Thanks everyone for providing Feedback and letting us know about any bugs you are encountering as both are very helpful hear.
Class Training Manuals - It is a bug that players currently have recipes for other class training manuals. This will be fixed in the next patch. A Tactical player should not have Science and Engineering training manual recipes exposed to them.
Rare Boff Abilities - When the system is released it will retrain any Rare Boff Abilities that a Boff had to begin with (so if a player accidentally untrained a rare ability, they will get it back on that Boff). We are also planning on releasing those Rare Abilities as Training Manuals in the future but we have not determined the method on it yet.
Traits - Boff Traits should not be affected at all by this update. Please report any bugs that you find.
Boff Training - With the release of this new system we will no longer be supporting the old functionality of consuming a Boff to train another in an ability. If you have any Boff's you were saving for this purpose you should use them now before the system goes live. We will also no longer be supporting players being able to directly train Boffs for free in an ability. Going forward all Boff training will be consistent and require the use of Training Manuals.
Dilithium Cost - Just to be clear on this cost any Training Manual that you purchase from the Boff Trainer (which is the vast majority of them) do not require Dilithium. You will only need to spend Dilithium for the high end abilities that must be crafted. We are evaluating the exact amount of Dilithium required to create the PADD component though and appreciate hearing feedback from the community before making a final decision.
Thanks,
Mike "Warpdust" McTyre
Systems Designer
Star Trek Online
Thanks for the additional details.
One comment that becomes immediately evident then, given your point about no BOFF consumption is:
What exactly is the expected value/outcome/use of the massive BOFF surplus currently in the game?
Consuming a BOFF for training was never ideal by any means but it was, essentially, the only way these leave game short of deletion.
The exchange just moves them around for consumption for training, in the vain hopes of securing even one or two EC total for the officer in question and we never have the space or need for a wildly varied BOFF complement in our crew now as it is, unless we want to experiment.
It is silly and wrong that the cheapest DOFF white I ever see is for several thousand EC in the exchange, often no lower than 30k or more for a simple white Duty Officer, while the Bridge Officers as the supposed 'top performers' are sold for 1 EC a piece, sometimes even for Very Rare BOFFs due to their utter lack of applicable value.
I'm totally in favour of making our BOFFs more meaningful and useful in our active roster but for the system to go live and really offer value there needs to be as part of this revamp, in my opinion, some means to convert BOFFS into other resources/utility.
Whether that is:
A) Assign to Fleet stations for Fleet Credit as part of a daily or DOFF mission Convert BOFFs to DOFFs in some fashion; this could be a variant of the existing 'Reassign Underperforming Duty Officers' chain of DOFF missions, using BOFFS instead of DOFFS. The exchange surplus would vanish overnight if you could trade 5 blue BOFFS in for one purple Doff.
C) Actually assigning them an EC or Dilithium Value on trade in back into the empire officer pools at Bridge Officer shops.
D) Using them as a 'beam down help' consumable device akin to a security team (not my best idea, but looking for ways to apply them)
My circle of STO players all like the changes that are coming and don't fret about the dilithium cost if it's marginal (which it appears to be), but strongly feel that one of the major liabilities of the BOFF system in its entirety has been the massive surplus of 'useless stuff' that BOFFs represent.
For a universe that was ostensibly all about the people in that universe in infinite diversity and infinite combination, that feels so very off the mark thematically as well as generating a very real, systemic game mechanics dead end that has been a sore point for as long as I can remember.
So, to sum up:
BOFF system changes overall look promising. Thank you for that.
BOFFs themselves need a value for application to deal with the massive quantity of unwanted/unused/unloved Bridge Officers out there and their constant intake through DOFF missions and other sources. Please ensure some consumptive or otherwise interesting application is available for them as part of the pending changes.
"The only thing mankind learns from the study of history is that mankind does not learn from the study of history." ~G. Santayana
Thanks everyone for providing Feedback and letting us know about any bugs you are encountering as both are very helpful hear.
Dilithium Cost - Just to be clear on this cost any Training Manual that you purchase from the Boff Trainer (which is the vast majority of them) do not require Dilithium. You will only need to spend Dilithium for the high end abilities that must be crafted. We are evaluating the exact amount of Dilithium required to create the PADD component though and appreciate hearing feedback from the community before making a final decision.
Thanks,
Mike "Warpdust" McTyre
Systems Designer
Star Trek Online
Good to know, I was thinking the padd free skills were a intentional testing glitch (but it does say Craftiable Skills in the blogg I guess)
I must say though, the new skill trainer shop gui is very very messy in comparison with the old one with the one long list of manuals. I miss the easy to find "break" to separate skills, especially when a T4 skill can be Power #1
The padds are still awkward though, you have 3/4 of skills not needing one, 1/4 via craft system with pads. I'd absorb the pads into the manuals, you are just making an obscure system
Ive also got a sad feeling rare abilities will be forgotten for a very very long time since their not implemented (Bad Cryptic! Partial Implentation is Bad!)
In the Bridge Officer Training store, there's no way of finding out what the new abilities do before purchasing them.
Hovering over the appropriate manual doesn't give enough information, and neither does right clicking on the item.
Also, 'Training Manual' doesn't seem very 'Star Trek' to me. How about 'Training Programme' or 'Training Simulation' or something?
Cheers
K
Thanks for bringing that up. I noticed it too and forgot to mention it, and it's a HUGE glaring problem. Even if the hover is over the skill in the BOFF's list it should be wear you buy it and on the PADD...especially on the PADD why wouldn't the PADD that's teaching the officer a skill not actually have the information on the skill???
Tech Journal? That's for engineers only. A manual is fine, the way they have it set up is certainly not equivalent to going off for a course at Starfleet Academy. At best they're reading the PADD and taking a quiz at the end to get qualified on a skill...HEY skill qualification works.
T3 skills costing dillithium is a BIG issue to newer 30x players
I've played without boff skills for a challenge, not having the skills a fairly serous disadvantage, a 30x just doesn't have access to the dill, or need the delay with making padds
Suggestions:
1) Make it T4, or just the special T3/T4 abilities (or leave some core T3 abilities dil free at least?)
I'm guessing that's a no so that leaves something like
1) Adding *many* free pads to the "you get free B-officer" levels and story line acquisitions in game. By many, I mean enough to fully spec the B-officer and a few left over
or
2) Blank slate the officers, and offer a free choose of skills when B-officer is promoted
Also I'll also object generally to the larger and larger "dill wall" that is being built, trying to keep an healthy economy (or profiting off the lazy) is starting to make the game less and less accessible. Grind is not Gameplay!
Free PADDs with new officers is a great idea.
A free skill selection for the skill trainer store would be nice with each new BOFF. Kind of like how we'd get a free costume change on every promotion before the tailor became free.
"Rise like Lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep had fallen on you-Ye are many they are few"
Thanks everyone for providing Feedback and letting us know about any bugs you are encountering as both are very helpful hear.
Class Training Manuals - It is a bug that players currently have recipes for other class training manuals. This will be fixed in the next patch. A Tactical player should not have Science and Engineering training manual recipes exposed to them.
Rare Boff Abilities - When the system is released it will retrain any Rare Boff Abilities that a Boff had to begin with (so if a player accidentally untrained a rare ability, they will get it back on that Boff). We are also planning on releasing those Rare Abilities as Training Manuals in the future but we have not determined the method on it yet.
Traits - Boff Traits should not be affected at all by this update. Please report any bugs that you find.
Boff Training - With the release of this new system we will no longer be supporting the old functionality of consuming a Boff to train another in an ability. If you have any Boff's you were saving for this purpose you should use them now before the system goes live. We will also no longer be supporting players being able to directly train Boffs for free in an ability. Going forward all Boff training will be consistent and require the use of Training Manuals.
Dilithium Cost - Just to be clear on this cost any Training Manual that you purchase from the Boff Trainer (which is the vast majority of them) do not require Dilithium. You will only need to spend Dilithium for the high end abilities that must be crafted. We are evaluating the exact amount of Dilithium required to create the PADD component though and appreciate hearing feedback from the community before making a final decision.
Thanks,
Mike "Warpdust" McTyre
Systems Designer
Star Trek Online
Nice to meet ya.
On your point 2, with the rare manuals. The Future is scary foggy. When the system hits, "The Future" means there's going to be an indeterminate time where we don't have access to those skills at All, and they're basically lost forever. Any new characters or players won't have access to them until you re-release them.
I do think that the dilithium cost of a PADD of all things is a smidge too high. But the four hour wait is absolutely ridiculous. It just makes no sense. Even an hour is too long.
One comment that becomes immediately evident then, given your point about no BOFF consumption is:
What exactly is the expected value/outcome/use of the massive BOFF surplus currently in the game?
Consuming a BOFF for training was never ideal by any means but it was, essentially, the only way these leave game short of deletion.
The exchange just moves them around for consumption for training, in the vain hopes of securing even one or two EC total for the officer in question and we never have the space or need for a wildly varied BOFF complement in our crew now as it is, unless we want to experiment.
It is silly and wrong that the cheapest DOFF white I ever see is for several thousand EC in the exchange, often no lower than 30k or more for a simple white Duty Officer, while the Bridge Officers as the supposed 'top performers' are sold for 1 EC a piece, sometimes even for Very Rare BOFFs due to their utter lack of applicable value.
I'm totally in favour of making our BOFFs more meaningful and useful in our active roster but for the system to go live and really offer value there needs to be as part of this revamp, in my opinion, some means to convert BOFFS into other resources/utility.
Whether that is:
A) Assign to Fleet stations for Fleet Credit as part of a daily or DOFF mission Convert BOFFs to DOFFs in some fashion; this could be a variant of the existing 'Reassign Underperforming Duty Officers' chain of DOFF missions, using BOFFS instead of DOFFS. The exchange surplus would vanish overnight if you could trade 5 blue BOFFS in for one purple Doff.
C) Actually assigning them an EC or Dilithium Value on trade in back into the empire officer pools at Bridge Officer shops.
D) Using them as a 'beam down help' consumable device akin to a security team (not my best idea, but looking for ways to apply them)
My circle of STO players all like the changes that are coming and don't fret about the dilithium cost if it's marginal (which it appears to be), but strongly feel that one of the major liabilities of the BOFF system in its entirety has been the massive surplus of 'useless stuff' that BOFFs represent.
For a universe that was ostensibly all about the people in that universe in infinite diversity and infinite combination, that feels so very off the mark thematically as well as generating a very real, systemic game mechanics dead end that has been a sore point for as long as I can remember.
So, to sum up:
BOFF system changes overall look promising. Thank you for that.
BOFFs themselves need a value for application to deal with the massive quantity of unwanted/unused/unloved Bridge Officers out there and their constant intake through DOFF missions and other sources. Please ensure some consumptive or otherwise interesting application is available for them as part of the pending changes.
Indeed I like all of these ideas.
I'm actually fond of the idea of trading them into a pool perhaps with your Fleet instead. I may have no use for a Ferengi BOFF I pick up, but it could be just the thing to round out someone else's all Ferengi crew, so just put them all into a common personnel directory. Make it so we can due a custom tailor job on a crew member and then put them in the bank for anyone who likes their look.
"Rise like Lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep had fallen on you-Ye are many they are few"
So far, i've liked the new system a lot, but it has a few downsides. *I'll edit this if more bugs show up*
- Bugs
Before character copy was fixed, i created a new character for tribble but shortly after the toutorial, when i beammed in to the azure, all my away team's abilities were availabe. All were boffs from the toutorial missions. I also noticed that couldn't train the skills past ensing level so having the boffs come in "empty" or with just the ensing skill trained should fix that. Level restriction is also an idea.
Edit: I also seem to be very close to level 6 in the new training school, since character was copied from holodeck.
- Questions
How do you train an officer in a specialization? it says i need an specialization qualification but i have no idea how obtain those. Having intel capable superior romulan operative officers sounds really awesome.
Also, i couldn't craft neither find rank 3 intel manuals, even with intel skill tree completed. Its not an urgent problem since rank 2 ones are availabe ... but surgical strikes 3 is better than surgical strikes 2.
Will we get rank 3 of most skills? such as med gen 3 for the officers? On the comm slot, most abilities get a captain trainable version one rank above.
- Suggestions
Having the old "boff only" skills, such as Transfer Shield Strength 3, availabe at the dil store. That way we'd still have access to them. For a different approach you can also give it as a mission reward at some point.
Since many of us are keeping a stock of bridge officers with such rare abilities, we should get an ability to convert an unequipped boff into a trainning manual of one the skills he has and the owner could choose which manual to get. for example, the jem boff could be converted to one T:S3 manual for free.
The PADDs could take a bit less to build, the dil amount is ok for me but the time seems too high.
More information on how to obtain each skill would be great too, perhaps adding an 'info' button next to 'learn' button for each skill explaining the rank and material requirements will do the trick.
Edit: A tab to search the new manuals in the exchange.
- Off topic (just skip this part)
Are there any plans on making trait respecs for bridge officers? just curious.
Feels a bit weird having one of my bridge officers commanding me due to the command abilities being availabe for them.
Flying a 15k dps dual cannons hazari destroyer. Let the discussion begin!
Why does the Bridge Officer Candidate Roster now behind a button? Please add this back to the right side of the window. I would prefer the larger window than to have to lick the button and have a window overlap the window it should be on.
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Looking for a new fleet? Drop by the in-game chat channel, "tenforwardforum", and say hi to the members of A Fleet Called Ten Forward (Fed) and The Orion Pirates (KDF). If you already have a fleet you are happy with, please feel free to drop by our chat channel if you are looking for a friendly bunch of helpful people to socialize with.
We are evaluating the exact amount of Dilithium required to create the PADD component though and appreciate hearing feedback from the community before making a final decision.
Personally I don't see that 500 dil is unreasonable. What I do find unreasonable is the 4 hour creation timer for the PADD component.
First this should be shortened to no more than 1 hour but in my opinion no less than 10 minutes. Honestly if your going to let a skill book be created in 30 seconds than a PADD should not take 4 hours to create.
Second The cost to complete the PADD project should be much lower as well, say 2000 dil/per PADD being created.
I'm not against there being dilithum costs at all, but I am against the excessive pricing and creation times.
Originally Posted by rosetyler51 August 14, 2014
First rule of STO: Avoid PVP or Drozana.
I can't drag and drop bridge officer candidates to mail, exchange, or trade window.
Changing one boff skill resets all 4 skills and not just that rank.
No skills after commissioning special boffs: Nelan Exil (voth), Reman Mystery boff, Xindi lobi boff, Delta pack Intel boffs, Khitomer Borg Science officer.
Commissioning Photonic Science officer - has 4 ground skills and 4 space skills but has 2 Lieutenant skills (HE3 and ST2) and no Lt. Commander skill.
MACO photonic tac - OK.
Untested: zen boffs, Hierarchy boff, Reman borg (lobi), Android
Thoughts:
Would be nice if I could put manuals in the RnD inventory section.
I think Officer training button should be moved to the top or bottom of crafting list and possibly seperated from the rest of the RnD.
Not sure how you are planning to fit Officer Training XP into the system, but expertise xp could be used for it and eliminate that extra "currency".
Traits - Boff Traits should not be affected at all by this update. Please report any bugs that you find.
Just tested again after the latest tribble patch and none of my Boff traits seem to work. The mains ones I looked at are Pirate, Space Warfare Specialist and Superior Romulan Operative all of which no longer boost damage, crit chance or crit damage.
Any news when crafting will be fixed? Its really irritating to have got to level 20 projectiles crafting and not be able use the projectile tech I crafted on projectile tactical consoles. Because I leveled up projectiles instead of beams I am unable to upgrade my gear.
I always made it a point never to have boff abilities for ground or space in any of my character builds that required finding someone to train my boff for me. I stick with boff trainer NPC and captain training. Mainly because I don't want to sit there for who-knows-how-long trying to find somebody, and because certain boffs are bound to character and can't be traded for training.
With this new system it eliminates the need to have other players train your boffs in skills you can't train yourself. I like that. I'll be able to craft those skills myself on my various characters and it would make me actually consider using some of those abilities.
Personally I don't see that 500 dil is unreasonable. What I do find unreasonable is the 4 hour creation timer for the PADD component.
First this should be shortened to no more than 1 hour but in my opinion no less than 10 minutes. Honestly if your going to let a skill book be created in 30 seconds than a PADD should not take 4 hours to create.
Second The cost to complete the PADD project should be much lower as well, say 2000 dil/per PADD being created.
I'm not against there being dilithum costs at all, but I am against the excessive pricing and creation times.
I agree that the time to manufacture these should probably be short, just from a convenience of use point of view. I'm unsure what the rationale for a long timer on these would be other than to artificially increase the desire to burn dilithium to rush the job (which still, imho, needs a 'confirm' button... way too easy to accidentally burn 1000s of dilithium by one errant click at moment).
However, what you suggest is inherently linked no?
If you lower the time doesn't that lower the dilithium cost to complete by definition as that cost is derived from the total time remaining for completion?
Just saying if they do the one, I think you get the other by default as well, so win win from our point of view.
"The only thing mankind learns from the study of history is that mankind does not learn from the study of history." ~G. Santayana
I crafted a training manual for Torpedo High Yield 3 and the result was a training manual for Torpedo High Yield 2.
Did anyone else notice that?
Yup, found that today, although I could swear that despite training in THY2 the manual still stated that it was THY3 (if true then its a matter of "crossed wires.")
Also, I have 22 points in intel but no ability to work with intel powers or specializations in the boff R+D school. Is this a bug or an aspect to the system that hasn't been added yet on tribble?
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T3 skills costing dillithium is a BIG issue to newer 30x players
I've played without boff skills for a challenge, not having the skills a fairly serous disadvantage, a 30x just doesn't have access to the dill, or need the delay with making padds
I'd say they do. If they play smart. Doffing is a great source of dil and something that new players have access to long before they have a reason to care about mk3 skills.
I agree that the time to manufacture these should probably be short, just from a convenience of use point of view. I'm unsure what the rationale for a long timer on these would be other than to artificially increase the desire to burn dilithium to rush the job (which still, imho, needs a 'confirm' button... way too easy to accidentally burn 1000s of dilithium by one errant click at moment).
However, what you suggest is inherently linked no?
If you lower the time doesn't that lower the dilithium cost to complete by definition as that cost is derived from the total time remaining for completion?
Just saying if they do the one, I think you get the other by default as well, so win win from our point of view.
Not really. the 500 dil cost is not actually connected to the time. Choosing 5X just means that your character does the project 5 times in a row. If the base for either time or dil was reduced it wouldn't need to affect the other.
Anyways, my thoughts...
I like being able to train boffs in multiple skills per rank. That seems to work out really nicely.
The cost... is not excessive for something that is permanent.
The one thing that bugged me is how random boffs have no starting skills. This is something that a new player would probably have issues with. Special boffs apparently DO, but not random boffs.
I also noticed a glitch that would soemtiems cause a newly commissioned random boff to be UNABLE to learn new skills, and thus be stuck with no skills at all.
Why does the Bridge Officer Candidate Roster now behind a button? Please add this back to the right side of the window. I would prefer the larger window than to have to lick the button and have a window overlap the window it should be on.
That does seem odd.
But it's on the station screen, and the station screen's right side is now taken up by the panel segment that will show the list of your BOFF's abilities to be hot swapped into the use slots. So in that regard I can see how they would want to clean it up.
Well, Boffs became a lot more common, and thus less valuable after the doff system was added. Getting the rare skills before then? yikes....I'd say they do. If they play smart. Doffing is a great source of dil and something that new players have access to long before they have a reason to care about mk3 skills.Not really. the 500 dil cost is not actually connected to the time. Choosing 5X just means that your character does the project 5 times in a row. If the base for either time or dil was reduced it wouldn't need to affect the other.
Anyways, my thoughts...
I like being able to train boffs in multiple skills per rank. That seems to work out really nicely.
The cost... is not excessive for something that is permanent.
The one thing that bugged me is how random boffs have no starting skills. This is something that a new player would probably have issues with. Special boffs apparently DO, but not random boffs.
I also noticed a glitch that would soemtiems cause a newly commissioned random boff to be UNABLE to learn new skills, and thus be stuck with no skills at all.
I noticed that. I had some purple and blue Boffs in the Assignment complete category and when I accepted them they still have their full list of skills, as opposed to new white quality guys on my lower level character who are just traits. It could be a quirk of the copy process, I'll check back.
"Rise like Lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep had fallen on you-Ye are many they are few"
I was on the fence about this system, but after trying it out, I love it! This is so much better than what we had. The dilithium sink is minor compared to the price of buying more boff slots to get the same convenience this update provides. Allowing us to swap abilities anywhere on the fly is a great quality of life change, and compliments the ability to change starships at will. And then there's making anyone a specialist, allowing us to give the abilities to our RP boffs.
I'm still not sure how I feel about R&D being involved, since I think it's adding needless complexity. I guess there's the time gating aspects, but STO's time gates feel ineffectual to me, since I can just queue things before I log out for the night... I'd be happier with a system like the skill trainers are using, where I just open a menu and pay my dilithium outright for a manual, rather than having to use the laggy R&D interface to do the same thing. At least PADDs being involved means others can pay their dilithium for one and I can craft them a manual with it.
I'm concerned with the lack of availability of boff-only abilities. I hope the plan isn't that we'll have to start with a boff that has the ability we want to get these... That's my biggest concern right now. With any luck, they're just something that hasn't been implemented yet. I'd hate to still be roped into using boffs I don't really want on my crew. (Ignoring traits for the moment, since those will always be an issue.)
Overall, I can't state enough how much I like this update!
Have you looked at the costs from a new person's perspective?
Before your BOFFs came with powers and you could change them with ec. Now your BOFFS have no powers. Every single power you want on every BOFFs will require ec, dilithium and crafting.
As a veteran I have these resources but to avoid the hassle I'll be sure to customize the BOFFs of my alts before the new system goes live.
Ex-CoH players, Please add the chat channel "CoX STO"
Have you looked at the costs from a new person's perspective?
Before your BOFFs came with powers and you could change them with ec. Now your BOFFS have no powers. Every single power you want on every BOFFs will require ec, dilithium and crafting.
As a veteran I have these resources but to avoid the hassle I'll be sure to customize the BOFFs of my alts before the new system goes live.
I think it's a glitch of some sort, since not all Boffs do that. And the ones that do seem to be unable to learn skills.
noticed that. I had some purple and blue Boffs in the Assignment complete category and when I accepted them they still have their full list of skills, as opposed to new white quality guys on my lower level character who are just traits. It could be a quirk of the copy process, I'll check back.
It's NOT the copy process as these characters have been living on tribble since at least season 9.5. One was CREATED on tribble as part of LoR beta. I'll hav eto see about getting new boffs. AH! of course! I probably have the ability to get some as rank up rewards. (on most characters I've never bothered with those since I never felt as though I needed them)
EDIT: YUP! newly acquired Boffs have a full set of skills! It's some sort of data conversion error.
Rare Boff Abilities - When the system is released it will retrain any Rare Boff Abilities that a Boff had to begin with (so if a player accidentally untrained a rare ability, they will get it back on that Boff). We are also planning on releasing those Rare Abilities as Training Manuals in the future but we have not determined the method on it yet.
...
Boff Training - With the release of this new system we will no longer be supporting the old functionality of consuming a Boff to train another in an ability. If you have any Boff's you were saving for this purpose you should use them now before the system goes live. We will also no longer be supporting players being able to directly train Boffs for free in an ability. Going forward all Boff training will be consistent and require the use of Training Manuals.
Can someone clarify for me what this means? I'm assuming this means that we can no longer use boffs with Beam Overload 3 and Torpedo Spread 3 to train others. In that case, how are we supposed to get these abilities? I don't it's acceptable for the new system to go live without this functionality.
Can someone clarify for me what this means? I'm assuming this means that we can no longer use boffs with Beam Overload 3 and Torpedo Spread 3 to train others. In that case, how are we supposed to get these abilities? I don't it's acceptable for the new system to go live without this functionality.
apparently that part of the system is incomplete. Hopefully it gets finished before February.
apparently that part of the system is incomplete. Hopefully it gets finished before February.
You have a very optimistic interpretation of that statement. My interpretation is that it means "something we'll get to eventually". They said something similar about adding the ability to change modifiers to the crafting system.
Rare Boff Abilities... We are also planning on releasing those Rare Abilities as Training Manuals in the future but we have not determined the method on it yet.
This needs to release with the rest of the new system... even though 70% of those "rare" boff skills are worthless/unused.
Personally, I will switch to a common disposable boff crew and pretrain my permanent boffs in any relevant/marginally useful skills before the patch. Just in case .
You have a very optimistic interpretation of that statement. My interpretation is that it means "something we'll get to eventually". They said something similar about adding the ability to change modifiers to the crafting system.
Yeah. I really would want a solution to be live immediately, otherwise it may take forever for this to become available, meaning people would be stuck without access to these skills. That would be very unfair. Especially since currently some of them are granted from the rank-up BOFFs, so anyone that played before the Anniversary release would have guaranteed access to some of the skils.
I certainly will deck myself out with the important skills now before the system goes live.
Don't make it too complicated. If needed, just raise the cost in some way (say, requiring two PADDs or whatever). You can lower it later when you have a definitive solution.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Rare Boff Abilities - When the system is released it will retrain any Rare Boff Abilities that a Boff had to begin with (so if a player accidentally untrained a rare ability, they will get it back on that Boff). We are also planning on releasing those Rare Abilities as Training Manuals in the future but we have not determined the method on it yet.
That really needs to be addressed before the new system goes live. Removing the capacity to train these Rare Boff Abilities is a huge downfall for this new system.
Dilithium Cost - Just to be clear on this cost any Training Manual that you purchase from the Boff Trainer (which is the vast majority of them) do not require Dilithium. You will only need to spend Dilithium for the high end abilities that must be crafted. We are evaluating the exact amount of Dilithium required to create the PADD component though and appreciate hearing feedback from the community before making a final decision.
Thanks,
Mike "Warpdust" McTyre
Systems Designer
Star Trek Online
Preferred: No Dilithium cost.
It doesn't cost Dilithium to train our boffs now, it will under the new system. Yes, the new system looks pretty neat, but turning boff training into yet another Dilithium sink offsets that. What could have been great is just meh thanks to the Dilithium cost.
Tolerable: Charge Dilithium to use the Manual, not to create one.
That would retain the monetization of the system while allowing players to continue helping each other out as they currently do. If you weren't aware, player communities such as the Service channels and Fleets train others in the skills that will be placed into these Manuals... adding a Dilithium tax to the person offering training rather than on the person receiving it is not beneficial to community engagement.
With each passing day I wonder if I stepped into an alternate reality. The Cubs win the world series. Donald Trump is President. Britain leaves the EU. STO gets a dedicated PvP season. Engineers are "out of control" in STO.
Rare Boff Abilities - When the system is released it will retrain any Rare Boff Abilities that a Boff had to begin with (so if a player accidentally untrained a rare ability, they will get it back on that Boff). We are also planning on releasing those Rare Abilities as Training Manuals in the future but we have not determined the method on it yet.
Just for clarification
1. that means that the Boff will still have the skill we retrained them in + the original skill added as a 2nd available skill?
OR
2. That the current skill will be erased in favor of the original skill?
PS... If option 2 that would be very upsetting. I was unaware the Database could do that as I have had some of my Boffs for 3+ years. (seems like a bit of useless info for the DB to be storing imho)
Rare Boff Abilities - When the system is released it will retrain any Rare Boff Abilities that a Boff had to begin with (so if a player accidentally untrained a rare ability, they will get it back on that Boff). We are also planning on releasing those Rare Abilities as Training Manuals in the future but we have not determined the method on it yet.
Boff Training - With the release of this new system we will no longer be supporting the old functionality of consuming a Boff to train another in an ability. If you have any Boff's you were saving for this purpose you should use them now before the system goes live. We will also no longer be supporting players being able to directly train Boffs for free in an ability. Going forward all Boff training will be consistent and require the use of Training Manuals.
I completely missed this post before (you don't show up in the devtracker, by the way), could you please inform players of this somewhere other than this thread? This should be on the blog, at the very least. I personally think it's a big enough deal that you should put it in that red alert text on the launcher before this change goes live. I have a ton of candidates stored with useful abilities that I give out to friends as they need them. These boffs will soon be worthless for that purpose, and I never would've known if someone else hadn't quoted your post.
I'm not clear on this: "When the system is released it will retrain any Rare Boff Abilities that a Boff had to begin with"
Do you mean they'll regain this ability in addition to one I've trained them in or will it override whatever I've trained that boff with?
I love this revamp, but I am not happy that there doesn't seem to be any plan to address the availability of these abilities when it goes live.
Do you mean they'll regain this ability in addition to one I've trained them in or will it override whatever I've trained that boff with?
In addition to.
Let's say you have the Jem'hadar Boff from the "2800" series. He comes with Torpedo Spread 3, but you could have trained him in any other Tactical Commander ability, thereby losing TS3. Example: Let's say you retrained this guy in APBeta3.
When this feature goes live, we're planning to restore rare powers like this to the Boffs that originally had them. As a result, you will log in and see that your Jem'Hadar Boff now has access to either TS3 or APBeta3. Both powers will already be Trained on him, and you'll just have to choose which to use.
That's the plan.
Jeremy Randall
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
Let's say you have the Jem'hadar Boff from the "2800" series. He comes with Torpedo Spread 3, but you could have trained him in any other Tactical Commander ability, thereby losing TS3. Example: Let's say you retrained this guy in APBeta3.
When this feature goes live, we're planning to restore rare powers like this to the Boffs that originally had them. As a result, you will log in and see that your Jem'Hadar Boff now has access to either TS3 or APBeta3. Both powers will already be Trained on him, and you'll just have to choose which to use.
That's the plan.
Is that going to hold true for just that small group of select BOFFs with those fixed rare abilities or would it apply even to the random BOFFs that had them?
Is that going to hold true for just that small group of select BOFFs with those fixed rare abilities or would it apply even to the random BOFFs that had them?
Thanks.
It will only apply to Boffs that had hand-picked powers assigned to them.
For any Boff that was randomly generated, we don't have the ability to track down what they were originally created with, so this change cannot be applied to them.
Jeremy Randall
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
Comments
Thanks for the additional details.
One comment that becomes immediately evident then, given your point about no BOFF consumption is:
What exactly is the expected value/outcome/use of the massive BOFF surplus currently in the game?
Consuming a BOFF for training was never ideal by any means but it was, essentially, the only way these leave game short of deletion.
The exchange just moves them around for consumption for training, in the vain hopes of securing even one or two EC total for the officer in question and we never have the space or need for a wildly varied BOFF complement in our crew now as it is, unless we want to experiment.
It is silly and wrong that the cheapest DOFF white I ever see is for several thousand EC in the exchange, often no lower than 30k or more for a simple white Duty Officer, while the Bridge Officers as the supposed 'top performers' are sold for 1 EC a piece, sometimes even for Very Rare BOFFs due to their utter lack of applicable value.
I'm totally in favour of making our BOFFs more meaningful and useful in our active roster but for the system to go live and really offer value there needs to be as part of this revamp, in my opinion, some means to convert BOFFS into other resources/utility.
Whether that is:
A) Assign to Fleet stations for Fleet Credit as part of a daily or DOFF mission
C) Actually assigning them an EC or Dilithium Value on trade in back into the empire officer pools at Bridge Officer shops.
D) Using them as a 'beam down help' consumable device akin to a security team (not my best idea, but looking for ways to apply them)
My circle of STO players all like the changes that are coming and don't fret about the dilithium cost if it's marginal (which it appears to be), but strongly feel that one of the major liabilities of the BOFF system in its entirety has been the massive surplus of 'useless stuff' that BOFFs represent.
For a universe that was ostensibly all about the people in that universe in infinite diversity and infinite combination, that feels so very off the mark thematically as well as generating a very real, systemic game mechanics dead end that has been a sore point for as long as I can remember.
So, to sum up:
BOFF system changes overall look promising. Thank you for that.
BOFFs themselves need a value for application to deal with the massive quantity of unwanted/unused/unloved Bridge Officers out there and their constant intake through DOFF missions and other sources. Please ensure some consumptive or otherwise interesting application is available for them as part of the pending changes.
Good to know, I was thinking the padd free skills were a intentional testing glitch (but it does say Craftiable Skills in the blogg I guess)
I must say though, the new skill trainer shop gui is very very messy in comparison with the old one with the one long list of manuals. I miss the easy to find "break" to separate skills, especially when a T4 skill can be Power #1
The padds are still awkward though, you have 3/4 of skills not needing one, 1/4 via craft system with pads. I'd absorb the pads into the manuals, you are just making an obscure system
Ive also got a sad feeling rare abilities will be forgotten for a very very long time since their not implemented (Bad Cryptic! Partial Implentation is Bad!)
Did anyone else notice that?
Free Tibet!
Tech Journal? That's for engineers only. A manual is fine, the way they have it set up is certainly not equivalent to going off for a course at Starfleet Academy. At best they're reading the PADD and taking a quiz at the end to get qualified on a skill...HEY skill qualification works.
Free PADDs with new officers is a great idea.
A free skill selection for the skill trainer store would be nice with each new BOFF. Kind of like how we'd get a free costume change on every promotion before the tailor became free.
On your point 2, with the rare manuals. The Future is scary foggy. When the system hits, "The Future" means there's going to be an indeterminate time where we don't have access to those skills at All, and they're basically lost forever. Any new characters or players won't have access to them until you re-release them.
I do think that the dilithium cost of a PADD of all things is a smidge too high. But the four hour wait is absolutely ridiculous. It just makes no sense. Even an hour is too long.
Indeed I like all of these ideas.
I'm actually fond of the idea of trading them into a pool perhaps with your Fleet instead. I may have no use for a Ferengi BOFF I pick up, but it could be just the thing to round out someone else's all Ferengi crew, so just put them all into a common personnel directory. Make it so we can due a custom tailor job on a crew member and then put them in the bank for anyone who likes their look.
- Bugs
Before character copy was fixed, i created a new character for tribble but shortly after the toutorial, when i beammed in to the azure, all my away team's abilities were availabe. All were boffs from the toutorial missions. I also noticed that couldn't train the skills past ensing level so having the boffs come in "empty" or with just the ensing skill trained should fix that. Level restriction is also an idea.
Edit: I also seem to be very close to level 6 in the new training school, since character was copied from holodeck.
- Questions
How do you train an officer in a specialization? it says i need an specialization qualification but i have no idea how obtain those. Having intel capable superior romulan operative officers sounds really awesome.
Also, i couldn't craft neither find rank 3 intel manuals, even with intel skill tree completed. Its not an urgent problem since rank 2 ones are availabe ... but surgical strikes 3 is better than surgical strikes 2.
Will we get rank 3 of most skills? such as med gen 3 for the officers? On the comm slot, most abilities get a captain trainable version one rank above.
- Suggestions
Having the old "boff only" skills, such as Transfer Shield Strength 3, availabe at the dil store. That way we'd still have access to them. For a different approach you can also give it as a mission reward at some point.
Since many of us are keeping a stock of bridge officers with such rare abilities, we should get an ability to convert an unequipped boff into a trainning manual of one the skills he has and the owner could choose which manual to get. for example, the jem boff could be converted to one T:S3 manual for free.
The PADDs could take a bit less to build, the dil amount is ok for me but the time seems too high.
More information on how to obtain each skill would be great too, perhaps adding an 'info' button next to 'learn' button for each skill explaining the rank and material requirements will do the trick.
Edit: A tab to search the new manuals in the exchange.
- Off topic (just skip this part)
Are there any plans on making trait respecs for bridge officers? just curious.
Feels a bit weird having one of my bridge officers commanding me due to the command abilities being availabe for them.
Flying a 15k dps dual cannons hazari destroyer. Let the discussion begin!
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Personally I don't see that 500 dil is unreasonable. What I do find unreasonable is the 4 hour creation timer for the PADD component.
First this should be shortened to no more than 1 hour but in my opinion no less than 10 minutes. Honestly if your going to let a skill book be created in 30 seconds than a PADD should not take 4 hours to create.
Second The cost to complete the PADD project should be much lower as well, say 2000 dil/per PADD being created.
I'm not against there being dilithum costs at all, but I am against the excessive pricing and creation times.
First rule of STO: Avoid PVP or Drozana.
Changing one boff skill resets all 4 skills and not just that rank.
No skills after commissioning special boffs: Nelan Exil (voth), Reman Mystery boff, Xindi lobi boff, Delta pack Intel boffs, Khitomer Borg Science officer.
Commissioning Photonic Science officer - has 4 ground skills and 4 space skills but has 2 Lieutenant skills (HE3 and ST2) and no Lt. Commander skill.
MACO photonic tac - OK.
Untested: zen boffs, Hierarchy boff, Reman borg (lobi), Android
Thoughts:
Would be nice if I could put manuals in the RnD inventory section.
I think Officer training button should be moved to the top or bottom of crafting list and possibly seperated from the rest of the RnD.
Not sure how you are planning to fit Officer Training XP into the system, but expertise xp could be used for it and eliminate that extra "currency".
Any news when crafting will be fixed? Its really irritating to have got to level 20 projectiles crafting and not be able use the projectile tech I crafted on projectile tactical consoles. Because I leveled up projectiles instead of beams I am unable to upgrade my gear.
With this new system it eliminates the need to have other players train your boffs in skills you can't train yourself. I like that. I'll be able to craft those skills myself on my various characters and it would make me actually consider using some of those abilities.
I agree that the time to manufacture these should probably be short, just from a convenience of use point of view. I'm unsure what the rationale for a long timer on these would be other than to artificially increase the desire to burn dilithium to rush the job (which still, imho, needs a 'confirm' button... way too easy to accidentally burn 1000s of dilithium by one errant click at moment).
However, what you suggest is inherently linked no?
If you lower the time doesn't that lower the dilithium cost to complete by definition as that cost is derived from the total time remaining for completion?
Just saying if they do the one, I think you get the other by default as well, so win win from our point of view.
Yup, found that today, although I could swear that despite training in THY2 the manual still stated that it was THY3 (if true then its a matter of "crossed wires.")
Also, I have 22 points in intel but no ability to work with intel powers or specializations in the boff R+D school. Is this a bug or an aspect to the system that hasn't been added yet on tribble?
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
Anyways, my thoughts...
I like being able to train boffs in multiple skills per rank. That seems to work out really nicely.
The cost... is not excessive for something that is permanent.
The one thing that bugged me is how random boffs have no starting skills. This is something that a new player would probably have issues with. Special boffs apparently DO, but not random boffs.
I also noticed a glitch that would soemtiems cause a newly commissioned random boff to be UNABLE to learn new skills, and thus be stuck with no skills at all.
My character Tsin'xing
But it's on the station screen, and the station screen's right side is now taken up by the panel segment that will show the list of your BOFF's abilities to be hot swapped into the use slots. So in that regard I can see how they would want to clean it up. Expertise is already in the system. It's expended when you actually use a training manual. So when you train an officer, it costs some expertise.
I noticed that. I had some purple and blue Boffs in the Assignment complete category and when I accepted them they still have their full list of skills, as opposed to new white quality guys on my lower level character who are just traits. It could be a quirk of the copy process, I'll check back.
I'm still not sure how I feel about R&D being involved, since I think it's adding needless complexity. I guess there's the time gating aspects, but STO's time gates feel ineffectual to me, since I can just queue things before I log out for the night... I'd be happier with a system like the skill trainers are using, where I just open a menu and pay my dilithium outright for a manual, rather than having to use the laggy R&D interface to do the same thing. At least PADDs being involved means others can pay their dilithium for one and I can craft them a manual with it.
I'm concerned with the lack of availability of boff-only abilities. I hope the plan isn't that we'll have to start with a boff that has the ability we want to get these... That's my biggest concern right now. With any luck, they're just something that hasn't been implemented yet. I'd hate to still be roped into using boffs I don't really want on my crew. (Ignoring traits for the moment, since those will always be an issue.)
Overall, I can't state enough how much I like this update!
Before your BOFFs came with powers and you could change them with ec. Now your BOFFS have no powers. Every single power you want on every BOFFs will require ec, dilithium and crafting.
As a veteran I have these resources but to avoid the hassle I'll be sure to customize the BOFFs of my alts before the new system goes live.
Ex-CoH players, Please add the chat channel "CoX STO"
EDIT: YUP! newly acquired Boffs have a full set of skills! It's some sort of data conversion error.
My character Tsin'xing
Can someone clarify for me what this means? I'm assuming this means that we can no longer use boffs with Beam Overload 3 and Torpedo Spread 3 to train others. In that case, how are we supposed to get these abilities? I don't it's acceptable for the new system to go live without this functionality.
My character Tsin'xing
You have a very optimistic interpretation of that statement. My interpretation is that it means "something we'll get to eventually". They said something similar about adding the ability to change modifiers to the crafting system.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=20880651&postcount=4
This needs to release with the rest of the new system... even though 70% of those "rare" boff skills are worthless/unused.
Personally, I will switch to a common disposable boff crew and pretrain my permanent boffs in any relevant/marginally useful skills before the patch. Just in case
Yeah. I really would want a solution to be live immediately, otherwise it may take forever for this to become available, meaning people would be stuck without access to these skills. That would be very unfair. Especially since currently some of them are granted from the rank-up BOFFs, so anyone that played before the Anniversary release would have guaranteed access to some of the skils.
I certainly will deck myself out with the important skills now before the system goes live.
Don't make it too complicated. If needed, just raise the cost in some way (say, requiring two PADDs or whatever). You can lower it later when you have a definitive solution.
That really needs to be addressed before the new system goes live. Removing the capacity to train these Rare Boff Abilities is a huge downfall for this new system.
Preferred: No Dilithium cost.
It doesn't cost Dilithium to train our boffs now, it will under the new system. Yes, the new system looks pretty neat, but turning boff training into yet another Dilithium sink offsets that. What could have been great is just meh thanks to the Dilithium cost.
Tolerable: Charge Dilithium to use the Manual, not to create one.
That would retain the monetization of the system while allowing players to continue helping each other out as they currently do. If you weren't aware, player communities such as the Service channels and Fleets train others in the skills that will be placed into these Manuals... adding a Dilithium tax to the person offering training rather than on the person receiving it is not beneficial to community engagement.
Just for clarification
1. that means that the Boff will still have the skill we retrained them in + the original skill added as a 2nd available skill?
OR
2. That the current skill will be erased in favor of the original skill?
PS... If option 2 that would be very upsetting. I was unaware the Database could do that as I have had some of my Boffs for 3+ years. (seems like a bit of useless info for the DB to be storing imho)
^^^This^^^
Lets do as upgrade items do. Dill tax on use rather then creation.
I completely missed this post before (you don't show up in the devtracker, by the way), could you please inform players of this somewhere other than this thread? This should be on the blog, at the very least. I personally think it's a big enough deal that you should put it in that red alert text on the launcher before this change goes live. I have a ton of candidates stored with useful abilities that I give out to friends as they need them. These boffs will soon be worthless for that purpose, and I never would've known if someone else hadn't quoted your post.
I'm not clear on this: "When the system is released it will retrain any Rare Boff Abilities that a Boff had to begin with"
Do you mean they'll regain this ability in addition to one I've trained them in or will it override whatever I've trained that boff with?
I love this revamp, but I am not happy that there doesn't seem to be any plan to address the availability of these abilities when it goes live.
In addition to.
Let's say you have the Jem'hadar Boff from the "2800" series. He comes with Torpedo Spread 3, but you could have trained him in any other Tactical Commander ability, thereby losing TS3. Example: Let's say you retrained this guy in APBeta3.
When this feature goes live, we're planning to restore rare powers like this to the Boffs that originally had them. As a result, you will log in and see that your Jem'Hadar Boff now has access to either TS3 or APBeta3. Both powers will already be Trained on him, and you'll just have to choose which to use.
That's the plan.
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
Is that going to hold true for just that small group of select BOFFs with those fixed rare abilities or would it apply even to the random BOFFs that had them?
Thanks.
It will only apply to Boffs that had hand-picked powers assigned to them.
For any Boff that was randomly generated, we don't have the ability to track down what they were originally created with, so this change cannot be applied to them.
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"