Specialist or One-Man-Army

[Veteran]

Some people say that PlanetSide is a game of specialists who work in concert to get to their goal. Some say it's groups of well-rounded personnel who can fill in for each other when one dies, which happens so often and so quickly that a squad of specialists would be robbed of essential personnel if there weren't redundant specialists involved. Imagine if you lost your squad's only hacker? Kinda funny, eh? Well, according to some people, the fact that so many people have Hacking is an abhoration, and a symptom of people 'having too many credits'. I consider it essential to any squad to have redundant hackers and engineers (and perhaps, some day, medics, but not today).

In PS, a person could be a shotgun-wielding, minefield-deploying medic who drives a gunship. Without mutually exclusive certifications, this will always be the case. If people were limited to, say, half the cert points they have now, would people give up their weapons to become dedicated medics? The answer is no, except for rare cases, too rare to be factorial. A dedicated medic is usually more of a liability to himself and others, unfortunately, because he is surrounded by extremely fast, agile opponents who will see him reviving a team-mate and go for the easy two kills. A dedicated engineer would quickly become bored repairing things all the time, and a dedicated hacker would too. One might say it's essential for PlanetSide to let people be jacks-of-all-trades.

So here it is... Do you consider yourself a valued specialist who cannot be easily replaced in your squad, or are you an all-around guy (or gal) who can remain flexible and still get the job done?

edit: You might note some personal bias on my part towards letting people wear many hats. I respect those who want the game to revolve more around specialists, but it's a game and not real-life, and squads have enough trouble as it is without being crippled by the loss (or link-death) of a needed specialist. I think it's a matter of practicality that people be able to serve as proxy specialists.

edit2: The genesis of this poll is the new certification paradigm that was announced recently. People are saying that everyone will 'be able to do too much', and I wanted to see if people agreed that it's possible to 'do too much' or if it's a sign of PlanetSide's maturation to let people choose their destiny.

edit3: I know the word 'irreplaceable' has another 'e' in there. Typo.