Question I REALLY want answered.

[exLupo]

As a few others in this thread have noted, this system is not new nor is it untested. It's fairly clear that there are EVE vets on the PS2 dev staff. Both from some of the comments made in regards to the sandbox and econ systems as well as the timelock skill progression.

From the way things have been said in various videos and posts, every player will slowly unlock tiers of basic gear. Any player will be able to pinch hit for any basic role. However, in the example above, MAX may be only available to players who have allocated skill time to HA. If you take that back to EVE, that time allocation may be a serious investment.

I've been playing EVE off and on since '04 and my oldest character can fly a large variety of basic (known as Tech 1) ships. Frigates to battleships. Mining barges to haulers. However, for nearly every Tech 1 there is a Tech 2 equivalent and even Tech 3 in some instances. My best can only fly two empires (of four, not including pirate factions) Tech 2 ships for a handful of types. Only one of Tech 3. And then you have to get weapon skills and I've only unlocked one type of missile and two types of lasers. On top of that there is an entire skill system for industry and market management and much, much more.

The point I'm making (yea yea, get to it) is that there will likely be a ton of paths and not enough time to follow them all deeply before the servers eventually shut down in time for PlanetSide 3. Even if everyone can switch to basic AV to help repel a vehicle push, if those vehicle pilots are specialists who have put in years to perfect their skillset, they'll have an advantage assuming "skill" levels are still the same.

On top of all of this, Smed was talking about spending finite resources on customization in a recent panel video. Roll this again back to EVE. You can get Tech1 guns damn near everywhere and for pennies. Tech2 is less available and 10, 100 or 1000 times more expensive depending on how desired the gear is. The system looks like it will be balanced on two facets. Making the choice between a wide but so-so skill set or a narrow but powerful specialization and then dealing with resource scarcity to limit the tools you actually have.

I would be fairly surprised if they made deep specialization in any one tree something you could realistically accomplish in less than six or more months. Total fantasy but it could go something like this: Go half way up MA to HA. Max out HA. Go up Agile to unlock Rexo. Max out Rexo. Max out ATV. Max out Medic but Rexo can't use the field medic backpack so you're limited to basic healing guns. You skip AV because you can't fit both HA and AV on your one "large" back slot. Since you're a perfectionist, you've taken all of these skills to 5 (EVE has a 1-5 system) and you're 8-12 months in. Now you're tired of being a heavy boot and want to spend time in tanks. Welcome back to Day 1. Rinse/Repeat.

And make sure your empire has the right resource flow or you won't be able to use the specialist weapon variants you've unlocked.

edit: I don't think the time-to-skill will be in EVE's ballpark. That's just not the kind of investment FPS gamers can usually keep the attention span for. However, from what has been said, the impression I get is one where, if you specialize, you'd best get good with basic tools in other trees for a good while.