I began thinking (I know a scary thought

). that when there are changes to the game mechanics (which cause specials to no longer work good for your type of build) by the Devs for whatever reason, should'nt there be a powers respec option for your Bridge Officers afterwards?
Currently, once you train your BO's, whether by a Trainer, another Bridge Officer Candidate (which you lose after your BO is trained), or by yourself or another Captain.
I think it only prudent that you can still receive Bridge Officers (Green, Blue, or Purple) on occasions from reaching certain point gains, certain missions (such as the Breen BO), Accolades Accomplishments or other goals.
Currently, I believe the Breen Bridge Officer is the last one you can receive (Blue) after reaching Vice Admiral Rank unless you buy them from the Exchange or the ESD Officer Saleslady.
The higher end special skills ought to be free of charge in exchange for the same tier special you no longer want for your Bridge Officer due to the changes in the game beyond your control.
Another note, some of these powers are hard to figure when you are buying them to train up your BO's. For example:
ESD Skills Trainer has tier 1 skills mixed in with tier 2 skills on the same level. It may be the highest tier 2 type power to train in that category, but it still says level 1 even though it's level 2 strength. This needs worked on. Due to the fact that later on, as your double checking everyone's skill level in your Bridge Officer crew, you see tier 2 levels amongst all of your BO's except for 1 that has a tier one. believing you may have skipped this BO, you rush to upgrade them before your next mission, where the skills will come in handy, just to find out that it is already maxxed out, but at a tier 1 level. If that makes sense. It doesn't to me and always leaves doubt and suspicions later on as to whether I have maxxed out my capabilities on my Bridge Officer crew.
Comments
I completly agree. This is what happend to me with both the season 1.2 and season 2 updates. Any ideas on how this could be handled?
The last line.
The last line is the best way I think. The BO Trainer should have another category for tier power exchanges.
If you have a Torpedo Spread Level III, then you can change it for a Beam Overload III which will be one of the several choices in the exchange for each category (Sci, Tac, Eng).
That was an example. If you look at real life training in the military, if the Military hired you becaus of certain skills or abilities such as Fire Rescue, and they no longer needed Fire Rescue because of automation which pretty much nerfs your abilities, they should train you in another field at their expense since you still are employed with them.
You can pretty much say that Cryptic is the Head of the Federation and they nerf things, which should require them to retrain you (in similar field IE tiered power) as you keep your same rank being a Bridge Officer.
It is only Logical.
Second, the fact that in the "real world" you can learn new skills doesn't mean you automatically forget your existing skills: IE, I don't forget my fire/rescue training just because they decided to train me to become a scuba diver.
Third, I don't know about you but I have so many merits stacked up that I'll never use them all. Some of my Admirals have 50-60k merits. You can retrain a BO in all 4 abilities to 9 ranks for about 9k merits, IIRC.
It just doesn't seem like that big of a deal to me.
You can train your BO's in skill level 3 powers using merits? Where?
Thats what I thought. Ok so everyone has to run around spending their time and (sometimes other Captain's time, which may take days if you have a real helpful friend which in place you have an empty slot until the friend decides it's time to give them back to you trained), their merits (indeed there are enough) or possibly try to find another BOFF on the exchange with the Powers you are looking for, just because a Dev nerfed your Boff's current Power.
It doesn't seem like alot, but if you have 3 VA's or more, well you can see where it would be a great pain for the player, and something they should'nt be forced to do on the whim of a Dev's nerf.
The road of the 2nd mass exodus of SWG was caused by things like this:
Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house
Just one creature was stirring, and clicking the mouse.
The stimpacks were hung from the backpacks with care,
Almost to master! Just need one more square!
The grinders kept grinding, ignoring their beds,
While visions of holocrons danced in their heads.
And Mamma in her fleshwrap and I in my composite
Had just settled down after a quick terminal deposit.
When up on the message boards came such a chatter
I flew to the site to see what was the matter.
Away into Windows I stole with a flash,
To read the new nerf, cost of 15 bucks cash.
The whiners already had cursed their new gun,
Its nerfed beyond reason! This game is no fun!
When what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But old Saint Q3PO full of nerf cheer.
The SOE staff had their nerf bats at ready,
But the servers as always were not quite so steady.
More rapid than eagles the nerf lists they came,
And there was the update, and each nerf by name.
No med droids! No dancers! No Bounties or Armors!
No clothing! No pets and no lewt for lewt farmers!
By the end of the list, by the end of the post,
It was hard to tell who had been nerfed quite the most.
I quickly logged on and loaded my ranger,
But his items were gone and his stats were in danger.
My backpack was empty, my hides were gone too,
Everything had been nerfed from my helm to my shoe!
I clicked on a link and I wrote out a ticket,
In seconds the staff made it clear I could stick it.
I reported a bug: This nerf must be a goof
And suddenly 3PO popped in with a POOF!
Weve nerfed the whole game to eliminate cheaters,
(Then he paused and ran back when he warped 50 meters)
We nerfed every Twilek and Mon Calamari,
We nerfed every stat and made customers sorry.
We made the Krayt Dragons less harmful than smurfs
and then we took care to nerf previous nerfs!
We nerfed Imps out on Bestine and Rebs out on Lok,
We nerfed all the flame guns and now they just smoke.
Your once mighty carbines? Now barely can sting.
We nerfed every item! We nerfed everything!
And as that old dev disappeared out of sight
He cried 15 bucks from all, and to all a nerf night!
I hope you enjoyed this little rhyme of wit,
but down the road, with each little change
causes mass disagreement, enough for some to quit?
In other words, stability in the game early and very slow nerfing allows everyone (not just the power players) to find a niche in their playstyle.
The answer is not to keep everyone busy with outfitting themselves because of nerfs, but to add more missions and quick easy re-defining their characters if they do get nerfed.
Well if your desire is to work hard on crafting per se, to get to the Blue X level gear, then next week, you discover that they nerfed the crafting and you no longer can use any of your anomolies that you have spent hours gathering. it would upset you. Same goes for people that outfit their BO's with certain abilities.
Yes, it is very minor, but when there are changes across the board, over a period of a short time (within a couple months) and then..."Look it's nerfed againI"... it desroys players confidence in their build or future builds. It makes people hesitant to start anything new, for it may be nerfed in another couple of months.
Nerfing is not part of the game, it is a result of people whining to a Dev crew that did not foresee different aspects of the ability, power, strength, weapon type, shield type, armor type, and so on.
Everything "nerfed" can be avoided completely if tested throroughly (by the devs themselves) and not rely on the tribble players to say "This is great!!" so they can get on when released and pretty much abuse their testing priveledges by using the improved "exploit" to "I win" until the exploit is discovered and "nerfed".
It is just one thing that I agree is not huge in itself, but it does result in problems to the silent majority causing the exodus described above.
Example:
The old power relied on emitters where the new power relies heavily on sensor probes. Let us pretend that you had a rare purple MK XI Deflector Dish with 22 points to Emitters and there are no sensor probes anywhere with those many points in sensor probes.
Also then you have to buy or loot a console with high end sensor probe.
The amount of running around changing things to get close to what you already had can be overwhelming, especially if you have 3 characters.
It is rediculous to "have to" go on these searches when another player feels a power is too strong then the devs nerf the power, forcing the multitudes of others to have to change up everything they have already earned with no reimbursement for their troubles.
I agree with your post. My first Charatcer was a Sci captain. With all the nurfs of seasons 1, 1.2 and 2, I started a tac captain and have only used my sci guy for the weekly missions. Now the Devs are nerfing abilities without telling anyone and without testing on tribble. Take the Grav Shift ability as an example.
I have now given up on doing anything other then med kit with my sci captain and it realy TRIBBLE@^%$^ me off! All that time ranking him up and now it's almost no fun to run a mission as that guy.:( Oh-well. At least I can phaser stuff to atoms with my tac captain.