have inconsistent formatting if it meant newer cards were more legible. Keyword Argument A also means they don’t have to re-template old cards to match current formatting. 9:19 - 10:44 I wholeheartedly agree. Keywords are a temporary fix to an ongoing issue, and I don’t think they’d be the fix that proponents like me hope they would be. I think it’d be a step in the right direction, but obviously we’re just two people on the internet and have nothing to do with the game’s design. Good video. 10/10
Some cards can receive key words and others cannot as they have greater complexity and uniqueness. Many cards have 2 or 3 Biblical-sized effects, not that all of these could be summarized in keywords, but at least 1 would alleviate the amount of tiny text on the card. Another way to reduce the flood of text on cards I thought of is unfortunately not viable, but it's interesting to think about. Instead of the effect being written directly on the monster card, it would only have a spell/trap card name, this card would be assigned to the monster and attached to it when summoned, just like an xyz. In other words, the effects would be transferred to spell/trap cards and these would be assigned to monsters. Obviously Konami would have to redesign the entire game but I liked that idea.
I believe keywords are a step in the right direction. Not every card needs them, but they can help. Instead of a card saying "When this card attacks a Defense Position monster and destroys it as a result of battle, inflict piercing battle damage to your opponent." It could just say "Piercing." But the bigger problem overall is that Yugioh cards just do too many things nowadays. Cards don't need 3 effects all with their own conditions. I don't know how they could fix this problem at this point, we are in too deep.
I can't speak for anyone else, but I would probably contend that YGO uses keywords not necessarily _as an all encompassing description of an entire mechanic_ because as you said, YGO cards do a lot of things now... but more as a method _to further condense several phrases that themselves are universal._ first example would be "this card cannot be destroyed/targeted by Monster/Spell/Trap effects" and "this card is unaffected by card effects". terms like that could pretty reliably condensed to "Immunity". you could instead say "this card has destruction/targeting immunity from Monster/Spells/Traps/effects" overall to say the same thing. second example is the distinction between a "soft" Once Per Turn (Once Per Turn, you can...) and a "hard" once per turn (you can only activate "?" Once Per Turn)... with the former being meant for the card itself, and the latter being to the player. if it were up to me, I would distinguish "soft" as "Once Per Turn, this card can..." and "hard" as "Once Per Turn, your '?' can..." but yeah, I think Keywords can help condense the superfluous text in the english TCG... Bullet Points also help, as the OCG does that already, but this is my take on Keywords specifically.
well... Except the obvious untargetable, imderstructible, Yugioh could have keyword actions, Like a word for "search on deck" , a word for "return from grave to hand, Or shuffle from grave in deck etc etc. and yes "specific keywords" like "search lvl4 or lower warrior" Also exist in MTG
I mean we have seen several already yes it's a fuck ton of work but guess what other card games have done it when they changed shit or implemented a keyword to an existing mechanic that didn't have one
Yu-Gi-Oh already have Keywords in Tuner, Union, Spirit, and Gemini. Unfortunately, Konami keeps spelling out the meticulous text of effects. Konami could just cut out the "Can't be special summoned and is returned to the hand at the End Phase" from all Spirit monsters since they all literally do this except for Shinobird. Unions could drop all of the text about equipping, destruction protection, and unequipping and trim it down to the equip target and any unique effects like searching or stat buffs to equipped target. Tuner is fine, Gemini could drop the treating themselves as Normal Monsters and leave the skill if it's been normal summoned on field. Some archetypes have a reoccurring effect like Madolche recycling and T.G. searching after being destroyed. Konami could just start the trend of putting number points into cards. Even if you have a paragraph of text, number points would stand out enough to hone in on at a glance. You can also save on text by prefacing ALL of the card's text with the Once per turn clauses so you don't have to keep printing once per turn on each individual effect.
Obviously Yugioh can't have keywords at the same caliber that MtG or Hearthstone has them at, the game is too granular. It won't be able to support 1 word "creature keywords" like trample/flying/reborn/stealth etc. Aside from Piercing of course, Piercing could be 1 word. But Yugioh literally already uses keywords, that's what excavate or banish or FLIP or set are. It uses these words in conjuction with plain text, the same way other games use keywords in combination with plain text like "behold an 8+ cost unit". There are 100% vocabulary terms the game could introduce that wouldn't be a massive problem, or text bloat that could be universally cut down on. Hard and soft once per turn could be icons, easily. There's no excuse for "when this card is synchro summoned" not to simply be "on synchro summon" for instance. A batch name /category for "fusion, synchro, xyz, or link monster" like "extra monster" would help immensely too. Yugioh can't have keywords the same way or to the same extent that MtG or other games have them, but it can have them. These cards are written like absolute hot ass which is why the game is so hard to parse.
Separating Condition and effect would go a long way to format card text though. Rush Duel cards are like that. The textbook for effect also just needs to be bigger tbh. A lot of cards are association with pictures and remembering what they do over time, but it really often is not readable at all at times.
Yugioh has what's called problem solving card text. It uses a colon to denote the activation condition and a semi colon to separate things like the costs and targeting. Maybe not the most elegant solution, but it does do exactly that. It makes sense once you get used to it. Also, if I recommend playing online, the text boxes are bigger there, and the game keeps track of things better than you can.
@@Streptovarius That's the point, PST isn't elegant. Not only that, it actively is hard to parse During the Main Phase, if your opponent Normal or Special Summoned 5 or more monsters this turn (Quick Effect): You can Tribute as many face-up monsters on the field as possible, and if you do, Special Summon this card from your hand, then Special Summon 1 "Primal Being Token" (Rock/LIGHT/Level 11/ATK ?/DEF ?) to your opponent's field. (This Token's ATK/DEF become the combined original ATK/DEF of the Tributed monsters.) You can only use this effect of "Nibiru, the Primal being" once per turn. Vs (1) [Condition][Quick] Your opponent Summmons 5+ times this turn. [Effect] During the Main Phase: Tribute as many face-up monsters on the field as possible, and if you do, Special Summon this card from your hand, then Special Summon 1 "Primal Being Token" (Rock/LIGHT/Level 11/ATK ?/DEF ?) to your opponent's field. (This Token's ATK/DEF become the combined original ATK/DEF of the Tributed monsters.)
@@KevinTangYT If you can't parse a sentence that's on you. It's reading, it isn't a laborious task. The average reading speed is about 240 words a minute, the average Yugioh card has about 70 words on it. It should take you take you about 3 seconds to read. Less if just skim for the bits that matter to you. I'll tell you what everyone tells me when I complain of keywords, if you don't understand it just go look it up. It's also worded very carefully to avoid a misunderstanding so I don't get what you're on about with it being hard to read. Also, the way you've edited it actually changes the effect. For starters you left out the hard once per turn, and yes that's important (Maybe something like "this is a hard once per turn," which is ). Leaving out the "you may," would actually make it a mandatory effect which is important because this is an effect you want to wait until the end of their combo for. The part you truncated isn't even the complicated bit, and the main phase part should be part of the conditions not the effect, it was that way round for a reason. You also stripped out the "normal or special," bit, which is mostly there for clarity and it's three words, I won't say you're wrong on this part, just that those 3 words may or may not actually be in some way relevant. You know how many words you saved if you add in all the bits you need? About a dozen, you saved about half a sentence worth of letters across half of a paragraph worth of text, good job editing. I'd rather rather grammar than short. See, the problem with this whole argument, is that you don't actually understand why this stuff is the way it is. You didn't even make the text take up less card space because of how you formatted it. It already told you everything you needed to know in as short amount of space it could without compromising grammar. All you've done is switch some prepositions with punctuation. Problem solving card text is consistent across all cards printed since they've used it. If bothered to learn how to use it you'd know it works quite well. But you're not going to bother to learn it, you're going to keep insisting it could be shorter without even bothering to understand why it's so long to begin with.
@@Streptovarius i remember having an argument with some guy who claimed that half of Destructive Daruma Karma Cannon's text is redundant, don't remember the exact words but it was soemthing along the lines of it not needing to say "as many monsters on the field as possible" as it can be simplified to just specify all monster and "if either player controls a face-up monster(s)" being completely unnecessary and is a useless contingent the changes he proposed would make the card literally unplayable as it now doesnt account for certain monster not being able to be flipped facedown like links and tokens and thus cannot be activated if any either of them is on field defeating its entire purpose and the latter effect would just contradicts the former effect since you cannot knowingly activate a card that would fail to resolve as you cannot activate a card to banish facedown all face up monster when you would know for certain that there would be no faceup monster to banish since the removal of the contingency line means that you can only activate this card if you know that all monster on the field currently can be flipped facedown in the first place so how can you banish any remaining faceup monster when there would be none to banish it is very evident that he has zero understanding of how the card worked and why i even came across someone else last year before who complained that Sky Striker Mobilize - Linkage! with Sky Striker Ace - Kagari made no sense because kagari had only a diagonal upward pointing link arrow, the complaint was that yugioh does not allow for the foresight of being able to send kagari to the grave to summon a link monster since there would need to be a legal zone first because sending kagari herself is something done on resolution of the effect and not a cost or condition that happens prior smarter then the above guy at least but doesnt realize the difference between sequentially and simultaneously effects of which linkage is of the latter and thus sending kagari and summoning something else in her place in the EMZ is treated as two-in-one and not separate effects resolving in sequence one right after another
@@YukiFubuki. Thank you for providing good examples of this sort of thing, I couldn't think of any off the top of my head. The effects of "Destructive Daruma Karma Cannon," are "Change as many monsters on the field as possible to face-down Defense Position, then, if either player controls a face-up monster(s), they must send all face-up monsters they control to the GY." The thing about how this is worded, the second part affects the players not the monsters. This means that a monster that is completely immune to effects is still removed because it's a forced player action (kind of like annihilator in MtG). This makes it far better removal than it might look at first (still not necessarily good, but that's more a meta thing). The effects of "Sky Striker Mobilize - Linkage,!" are "If you control no monsters in your Main Monster Zone: You cannot Special Summon monsters from the Extra Deck for the rest of this turn after this card resolves, except "Sky Striker Ace" monsters, also send 1 other card you control to the GY, and if you do, Special Summon 1 "Sky Striker Ace" monster from your Extra Deck to the Extra Monster Zone, and if you have at least 1 LIGHT and 1 DARK "Sky Striker Ace" monsters on your field and/or in your GY, the Summoned monster gains 1000 ATK." The way I read that is that the first thing it does (well, after the restriction) is get rid of the monster in the extra zone, then summons the other monster. It's pretty clear to me how that works, so maybe the guy misread?
it doesnt, look at every card with piercing and you will see that it has the full text written out, its always some variation of " If this card attacks a Defense Position monster, inflict piercing battle damage."
@@YukiFubuki. it used to be much longer "During battle between this attacking card and a Defense Position monster whose DEF is lower than the ATK of this card, inflict the difference as Battle Damage to your opponent." just for "Piercing"
@@jps_user20 and a lot of it was just fluff like needing to specify what is happening in something atking a def position monster or couldnt be applied to every situations like atk position to defence position because of defense position atkers since the piecing effect is possible to be granted to another monster by an effect there were more practical reason to shorten it besides just to shorten it
They could still have key words for certain things. Instead of saying "inflict piercing battle damage". Just say piercing. The searching they can have the keyword then a colon then say what they search. Eg. Search: 1 l4 or lower warrior Search: 1 kashtira monster. Instead of add 1 level 4 or lower warrior type monster from your deck to your hand. They dont need to reprint all cards. Same way there are cards that dont have problem solving card text. At least not all the cards immediately. But if they did rewave every set to give them keywords they would probably make more money tbh. Because people would want to get the newer version. If they reprinted for example extreme victory. There was never a reprint for that set. People would buy it because past formats are getting popular
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And the fact that konami will literally never ever errata 10,000 cards
I think this is the main reason
They dont need to. Just write the errata whenever they do a reprint. Or just make the keywords and trust me you will learn to skip the rest of the words like when they put piercing on cards. I bet you dont read the whole sentence on cards that had the older expression for piercing
@@TraaaaaasshBooooaaaattttexactly this. They won't need to errata everything, anymore than they already did when psct happened.
Or they can have an actual good idea and implement set rotation but what do I know
@lit_wick i honestly dont know how set rotation would even work in yugioh. The reason other games can have it is that they print a lot of cards that do basically the same thing even though they have different names even when they dont reprint the exact specific card. Whereas for yugioh, cards dont have to be reprinted because they are always available. The problem this poses in yugioh is now what they would consider generic to reprint over and over and what they would consider to rotate out. Because yugioh is archetype reliant now instead of individual reliant is that, sure they rotate out tearlaments or kashtira now. But then, in 5 or 6 years, they reprint it and bring it back into rotation again? I'm not a game designer, so I'm not sure how to tackle this problem, but if we look at pokemon, for example, set rotation is built into the core of the game. Every single set prints professor's research, but they dont always print all the same pokemon so that when they do print a new version of mew, it can now have different abilities to the previous version thats rotated out. Yugioh, being reliant on archetypes and having the type of effects that it does, would mean kashtira ariseheart of 2023 and ariseheart of 2025 would be 2 entirely different monsters by effect but still have the same name. Or maybe magic, for example, where 2 different cards with different names have the exact same effect? The way yugioh is designed makes set rotation inherently difficult if not impossible to do because it was not designed that way at its foundation. I have no solution on how it could be done. But i do see how it would be almost impossible to do because of the design. Maybe a pokemon approach where they just keep reprinting things that are considered staples and essential like ROTA in every set, but then that might mean sets would be much much bigger on filler because they would need to put in new cards while also reprinting essential cards. But then, who's to say what card is essential? Komoney? If no other ROTA, for example, is legal for the current rotation except the one printed in the set that's in rotation, they would just make it a secret and then make it be hard to get amongst all the other junk. You see the problem there. Sorry for the rant, but it's 25 years into a system, and changing it into something it was never designed for is practically impossible. That's like trying to change the foundation of a 100 story building after it's complete
@@TraaaaaasshBooooaaaatttt ygo is a ccg, like the games you mentioned. It's model is successful if people spend money on packs. Currently, the game is doing horrible in sales, boxes are rotting at lgs all over. Many people sooner buy their deck cores online these days.
Konami could do a side thing like they did with speed duel. Simply retrain, or make new, busted cards (as in generic searchers). Every deck doesn't need a Stratos, if there's a generic Stratos, or elemental Stratoses (strati?). Or even a new game with yugioh esque rules, but some pre-built, asymmetrical character decks. Something more like exceed, or battlecon. This could give them the ability to "retrain" some older cards too.
All I'm saying is, a retrain/reboot of a 25year old card game doesn't sound like a bad idea.
I agree... I think the main issue is more the formatting of the card effects then NEEDING keywords...
i think you hit the nail on the head, there's been just way too many design decisions around how card text currently works to try and refactor the entire card database. There's so many effects that do basically the same thing, but because of minor nuances like if/when conditions or soft vs hard once per turn clauses, would need completely different keywords to communicate those nuances. At a certain point it just ends up being EVEN MORE noise than is already there on the cards.
Search: Warrior 4- (Warrior 4 or less)
Search: Spell Card (Optional: Specific Word)
Search: Creature (Specific Type)
I don't know, I think that saves a boatload of text. It doesn't have to be perfect, it just needs to be succinct.
Ok, so, how do you specify the keyword for pot of avarice and card like Runick Fountain?
One shuffle, one put card to bottom deck without shuffling. Avarice draw 2 only if everything is shuffled sucessfully, Fountain draw depend on each card put back to deck and still resolve even if the target move location.
At that point a "Keyword" lose it's meaning and become "Key Sentence"
@jps_user20 "Shuffle 5 cards from your GY into your deck, then Draw 2." It doesn't need to be any more complicated than that. No keywords are necessary. Nobody is saying add keywords to every card, just the most common effects.
Runic Fountain can be similarly simplified, without needing any keywords. It doesn't even have that much text really.
Not each and every single thing needs a keyword. Just like you'll have cards in M:tG with no keywords to them.
Common effects that might normally take 10+ words could be truncated to two, though, if the effects are common.
I'm basically saying 'it isn't impossible'.
@@ChristopherLaHaise EXACTLY
The words being replaced by the keyword aren't "Add 1 "Kashtira" Monster from your deck to your hand", it's "Add X from your deck to your hand"
replacing the above example with Search would lead to "Search 1 Kashtira Monster"
which as described in the video is a sentence, but they're wrong in that it's not a KEY sentence
the only keyword there is Search
What about searchers that can add from gy or banished as well. What about conditional searchers, what about specific monster searchers that can also search those that mention the monster in their text.
Turning Search into a keyword is actually overcomplicating it, when it is one of the easiest to parse effects in the entire game where reading a quick sentence is in general is easier to understand the application, than learning a frankly more complex lingo of multiple keywords to parse and try to understand when a card can search what(Search, Mentions, You/Opponent Controls, Reveal/Revealed etc).
Only the most simple effects can be universalised into keywords, and those are the ones the quite frankly do not need them, and still cause problems because even something as simple as piercing gets you messed up by how some are worded and applied.
Keywords yugioh actually needs are better codification of soft and hard once per turns, better indication and differentiation between activation, cost, effect, conditionals and how those interact with those. Keywords in yugioh already exist, frankly they just need to be highlighted and called attention to. Effect should be highlighted in cards(would save so many people from misunderstanding Dark World) Target should be highlighted and quite frankly non targeting should be highlighted in some form as well. Problem solving card text if it is gonna stay should be part of the freaking Master Duel tutorial.
I think the bullet points the OCG cards could be added to TCG cards, it would juat be like how the changed "Graveyard" to "GY" or "Removed From Play" to "Banished". And i don't think they would have to reprint every card, just reprint cards like normal with the updated text.
Plus adding the bullet points would also be a way to know if cards are fake since i have some fake Japanese cards and how I could tell they were fake was thr fact they didn't have the bullet points, fakers don't put in the enough to put in the bullet points because thats means they would have to understand the language they put them in
I've had this conversation with people before about how keywords just don't work in Yugioh and I'd like to add some things. Yugioh's effects actually tend to be rather simple, just very precise most of the time. The bulk of the text comes from the cost, the activation condition, and the limitations it applies afterwards. All of which can be anything at all. There's a lot of minutia that you can't really simplify without drastically changing how a card works. If you did manage to compress a Yugioh effect into a string of keywords it would still be an entire sentence just from how the card works so you might as well make it a full grammatical sentence.
I don't think keywords are on a card to make that card's effect simpler, I think they're on a card so that other card's effects can be simpler. They determine if a card can interact with another card based on keywords. There are other benefits but a lot of how other card games feel to play does come from how they interact with the keywords, not just from having them. Yugioh's effects don't interact with other effects like that. Yugioh cards determine if they affect another card is usually by something like the stats, name, type, attribute, ect, basically everything about a card except it's effects. The interaction with effects is generally done by stopping certain kinds of effects rather than by interacting directly with cards that have certain kinds of effects, which might sound the same but it isn't. Even then, those sorts of effects are highly detailed. MtG has cards that can change what a card does by adding or removing keywords, and it can determine what a card can do things to based off of keywords. Yugioh doesn't work that way. In Yugioh, you're opponent can't remove a specific effect from your card, only negate all the effects of it. Cards in Yugioh don't care what effect another card has, only if it does have one or if it can activate. Keywords aren't just shorthand, they actually serve a purpose, one that Yugioh doesn't need.
Adding key words wouldn't do anything for Yugioh because the design ethos is different. They only work for others because others are designed to work that way. They're different games you can't just add mechanics from one to the other and expect them to work. People saying Yugioh should have keywords don't understand Yugioh, and honestly I don't think the understand the point of keywords either.
I think the point of keywords is to 1) save space on the card, and 2) to unify effects. And I think Yugioh has enough common effects that keywords would work. Draw, Search, Bury (remove from play), Sacrifice, there's specific things where you could narrow down a dozen words to 2-4. It would make reading a card a LOT faster, and it would make it easier for the opponent to glance over and figure out what the hell your cards are doing.
@@ChristopherLaHaise
Yugioh effects go like this "Activation requirements: costs; effects, limitations of the card, restrictions it places on you," not all effects have all that but you will see it often. So you'd need about 5 keywords per effect, probably more. It's not the effect that's the problem, it's that one effect can do a lot of very different things, and there isn't any sort of limit on what those effects can be. I'd argue that if Yugioh tried to use keywords it would only be slightly shorter, but more confusing cause you'd have to parse how all the key words are working together. So you'd have a sentence worth of words anyway, really all you've removed is grammar.
In regards to your second point; Yugioh doesn't have a lot of unified effects. At least not these days the old stuff had a few like union but a lot of those were phased out and replaced with unique effects. Cards don't share effects in yugioh, even archetypes don't always have the same effect, they have similar effects. The uniqueness of the effects is part of the appeal of Yugioh.
Oh, and on the terms you used, we use banish for bury (there's cards like foolish burial which are graveyard set up) and we use tribute not sacrifice. Not a big issue, just figured I'd clarify.
@@Streptovarius I agree with most of this. However, some conditions are too closely worded that can use less conciseness
"If this is destroyed by battle or card effect:" Only excludes game mechanics
"If this is destroyed:"
Includes game mechanics such as Setting a field spell over existing field spell.
"If this is destroyed and sent to the GY" - cannot activate if card goes somewhere aside from GY this turn.
"If this card is sent to the GY" doesn't require destruction; can be cost or any send to GY effect.
"If this is leaves the field by an opponent's card:" -can include bounce, banish, sent to GY.
You can argue that this adds "depth" to the game, but I'd argue that the first three should be condensed to just "If this is destroyed". Obviously stuff like Unchained conditions would stay as-is, but there such a thing as being too nuanced that can just be simplified.
@@KevinTangYT
Replacing a field spell doesn't destroy (so that you can't easily trigger their effects like that).
The people that play Yugioh actually like the complexity, of effect interactions, and those aren't even that complicated.
MtG keywords include shroud and hexproof, which do almost the same thing, as well as fear, dread, and menace, are different but have the same end goal. Then there's all the various kinds of protection, not just colors either. There are others like this, but not my point. This isn't a Yugioh specific problem, TCGs tend to become rather intricate as time goes on now matter how they are worded.
Yugioh doesn't need to simplify itself just because people don't want to make the effort to understand it. It is entirely functional as is, people just like to complain.
@@Streptovarius except it does; that's how people trigger Geartown: by setting another Geartown. If you activate Geartown on top of another Geartown, it misses timing because last thing that happens is the activation of second Geartown rather the first one.
And that's super unintuitive. The game and spirit of the game isn't to rule shark the game. To new players, that interaction is completely unreasonable. Your response is basically just gatekeeping because you already spent the time to learn the types of card interactions and not be critical about it. MBT just made a video on this very topic too.
1 of the things i really dislike about keywords aint so much about keywords itself but the proponents of keywords instead
9 out of 10 times someone advocating for keywords cant even properly define what an actual keyword really is but would still go and call anything and everything a keyword slapping the label on to whatever they deem necessary for convenience which is especially true of mtg players like ive seem them call things like the graveyard and extra deck a keyword as justification that yugioh can have keywords because they're already using them
hell recently came across someone in the comments of rarran's yugioh vid that try to proclaim that yugioh's card types of all things are keywords to justify it... wut the actual fk?
Great video, the amount of players and youtubers who talk about it in the laziest and most superficial way is disturbing. Card games are niche and most people who think that YGO is too complicated will continue to think the same if there is a "requirement" at the beginning of the cost of a card instead of ";" at the end for example.
YGO is so unique and different... it would be really sad to see it turn into a generic game after all these years.
I keep seeing people saying you can simplify it to just "search [card]," but the formatting is actually "move [card] from [location a] to [location b]," (with the prepositions and stuff changed to fit the sentence better). This includes stuff like sending things from deck to graveyard, or vice-versa, and stuff like returning cards from the field to the hand or deck. This provides a consistent way to right a bunch of similar effects. I'm sure you could come up with keywords for every permutation, there's already a couple people use informally (bounce and spin for the last two examples) I just wanted to point out that it's the way it is for a reason. Whether you think it's a good reason is up to you.
Before reading this and thinking I'm just a mad MTG fan (I have other reasons to be a mad MTG fan than such a discussion), I love the absolute insanity Yu-Gi-Oh has become. It truly is a one of a card game with many things exclusively unique to it. But I do feel that codifying a few simple effects would greatly streamline the learning curve.
Keywords don't have to be as generic as you think they need to be. For your example of "Search" at 3:35 through 4:20, you can add quantifiers for what can be searched by a card effect. Fenrir could read "Search a 'Kashtira' monster" while Unicorn could be "Search a 'Kashtira' spell." RotA could be "Search a level 4 or lower Warrior-type monster." Search would be the keyword to truncate "Add from your deck to your hand" instead of writing out the effect to add a card every time it appears on a card. Which also saves a lot of the extremely limited space an effect text box has on a tiny Yu-Gi-Oh card. Which card size is another massive problem but that is a whole other topic.
The examples of Baronne de Fleur and Ash Blossom are great examples as to why not every game action needs to be keyworded. Negation effects do not need to be fully keyworded PRECISELY because of how negation effects differ. Some negate the activation and some negate the effect. Keywording those would be a nightmare and would not benefit the game at all.
Third point has some valid reasoning, but part of it also falls a little flat precisely because Yu-Gi-Oh is an eternal format game. 100% agree that the TCG should bring over the effect bullet points from the OCG. But the point that old cards mixing with the new isn't anything new in Yu-Gi-Oh. You can run cards that have never been updated to have problem-solving card text alongside cards with problem-solving card text. How is that any different than having cards with useful keywords like Search and cards that read "Add a [[LEGALTARGET]] from your deck to your hand."? There really isn't any difference. And a good example from Magic is the latest game action to become keyworded, Mill. The effect had been around since the beginning of the game fully written out as "put the top {N} cards of your library into your graveyard (or mentioning an opponent in place of yourself)", but had the fan terminology of "Mill" because of the card Millstone. They codified it into Mill a few years back and there are cards that are played in various eternal formats that still have the effect fully written out. And it doesn't cause any issues in Magic, so I couldn't see it being an issue in Yu-Gi-Oh either.
And also spoiler alert: Yu-Gi-Oh already uses keywords! Excavate is a keyword for revealing the top {N} cards of your deck (Why they don't word it as "Excavate {N} cards" when the old "reveal" would actually take up less text space is beyond me). Banish is a keyword for "Remove from the game." Any card summoned from the Extra Deck that reads "When this card is Fusion/Synchro/Xyz/Link Summoned" is a keyword for "When this card is Special Summoned from the Extra Deck through the proper summoning method". So the argument against Yu-Gi-Oh using more keywords is absolutely farcical to me because they have been using keywords since the GX era, if not earlier.
for the search thing it isnt so much that they're searching something from deck but rather "add to hand" itself is a mechanic and is also an umbrella mechanic over "drawing" too so cards that would prevent adding cards would also prevent drawing but cards that can prevent drawing cannot prevent adding
"searching" itself is also a very loose term in yugioh used for more then just adding or drawing cards, on top of special summoning from deck there are effects that actually just goes and straight up either activates or places from deck to field face-down (set) or face-up and in the case of placing it face-up it actually activates them without ever actually having activated them (yes this is different from activating cards from deck) and the cards that this is subjected to never had a point of being activated either but players would still consider this searching, even banishing or sending specific cards from deck to grave would count as both milling and searching since it places cards is locations that is more easily reached if not advantageous
basically searching in yugioh isnt a unified definition but a collection of various effects both conventional and unconventional that just simply has the shared trait of making cards more accessible
as for some terms being keywords these are easily debunked
"excavate" and "reveal" is a similar case to drawing and adding where the latter is an umbrella term that the former is under association of so effects that fall under "excavate" is also "reveal" but not the same in reverse but basically they were never one and the same, "reveal" even has a sibling mechanic in "look" where "reveal" reveals the card's face to both players but "look" only allows the owner to perceive the card's face and "excavate" is also not a keyword because the localization team simply decided to be grandiose when localization the mundane めくる (mekuru) which simply means to turn or flip over and in fact the very same mechanic can even be used for cards set on to the field too as some archaic cards has this effect under the same terminology in japanese which back then was localized as "pick up" but this effect has been discontinued now only existing exclusively to effects that pick up cards from the top of the deck so excavate in this case is probably used to differentiate it from the older localization of めくる that was previously translated to "pick up" rather then as a completely new mechanic but again its grandiose because something like turnover or even upend wouldve sufficed if "flip up" wouldnt work because its too close to "flip" mechanic
banish is a similar case to pick up -> excavate because "remove from play" literally meant what it said, the idea was that cards removed from play were probably never gonna see play for the rest of the duel since methods to bring them back so were incredibly rare and scarce hence the term being worded as "remove from play", however it was increasing becoming inaccurate as more and more cards printed that made removed from play cards more accessible and so with the introduction of PSCT the devs had a chance to change the terminology and they took it replacing it with "banish" instead shortening it and removing the connotation that these cards would never see play for the rest of the duel meaning "removed from play" is no longer a legal term because it doesnt even exist anymore so "banish" cannot be a keyword else its trying to shorthand something that no longer exist but the way the term is used remains identical as no effects that would reach for banish cards ever refer to a zone and there is never an official zone for it either as it zig-zags between being next to or above the graveyard across various yugioh media with it most recent location being somewhat diagonal to the grave in master duel
the last point about proper summoning is debunked by certain effects allowing you to cheat them out (most notably xyz) without proper summoning but fulfils the proper summon rule by clause that treats it as the respective summoning mechanic and yes this will trigger on (proper) summon effects as long as it doesnt misses timing
another thing is that these arent rule-text for keywords to shorthand but mechanics instead
Yeah, I agree basically with what you said. They'd have to change how card effects are made entirely in order to account for keywords, not just errata existing cards. I think it could be done, but it'd have to be done in a way where they can be adjusted on the fly imo, like having them be an optional format for Master Duel.
One thing I could see them do, though I'd much prefer to digital route, is starting to print new cards for formats (Similarly to how they do Rush Duel, I guess), but these are built with keywords in mind. I'd prefer the Master Duel route though, because this would probably effect the TCG and OCG a bit too. Konami doesn't exactly have the greatest track record when it comes to getting things right upon the first release as well.
Honestly, I think having Master Duel work as a sort of optional test server for new cards, mechanics, formats and ideas would help give Master Duel something that it's missing. With Konami's current payment model though, I don't see this ever succeeding, because it'd cost too much for stuff that may not exist in the future.
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Small side rant about MD, but I think having a $60 version of Master Duel where you get 3 non-holo, undecraftable copies of all the cards available in the Secret, Master and Legacy Packs that are available at that time would be good. There are still people who will go for new cards in the Selection Packs, holo cards, and other cards that aren't available in any of these as well, so it isn't like gems just become redundant either.
Then if they did the testing server route, they could do a $5-10 monthly subscription to access the test server stuff? Idk, but I feel like they could be doing a lot more with Master Duel, but are just sticking to what they know will work/feel comfortable doing, rather than pushing any boundaries, innovating, or making something new.
i think they should change the format of how cards are written honestly just so people arent starting at a wall of text all the time
ocg does it with its numbered circles but sometimes that isnt enough, like there could be more ways to signify the difference in text such as maybe having an icon before a sentence that tells if this effect involves the player, opponent, both or if the following text is simply restrictions/limitations which would make the cards easier to parse as now at a glance you know what to ignore and hone in on just certain lines
@@YukiFubuki. Even color codes could help.
Many YGO Cards have the text: "Once per Turn" it could be "OpT: Draw a card"... And then (Quick Effect), could be "QE: Discard a card, destroy target Monster"...
But see, this is where a lot of this goes awry.
There are 3 different "once per turn" clauses as well as a few fringe other restrictors on usage.
Once per turn: once per turn per unique instance
You can only use effect of "card name" once per turn: once per turn at all, no matter what.
You can only activate "card name" once per turn: as above, but if the activation (not effect) is negated, you can activate the same named card again legally.
Once per duel: as it says.
You can only activate "card name" once per duel: as above, but if activation is negated... blah blah you get the picture.
There are also once per time its face up and other wierd crap too.
Youd have to keyword each of those individually, which would be hard fir new players to track with.
As it stands now, reading the card explains the card.
Massive reboot and set rotation is right. I don't think that's a bad idea though. I think they've been easing us into this change. How? By making legacy formats more official like Edison and goat. They can reboot, and make new tournaments with older formats. I think this is a change the game needs to make.
Well in the case of “Spellsearch (Kashtira)” or “Monstersearch (Warrior Lv. 1-4)” it would save card space. Magic has “keyphrases” too where they can just add a specific thing and not have to make a unique keyword for each possible variation.
Hell it could just be called “Search (Kashtira Spell)” or “Search (Monster Lv. 1-4)”
Smaller key words should be implemented tho. Like how "During either player's turn" is shorten to "(Quick Effect)".
I want to start by saying yugioh already has keywords. Piercing is literally already a keyword. So is banish.
1) too many cards do too many different things.
Wild point because this kind of implies there are not even more unique magic cards?
2) other games have cards that do the same things.
And yugioh has a bunch of normal monsters? Very weak point.
3) cards do similar things but have slight differences.
This nuance also exists in games like magic. Lifelink is a keyword. There are also cards without lifelink that do what lifelink does but slightly different on a trigger that uses the stack, making it counterable. So still a bad point.
4) too many cards to errata.
Worst point on the list tbh. MTG has done HUGE errata’s exactly like this. They simply only update the text on cards they reprint, and announce that older cards with “this” text now have “this” text which means the same thing.
If the cards do the same thing then there is no need to reprint them for the keyword. Just announce future cards will have the keyword.
But keywords/simplification of effects has been done over time. Such as Graveyard to GY and "During battle between this attacking card and a Defense Position monster whose DEF is lower than the ATK of this card, inflict the difference as Battle Damage to your opponent." To "If this card attacks a Defense Position monster, inflict piercing Battle Damage to your opponent." And "Remove from Play" into "Banish", which not all cards have been reprinted with these wording. Not all effects need to be keyworded to add keywords into the game. So they can easily add bullet points csuse not every card need to be reprinted to add them as it doesn't fundamentally change the cards. If they added BPs starting with the latest set going forward, any reprints would get BPs if needed.
As someone returning to Yu-Gi-Oh! who has played many, many other card games a lot, I would like to summarize your arguments and offer my opinions. This is not meant to be an attack on you; I’m just addicted to debating.
You hit the nail on the head on why players want keywords, and I couldn’t have said it better itself. I do want to propose the following Keyword Arguments:
A: Keywords do not change existing card effects
B: Keywords do not prevent cards from having effects that aren't keyworded or prevent card design teams from designing mechanics that aren't keyworded.
Point 1: Too many cards do too many things.
Keyword Argument B.
2:24 - 2:43 What you’re describing is called Vintage in Magic the Gathering and Wild in Hearthstone. What’s unique is that, to my knowledge, Yu-Gi-Oh! does not have other officially recognized formats.
4:16 -- 4:20 Note how “Search 1 Level 4 or lower Warrior Type-Monster” is 6 words less than the printed 15 word card (assuming numbers are counted as words). What you’re describing is called a Keyword Action and is actively used in other card games exactly as described. And yes, you can errata the existing cards to say “Search,” (or not if the game design team never wants to interact with the keyword except for using it to lower future word count.)
4:20 - 6:04 This argument frustrates me. Your argument does not prevent cards from having actions and phrases keyworded aside from being afraid that cards can’t be unique if keywords are used to replace extremely common returning lines of test. I’d like to refer you again to the Keyword Argument B.
Point 2: Too Many Weird Rulings
Your example is two different effects that would have two different keywords (if they were keyworded at all).
Keyword Argument A.
Point 3: All cards are legal in Yu-Gi-Oh!
This is actually a very good point.
Other games have had to deal with this exact same thing, and it’s never pretty. Most card games just divided into different formats, but that’s not why people play Yu-Gi-Oh! Inconsistent templating wouldn’t break the game though, and it comes down to personal taste.
As for my personal experience, modern Yu-Gi-Oh! is miserable to look at, and personally I’d much rather have inconsistent formatting if it meant newer cards were more legible. Keyword Argument A also means they don’t have to re-template old cards to match current formatting.
9:19 - 10:44 I wholeheartedly agree. Keywords are a temporary fix to an ongoing issue, and I don’t think they’d be the fix that proponents like me hope they would be. I think it’d be a step in the right direction, but obviously we’re just two people on the internet and have nothing to do with the game’s design.
Good video. 10/10
Some cards can receive key words and others cannot as they have greater complexity and uniqueness. Many cards have 2 or 3 Biblical-sized effects, not that all of these could be summarized in keywords, but at least 1 would alleviate the amount of tiny text on the card.
Another way to reduce the flood of text on cards I thought of is unfortunately not viable, but it's interesting to think about. Instead of the effect being written directly on the monster card, it would only have a spell/trap card name, this card would be assigned to the monster and attached to it when summoned, just like an xyz. In other words, the effects would be transferred to spell/trap cards and these would be assigned to monsters. Obviously Konami would have to redesign the entire game but I liked that idea.
I believe keywords are a step in the right direction. Not every card needs them, but they can help. Instead of a card saying "When this card attacks a Defense Position monster and destroys it as a result of battle, inflict piercing battle damage to your opponent." It could just say "Piercing."
But the bigger problem overall is that Yugioh cards just do too many things nowadays. Cards don't need 3 effects all with their own conditions. I don't know how they could fix this problem at this point, we are in too deep.
I can't speak for anyone else, but I would probably contend that YGO uses keywords not necessarily _as an all encompassing description of an entire mechanic_ because as you said, YGO cards do a lot of things now... but more as a method _to further condense several phrases that themselves are universal._
first example would be "this card cannot be destroyed/targeted by Monster/Spell/Trap effects" and "this card is unaffected by card effects". terms like that could pretty reliably condensed to "Immunity". you could instead say "this card has destruction/targeting immunity from Monster/Spells/Traps/effects" overall to say the same thing.
second example is the distinction between a "soft" Once Per Turn (Once Per Turn, you can...) and a "hard" once per turn (you can only activate "?" Once Per Turn)... with the former being meant for the card itself, and the latter being to the player. if it were up to me, I would distinguish "soft" as "Once Per Turn, this card can..." and "hard" as "Once Per Turn, your '?' can..."
but yeah, I think Keywords can help condense the superfluous text in the english TCG... Bullet Points also help, as the OCG does that already, but this is my take on Keywords specifically.
well... Except the obvious untargetable, imderstructible, Yugioh could have keyword actions, Like a word for "search on deck" , a word for "return from grave to hand, Or shuffle from grave in deck etc
etc. and yes "specific keywords" like "search lvl4 or lower warrior" Also exist in MTG
I mean we have seen several already yes it's a fuck ton of work but guess what other card games have done it when they changed shit or implemented a keyword to an existing mechanic that didn't have one
Yu-Gi-Oh already have Keywords in Tuner, Union, Spirit, and Gemini. Unfortunately, Konami keeps spelling out the meticulous text of effects. Konami could just cut out the "Can't be special summoned and is returned to the hand at the End Phase" from all Spirit monsters since they all literally do this except for Shinobird. Unions could drop all of the text about equipping, destruction protection, and unequipping and trim it down to the equip target and any unique effects like searching or stat buffs to equipped target. Tuner is fine, Gemini could drop the treating themselves as Normal Monsters and leave the skill if it's been normal summoned on field.
Some archetypes have a reoccurring effect like Madolche recycling and T.G. searching after being destroyed.
Konami could just start the trend of putting number points into cards. Even if you have a paragraph of text, number points would stand out enough to hone in on at a glance. You can also save on text by prefacing ALL of the card's text with the Once per turn clauses so you don't have to keep printing once per turn on each individual effect.
Obviously Yugioh can't have keywords at the same caliber that MtG or Hearthstone has them at, the game is too granular. It won't be able to support 1 word "creature keywords" like trample/flying/reborn/stealth etc. Aside from Piercing of course, Piercing could be 1 word.
But Yugioh literally already uses keywords, that's what excavate or banish or FLIP or set are. It uses these words in conjuction with plain text, the same way other games use keywords in combination with plain text like "behold an 8+ cost unit".
There are 100% vocabulary terms the game could introduce that wouldn't be a massive problem, or text bloat that could be universally cut down on. Hard and soft once per turn could be icons, easily. There's no excuse for "when this card is synchro summoned" not to simply be "on synchro summon" for instance. A batch name /category for "fusion, synchro, xyz, or link monster" like "extra monster" would help immensely too.
Yugioh can't have keywords the same way or to the same extent that MtG or other games have them, but it can have them. These cards are written like absolute hot ass which is why the game is so hard to parse.
Separating Condition and effect would go a long way to format card text though. Rush Duel cards are like that. The textbook for effect also just needs to be bigger tbh. A lot of cards are association with pictures and remembering what they do over time, but it really often is not readable at all at times.
Yugioh has what's called problem solving card text. It uses a colon to denote the activation condition and a semi colon to separate things like the costs and targeting. Maybe not the most elegant solution, but it does do exactly that. It makes sense once you get used to it. Also, if I recommend playing online, the text boxes are bigger there, and the game keeps track of things better than you can.
@@Streptovarius That's the point, PST isn't elegant. Not only that, it actively is hard to parse
During the Main Phase, if your opponent Normal or Special Summoned 5 or more monsters this turn (Quick Effect): You can Tribute as many face-up monsters on the field as possible, and if you do, Special Summon this card from your hand, then Special Summon 1 "Primal Being Token" (Rock/LIGHT/Level 11/ATK ?/DEF ?) to your opponent's field. (This Token's ATK/DEF become the combined original ATK/DEF of the Tributed monsters.) You can only use this effect of "Nibiru, the Primal being" once per turn.
Vs
(1) [Condition][Quick] Your opponent Summmons 5+ times this turn.
[Effect] During the Main Phase: Tribute as many face-up monsters on the field as possible, and if you do, Special Summon this card from your hand, then Special Summon 1 "Primal Being Token" (Rock/LIGHT/Level 11/ATK ?/DEF ?) to your opponent's field. (This Token's ATK/DEF become the combined original ATK/DEF of the Tributed monsters.)
@@KevinTangYT
If you can't parse a sentence that's on you. It's reading, it isn't a laborious task. The average reading speed is about 240 words a minute, the average Yugioh card has about 70 words on it. It should take you take you about 3 seconds to read. Less if just skim for the bits that matter to you. I'll tell you what everyone tells me when I complain of keywords, if you don't understand it just go look it up. It's also worded very carefully to avoid a misunderstanding so I don't get what you're on about with it being hard to read.
Also, the way you've edited it actually changes the effect. For starters you left out the hard once per turn, and yes that's important (Maybe something like "this is a hard once per turn," which is ). Leaving out the "you may," would actually make it a mandatory effect which is important because this is an effect you want to wait until the end of their combo for. The part you truncated isn't even the complicated bit, and the main phase part should be part of the conditions not the effect, it was that way round for a reason. You also stripped out the "normal or special," bit, which is mostly there for clarity and it's three words, I won't say you're wrong on this part, just that those 3 words may or may not actually be in some way relevant.
You know how many words you saved if you add in all the bits you need? About a dozen, you saved about half a sentence worth of letters across half of a paragraph worth of text, good job editing. I'd rather rather grammar than short. See, the problem with this whole argument, is that you don't actually understand why this stuff is the way it is. You didn't even make the text take up less card space because of how you formatted it. It already told you everything you needed to know in as short amount of space it could without compromising grammar. All you've done is switch some prepositions with punctuation.
Problem solving card text is consistent across all cards printed since they've used it. If bothered to learn how to use it you'd know it works quite well. But you're not going to bother to learn it, you're going to keep insisting it could be shorter without even bothering to understand why it's so long to begin with.
@@Streptovarius i remember having an argument with some guy who claimed that half of Destructive Daruma Karma Cannon's text is redundant, don't remember the exact words but it was soemthing along the lines of it not needing to say "as many monsters on the field as possible" as it can be simplified to just specify all monster and "if either player controls a face-up monster(s)" being completely unnecessary and is a useless contingent
the changes he proposed would make the card literally unplayable as it now doesnt account for certain monster not being able to be flipped facedown like links and tokens and thus cannot be activated if any either of them is on field defeating its entire purpose and the latter effect would just contradicts the former effect since you cannot knowingly activate a card that would fail to resolve as you cannot activate a card to banish facedown all face up monster when you would know for certain that there would be no faceup monster to banish since the removal of the contingency line means that you can only activate this card if you know that all monster on the field currently can be flipped facedown in the first place so how can you banish any remaining faceup monster when there would be none to banish
it is very evident that he has zero understanding of how the card worked and why
i even came across someone else last year before who complained that Sky Striker Mobilize - Linkage! with Sky Striker Ace - Kagari made no sense because kagari had only a diagonal upward pointing link arrow, the complaint was that yugioh does not allow for the foresight of being able to send kagari to the grave to summon a link monster since there would need to be a legal zone first because sending kagari herself is something done on resolution of the effect and not a cost or condition that happens prior
smarter then the above guy at least but doesnt realize the difference between sequentially and simultaneously effects of which linkage is of the latter and thus sending kagari and summoning something else in her place in the EMZ is treated as two-in-one and not separate effects resolving in sequence one right after another
@@YukiFubuki.
Thank you for providing good examples of this sort of thing, I couldn't think of any off the top of my head.
The effects of "Destructive Daruma Karma Cannon," are "Change as many monsters on the field as possible to face-down Defense Position, then, if either player controls a face-up monster(s), they must send all face-up monsters they control to the GY."
The thing about how this is worded, the second part affects the players not the monsters. This means that a monster that is completely immune to effects is still removed because it's a forced player action (kind of like annihilator in MtG). This makes it far better removal than it might look at first (still not necessarily good, but that's more a meta thing).
The effects of "Sky Striker Mobilize - Linkage,!" are "If you control no monsters in your Main Monster Zone: You cannot Special Summon monsters from the Extra Deck for the rest of this turn after this card resolves, except "Sky Striker Ace" monsters, also send 1 other card you control to the GY, and if you do, Special Summon 1 "Sky Striker Ace" monster from your Extra Deck to the Extra Monster Zone, and if you have at least 1 LIGHT and 1 DARK "Sky Striker Ace" monsters on your field and/or in your GY, the Summoned monster gains 1000 ATK."
The way I read that is that the first thing it does (well, after the restriction) is get rid of the monster in the extra zone, then summons the other monster. It's pretty clear to me how that works, so maybe the guy misread?
Technically, Yu Gi Oh does have 1 keyword - piercing.
it doesnt, look at every card with piercing and you will see that it has the full text written out, its always some variation of " If this card attacks a Defense Position monster, inflict piercing battle damage."
@@YukiFubuki. it used to be much longer "During battle between this attacking card and a Defense Position monster whose DEF is lower than the ATK of this card, inflict the difference as Battle Damage to your opponent." just for "Piercing"
@@jps_user20 and a lot of it was just fluff like needing to specify what is happening in something atking a def position monster or couldnt be applied to every situations like atk position to defence position because of defense position atkers since the piecing effect is possible to be granted to another monster by an effect
there were more practical reason to shorten it besides just to shorten it
Damn that's crazy
Yugioh has keywords
Piercing
GY
Tribute
Special Summon
those arent keyword, those are terminologies
This is a great video!
You should only do these kind of videos.
They could still have key words for certain things. Instead of saying "inflict piercing battle damage". Just say piercing. The searching they can have the keyword then a colon then say what they search. Eg. Search: 1 l4 or lower warrior
Search: 1 kashtira monster.
Instead of add 1 level 4 or lower warrior type monster from your deck to your hand.
They dont need to reprint all cards. Same way there are cards that dont have problem solving card text. At least not all the cards immediately. But if they did rewave every set to give them keywords they would probably make more money tbh. Because people would want to get the newer version. If they reprinted for example extreme victory. There was never a reprint for that set. People would buy it because past formats are getting popular