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I, for one, like the changes to BOFF powers.
cabezadetortuga
Member Posts: 251 Arc User
As the title says, I actually like and appreciate the changes to BOFF powers.
Because of the changes, my BOFFs will now be more versatile and flexible in what powers they use. This is a good thing. I have more choices about how to play. This is also a good thing.
Also, while this has not been officially stated, I suspect that the changes to how BOFF powers work were a necessary step in fixing the bugs in the loadout system which have plagued us since it was introduced.
Did anyone ever notice that the main loadout bugs were related to how the BOFFS were listed on the "stations" menu? I did. I noticed in the previous system that the loadout bugs were associated with another quirk that happened when you clicked on the drop down menus from the "stations" menu. When you clicked on a station drop-down menu, you would often find that one or more bridge officers were missing from the list and were replaced with duplicate names of other bridge officers which appeared more than once. Through testing, I confirmed that this was happening every single time I experienced a problem with my loadouts. Furthermore, I found that if you saw the duplicate bridge officers in the station drop-down menu and then clicked off the menu to make it go away, then you could re-click the same station drop-down menu and the duplicate bridge officers would be gone; replaced by the correct bridge officers. After doing this, the loadout system would work properly until the next time I loaded a new map, when the bug with the station drop-down menus and the loadout system would return.
I think that the developers discovered the association between the loadout system and how bridge officer powers worked and came to the conclusion that the only way to fix the loadout system was to revamp how bridge officer powers worked. I also think that a lot of the people who are complaining do not understand this and think that the developers are doing all of this to annoy them or because of greed. Those people complaining the loudest could not be further from the truth, in my opinion.
The changes to the BOFF powers are a good-faith effort by the developers to fix the loadout system, and we as players should appreciate their efforts.
So I, for one, say thank you devs.
Because of the changes, my BOFFs will now be more versatile and flexible in what powers they use. This is a good thing. I have more choices about how to play. This is also a good thing.
Also, while this has not been officially stated, I suspect that the changes to how BOFF powers work were a necessary step in fixing the bugs in the loadout system which have plagued us since it was introduced.
Did anyone ever notice that the main loadout bugs were related to how the BOFFS were listed on the "stations" menu? I did. I noticed in the previous system that the loadout bugs were associated with another quirk that happened when you clicked on the drop down menus from the "stations" menu. When you clicked on a station drop-down menu, you would often find that one or more bridge officers were missing from the list and were replaced with duplicate names of other bridge officers which appeared more than once. Through testing, I confirmed that this was happening every single time I experienced a problem with my loadouts. Furthermore, I found that if you saw the duplicate bridge officers in the station drop-down menu and then clicked off the menu to make it go away, then you could re-click the same station drop-down menu and the duplicate bridge officers would be gone; replaced by the correct bridge officers. After doing this, the loadout system would work properly until the next time I loaded a new map, when the bug with the station drop-down menus and the loadout system would return.
I think that the developers discovered the association between the loadout system and how bridge officer powers worked and came to the conclusion that the only way to fix the loadout system was to revamp how bridge officer powers worked. I also think that a lot of the people who are complaining do not understand this and think that the developers are doing all of this to annoy them or because of greed. Those people complaining the loudest could not be further from the truth, in my opinion.
The changes to the BOFF powers are a good-faith effort by the developers to fix the loadout system, and we as players should appreciate their efforts.
So I, for one, say thank you devs.
Post edited by cabezadetortuga on
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Comments
Yeah, that's definitely nice. You just train them once and they have the ability forever, and you can change them out of combat whenever you want. Makes trying out new builds a lot easier and hassle free in the long run.
Yes, it caught a large number of people aside, but the new tutorial should go a long way to help break the ice.
However the new system does have a few minor bugs with it (from what I'm told there are also some big ones). But nothing that you have to deal with that often.
Support 90 degree arc limitation on BFaW! Save our ships from looking like flying disco balls of dumb!
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Nope the bug is still very much alive. I can tell it's coming when I get the double warp-in or transport up.
I fixed 2 characters - haven't looked at 2 and my last has to be re-designed with new powers. I'll get over it and hopefully will be able to ignore it in the future if I can get everything refixed.
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I had previously trained a boff om Omega III and now that ability is gone. Yes, I know how to change the abilities in the new system. I went through the step by step instructions and yes I made sure to click on the commander slot since Omega III is a commander level ability. It simply isn't there anymore.
Also, when I was on another character, I somehow managed to slot Hazard Emitters III - a Lt Commander ability - in the ensign slot. And it worked. I will start taking screen shots if I run into the issue again.
Price like 31K dil to make a specialization token is beyond stupid (and greedy). Other than that, it's fine.
This is one of those minor bugs I mentioned. :P
Support 90 degree arc limitation on BFaW! Save our ships from looking like flying disco balls of dumb!
The bugs are not appreciated, but the relatively quick response to fix them is. Yes, this is somebody saying something nice to the cryptic devs. A shocker, ain't it?:eek:
I like the fact that I can change abilities on the fly. It's nice because I can use the same officers on all my ships and just have them use different abilities based on the ship they're on. I like that.
I also like the Manuals. My Tactical Captain wanted one of his Engineering BoFFs to have Emergency Power to Weapons III. I had my Engineer whip one up and pass it over.. it was much easier then trying to find someone in my fleet that could do it, meeting up and trading BoFFs back and forth just to get an ability.
Now if they can just fix it so that the missing skills are accounted for, that would be great. I use Aux 2 Structural 3 on all my ships, luckily I already had it ready before this system went into place.
Once people figure out that they can use just a handfull of BOFFS to pilot multiple ships - people will feel better about things.
You can basically just shift from one skill to another and keep all the skills your BOFF learned permanently.
It will take time. Like any project theres some bugs and also people dislike change in general.
But after awhile people will start to like it, after they see the potential.
Also once everyone realizes you won't need to buy overpriced exchange BOFFs to get new abilities trained. That's another plus of the system.
Then I'll go back and adjust my old toons, once I have a fairly good handle on it.
I think my favorite part of the game is the first 50 levels now anyway.
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People just get so stuck in their ways and especially in STO, are very often pessimistic of everything. I saw lots of people raging on zone chat, when they were too impatient or stupid to spend 2 minutes figuring out how to re allocate the boff abilities. I actually found it quite amazing how many people were seemingly oblivious to even the most basic game mechanics, or were apparently unable to read.
Not "stuck in our ways". it's more not liking to be gouged by Cryptic over and over again. What even happened to the boff passives? A graphical error or are they now gone?
Noob question : what is this "specialization token" and how is it used ?
They aren't gone.. look on your Traits tabs.
I'm aware of the Traits tab, thx. All that's listed there is a duplicate screen of my abilities tab. They're gone, as in not there/showing up.
The good:
-Smaller, easier to remember space crew: I can reduce my space crew to 6 boffs. I have 1 eng slot, 1 sci slot, 1 tac slot, and 1 universal slot on my ship, so I only need 2 boffs of each career to cover every slot.
-Bigger ground crew: I generally prefer space to ground so I kept by ground boffs limited at the 4 needed for one away team. Now I have extra space and can have some fun ground boffs!
-Cheaper on fc/dil: My toons now need a maximum of 2 embassy boffs with SRO. This is savings for me.
-Cheaper on ec: There were several expensive abilities (like bo3) that I trained, then replaced with something else, then had to retrain again. Now boffs don't lose abilities, so there's no need to untrain them on something expensive.
-Easier to get captain-trained abilities on normal boffs: No more asking fleeties or using the second account I set up to pass boffs between characters on my account. I can search the exchange or have an alt whip up a training manual.
-Possible to get captain-trained abilities on bound boffs: Especially important for my SRO tac officers who could use APO3 or CRF3 sometimes (my main is an eng in an escort). But also useful for training Nelen Exil in ground stuff or getting tier3 heals in my lt comm slot on my tac rom's faeht because I really didn't need GW there as much as I needed another heal.
-Training manuals will be cheap on the exchange: Since it doesn't take any leveling to produce them (except for the specialties), anyone can produce them if they want a little ec. So the price can never get that high.
-Better interface: I just like it more
-Better icons: Sure, it'll take some getting used to and I'll be like "Where's my subnuc???!!!!" for a week or two, but I like them better.
The bad:
-BO3, TS3, etc.... where are they? What happened to rare abilities? I was warned, but that doesn't mean it's not a draw-back to this system.
Doesn't really matter to me though, I retained my ships skills and doubt be changing them any time soon, lol.
Will they? That alleged 'flexibility' doesn't carry over to the loadouts: aka, you can't have one loadout in which a boff has, say, GW, and VM in another. In other words, the only way to keep loadouts working (or at least as badly as before) is to keep your boffs static. In other other words, there's no flexibility, no benefit (except to Cryptic, of course).
To me this was one of the best things added to the game. The minor annoyance to buy back my old skills again could been worse. But its just a minor issue.
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BO3, Torp Spread 3, Viral Matrix 3, etc. These are kind of important. What are we supposed to do?
Also, they need to get rid of the 30 minutes to create the manual. There was never any delay involved in training our BO's before, just stop it. I get the dil, you're greedy, I understand, stop it with the deliberate wasting of my time.
I second this question. I read the patch notes all through and saw nothing about this...
I think once I have my main Tac, Sci and Eng Capitans sorted out for crafting all the top level abilities, i'll be golden. Actually, I'm rather looking forward to being able to reduce my BOff count, just swapping out abilities on the fly, and being able to have the exact same Bridge Officers, regardless of which ship im in, without having to hit ESD and retrain them.
But as lovely as all the new artwork and BOff system is, surely the time could have been better spent sorting out old bugs and issues in game? But, thats the way of the STO i guess, so predictable in there methodoligy its borderline cliche.