I believe I'm pretty firmly on record as not being a fan of the upcoming buff packs. My criticism, and that of the less trollish opponents basically boils down to three points:
1. It waters down the MMO aspect by making some of the most specialized stuff available without the pesky issue of interacting with another human. Bear in mind, even if FC does their best to lock this down combat-wise there's still going to be unintended consequences like, say, a lowbie enforcer using mochams/wrangle packs to pop top-tier Mongo/Challenger seconds before entering combat.
2. Slap in the face to everyone who made a buff class in order to be social. What happens to all the people who, say, rolled a MP because handing out +140 nanoskills makes them feel good but don't particularly like how the class itself plays?
3. Massive gameplay changes to deal with this are likely to make gameplay for the "buff totem" professions radically different from what people signed on for. This one's probably ultimately good but it potentially screws the hell out of around 20% of all characters created pre-rebalance. It's also probably applicable to all classes, really, due to the scope of the proposed changes.
I suggest a two step compromise that will maybe make everyone reasonably happy.
Part 1: Instead of copying over the major buffs as-is into the buff packs, tone them down a little bit so they are not *quite* as good as what players can offer--90-95% seems about right. So a +131 wrangle might become a +115 or +120 buff pack. Still enough for some major on-the-fly twinkage, but if you want the very best stuff you'll just have to hunt down a trader.
Part 2: Once all of the rebalance has been released and right before "AO 2.0" is considered officially completed, all existing characters are given the ability to change profession one time. This would work like a full IPR i.e. no items or imps when it happens and it clears all skills, perks, nanos, whatever else might be class-specific and leaves you with a shiny new profession and a big pile of xp/sk/vp/etc. Again, I stress that this would be a one-off deal made in light of the fact that, due to every profession being majorly reworked, many players are likely to be better suited with a different profession than they started with--not everybody has a stable of 220s available to "sacrifice" one that's no longer fun to play.
Originally Posted by Mamman
