Okay, I keep seeing people argue for the removal, or nerf, of abductors.
I instead suggest a buff of a few specific things, and i’ll explain a lot of what i like about abductors and what i think causes the dislikes.
Keep in mind, just basic ideas.
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-Remove the brain trauma you get on top of the heart/objective. it’s meaningless, and sometimes just makes your round worse. Fuck that.
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Make the surgeries faster. Maybe provide them with a tool they can buy after 3 or 4 experiments that allows them to bypass the normal surgery (say normal surgery takes 20 seconds to do, switching tools and all. This would be a one click tool taking 15 seconds, that will allow to do this fast and without fumbling). Allows them to choose between economizing in case the agent inevitably loses his batong, or going for rapidity and efficiency.
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Add more gimmicks for the abductees.
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Allow abductors to choose from a list of gimmicks, when sending people down. Right now, the three buttons have no actual meaningful function (dissect, probe, analyze iirc), but instead make them all have 3 randomly chosen abductee gimmicks, which you can choose one of, before they get randomized for the next abductee you put in there.
This one’s debatable. Some could argue it’d be great to allow for everyone to have different gimmicks, but it could also mean cunt abductors will use this to choose the worst gimmicks of them. But, abductors can choose organs, which can have worse effects than our current gimmicks, so i’m still fine with that idea.
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batong no longer sleeps, instead, its stun will be in two parts : First stun, stuns for as long as normal, second stun, stuns twice as long, AND disables comms. That way, people about to be abducted can still yell/feel a sense of control, and attempt roleplay with emoting abductors, over just alt tabbing and waiting for it to end.
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this one would be closer to a small rework, but make abductors less strong early one and have to actually acquire their gear throughout. Make it harder for them to greentext, the only reasons i don’t see abductors greentexting nowadays is because the shuttle was called too fast.
These come from someone who played a lot of abductors, due to having a lot of ghost hours.
What I like about abductors, is that there’s an actual sense of threat station-wide. You do wonder if you’re in danger, and try to stick together upon learning they’re overwatching. depending on their competency, the tone of the shift can quickly and wildly change.
And it’s chaos. A lot happening, panic, threat, confusion, it’s enjoyable. It’s a source of great things to remember, be it abductee or not, and could be character-defining moments if you roleplay in such a way.
However, a lot of people just. Don’t follow with their abductee gimmicks. Mostly because they’re either inconsequential or boring (shave people’s hair… okay…), and end up repetitive due to there being so few. And yeah, it sucks. I try to fix it by giving fun brainwashes when i’m an abductor, but it’s not always possible.
The complaint of “i don’t like feeling disempowered/having to alt tab for 20 years” is very valid too. Should be adressed. Same for the fact abductors can’t really roleplay back apart from miming.
And now, my biggest gripe, and what i hear a lot of complaints about.
“It just breaks up whatever I was doing and ruins my roleplay/my project.”
I fundamentally disagree with this one. It is a roleplay game. I, personally, enjoy actually dying most of the time. It wraps up whatever i was going through that shift in a tiny little cute bow, making me able to remember it more than an uneventful shift where I focused on my autism project for 20 years. Abductors, fit in here too. A wild change of pace, a new way to approach a round, modifying how i play and how i approach others, is fun. And I genuinely don’t understand people who dislike it for that specific reason.
Even on high roleplay servers, you have a lot of events happening to break the monotony of a shift. Be it the creativity and help given to traitors to provide entertaining scenarios to the crew, or admin interventions and events to spice it up, it allows people to actually be inside of a story and not just isolated doing nothing.
If you really feel that disturbed that you died because “i can’t roleplay anymore”, then, i really believe you should opt for a different form of roleplay game, one which does not feature at its core a chaotic and silly narrative-maker. Maybe a chat-room ala vrchat, or TTRPGS, which are naturally more predictable.
But SS13 really isn’t a game where you should expect your RP session to be predictable. One moment, it’s discussion between coworkers, the next, it’s panic because of a plasmaflood and trying to hide with said coworkers, or alone if they died, making up your own story in your mind and encountering a few other survivors to continue this round’s “story”. That’s the essence of ss13. And I really think you should shift your mindset around that, because i really don’t think ss13 would be for you otherwise.
And if you feel annoyed that you died because you couldn’t finish whatever project you had. look, dude, you can just boot up your own ss13 server really easily, turn off random events, refill power here and then, and do whatever thing you wanted to do on your own with no danger. You would even be able to try out dangerous things safely, and be able to know how to reproduce them in game much faster. AND probably feel less frustrated if you fail, because you already know how to do it !
Overall,
This is a round event meant to feel actually threatening and dangerous, while keeping a whacky/silly enough nature to not warrant panic like a blob would. If you see it as the same level of threat as a sentient slime spawn, you’re really really wrong on that.
It has charm, wackiness, sillyness, and provides a lot to the overall RP experience whenever someone actually bothers enacting out their abductee objectives. It has flaws, it needs a bunch of ironing out, but it’s good. Better than what a bunch of people would like to make you believe.
And I really oppose the idea of removing them, and i don’t think you could rework them from the ground up without losing a lot of what makes abductors, well, abductors.