Every game mechanic is meant to serve a purpose. I ask what the purpose or design intent is currently with the way boff abilities are trained. If it is to make specific boff abilities rare, it does not do this. If it is meant to keep specific boff abilities within their respective captain type, it also does not do this.

At the moment, there are three large downsides to the way gaining these abilities works.
1) It exposes a player to having boffs stolen/scammed from them when having someone else train them. This is very, very, very bad when F2P hordes arrive.
2) Forces you to take skills to a 9 when the benefit for doing so is not there, especially with the new system. When respecs costs real cash this is also a bad thing.
3) Makes you search the exchange for the skill you want, which with no sorting options makes one want to pull out hair.

As it is various boffs are already better than others due to the trait system. I think that is enough. Please allow boff abilities, ALL boff abilities to be trained by NPCs, even if some have a reasonable dilitium cost. Boffs are one of the best mechanics of this game, do not annoy the playerbase when they try to experiment and customize the abilities attached to them. I feel the current system is outdated and should be removed.