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My two main gripes with abduct:
"realism": Even if the game isn´t inherently realistic, it still needs some internal logic - roughly recognizable laws of physics being one. Thus aircraft fly, while marines stay on the ground for example. In this regard abduct is extremely counterintuitive - I can´t even conjure up an imaginary sci-fi way this would work or what it would look like. And I´m sure I´m not the only one here - its not a coincidence no movie cutscenes ever featured a viper abducting a protoss mothership... Not to mention that the ingame graphic resembles a (poorly) fan-made mod.
Gameplay: As I said before, abduct only works if the viper is with a large clump of units. The viper is therefore useless when separated from the main army. Also, the only protection from it, is a clump of units of your own, to keep the viper away. Harassing a viper army with small groups of units is punished hard, since they can´t expect to get away. Thus, it promotes HOTS-style deathball-play, rather than the all-over the map skirmishes of SB.
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I think the most damning comment on Abduct is that it's uninteresting. I second the poster above who says they've never seen Abduct result in interesting play - it occasionally creates a moment of drama, but the drama is literally "will the Zerg quickly right click the Colossus, or will it get away?" That's not exciting.
Every other problem with the ability could be dealt with - I could imagine an animation, for example, where the viper latches onto the ground or sends a second tentacle into the ground behind it or something to give more of a feeling that it's really pulling the target, and "I'm getting abducted" animations for the units would help, too, but I don't really see the point in fixing cosmetic issues when the ability itself is just boring.
I don't really like the Spawn Broodling idea, I think that's even less interesting than Abduct. If we want a single target instant-kill ability, I think it should be something with contermicro potential. Honestly nothing good occurs to me, but there are much better minds than mine in the community at coming up with ideas like that, I'm sure someone can think of something that would be fun.
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Irradiate is the perfect example of a single-target spell with counter micro potential.
A few ideas for single-target abilities, mostly taken from other games:
- instant-kill
- unit explodes after X seconds
- spawn broodlings
- polymorph
I don't know if these abilities are always the most fun to be honest.
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On March 03 2014 23:23 Ygg wrote:
"realism": Even if the game isn´t inherently realistic, it still needs some internal logic - roughly recognizable laws of physics being one. Thus aircraft fly, while marines stay on the ground for example. In this regard abduct is extremely counterintuitive - I can´t even conjure up an imaginary sci-fi way this would work or what it would look like. And I´m sure I´m not the only one here - its not a coincidence no movie cutscenes ever featured a viper abducting a protoss mothership... Not to mention that the ingame graphic resembles a (poorly) fan-made mod.
Wait, you can imagine ways why a bigass spaceship like the Battlecruiser only moves at the speed of a snail but somehow can escape gravity when flying into space. You can imagine ways why these spaceships get destroyed by creatures which spit on its surface. You can come up with ways why siege tanks have more range than all other units with superfast moving projectile (damage point 0), but when it comes to shooting at something flying, you rather use some slow moving rocket walker with less impulse, firepower and range.
But you still have a hard time seeing that said spaceship can be pulled by some large outer space, superspecifically mutated Alien.
I agree that Vipers pulling Colossi and BCs looks stupid, but so does marines attacking BCs and Command Centers not being able to land upon a burrowed unit... There is really no reason to complain about the visuals/physics of Viper pulls over all the other things in the game apart from "hey, it wasn't in Broodwar. Why isn't this mod Broodwar?".
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@Big J, I think Command Centers should be able to land on burrowed units. That's a fun change to the game imo. All terran buildings should be able to crush zerglings and broodlings imo, so fun.  And even if you account for battlecruisers breaking the laws of physics, then abduct still shouldn't drag ultralisks and tempests. Also, there is a difference between the obscure physics of how the battlecruiser functions and the evident mechanic behind abduct (it's a lasso/hook, which every person is aware of how they work).
And mind you that marines have combat suits that greatly enhance their speed.
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I would rather have abduct then Spawn Broodling. There is a reason why queen was not used much in BW. Also Abduct with all its shortcomings still lets you micro more than Spawn B does.
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Maybe Abduct would be interesting if it actually pulled the first unit it hit, but I don't think that can work in this game because of friendly fire.
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On March 03 2014 23:23 Ygg wrote:
My two main gripes with abduct:
"realism": Even if the game isn´t inherently realistic, it still needs some internal logic - roughly recognizable laws of physics being one. Thus aircraft fly, while marines stay on the ground for example. In this regard abduct is extremely counterintuitive - I can´t even conjure up an imaginary sci-fi way this would work or what it would look like. And I´m sure I´m not the only one here - its not a coincidence no movie cutscenes ever featured a viper abducting a protoss mothership... Not to mention that the ingame graphic resembles a (poorly) fan-made mod.
Gameplay: As I said before, abduct only works if the viper is with a large clump of units. The viper is therefore useless when separated from the main army. Also, the only protection from it, is a clump of units of your own, to keep the viper away. Harassing a viper army with small groups of units is punished hard, since they can´t expect to get away. Thus, it promotes HOTS-style deathball-play, rather than the all-over the map skirmishes of SB.
Sc always used a representative token as a way to explain things. So while ingame it is one Viper pulling a Mothership around, in "reality" it could be 100 Vipers represented by one token pulling the Mothersip.
Pretty much like Stim is explained as buffing the Marine and enabling him to use the second fire option of their rifle. It is rather easy to explain things in a Scifi setting and if you complain about realism where entities use the power of their mind to create lightning storms then you basically search for an excuse to say: "I don't like this but can't explain the reason"
Afterwards you have a fairly good point about abduct though, but that one is true for every support spell caster. Abduct is in the end just a Finger of Death skill, but under the condition that you need units along and that you can't abduct everything. So its actually one of the better designed fingers of death.
And harassing an Army usually ends up with the units dieing , otherwise the large army wouldn't work in the first place.
I always thought it would be funny if abduct would incorporate supplies. So the Viper is pulled in the direction of the unit it is abducting based on their supply. So it would be rather hard to abduct heavy units from the middle of an army, without loosing the Viper. But I guess it stands against the Consume ability, which indicates its a reusable caster. Well it can be reused if you grab the small fries, but it would end up turning into an "harass death ball" skill by picking out smaller units and running away.
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On March 03 2014 23:41 Grumbels wrote:@Big J, I think Command Centers should be able to land on burrowed units. That's a fun change to the game imo. All terran buildings should be able to crush zerglings and broodlings imo, so fun. And even if you account for battlecruisers breaking the laws of physics, then abduct still shouldn't drag ultralisks and tempests. Also, there is a difference between the obscure physics of how the battlecruiser functions and the evident mechanic behind abduct (it's a lasso). And mind you that marines have combat suits that greatly enhance their speed.
Oh, I don't have a problem with such things. Marines have Gauß-Rifles, and if you have ever heard anything about Gauß, you know only the mightiest stuff in the world gets named after him. No wonder that they are so OP.
I'm not even against changing abduct if people come up with something better, but the arguments against it right now are very weak apart from the one that you kind of need vipers+armies to use it.
Imo, it is not a bad ability in terms of strategy. It breaks massive techturtle bullshit strategies to a certain extend. Like in SC2, it makes it possible for Zerg to win endgames despite being heavily disfavored in straight up engagements - which makes sense because due to the larva mechanic it is simply hard to give Zerg very strong straight counters without imbalancing the game.
But yeah, give the Viper Akula Submarine missiles with some effect upon impact and I'm all for change. 
Edit: Though I believe that there would also be ways to make Abducts much more exciting, like if pulling didn't happen to the place from where the pull was initiated, but if the pull would drag the unit to the place that the Viper flies to during the pulling action. Then of course control options like how it is targeted, how it could be avoided etc. Maybe some splash area where it could pull multiple small units... Repercussings if it would try to pull big units/buildings, where the Viper would get pulled in the wrong direction.
Maybe attach the pulled unit and the Viper to each other and they both deal damage to each other (like a fixed degeneration for both) for as long as one of them dies or the abduct gets canceled.
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On March 03 2014 23:46 -Archangel- wrote:
I would rather have abduct then Spawn Broodling. There is a reason why queen was not used much in BW. Also Abduct with all its shortcomings still lets you micro more than Spawn B does.
Actually, Queen was used in the later stages of BW when SC2 was already out, so we were watching SC2 and didn't know about some strategies like 5 Rax into late game Mech from Terran, or mass Queens from Zerg to counter Terran mech. Still, I agree that I like Abduct more than Spawn Broodlings.
Abduct isn't strong spell on its own, you need other units for spell to have any effect, you need to watch out for both Vipers and your other units, and enemy's positioning, exploiting holes in his defense and you also can destroy flying units. On the other hand, Spawn Broodlings is just "shoot and forget" kind of spell, and it would definitely be overpowered with smart-casting.
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abduct promotes deathball play, you will never see the viper be usefull outside of big army against big army, i think that is a pretty big "flaw" of the spell.
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On March 04 2014 00:02 The_Red_Viper wrote:
abduct promotes deathball play, you will never see the viper be usefull outside of big army against big army, i think that is a pretty big "flaw" of the spell.
That is just a bad excuse. You are pulling 2-3 units, you can kill them with your 20 Hydralisks, you don't need 200 supply to do so. On the other hand Vipers are counter to big Terran and Protoss deathballs of mass Carriers/BCs with caster support. The kind of deathballs that Zerg in BW/Starbow doesn't have since Zerg in these games is more about quantity over quality.
Anyway, Spawn Broodlings isn't the answer, I would rather see few casters for support with ton of small units wreaking havoc(Vipers + Defilers with the rest of Zerg army), than having smart casting with the completely broken ability, which will just result into massing spellcasters like they were doing in WoL with Infestors and right now with the Ravens, and those games are terrible.
The closest thing to the massing caster is massing Science Vessels, but you make like ~10 of them, and the rest of the army is made of Marines, Medics, Firebats, Tanks, Dropships etc, and even then SVs aren't that big of a problem because they don't kill stuff instantly.
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There is so much in the game that makes no sense from a functional perspective, but that is explained very well from a conceptual one. Terran buildings burning down, for one. There is no gameplay purpose for that to exist, possibly you could invent one by having flying buildings starting to burn down to prevent draws, but the main reason it's in the game is because it is cool. You can't purely look at functionality, because that is only relevant within the context of it serving the gameplay experience. If you can add flavor to the game without it interfering too much with the gameplay concepts we have, then why not consider it? Otherwise the experience risks becoming pointless and lifeless.
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On March 03 2014 23:38 Big J wrote:
Wait, you can imagine ways why a bigass spaceship like the Battlecruiser only moves at the speed of a snail but somehow can escape gravity when flying into space. You can imagine ways why these spaceships get destroyed by creatures which spit on its surface. You can come up with ways why siege tanks have more range than all other units with superfast moving projectile (damage point 0), but when it comes to shooting at something flying, you rather use some slow moving rocket walker with less impulse, firepower and range.
But you still have a hard time seeing that said spaceship can be pulled by some large outer space, superspecifically mutated Alien.
I agree that Vipers pulling Colossi and BCs looks stupid, but so does marines attacking BCs and Command Centers not being able to land upon a burrowed unit... There is really no reason to complain about the visuals/physics of Viper pulls over all the other things in the game apart from "hey, it wasn't in Broodwar. Why isn't this mod Broodwar?".
In short: Yes, most other things I can intuitively accept as tokens of something that makes sense i SC universe, but a 25 km long lasso tail of a viper, dragging a siege tank flying through the air (still in siege mode mind you), and landing it unharmed, resieged and ready to go, I ... well I simply just can´t. Maybe my imagination is just limited.
But thats beside the point. Screw realism, as long as I get some pretty graphics to look at. And graphics aside, we can all accept a lot of nonsense for gameplay reasons (command center landing thing for example). Abduct however provides no interesting gameplay, and it doesn´t even HAVE graphics, apart from the tail sticking out.
Basically my problem is this: bad gameplay + bad graphics + no inner logic = ick...
All in all, its simply below the standard of the rest of this mod. Could be replaced with almost anything as far as I´m concerned, shouldn´t be too hard to come up with better alternatives.
Please let go of the brood war fetichist accusations btw, its not constructive. I quite like how this mod is turning out, and there is a reason we´re all on this thread and not the SC2BW one...
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On March 04 2014 00:02 The_Red_Viper wrote:
abduct promotes deathball play, you will never see the viper be usefull outside of big army against big army, i think that is a pretty big "flaw" of the spell.
Zerg has muta and lings for harras, it does not need support or spellcasters to fill that role.
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Russian Federation618 Posts
Leaving smartcast matter aside, I was thinking about possible tournaments and came up with idea, which I hope will be interesting to Xiphias and other Starbow stuff, who organize tourneys. So, the idea is, that after start of new ladder season players will have 2-3 weeks to climb on the ladder, then 8 top ladder players from each region will be put in the 16-player one-day single-elimination tournament, with matches being played simultaneously. Ro16, Ro8 and Ro4 are Bo5, finals are bo7. Seeding will be like top1 NA vs top 8 EU, top2 NA vs top7 EU etc. I believe this kind of tournament will be cool, hope Starbow team will find something useful for them in this idea.
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There's room for a monthly official Starbow invitational isn't there? (with more qualified players every month or so) But I guess finding sponsorship money for the prize pool is a bit tricky.
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@ Abduct
I agree that the spell is slightly more interesting than spawn boodling but generally quite boring and illogical in some settings.
Before we had Viper we had Infestors which could use neural parasite while burrowed (yes it was fun but broken). Having neural parasite at a reasonable range (6-8 perhaps) on the Viper might be a good replacement. They are both very similar as they deal with single high-priority targets. The biggest difference, however, which I think makes neural a tad more interesting, is that you can counter it by killing the spallcaster, even after the spell has been casted (hence the range must be not too low).
It would still deal with reavers/ carriers / tanks etc, and it would be a tad better without the rest of the army.
Neural is not the must fun spell ever, but I think it might be a better alternative. Maybe it is possible to tweak it in some way to make it even better?
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On March 03 2014 23:46 -Archangel- wrote:
I would rather have abduct then Spawn Broodling. There is a reason why queen was not used much in BW. Also Abduct with all its shortcomings still lets you micro more than Spawn B does.
queen was used in the late BW era though. mostly vs mech.
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EPT
