You say suicide yourself to get the class change to deal with, in your example, a tank. For me, this isn't representative of how I see EC to work. What I'm going to say is based off PlanetSide 2. So a tank kills you, you re-class to AT. The tank can still kill you just as easily and you've only gained the ability to destroy the tank by re-classing to AT, not an auto-win tank-destroy button. When you re-spawn and are en-route to the tank, has the tank moved, are there other armour assests in the area. Are there enemy infantry in the area? In every attack bigger than 4 vs 4, it's pretty much a yes. You don't respawn in an advantageous area and kill the tank. You spawn, in all probability a minute of foot-movement away from the tank ,if not more, and will have to engage hostiles BEFORE getting to your target tank. And within a large scale game (again, from my experiences of PS2) you won't NEED to re-class as you have a lot of team mates backing you up. In PS2, during base assaults or attacks, it's a rare occasion when the force I'm in (public force, I'm not part of an outfit) doesn't have tanks, aircraft, medics, engis, MAX suits, anti-tank, anti-air or anti-infantry capabilities. Further more, AFAIK within WH:40k lore, Space Marines aren't limited to a class. Reading stories, Marines previously carrying a bolter (presumably tactical marines) have picked up weaponry from devastators when they go down. It'll be the same for Chaos Marines. And can you really imagine it making sense for an ork to lock into a class?! From the little I know about Eldar, it would apply to them lore-wise. But why should we make the (in my opinion) least populated faction even more gimped?
The path of an SM depends on the Chapter. In the Codex Chapters it's usually Scout > Tactical > Assault/Devastator. Some Chapters have progress from Scout straight to their Specialisation (Scout > Tactical/Assault/Devastator). And then there's the Space Wolves with their Neophytes going straight into power armour as Blood Claws, from there to Grey Hunters or Sky Claws with Long Fangs and Wolf Scouts being the level before Wolfguard. But what if you're not playing as the same individual in each class, after all the Howling Banshees are all Female which and your other slots may not be? It could be that you are playing as members of the same family on the Warrior's Path but belonging to different Warrior Shrines.
You have a very interesting point besides your main one! I think everyone of us has one aspect of the game, even if he is super active in the forums and trys to get all info, where he has some vision in his mind how its going to be, and it might not be that way. I sure do^^ If only I knew which one it was On Topic, I think we have a good middle between shooters like CoD and MMOs. The Question is: How long will you be alive. How long are the respawn times, how long is the way back to battlel. If these things are long enough, you might not want to suicide to spawn as another class.
HBs can actually be male, it's rare in the lore though, rarer than they'll be on Arkhona. Most Codex chapters progress from Scout -> Devastator -> Assault -> Tactical but that isn't important and GW has changed that back and forth over the years. Because they're douchey Anyway my take on the OP as it relates to my experience is that I do plan to play a single 'class' (at least for a while), I could care less if other people flip-flop around me and I will be disappointed only in the event that 2 issues arise: The depth isn't there. I don't care if by the 3rd month every unlock and specializations costs (X) million XP to advance where I could easily be unlocking other classes a couple of thousand at a time. If I want to "grind" that should be supported and actually that's a major concept thread Miguel, Brent, Michael espoused that drew me in with. My favorite line given early this year was (paraphrasing) "Yeah you CAN swap and you will fit more situations but you can also dedicate all your work, gear, experience into a single class and you'll be THAT guy everyone wants when they need a specific job done". The effort to balance goes entirely out the window because "fuck it, we know the Tactical and Assault suck but people can just go play the Apo or Devastator". That's actually more serious than some people might think, especially for those of us who come from class swapping games. I have been disappointed by studios who knowingly let classes suffer because switching was so easy. I'm not talking 1 vs 1 parity or full contribution equality in any Squad/Strike-Force composition (asymmetry is just that) but if something becomes unplayably broken and they're too lazy to rush a fix ... I will Chainsword a bitch If either of those materialize I'll be pissed in the extreme but it still probably won't break my love of the game if Eternal Crusade is actually half as good as proposed. I just never want to HAVE to swap because Havocs, Stormboyz, Dark Reapers or Apothecaries are suddenly worthless. Chainsword. Bitch. You heard
I respect your concerns and your reasons for want one character per role or class, but i look at it this way. In real life no one is permanently stuck doing a certain job or thing. Its not like if i decide i really like drawing so i want to be a arts and find out its not really my thing or i cant make a living off it or what ever. So i decided i'd like to change my job profession, no ones law of nature or something going to pop up and say sorry you cant do that you already chose artiest and aren't allow to change. i'd be like "no screw you i'll do as i please!" So say i pick up....i don't know become a teacher, i don't suddenly forget how to draw, i just add more skills to my skill set, you could look at it the same way in EC. Your not force to put the xp point you earn into every tree, you could totally devote all you skills point into making your self the best god dam bolter using tactile on the planet, yet being a ok devastator or assault. I mean how hard is it to figure out how to use a lascannon or chain sword. As for the eldar, they live for hundreds if not thousands of years, and not all of them devopot them self for then entire life to a single shrine or path, many of them have probably been a firedragon or a ranger, etc at some point in there stupidly long life span. So even tho you character can change classes its dosent mean your killing him off and replacing him with doppler clone 56672, its just there not magic force telling him hes not allow to be a devastator right know because you brought a chain sword to a tank fight as a assault.
We haven't seen the guts of the character progression system yet so there still may be perks for limiting yourself. While we can switch at will it'll still be more beneficial to stick with whatever class we dump our talents into, should that be the route the devs decide to go. I'd campaign for making talent resets something that can't be done often though to keep some form of character identity.
I'll wrap this up, at least on my end unless something important comes up, since I think we have covered everything I felt the need to talk about and another wall of text isn't necessary (Sorry about those). I wasn't aware the game would have this respawn as any class system until a day or two ago and I just wanted to voice my concerns about it and I think I have accomplished that, at least to the best of my abilities. I would like to thank all of you that took the time to reply and for being respectful of what I had to say even if you disagreed with me, I tried to give you all that same courtesy in return. I was a little concerned when I started putting this thread together that I would end up on the receiving end of a lot of hate and aside from running Djemo over with a bunch of tanks, I think I got out of here without making too many enemies! (I'll be watching you Djemo ) One more thing to the last few of you that posted, I don't want you to think I didn't take the time to read what you had to say. If I didn't respond to you it's probably because I would have simply been repeating myself, couldn't think of a valid argument or actually agreed with you.
I see people keep saying all this stuff about character slots costing money and such. Thats only for founders characters, in game you can still make other characters (I have a dark angel SM, but I can still create a space wolf when the game is out if I wanted to). Like, thats common sense guys. Unless that is bE's intention... which would be really stupid....
Well if im reading you right, bE intends to make the different subfactions different enough to warrant their own character slot.
