Things seemed to have gone off the rails a bit here and there not to mention the rather nasty attitude shown by more then one of you. When I started this thread I did so with the sole intention of talking about a part of the game I didn't like, I wasn't trying to change anyone's mind or strong arm the devs into changing anything but simply have a dialog about it. The past couple pages a few of you seem to be looking down your noses at others that disagree with you or flat out talking down to them and I have to say I'm more then a little disappointed to see that happening considering how well everything started off. /end rant

Now, lets see if I can't catch back up, sorry I've been busy the past few days. I agree with Psychopski, if the plan is to allow you to take one character and allow that character to do absolutely everything then what do you do after that ? As far as that faction is concerned you have nothing else to work towards, you've unlocked everything and there is nothing left to keep you motivated aside from slapping your enemies around. I'll hijack his argument and say that might have been another bonus of having characters forced as one class, once one is finished, you play another and work on that one instead of doing it all with one. I'm sure I'm not alone when I say that having to work towards unlocking things is a big part of what keeps me playing most games as long as I do, it gives you something to work on over top of just mindlessly killing other players.

Wyzilla, I'm sure a rather large chunk of the people here have played all those shooters you've mentioned, and in all those games, even with people playing classes that aren't meant to deal with tanks for instance, those people still had options of doing something about them. We are going to be able to spawn in our own tanks or vehicles to counter them or even use the turrets on the battlements. Infantry don't have to deal with everything alone, if you're a raptor and there is a tank, if you don't have melta bombs or krak grenades or something to deal with that tank, spawn your own.

If there are tanks that you can't deal with then where in the world are your tanks at ? Regardless of what classes are there at any given time chances are your factions has clearly shit the bed (Pardon my french) and no amount of changing classes will change that if you're getting zerged by tanks or anything for that matter. Will there still be mismatches if you aren't allowed to switch classes ? Of course, I've agreed with that from the very beginning but I do think there will be enough war gear, vehicles or support you can give to others to counter most of these threats. Another option might be to allow players to pick up weapons off the dead ? If a Devastator goes down next to you with a lascannon, pick it up, take out the tank. Personally I see a lot of options that could deal with these issues instead of being able to switch classes on top of that but that's just my two cents.

CoD, Battlefield and Halo don't bring a lot to the table here since EC won't be anything like those titles, will it be a lot like Planetside 2 ? Yes it does appear that way, but that's why I was excited when I thought EC was going to go the single class route with your characters, I can't think of any other shooters along these lines that have done that, I was excited about that, it would be something new in the sea of very similar and to be honest, rather lackluster shooters.

I agree with Putrefaction, I'd also like to add that this game is supposed to be more tactical than other online shooters of large scale, only having a single class-character would benifit this greatly.
As he said, if you dont have the equipment to deal with a situation, you will have to think of another way to go about it, or let your allies help you. Its very good for planning and you will be more inclined to play a specific faction/subfaction because of your progress in that faction.

The only problem is character slots, for now I think we are only getting 4 unless we buy more, which in my honest opinion is rather annoying. I love Dark Angels, but I would really love a Space Wolf character to play when I'm not with my guild.

I think the best way to go about this is to allow upto 8 character slots, 4 of which are your founders characters.
To people who are not founders, you can unlock those slots in-game, since the founders store will be in-game as well.

I don't see moving to 8 as likely while extra slots are for sale. I could of course be wrong (I am a good deal of the time ). Keeping in mind that this game is less constrictive both in swapping classes from one character and swapping roles with the flexible loadout system, the 4 slots are already at least as good as 10 in any other MMO.

Selling character slots has been one of the better service options F2P and B2P+ games have introduced.

Remember there is a cap on the number the of slots per an account- 15 i think. (why thats there is another bag of worms.)

I fail to see how "one character one class" will improve the strategic elements of the game, in fact having 40-50% of Eldar and CSM wanting to play their support classes will limit a lot any possibility of strategic gameplay and it will frustrate people seeing how they cannot (effectively) play their favourite class because it's over used, it will punish the less populated factions more than the others and it will punish Eldar twice because of the number of highly specialized classes.

Well, I'll be maining as a Tzeentchian Sorcerer, so I personally have a perfectly reasonable RP explanation to play as multiple classes. The Sorcerer is my real character, the other three are my Rubricae that I send in my stead when I can't be buggered to get off the ship

Now in more seriousness, I believe the design choice of not locking you to a specific class is a good idea. In any shooter I play I tend to favor a specific loadout that I'll use most of the time, but some days it seems to work like shit and I have to change it up to deal with the situation. That flexibility is crucial to my enjoyment because when a loadout choice isn't working then the game is no longer fun but becomes an exercise in frustration. Now with huge dynamic battles, being stuck with one class would exacerbate this frustration. Worse yet, not everyone is going to know what fits their main playstyle from the very beginning of the game, they need time to experiment with the classes, and taking this away would be a poor decision. And regardless of your ability to change classes, you still have a skill tree to deal with, so investing in a certain character type will still be important.