If Eternal Crusade has a Tech Tree option based on your character why not focus your abilities on merit as level progression?

For instance? Say you start the game as a basic Space Marine.
Once you get out of noobsville you kill 100 foes with ranged combat attacks.
Your ranged combat merit would be enhanced ranged combat skills. Melee would work the same way

You've participated in your first Mega Battle and your first instance and slayed 100 foes in any capacity? I'd say that's Veteran Status.

Veteran Status unlocks three directions. The beginning of melee focus, support focus, or ranged focus. By saying you must participate to achieve a certain goal (especially PVP) you've enhanced the quality of the beginning tiers of players so they cannot simply grind in only 1 way. Participate or progress no further...

Melee focus will eventually unlock things like melee weapon options, becoming a Vanguard, maybe even a Melee style Terminator, would be your ultimate goal.

Your ranged focus would first lead you onto the path of the Devastator or Sternguard, culminating into a Ranged Attack Terminator or a Centurian perhaps.

For your support focus, you can follow the path of the healer, which means your an Apothecary, A Chaplain, which enhances melee attacks, or a Tech Marine, which enhances ranged attacks. A Librarian, if psyker powers would ever become an option would be support AOE Damage & Friendly buffer (essentially, you can combo attacks to either degrade or enhance at range, rather then in a burst like the Tech Marine, Chaplain or Apothecary. May not be as effective as either of the other 3, but the enhancements could arguably come at a price against the foe. So if you do an AOE attack every friendly caught in the blast would instead get a buff)

Orks are similar...

normal boy gains 'Ard Boy Status. It unlocks shoota boy, Burna Boy, or Choppa Boy. Choppa progresses to Storm Boy or Kommando -which in turn turns to a Nob of similar status, Burna Boy is a support class so it enhances to Mek Boy or Mad Doc, Shoota progresses to Loota or Tank Busta, which eventually turns to Flash Git.

Chaos Marines

Chaos Marine would enhance to Veteran status, which in turn unlocks one of the following... Ranged, Melee or Support. Melee would lead you on the path of the Berzerker or the Raptor. Ranged towards the Havoc or the Noise Marine. Support would lead you to Dark Apostle, Dark Mechanicus or the Psyker. Melee would culminate to a Melee Terminator & finally a Mutiliator. Ranged would be a range support terminator & finally an Obliterator. A Support class would see to it that you are enhanced to a Lord status of your chosen profession, granting you more enhanced powers.

Eldar would also be the like...

You start off as either a Guardian, Storm Guardian, or Warlock. Guardian becomes a Dire Avenger, Fire Dragon, or Reaper. Storm Guardian becomes a Warp Spider, Banshee or Swooping Hawk. Warlocks will eventually focus in Heals, Support, or mid-ranged AOE/DPS - eventually becoming either a leader of there chosen profession or a FarSeer.

Devs said there will be no character progression.
You just unlock classes and wargear. There are no strong and weak classes or wargear, all of them just differ from each other and play different roles on the battlefield.

Devs also said, that there will be horizontal character progression. This means no level ups, just XP (or similar) to unlock new weapons, accessories, etc., also, I guess you will be upgrade your skills with a little, so a Dark Apostate with a Chaos Bolt lvl 7. will do like 220 DMG, but a Chaos Bolt lvl. 6 does only 205 dmg.

In the meantime, a SM has like... 1000HP, so the difference of 15 dmg does not matter that much, but still, you feel yourself "upgraded".

This is just a guess ofc.

Hmmm actually Character Progression would add to the game but I'd prefer a more free form as in you gain exp and can put into what ever skill you want ie I could upgrade my melee skills but also say my ranged skill creating a well rounded character or a more specialised character and after so many upgrades you can unlock say centurion armor than dreadnaught armor and outfit in whatever way you see fit

I agree. I want skill to be more important that levels... I want to be able to build my ork however I want and still don't feel like I am being a bad player just cause I don't want to be a burna-boy.

Well in the rts style games your hero's and units are able to upgrade certain weapons for certain things, so I think it would ok to have slight progression. Usually just towards melee or ranged type attacks. But if you are unlocking weapons and accessories then I suppose you can just choose your unlocked weapons before each battle.

I understand why some would want a more class based progression system like RPGs, but this will be more action based, so having more equal characters with different equipment like Space Marine would be the norm, and choosing what skills you like would be preferred then being locked in (see The secret world for something slimier). What you could have would be titles, eg, you have killed 1000 enemies, Veteran, You healed 100 allies, Apothecary, you've repaired 50 vehicles, Techmarine and so on.

I see why this would be interesting. ( Apothecary is already a class ) but if it would be like that I think you should be able to be promoted. If you get a techmarine rank you get some diffrent skills. YOu maybe become slower ( cause you have much more ''gear'' ) but get increased firepower and faster repairing or something.