Just gotta say.
Never taken this stupid game serious but been going over threads like this and seeing people like Smeet and even Mand talking is pretty cool. Lot’s of in depth convo. Good thread.
edit: 9/10 discussion
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Yeah, Smeet’s takes are on point today
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Mand too. Believe me, no one hates me more here than him but props due.
I will still point it out though the dude is bringing it ITT.
Good discussion all around. You are new to me Altair but seem to be in this too. Good job man.
I cannot bring anything to this because it is way over my head. I Just enjoy reading it.
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Are you drunk, high or sarcastic?
Something is fishy here 
If you take a short text example sure
Becomes harder to replace owner by controller in these, if text space is the only thing we consider. Which could explain why freezing trap is using “its owner” instead of “your opponent”
Because of these, if you want to maintain consistency, you can’t suddenly introduce the word controller for some cards but keep owner for some others
Besides, controller doesn’t feel like a natural word, not in this context at least, but that may be because I’m not a native english speaker and that the translation wouldn’t really work
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False. Controller is clearer, owner is shorter, screw consistency. The game shouldn’t be worse just because you have OCD
I don’t want to brigade this thread so will make this my last post. I am just being honest. Nothing else.
I have played a long time but just as a stupid game, never took it serious. Once upon a time Mand was on my friends list and was terrible at the game. He couldn’t get past rank 18. LOL!
Now, I have no idea what half the stuff you are talking about even means. It is fun to read though.
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You don’t need to contradict that point, I already said it can just be a me problem
Then you willingly introduce a differenciation between cards while they in fact mean the same thing
That the game tweaks the meaning of a word but is consistent is a thing.
But that it uses 2 different words to talk about the same thing is way worse
Not being a native english speaker is a disorder now ? Well that’s new
Consistency in a digital CCG, where playing the card has a computer show you what the card does, is not a value. At all. It is worthless.
If you can fit an explanation that’s clear enough where people play zero games and know how the card works, that’s good. Clarity is a value. If it can’t be fit in the text box, the idea is to minimize the number of times it needs to be played to understand what it does.
We don’t have human judges in this game, it’s not paper MTG. Anything that was valuable in other CCGs just because humans had to run the game, has zero value here.
These concepts also apply to localization in different languages. In English “owner” is shorter than “controller,” I don’t know about other languages. But a less direct translation that fits in the box and is clearer is better than a more direct translation that doesn’t fit when the English was less clear for brevity.
By introducing inconsistencies on the wording of the same effect you are actually increasing the number of times you’d have to play the cards to know what they do
What does A do ? Oh it does B, ok weird but that may be how it is intended
What does A do ? Oh it does B, weird but ok
What does B do ? Oh it does B…
Wait why ? That’s not normal, if B does B then A should do A, not B. A is clearly bugged, since B exists in the game
Also consistency is definitely valuable, it prevents from having to learn different wordings that lead to the same results. By wording the same thing several ways, you are losing the clarity you are yourself valuing
And I absolutely don’t take physical ccgs in consideration. I’m speaking with hearthstone being my very first game of this kind.
And since Hearthstone is my first game of this kind, I don’t understand why it is hard to understand that you own the minions that are on your side of the board.
It has been well explained earlier in the topic how ownership was a limitation from physical card games
Knowing who had the physical ownership of the cards was valuable in mtg because of the physical limitations of the game. Rooting the word in these physical limitations has zero value in hearthstone
If you play Treachery, you literaly GIVE a minion to your opponent, if you give it to them, it is now their, they own it. If they TAKE a minion, why shouldn’t it be their ?
Only if you have issues with reading comprehension
This whole thread is about a single word being missinterpreted
They want that word to be kept in the game but being partially replaced on some cards.
You don’t need issues with reading comprehesion to be disoriented by something they want to be more complicated that it is now
If the same effect is described by 2 words with different meanings, it’s actually because you have reading comprehension issues that you won’t see the problem
A good example of this is with the slight inconsistencies that exist within “in X turns” that the game has (even with wheel of death fixed here).
A card like
Counts the end of the holder’s turns to ensure that it is in hand a full 2 turns before they change.
Counts end of the player’s turns to make sure they get 3 uses of the effect.
Counts the end of opponent’s turn so they get 3 turns to play their cards.
Dormant for X turns and Rhythm and Roots and the like count the start of the player’s turns so the opponent gets that many turns to prepare.
All of these count turns differently, but are intuitive enough about their timings.
A physical card game would need to be explicit about that timing (your end phase, standby/upkeep, opponent’s end phase, etc.). Hearthstone doesn’t have to be so long as the end result is still intuitive enough that a player ideally has to play 0 games to understand it.
Inconsistencies are mostly bad when they needlessly make it harder to predict what the card is going to do before you play it for the first time.
That said, if they wanted a different word than “owner” that got the same meaning, but fewer letters than “controller,” “holder” or “master” might work as a term to describe that without using a word that has a pretty explicitly different meaning in other CCGs.
Devil’s attorney speaking
If the card is on the board you don’t hold it. People will say “my opponent never held that card, I held it, I’m its holder”
I think this one is even more ambiguous since nothing in the game implies a clear change of master. Even if you consider a minion-master relationship, people that don’t consider taking control as taking ownership could also not consider it as receiving allegiance “it may be on their board by force, but it is still my minion so I remain its master”
Not saying I agree with what I wrotte, but you’ll always have players disagreeing with each wording
Yeah, the other option is to change mind control style effects to say take ownership. Just align the verbs more explicitly.
Here’s the trick: don’t belligerently attack people as an opener, and they’ll talk a lot more.
I also thought of this one but didn’t want to stretch it too far
But since people disagree with controlling and owning being the same thing in the game
Then you’ll have players saying “gaining ownership only means that you’re now the owner, not that you have control of it”
Since they claim that if you take control of a minion, you don’t take ownership, since they are dissociated, then if you only take ownership, you don’t take control
Yeah, that makes sense too.
So I double back to the original idea, expanding the collection’s related cards info to include ruling info when appropriate (such as “the owner is the current controller”) in cases like this where you’d otherwise have to have played it at least once before to understand interactions.
It’s more acceptable to put larger form info like that when the card is being inspected in the card library.