Forum:Timing semantics in rules: meaning of "when", etc

I initially posted this in the Talk page for Destroyed by battle because that was where I was when I started asking these questions, but I think the questions are too large for such a page and talk about problems that span broader than that page's talk section. I start by complaining about the word "destroy" and "destroyed" being used ambiguously throughout different rules pages in this wikia. This led me into asking into the timing of actions, and what "when" something happens means, and what actions in the game happen sequentially and are considered to be happening concurrently.

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Interpage conflict - Destroy and Damage Step

There seems to be conflict between a few wikia pages dealing with the Damage Step, as well as the Yu-gi-oh Official Rulebook 8.0.

From the official (but lazily worded and oversimplified and hardly comprehensive) rulebook 8.0: A card is destroyed when it is sent to the Graveyard due to battle between monsters or by an effect that destroys a card. The Destroy page agrees with this, that destroying is the act of moving a card to a different zone, usually the Graveyard.

However, from the Destroyed_by_battle page, it says "Destroyed by battle specifically refers to a monster being destroyed during damage calculation due to the battle." Also, the Breakdown_of_the_Battle_Phase page says (under TCG) that throughout the Damage Step (including Damage Calculation), until the End of the Damage Step, monsters will stay on the field but are referred to as being destroyed throughout this time. This may be because of lazy wording where they meant "is pending to be destroyed" instead of "destroyed", or it could mean instead that the cards are marked and considered "destroyed" during Damage Calculation, but not actually destroyed and do not trigger appropriate effects until the End of Damage Step (These two cases seem functionally the same but are worded differently). Either way it needs to be clarified somewhere.

Furthermore, The Official Rulebook 8.0 also says, under Damage Step Rules, that "When an attacked monster is flipped face-up, any Flip Effects are activated and resolved after damage calculation. If you need to select a monster for the Flip Effect to target, you cannot target a monster that has already been destroyed during damage calculation." again with possibly lazily throwing around the word "destroyed" instead of something like "calculated to be destroyed", but it is unclear. The Damage_calculation page also uses the phrase "When a ... monster is destroyed", inflict the calculated damage to the appropriate player's lifepoints. But monsters aren't properly destroyed from battle until later, during the End of the Damage Step.

I thought I would point this out because trying to learn how the Damage Step works is quite confusing because of this. The rules on one page should not seem to conflict with rules on another page, it often causes frustration when trying to learn or reference rules.

--Yugiohrulesarepoorlydesigned (talk • contribs) 00:53, June 12, 2014 (UTC)

Additional Note: Whenever the word "when" is used in language, it's always hard to understand the timing of actions are framed. For example, the instructions, "When you see the intersection, turn right", intends for you to wait until you finish approaching the intersection instead of immediately turning right. Additionally, all the actions that are performed between seeing the intersection and finishing the turn can all be considered as happening "at the same time", or they can be considered as occurring distinctly and sequentially in time (and each of these distinct units of action will always have composite sub-actions, thus the interpretation of time frames has to be drawn somewhere to logically treat what is sequential and what is parallel.) The time frames of what is sequential and what is treated concurrent are sometimes ambiguous or poorly defined, and that is present here.

Think of player confusion over card situations like:

Gorz_the_Emissary_of_Darkness - as your opponent destroys by battle your last monster.

Questioning if you can activate Trap_Hole if "When... summoned" triggered effects start a chain before it; what is the "last thing that happened" when considering Trap Hole for missing its activation opportunity to Respond.

Player A declares an attack with a Gemini_Elf, Player B tries to activate Battle_Fader's effect, but Player A argues that Player B had missed the timing, because they had blinked their eyes and breathed subsequently after declaring the attack. (This last one is silly and likely never be disputed, but these timing mechanics are not well-defined, so the argument has a point)

This leads into another issue, one about "Missing the Timing", which is a single term to describe the game mechanics for arguably different game features, cards with spell speed greater than 1 and triggered effects, that deal with the time frame in which you can choose activate these things in response to other actions.

These are problems that span throughout all the rules documentation, so I may try move this from the Destroyed by Battle page

--Yugiohrulesarepoorlydesigned (talk • contribs) 17:35, June 16, 2014 (UTC)

Editted--Yugiohrulesarepoorlydesigned (talk • contribs) 17:39, June 16, 2014 (UTC)

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This discussion can probably be split up into two separate discussions regarding the ambiguously used meanings of "destroy" and the definitions of game actions and their timing relations (which actions happen sequentially and which happen concurrently; and also, can one action happen in parallel through the whole duration of other actions defined to happen sequentially with respect to eachother), but whatever.

Mostly, though, I care about the timing issue. To my knowledge, there do not exist any explicit game rules for what game actions are and to what their timing is. Even though the game of YGO is currently not played this way, with a certain definition of concurrency for game actions, cases like Naturia Cliff being used as a Tribute Summon would still activate and not miss the timing. The current game seems to have formed into one where each tiny action everywhere happens sequentially, and is thus a really unintuitive blob of rule spaghetti.

I am thinking about trying to backwards engineer the way the game is played and come up with a list of game game actions and describe their concurrency patterns; what it means to be the "last thing that happened", etc. I can a new page maybe and unofficially detail how these things work.

Hopefully this wasn't a stupid or overly nit-picky topic to bring to people's attention. But I brought it up to hopefully take a step to making the rules of this game more formal and well-defined.

--Yugiohrulesarepoorlydesigned (talk • contribs) 21:05, June 17, 2014 (UTC)