I agree that we are a long way off, so things could be a lot different. However, you must admit that the current store options are not helping this situation. It currently looks like it is a problem.

I don't accept your premise that the current Eldar equipment can be used by multiple Eldar characters. Your example of DA, DA Exarch & Autarch is completely wrong. You are offering the same as Tac marine, Vet Tac marine and hero. That does not show different classes. They are progressions within a class.

If you had a weapon that was usable by assault marines, tactical marine devastator marines and chaplain, then you should have a weapon that is usable by all the Eldar basic classes. Before you say "there is no such weapon", I think you should check up on the chainsword that the LSMs get. It may be that devastators don't get it, but I think I've made my point.

The basic Eldar classes can be grouped into similar categories, but they still can't share many items. eg, scorpions don't use power axes, while Banshees do, but they are both assault classes.

So, the complain still stands in my book. I think bE needs to address this issue with us. It needs to be validated as a know concern of the Eldar community.

I think you have missed mine though.

Firstly yes, Marines are flexible and all sergeants can carry chainswords, but that's not an option available to the basic Devastator.
Also pointing out that Marines are jacks of all trades is just pointing out the obvious, so what if the basic Marine can spend points to have better close combat weapons, so can many close combat troops.

It isn't their ability to fill a range of roles you should be concentrating on, or the generic weapons that fall into the general bracket of melee role and so can be used by any trooper wanting to stray in that direction, but rather the weapons that demarcate their more specialist roles and how many of these roles exist in total, because it is this total that will determine the number of unique weapon types.

Your example also ignores the fact that there is a similarly ubiquitous Eldar weapon, the Shuriken Pistol.
Used by: Banshees, Scorpions, Warlocks, Dire Avenger Exarchs, Farseers, Rangers, Autarchs and Harlequins.

As I said, the fact that we see a generic Marine weapon doesn't mean that other races don't have similarly common weapons.

Actually I am looking at special weapons. I should have said (edit now I have checked) power sword. It can be used by most or all LSM. Eldar don't have that that type of option. It is quite possible that they will restrict the other factions, but there has been no indication of it happening.
DA have the Mael Dannan and the Gatekeeper.
Scorpions have the Dragon's Tooth (I guess I'll have to take that )
Swooping hawks the lasblaster upgrade
Fire dragon's get the fusion gun upgrade
Reapers get the Torrent missile launcher
Warlocks get the lael'shan witchblade (this is new )

Which of these can be used by a different aspect? There is no cross over. To have all of your classes have some bling, you have to spend more.

This is why we are questioning what is going on. We need to know if what we see is actually true or not. We need to know what is planned, whether they intend to do something to address our concerns or not.

This is exactly what I meant when I said "For starters we may simply be seeing the generic weapons for other races and class specific weapons for the Eldar at this moment, which is giving us a false impression."

It looks as though there is an imbalance exactly because LSM are seeing generic weapons and Eldar are seeing Specialised weapons, but we have no way to know whether there won't be a slew of specialised LSM weapons and Generic Eldar weapons to follow, hence it's too soon to say for certain that there will be an imbalance in weapon cost.

Now I'll be the first person to criticise bE on bad choices, but they can't really change the fact that the Eldar are a highly specialised army now can they.

Actually yes, that's exactly what it does since to gain those loadouts they will probably have had to invest skillpoints to unlock them in the first place.

Exactly the same applies to Eldar.
Want to specialise in Tankbusting, train and gear up your Firedragon to use decent Fusion Weaponry, want to change to a heavy anti-melee role, you need to switch to a Scorpion.

The switch is done between spawns just as with a Marine, and just like a marine it will involve a separate character slot to achieve quickly as well as a separate weapon loadout

I tend to agree, but if it's character skill points we are talking about then what is the difference between skilling up a Devastator to carry a Multimelta and Skilling up a FireDragon?
The issue lies in whether skill points can be re-assigned and if so how easily, or whether they are instead simply acquired through playing the character and are permanent once spent but that in time all the character's options can be unlocked.

Both could allow Marines to achieve more with a single character slot than an Eldar if they were willing to spend the time and effort to manually reassign items between spawns, but you can bet your bottom dollar that bE will make it so that you really do need to unlock multiple character slots whichever race you play, not for reasons of fairness but because you will be asked to pay for the character slot.

And I'm all for that, but as they've already said that Marines will specialise into different battlefield roles through gaining access to specialised Equipment (via skill unlocks) there is already a strong implication that such specialised equipment will exist.
However it also suggests that unlike Eldar the Marines don't begin strongly committed to a certain specialised role and so it's hardly surprising that we are seeing generic Equipment for Marines and Specific Equipment for the Eldar. Why? Because it's probably intended to represent a range of starter options, this doesn't mean that the Eldar won't have or do not have similarly generic weaponry, simply that it's not the first thing they will be looking for to fulfil their main role.

I think maybe for Weapons it is fine, because we have to buy lets say a DA weapon and a Firedragon Weapon. On the other hand, Spacemarines still have to buy a Bolter, and a Melta even though they have no class that can ONLY carry melta weapons. So the question would be, how many different roles are there that are filled by weapons you have to buy.

On the other hand, maybe the Eldar prices need to be lower because, when a Spacemarines buys a Sword, they can use it for their assault, AND their tactical. If we buy a Bansheesword, we can't use it on the Direavenger.

In the end there is too much we don't know yet (can you buy different jumppacks? shields?) so I don't think we can say it right now, but it should definitly be a concern for us and the devs.

And Armors... they DEFINITLY have to be changed. First of all, right now the armor for the light classes is cheaper, and the one for the heavys more expensive. Then they have to be either wearable as heavy OR light armor, or have to cost half as much as other factions equivalent.

I would suggest taking a look at Planetside 2 here. You have several character slots there, and you make a character as part of a faction. (Here: Faction and sub-faction.)

A character can equip any class. (Here: Same deal.)

The name of the "skill points" in PS2 is Certs (certifications). You use them to unlock gear, suit abilities, and so on. You get 1 cert for every 250 xp you get, and they're independent of level. Even at max "character level" (which is just a cosmetic title thing anyway), you can keep gaining them.

You have several loadout slots, which you can customize with all the gear you've unlocked. There's several loadout slots per class (4), so you can store 4 configurations for each class to switch to with a simple drop-down menu between lives.

You can unlock everything a class has to offer, given time. There's no max amount of certs. It's more like "money", you earn it, you spend it, whatever you spend it on is yours.

Considering they've said PS2 is an inspiration (and some other things they've said, like you might be able to use resources gained to unlock things on a class other than the one you earned it with, and other stuff), I really doubt your view is correct. You seem to have an RPG-like image (characters can get a maximum of [insert number] skill points per class, and have to spread them around), while nothing that's been said supports that. Quite the opposite.

So no, it's unlikely the versatility of a space marine character will decrease because of skill point investment. Over time they'll be able to unlock every option, then mix and match them. Loadout slots (something every shooter has these days) will keep it easy to swap between them. No need for additional character slots. (That would force a relog anyway, so it's a bad idea from the start.)

I'm planning to submit a question for the next Twitch about it, but I keep missing the threads to submit them!

Err nope, my idea of the EC class system is virtually the same as PS2 system for that very reason, only with skills being more of a tree type progression than a bland cert system.
I imagine that a character slot will basically be used to preload a spawn loadout complete with items and skills.

Ahh I see the confusion.. What I meant by a Marine losing versatility by specialising is that when they skill for and gear towards a role they can no longer act as a jack of all trades.
In other words, if your spawn is skilled as a heavy support trooper and is carrying a multimelta then you shouldn't expect to fare well in close combat. The act of specialising has limited your flexibility.

This is true for whichever role they intend to fill, to excel at it they will need the right gear and the right skills and by virtue of needing to allocate gear to fill their gear allowance they inevitably cut out a range of other roles and hence lose versatility.

Marines may start off more versatile than an Eldar, but that versatility comes at a price, it means that they won't be as good in a particular role as a more specialised trooper, however they can spend points to specialise

On the other hand an Eldar has access to the very specialised aspects right from the outset, though each aspect can gain a degree of flexibility in their role by skilling up and gaining access to Exarch type unlocks.

I simply imagine that the starting gear is being tailored to this, with the aspects getting specialised gear right off the bat and the Marines getting more general gear.

I see no problem with this asymmetry, provided that it all balances out in the end.

They've already said that you can play every class in one sub faction with one character slot. It would be highly curious if you can only have one loadout saved for each of those classes; no player would stand for it.

I don't see how a cert "tree" really changes anything. It changes in what order you unlock things, but that's about it. Unless you abandon the PS2 model completely, but you say you are not.

Your versatility once you have spawned into the world is outside of the scope of this discussion. This thread is about how additional pieces of gear increase the versatility a player has in choosing their loadouts differently based upon what faction they are (a point I've already illustrated with detailed examples), and about how many unique pieces of gear one has to buy to get the same benefit. (Eldar having to buy 2 different armour sets instead of one, and multiple meleee weapons instead of 1 chainsword are good, objectively true examples of extra costs.)

From what I've heard I think that you can, but would need to manually reassign weapons e.t.c. which is a time consuming process, the character slots basically allow a full loadout to be preconfigured, making switching roles mid spawn much, much faster.

As I said, the fact that bE are selling character slots should speak for it'self.. Sure you can make do, but they'll try to make you want to buy some.

It means that you need to invest in pre-requisites before spending on the deeper parts of the tree, this means that in some cases you will need to have built a class towards a certain role and this involves a degree of commitment.

No you misunderstand me.. I'm not talking just about how many characters you can stick a chainsword on from the outset.
Yes it may be a weapon that you can bung on a variety of different classes (if that is bE haven't done their usual trick of forgetting to add the specifics and limitations to the blurb), I get that.

No I'm talking about why the idea that a weapon must be in effect cheaper simply because you can use it on a number of characters at first might infact not be the case later on.
The fact that specialising into a role inhibits the use of these generic weapons may well be key to this, which is why I mentioned that role/gear specialisation is important.

If, as I said, Marines start out able to do quite well in a number of different roles simultaneously and have a bunch of generally available weapons that help in this (Chainswords, Bolters) then yes, at first they are able to get more mileage from these weapons, however as they progress they may instead wish to use more specialised weaponry that excels at a particular task, but which stops them from wanting to equip the generic weapons.
Why equip a chainsword when you have access to a powersword, or even a mastercrafted chainsword that is much better, but costs more to equip - Dang, gonna have to leave that bolter and use a cheaper boltpistol instead.

Therefore as they progress they naturally fall into certain class roles until eventually only a minority continue to choose versatility and the more widely available weapons over the more specialised and effective role specific ones.
How long it takes for their generic weapons to become superseded by specialised alternatives will determine how much mileage they will get from their 'versatile' weapons.

By comparison an Eldar player who later on gains access to hero classes that can mix and match specialised weapons and wargear finds that now their specialist weaponry from other classes becomes useful beyond that class.
Farseers can use Warlock Force weapons and Autarchs can use anything the Aspect warriors can.
In these cases they would absolutely want to use the specialised weapons of that other class, but would do so rarely since it depends on a hero class.

So Marines get less use of their generic weapons, while Eldar get more use of their specialised weapons.
Do you see how this can balance out?